2 comments on "Hopefully my site will speed up (fingers crossed)"

Okay, so if you’ve tried to visit my site in the last year, you’ll have noticed that it was so frickin’ slow. Like really, it would take 12-seconds to load the front page, which is an eternity in Internet time. (I was feeling like Comcast had already won and the Internet was being choked to heel like a recalcitrant dinosaur.) It’s been incredibly frustrating.

To try to alleviate the problem, I’ve added a VPS. I have no idea what it is or how it works (of course), but it’s supposed to make things better. At least they have 24/7 support, so they better be prepared for my barrage of nonsense.

Seriously, it reached the point that I just wasn’t feeling like posting anything because it was too frustrating. I wasn’t up to dealing with my own site, which makes me a bad site owner (“I didn’t mean for Fido to bite anyone. It just happened!”), so there I was throwing away money I don’t have on something that wasn’t working and was just making me angry.

Hopefully the VPS makes things better. If not… I have no idea what to do ;_;

UPDATE: Still super slow. Hopefully things will speed up once things propagate (right? right? Yeah, I don’t know how any of this works).

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Check out “Allies & Enemies” at: All Romance Ebooks, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookStrand, Goodreads, iTunes, Kobo, Less Than Three Press, Smashwords. — superhero, urban fantasy, mm, drama. Darkstar x Blue Ice.

Allies & Enemies at Amazon
3 comments on "CDandHBFH 04 [Caspian Dukes and Vereint Georges]"

Title: Caspian Dukes and His Best Friend’s Husband
Author: Harper Kingsley
World: Heroes & Villains
Frame set: Allies & Enemies, “Good Times”
Characters: Caspian Dukes, Vereint Georges, Warrick Tobias, Melissa Kim
Pairings: Vereint Georges/Warrick Tobias
Genre: friendship, superhero, meta
Summary: Vereint and Caspian go see a movie together.

Vereint was fun to hang out with. Caspian would definitely be open to the idea of doing it again.

“What do you think about this?” Vereint held up a brightly garish tee shirt with what might have been a purple unicorn-pony on the front. “You think I could get Warrick to wear this?”

“I will give you my complete Dragon Ball Z collection if you do,” Caspian said.

“I was not aware that you were a DBZ fan, but I’d be happy to take your collection.” Vereint tossed the shirt into the small shopping cart he was pushing. “Help me find something for Hank and then we can get out of here.”

“What are you looking for?” Caspian asked.

Vereint shrugged. “A mogwai would be cool, but other than that I don’t have a clue. He’s always the hardest one to shop for.”

“I see.” Caspian looked around, his eyes scanning the shelves overloaded with a mishmash of plushies, novelty toys, and bootleg DVDs. “Where do you want to start looking?”

“How about over there?” Vereint pointed toward a display of off-brand electronics. “He could use a new rice cooker.”

Caspian cocked his head. “You’re going to buy him a rice cooker from this place?”

“Why not?” Vereint asked.

“Uh.” Caspian wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. Vereint had a ridiculous amount of money at his disposal, yet he was eying a $30 rice cooker like it was the Holy Grail of kitchen appliances. “It looks nice?”

“I think he’ll really like it.” Vereint opened and closed the lid on the test model, peering inside curiously, then grabbed one of the unopened boxes and put it in the cart. “He and Caroline have just moved into a new place and I never got around to getting them a housewarming gift. A rice cooker is the perfect thing, something that anyone can use.”

“Ah,” Caspian said intelligently. He looked at his watch. “What time does the movie start? And what do you plan on doing with all this stuff?”

“I’ll rent a storage locker near the theater,” Vereint said. “It’s no big deal. Let me pay and we can head on over there.” Caspian crossed his arms and waited near the door. Vereint said something that made the cashier laugh as she bagged his purchases. It brought a small smile to Caspian’s lips.

Vereint was a godsend. Before Warrick had met Vereint, he had seemingly been on a downward spiral. There had been a creeping sense of misanthropy as Warrick spoke of the people they were dedicated to saving, a barely restrained sneer of disgust.

Caspian had been worried about Warrick, but Vereint had cleared away those fears. He’d breathed new life and new hope into Warrick’s life, and as a result Blue Ice had become a better hero. It was a good thing.

I’m not gay, but I can see that he’s beautiful, Caspian thought.

That was the thing about Vereint: he didn’t flaunt his good things–they were simply a part of his face–but no one could resist him for long. Even when he did nothing overt, on entering a room Vereint drew every eye. He had a presence about him, one that could quickly become overpowering when all of that attention was focused directly on a person.

Vereint paid the cashier with his credit card, then pushed the shopping cart ahead of him out of line. Caspian was amused to see that the plastic shopping bags were opaque green with lurid red Asian writing printed on them. The letters spelled out SOUP.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Vereint said, pushing the cart past Caspian. “I don’t want to be late to the movie. If I don’t have time to get popcorn and snacks I’m going to scream.”

Caspian rolled his eyes with a grin. “Good to know.”

“A vague disclaimer is nobody’s friend,” Vereint said.

