Saturday, with Flower Coffee

Not a cat picture, but pretty anyway, I hope. My favorite coffee shop is this quirky place run by a Sicilian who insists on giving me free food. We have this long-running slapstick routine where I try to pay him and he refuses, so I try to sneak around him and pay his wife or daughter or barista, and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. It's... kind of ridiculous and funny, and adds absurdity to my life.

Anyway, usually the coffee they bring me has a heart on it, something they create by tilting the coffee during the foaming stage. When the barista brought me this instead, I exclaimed in delight and asked how she did it, expecting some new mechanical procedure. She said, blushing, "Well, actually I used a toothpick. I hope it looks like a flower, I did my best!"

I assured her that it was adorable and splendid and that I loved it, which was great because all those things were true. But to tell you the truth, I thought her decision to do something creative, and her hesitation about offering something she thought might not be perfect, was even more adorable and splendid and lovable. I treasured the flower coffee.

Anyway! It's kind of a crazy month. But for those of you with scorecards, here's news both creative and personal!

• The Kickstarter ends on Wednesday and is already my highest grossing KS at $10745! It's taking aim for my other record, 'most backers for a single project', which was set by the Laundry Dragons with 177. (We're at 167). Y'all, I can't even with this. *flails weakly*
• Kherishdar's Exception launched yesterday, and better than I thought it would! I am chuffed and excited because I love writing Kherishdar.
• Which reminds me, audio fans, the KH4 audio edition should be out in August (have a snippet). I'm getting chapters of it now. Also, audio fans, I just got the FLACs for the entire book of PG2, so for those of you at the audio tier I'll be either serializing that here, or sending you coupons for a Bandcamp edition, depending on what people prefer. Or both, I guess! 
• Family suggested I get a new phone to celebrate the success of the KS, but my current phone is good enough and phones are expensive. I opted instead for a new monitor, because my 8-year-old one is beginning to show signs of finally dying. I set an aggressive budget, but thanks to lots of recent sales I not only got the monitor, but a new stand so I could get all the books off my desk I was using to get the monitor up to the right height. I can finally see my desk! I am so excite! Plus, monitor is no longer fuzzy and flickery. 💖

So that's today! Goodness. We've got great stuff coming the remainder of this year! I can't wait to get all the new writing out to you. In the meantime, I hope you're having a great weekend! 💖