Welcome back to more pieces of Peschel! If it seems like you were only reading the newsletter a few days ago, you’re right! August was so challenging that our monthly newsletter, normally released around the 15th, didn’t leave headquarters until the 29th or so. I got it written and Bill sent it out before 31 August 2021, so it counts for that month.
We’ll start with an update on our new kitties. Dimitri is growing by leaps and bounds. He’s going to be a very big kitty when he finishes growing. He’s over 7 pounds now and isn’t yet six months old.
Lulu is now willing to sleep on our bed, be seen, be petted, even be picked up for brief moments. We haven’t yet dared to clip her claws. They’re scimitars. She’ll skitter away if startled, but she’s finding her place in Chez Peschel. She plays with Dimitri while doing her darndest to keep him in his place.
Sasha (above) is proving to be a very skittery kittery, a skittish feline, a bundle of nerves. Poor Sasha. She’s around us, inching towards being scritched and petted (which she obviously craves) but when any of us move a hand to her head, she backs away. She also bolts from a window if one of us enters the room, despite having to run right past our feet. But she is doing better. We thought she’d be the last one to come out and play and she’s not. She will play with certain toys and she plays with Dimitri. She also needs her claws clipped.
Madeline is proving recalcitrant. It’s been just over eight weeks as I write this. We really thought she’d be the first to adapt as she was the friendliest at PetSmart, but no. We are seeing her more as she slinks around the house. She even comes out by day on rare occasions. Fortunately, those occasions are becoming — very slowly — more common. Bill can easily coax her out of her hidey-hole behind his computer box for scritching and petting but only on her terms. We’re giving her time and space and she’s adapting, but slowly.
There’s a new pet shop at Colonial Park Mall called Zoomania. Conveniently, it’s located next door to Cupboard Maker Books pop-up bookshop so I can easily visit it. They’re affiliated with the Harrisburg Humane Society and have pets galore waiting to find their new forever homes. They posted what I thought was a very useful guide to understanding how dogs adapt to their new home.
3 days to stop cowering in fear
3 weeks to figure out where they are
3 months to become fully adapted to their new home
Zoomania did not have a similar poster for cats.
Based on my experience with Lulu, Sasha, and Madeline, I’d guess that you should — with adult cats — double those numbers. At minimum. Our new kitties will mark their seven-week anniversary with us on Saturday, 18 September. We should have cake. I have hopes that when I write the October newsletter, I can report that Sasha doesn’t panic any more and that Madeline comes out and socializes. We’ll see.
What do our new kitties have to do with the writing business? Nothing! Except that they take time away from the keyboard. In a roundabout way, they do help the writing business or at least we hope they will.
Experiments in Instagram
I mentioned last month that I’m learning to make Instagram posts, using Canva. To my vast surprise, I discovered that I like both making posts and I like looking at Instagram. Here’s our feed if you want to follow us (and we may follow you!): https://www.instagram.com/peschel_press/
We’re working out a posting routine. I make most of the posts and Bill does the actual hands-on work of sending them into the ether. In other words, I get the fun part. Do we have cat pictures on our Instagram? Why, yes, we do! Not many, but there are some. As our new felines start feeling more comfortable, we’ll be able to get more adorable pictures instead of furry blurs racing past.
In the meantime, here’s our tentative schedule of Instagram posts. We vary the posts from week to week, in that we’ll have comic-strip panels on MWF one week, T-Th the second.
Sunday: a word from our sponsor.
Monday: author quote, cat photo, “Comic panel without context”
Tuesday: author quote, faux record album art
Wednesday: author quote, upcoming events for Peschel Press, Agatha Christie movie image
Thursday: author quote, Wednesday’s Poirot movie
Friday: author quote, Sherlock Holmes art
Saturday: Friday’s Agatha Christie movie, books we’re reading
Why are we finally getting into social media more? We want to reach out to more people who might like our books. Will Instagram work for us as a marketing device? Maybe. I do know we don’t want to shriek “buy, buy, buy.”
If you, dear author, are thinking of an Instagram feed for yourself, think about saying something other than buy, buy, buy. It’s annoying. That’s why we’re limiting a word from our sponsor to Sundays only. We’ll mix it up. Cat pictures, naturally, but there’s plenty of other fun stuff.
I enjoy making the author quotes. Each one comes from “Career Indie Author Quote Book” and if you follow our feed long enough, eventually, you’ll get most of the quotes. There are over 2,700 quotes in the book so it will take years to post them all. Actually, I won’t post them all because Bill likes long, in-context quotes; many of them are too long for an Instagram post if you like your text of a readable size. I especially like that the author quotes give a snippet of a writer’s thoughts and advice.
I’ll also post pix of our adventures such as the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum (totally worth a visit if you’re anywhere near Strasburg, Pa.). We have so much material, we won’t be repeating ourselves any time soon. We look at our Instagram feed as a peek into our lives.
Finally! Book announcements!
In book announcements, Bill is nearing the finish line for “The Cases of Blue Ploermell.” This project has been a long time coming, not just for us but for James Thurber. His short stories, written as throw-away filler for the Columbus Dispatch back in 1923, are finally being republished. Nearly 100 years after he wrote them, they’ll find a new audience outside of Ohio. They get the full Peschel Press treatment: footnotes galore, explanatory essays, and as much period art as Bill can cram into the pages. If you like James Thurber and/or Sherlock Holmes parodies, this book is for you.
So that’s where we’re at in mid-September. Moving forward, achieving stability, and wading into the ocean of Instagram. Thanks again for reading us. What’s the point of writing if you don’t have readers? We need you and we appreciate you. Follow us on Instagram!