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Month: January 2011

Natural (aromatherapy) perfume creation

Published by Kai on January 31, 2011

One of my biggest passions and indulgences is I design ‘scents’ from pure aromatherapy oils.  I’ve been doing it on and off since I was a teen, mixing orange blossom, neroli and rose to make what was my signature scent for the first few years of my adult life, and then adding other elements to the mix like champacha and melissa, or blue lotus.  I got away from it for the longest time, and then came back to it recently, so I’ve designed and trialled scents and mixes for a variety of needs for a while now. I’ve designed a…

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Friday free for all – life after gall bladder surgery

Published by Kai on January 28, 2011

It’s been close to ten years since I had my gall bladder removed (this September) and just lately, I’ve found that all the niggly little problems I’ve had with my digestive system are worse than usual. I don’t know if I picked up a stomach bug on top of everything else in the last few weeks, but one of the big changes I’m trying to make, alongside the whole ‘flylady’ thing is to fix my diet once and for all. Here’s the science part One of the biggies that I’ve never really managed to take on board is that my…

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Making it easier on myself

Published by Kai on January 27, 2011

I’m infamous for biting off more than I can chew – it might be the Scottish in me, it might be the fiery red hair – even though in that picture of me I actually had black hair ;),  it might just be that I always feel I have to make up for *something*.  Goodness knows what, but I’m highly competitive with myself mostly.  What I do know is that for about two months now I’ve had this growing list of things that I need to take care of – I was midway through designing my hosting site when Christmas…

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The best laid plans…

Published by Kai on January 26, 2011

Funny that I’m using a poem line given last night was ‘Rabbie Burns night‘. (‘The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee’ ).  Being a wee Scottish lass…ahem, sorry.  Seeing as I hail from Scotland, it’s become a bit of a tradition in our house to at least celebrate Burns night, and St Andrews Day with Haggis, though, to be fair, it’s usually a case of ‘any excuse’. We celebrated with lots of haggis, neeps (swedes) and tatties (potatoes).  No kilts, but only because my other half was so busy sorting out brownies and other fun stuff.…

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10 must have plugins for my blog

Published by Kai on January 25, 2011

Image via Wikipedia I’ve been emailed lately about my tech ‘stuff’ after I accidentally outed myself as a WordPress aficionado in a community that thought I was ‘only a writer’. Oooops 😉 I’ve got about 23 plugins on this blog now – some are because I’m looking to see if I can replace a plugin that’s not quite doing what I want. But I’ve got a set of ten plugins that I like to use, and in the coming weeks, I’m going to try to put up some in-depth tutorials at my WPwonderwoman site. For now though, the ten recommendations…

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The difference between writing for publication (traditionally) and blogging

Published by Kai on January 23, 2011

One of the biggest discussions I’ve been involved in recently between some of my closer friends and some newbies alike, is what the difference between traditional publication and blogging actually is. SO I thought I’d sum up what I’ve had explained, what I understand and how, if anything,  this changes your view on blogging. Legally Legally, once you’ve blogged something, it is considered published.  In the case of stories, or poems, this means that if your blog is public, you’ve just given away first rights.  If your blog isn’t public and it’s locked to a group of friends, your mileage…

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Toys and tools for writers – part 2 – the novelist

Published by Kai on January 23, 2011

Ok – so, one way or another, you’ve got the tools I recommended – whether you went with all free, or a mix of free and paid, or you’re ready to experiment with each.  Or you’ve got your own go-to tools, that you work with – that’s ok too – the list I provided wasn’t exhaustive (though, if you think I’ve missed something, please let me know – I’d love to hear about other tools people use). I also didn’t list ‘Write or die’ – deliberately – that goes under a whole ‘nother section – writer’s block. Anyway – tools…

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Ten more topics almost anyone can use

Published by Kai on January 23, 2011

After the vast amount of comments and attention the ‘topics anyone can use’ series has generated, both on my blog and in private on the mentoring group where I was the guest speaker this week, I thought I’d kick off my site ‘the status report’ with ten more topics here – and invite you to add ‘the status report’ to your RSS feeds.  I’ll talk markets (for fiction and non fiction),  timely topics with a couple of suggested slants, and, best of all, I’m going to feature one reader every week and talk about things they might want to talk…

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There and back again

Published by Kai on January 20, 2011

Image via Wikipedia So Monday morning, I went into hospital – and I’m home again now. For personal reasons I tend not to talk about my medical problems on the blog (I have a couple, some of them gender based, some of them because I’m just unlucky) but it’s a fair bet that if I’m going into hospital, I’m in more pain than I can cope with. There’s been an odd shift in the health community lately – and I’m not sure that I like it. Ir amazes me that doctors are perfectly willing to take input from sick people,…

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Guest blog posts with free tech support

Published by Kai on January 13, 2011

I thought, given there’s a lot of people have been asking how to ‘hire’ me as a guest blogger recently so I thought I’d sweeten the deal. If you’re running WordPress self-hosted, I’ll log in, run the posts that you want, over a period of two weeks or more (with a standard bio) – but you’ll get to review them and edit them before they’re posted as live – and while I’m there, I’ll make sure everything you’re running is up to date and give you the basic plugins that I run at the same time. I’ll also make sure…

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