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Still here!

A major online site accepted one of my pitches (this one wasn’t cat related), and I just finished and submitted the completed article.

If they find it acceptable, that should go up during the first week in May.

The cat-evolution book

Also, Amazon has come up with a new format for their eBook authors: publishing chapter by chapter, offering the first few for free and then charging for the rest.

WordPress is already set up so you can do that with blog posts, but on principle I don’t charge for reading anything on this blog.

Yet I do need writing income. (P. G. Wodehouse was right: For newbies, publishing a book is like dropping a rose petal into the Grand Canyon and waiting for the impact. 🙂 )

Those rose petals are floating in, which is major success for a new writer, but something more substantial would be nice, too.

This new Amazon format does work for my planned book on cat evolution, though I think it probably is meant more for fiction a la Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo.

I can certainly cover how cats evolved in less than five volumes! Am looking at a series of 1,000 to 2,000-word essays, a few of them based on posts here.

Here’s my draft of the simple outline.

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1. Intro.
2. To Make a Cat
3. Time: Human vs. Geological.
4. What is Life?
5. Does Life Exist Elsewhere?
6. Main Character: Earth.
7. Early Life on Earth.
8. Main Character: Tetrapods.
9. Main Character: Natural Selection.
10. Main Character: Plate Tectonics.
11. Volcanism: A Main Character?
12. Mammals vs. Dinosaurs: Round 1.
13. Mammals vs. Dinosaurs, Round 2.
14. Mammals vs. Dinosaurs, Round 3.
15. The K/T (K/Pg) Extinction.
16. Paleocene Mammals and Dinosaurs.
17. Carnivora.



18. Eocene Saber-toothed “Cats.”
19. The Big Freeze.
20. Oligocene Wildlife.
21. Cats and “Dogs.”
22. Miocene Saber-toothed “Cats.”
23. Miocene Cats, With and Without Saberteeth.
24. The Miocene-Pliocene Toll Bridge.
25. Smilodon and Homotherium.
26. South America is Invaded.
27. The Ice Ages Begin.
28. Seeking Refuge.
29. Main Character: Felinae.
30. Paleocene Wildlife.
31. Main Character: Us.
32. The End of Sabertooths and Most Giants.
33. Choosing Hard Work Over Life in Eden.
34. Domestication of a Little Cat.
35. Mercy.

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See? Told you there is a lot to it! All this makes Fluffy and the other cats in our world today even more precious.

Other projects

Also, the superficial but important changes in blog appearance will be done, too.

I’ll keep covering volcanoes as often as possible. Some tragic events have occurred in Indonesia, but La Soufriere (still dangerous but calmed down a bit) and the ongoing eruption in Iceland kept me busy.

I’m on a two-day “weekend” right now but wanted to let you all know I hadn’t fallen off the planet.

Thank you SO much for your interest and encouragement.

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Featured image: Catalyst Labs/Shutterstock

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