TBC…
* * *
Check out “Allies & Enemies” at: All Romance Ebooks, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookStrand, Goodreads, iTunes, Kobo, Less Than Three Press, Smashwords. — superhero, urban fantasy, mm, drama. Darkstar x Blue Ice.

Panoply at Amazon
0 comments on "What’s up buttercup?"

I am currently attempting to NaNo, but it seems like today is the one where everyone wants to have a conversation with me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What is NaNoWriMo? Well, it means National Novel Writing Month, and it lasts all through November. Basically, everyone spends all of November trying to write a 50,000 word novel from scratch. The main purpose is to get a story done.

If you’re interested, check out NaNoWriMo at http://nanowrimo.org.

* * *

FLORENTINE: “This right here–what you’re doing now–it’s the explanation for why you can’t get a girlfriend.”

SCOTT: “What?”

FLORENTINE: “You’re trying to explain your game and nobody cares. Yet you continue to ramble on. I have no interest in your game, dude.”

SCOTT: “It would have been polite to at least pretend to listen.”

FLORENTINE: “No, no it wouldn’t. The best thing for you is a little honesty. Lying to you isn’t doing you any favors. I’m not your momma. I don’t have to pretend to care about your game. We have different interests. End of story.”

CHARLIE: “What’s going on in here? Why does he look like he’s about to cry?”

RICKETS: “Oh, Loren is just laying some painful honesty down on Scott. It was pretty brutal.”

FLORENTINE: “But it had to happen. I could *feel* myself getting all passive aggressive. No thank you.”

CHARLIE: “Well… Uh, I was going to ask if you all wanted to go to a ballgame?”

SCOTT: “Totally. Get me out of here, dude.”

FLORENTINE: “We can hear you. You’re like right there.”

RICKETS: “Okay, down girl. Sorry guys. She’s like a bear–get her riled up and it takes her a while to put the teeth away. Thanks for the invite. Maybe next time.”

CHARLIE: “Right-oh. Come on Scott. I’ll buy you a hotdog.”

SCOTT: “With extra relish?”

CHARLIE: “Sure. Whatever you like.”

Panoply at Amazon
0 comments on "Patreon; Locks of Love; Regrowing green onions"

I use my Patreon page => http://www.patreon.com/HarperKingsley?ty=c <= like it’s some weird scrapbook. Except I’m that crafter that posts random pictures with text that completely doesn’t match. Like those greeting cards with the picture of a sunset accompanied by beautifully scripted nonsense.

Take my “Nancy, Drew, and Charlie” thing for instance.

Nancy, Drew, and Charlie at www.patreon.com/harperkingsley

For some reason I thought that I would share my picture of where the bugs were munching at my plants. (Those bites are what I blame for my crop failure :P) That picture has nothing to do with the dialogue. But I chose to use it anyway.

So if you want to say you visit my Patreon page just to look at the pictures… I will completely understand.

* * *

I had the Kid cut my hair to donate to Locks of Love. It’s 11-inches of dark brown medium grain straight hair. Hopefully it will make someone a great wig.

For my head, the Kid did a good job. It’s a little lopsided, but I can fix it myself. It makes me feel lighter and more carefree to have shorter hair. It feels more like a giant life change than just a haircut.

I like shorter hair because it feels better, not just physically but spiritually. It’s like my hair gathers up all of the miseries of the year, and when I cut it off a weight is lifted from my shoulders.

I have a round face. I look best with my hair down past my chin, giving the illusion of a longer face, or pulled back to show off my neck and bone structure. Anything else and my face looks like a basketball. I tell people I have a Charlie Brown head because it’s true.

The longer my hair gets, the prettier I become. It’s some kind of weird curse. The best look for me is the one I hate the most. If I ever want to be “beautiful,” I’d have to carry my miseries around like a flowing cape of seal brown locks.

Ugh. I hate how long hair sheds. I’m not someone that takes care of my hair–I let it ride around in a ponytail and my hat is my friend. I grow my hair out just to chop it off.

I hope this feeling of renewal lasts a while.

* * *

I’ve been regrowing green onions. I buy them from the store, chop the green off to use, and stick the white ends with the dangly roots in my grow tray. The aquaponics really make them shoot up fast. I can get two uses out of one bunch of green onions.

Speaking of aquaponics: we’ve planted some lettuce, green onion, and white onion. The zucchini is pretty much a bust–our media is being kept way too moist. I don’t have any say in that though.

The Kid showed me a YouTube video where someone got roots to grow out of a brussels sprout. I’m going to try that and see what happens. I’ll try to get some regular pictures. It just seems so interesting to me–I didn’t know you could regrow brussels sprouts, and I’m really curious whether a new sprouts tree will grow. That would be super cool.

* * *

Mad Max 2014:

I feel that there might be fanfiction in my future. The Mad Max fandom will either stand up on its own, or it will be absorbed by the Nolan-Batman (Blake/Bane/Barsad) or Inception (Arthur/Eames) fandoms. I’m not worried. (And if I’m real lucky, the wonderful brain that spawned the Nolan-Batman/The Collector longfic will fusion me up some Nolan-Batman/The Collector/Mad Max action with Blake and Barsad escaped from the Collector into a Mad Max world.)