Hey, everyone else is posting cat pictures, so here’s Notty. As in “not my cat.” He, she, or it is one of (last time I asked) thirty-six cats my neighbor owns. I’ve never gotten within twenty feet of Notty; this picture was taken through a window.
Unfortunately I didn’t catch a pic of the squirrel up the tree.
But using Notty and the squirrel as a metaphor, most of us writers are just like that. Determined to get those readers. We all want a chunk of those hundreds of thousands of readers that are out there (or so we’ve heard.)
Which is not unreasonable, given 330 million Americans. And then there’s the UK, Canada, Australia, and all the other English readers around the world.
I mean, really, it shouldn’t be so hard to snag the attention of, oh, say, just a single million of them, right?
But like Notty, our intended prey seems to be out of our reach.
For us Indie writers and publishers, marketing is turning out to be a baffling puzzle. We talk it up, try pre-orders, give aways . . .
Oh, free books, while I’m here . . .
FREE FOR FIVE DAYS:
Need a big fat book for teenager or young adult? Christmas is coming up, you know! 
How about a college that trains people to explore the Multiverse? Magic lessons and internships on a Dinosaur World included. You can grab the ebook for free and check that it’s suitable for your younger relative, then buy it for them. And if they’re old fashioned, buy it in print and wrap it up.
St
ill a little too mature? How about this one? In the future . . . things are very weird. And about to get stranger . . .
ALSO FREE FOR FIVE DAYS!
Phew! All this marketing is exhausting!
Well, all right. It wasn’t hard. Wasn’t exhausting.
But I’m still going to kick back in the atrium
and commune with the goldfish, while plotting nefarious deeds for my characters to foil. Or commit.
Or . . . both. Uh . . . hmm . . . Now there’s an interesting . . . oddness.
I must ponder this.
What was I talking about before I got distracted by advertising?
Oh, SQUIRREL!
Mad Genius Club 
No cat-tales, but I can report that Maximum Maxwell caught a rabbit the other night.
3AM and his majesty decided he needed to go out, whereupon he found Mr. (or Ms.) Rabbit in the yard and gave chase. And caught up to it. But then he was unsure of how to proceed, and settled for barking furiously. The rabbit lost its mind and managed to cram its head and shoulders through the 2″x3″ space in the horse fence. (Its really a poodle fence, but sold for horses.) But then couldn’t get any further, and hung there suspended with the dog threatening all manner of murder and mayhem. Fortunately for Mr. Rabbit, the dog is all talk.
Eventually rabbit was cut free from the far-too-small hole and (I quote) “yeeted” to freedom, where it sped off at full emergency power, with afterburner.
The best part of this tale is that I slept through the whole thing. ~:D
*looks at Notty* Going off the other feral Siamese sourced cats I’ve known? He’s gotten quite a few other squirrels and is trying to figure out how to get THIS one– while waiting for a better opportunity to show itself.
He does get fed (the whole neighborhood can hear Eli calling his cats) and I haven’t found any squirrel parts, so I’m a bit dubious of his hunting prowess.
❤