Feeling another human’s touch.

touching foreheads

running fingers through hair

hiding face in neck

caressing the other’s hand

feeling their pulse

patting the other’s head

holding hands

shielding the other one with their body

listening to the other’s heartbeat

spooning at night

laying their hand on the other’s neck

pushing a strand of hair behind their ear

nudging the other one

putting an arm around the other’s waist

hugging each other

massaging them

holding the other’s chin up

squishing the other’s cheek

high fiving

bandaging/stitching up an injury

kissing the other’s brow

falling asleep on the other’s shoulder

carrying the other one in their arms

whispering in their ear, lips touching the skin

stroking the other’s arm soothingly

kissing the top of their head

pulling the other one towards them

feeling for each other in the dark

tickling the other one

grabbing onto their arm

doing a pinky swear

caressing the other’s back

tasting their smile

washing the other’s body

kissing their bruises and scars

lifting the other one up

putting their head on the other’s chest

stroking their leg

leaning into the other’s side

patting them on the back

sitting close and knees touching

braiding the other’s hair

giving them a piggy-back ride

sitting on the other’s lap

feeling their temperature

linking arms with each other

touching their elbow to get their attention

dancing with each other

holding onto the other’s shoulders for support

putting a hand over the other’s mouth to shut them up

He'd be 91 if he were alive today

Have you ever been listening to Rainymood and thought, “Yeah, this is good … but it would be nice if I could customize the sound more, or if there was a little more choice.

Let me introduce you to MyNoise.

MyNoise is a customizable sounscape looper with so many options, even within each soundscape.  So say, for instance, you really love rain sounds when you write or study or relax.  Anything.  I know I’m a big fan of rain sounds.  They have a page for that.

But say you like really high, pattery rain, and LOTS of low thunder.  Here’s where MyNoise really stands out: you can customize that.  See those sliders with all the cute colors?  That is your equalizer. You can adjust the levels based on what you want to hear more and less of.  Here’s how it looks when you want high, pattery rain and low, rumbly thunder:

But say rain isn’t really your jam.  Say you want something a little more ambient, a little more background noise-y.  Something with people.  Well, they have customizable coffee house chatter that even has the levels listed for things like “kitchen,” “babble,” and “table”:

Or say you miss the ocean.

Or say you miss your cat.

Or say you miss your spaceship.

Or say you miss the dungeon where you and your team of scalawag adventurers used to explore and face off against, say, dragons.  In the dungeon.

This site is seriously so helpful, and those are just a fraction of every kind of sounscape the site has to offer.  The best part is that if you want to layer it with music (for instance, I’ll layer a playlist + rain + coffee shop if the scene I’m writing takes place in a coffee shop), you can adjust the master volume, meaning all of your layers stay at their respective volumes, just louder or quieter.

There is a new Wattpad competitor called Dreame.

I suspect a lot of people here read stories on Wattpad.

Dreame is similar in concept.

BUT.

Dreame has been attempting to headhunt writers from Wattpad. Sounds good, right?

Nope.

One writer was offered a $60 advance…to sign over the RIGHTS to his book. They’ll license the print book rights back for 30%.

Please do not sign with these people as a writer.

They are claiming for one of their “contests” that they will “invite professional book reviewers” to review your books. No professional book reviewer is going to review a web series.

Some more gems, because I went to their site so you don’t have to:

To get the reward for daily updates, you have to update DAILY. You get two days off a month.

Here are a few articles on red flags and publishing scams, which can help writers make a more informed and safer choice:

Writer Beware 

Publishing Companies To Avoid And Nasty New Author Scams

In bold are names/sites you should avoid:

“Dear Author, [you guys know my name by now, gimme a break]

This is Monnie, an editor from STARY PTE. LTD, which is based in Singapore and owns two fast-developing fiction-reading platforms: FicFun, focusing on presenting thrilling stories for male readers while Dreame, a community featuring romance stories for girls. […] You can learn more about us by visiting our website, or joining the FB Group “Online Fiction Writers & Readers Union”.

Fifth time’s the charm, eh creeps?

It’s currently fighting a bitter battle to the death against the raspberries attempting to invade from the east while trying to annex the patio.

Could go either way at this point TBH. Unless, of course, I take a shovel and the blowtorch out there and battle both back to within their original boundaries.

tl:dr

you lose more than half your donation

youtube never states this anywhere

Julie D’Aubigny was a 17th-century bisexual French opera singer and fencing master who killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death duels, performed nightly shows on the biggest and most highly-respected opera stage in the world, and once took the Holy Orders just so that she could sneak into a convent and shag a nun.

Around 1678 (she was like fourteen or fifteen), she was making a living in Marseilles by doing fencing exhibitions, dressed in male clothes, with her boyfriend who was on the run because he killed a guy in an illegal duel in Paris.

Then she joined an opera company and fell in love with a young woman, but the woman’s parents decided to put her in a convent to, you know, protect her honor and all that…

…so yeah, that’s when the whole “sneaking into a convent to help a nun sneak out and also putting the room on fire” thing happened.

She wounded a guy through the shoulder with a sword in a duel because he had made fun of her clothes. They became friends after she came back a few days later to ask if he was okay.

She beat a singer who was quite famous at the time because he was being a jerk to some women from her new opera troupe in Paris.

She kissed a young woman in front of everyone at a society ball, and that angered three noblemen who were there, so she beat them all in duel and fled to Brussels. Then she resumed her opera career there.

Then she returned to the Paris opera and had yet more problems with the law because she beat up her landlord.

She retired to a convent after the death of her love Madame la Marquise de Florensac, and died at only 33 years old.

This speech-language pathologist taught her dog 29 words, and he can even form full sentences.

They do understand our words. This is not true of all domesticated animals (horses, for example, can only manage to distinguish a relatively small number of spoken commands…but boy do they know what you’re really saying).

They don’t understand “just your tone of voice” as a lot of people think.

As of 2016 the record vocabulary for a dog demonstrating understanding of words is over 1,000.

So if you give them a way to talk back, they’re going to use it.

The development of language skills is probably a side effect of domestication and of being kept in close contact with humans. A dog that was a better hunting partner would be kept and bred and over time they developed a better understanding of language.

In other words, dogs are pretty dang smart because we need them to understand us.

Check out the owner Christina’s Instagram: one of the first things I saw was a video where the dog started barking and, when prompted by the owner, said “outside, look look look look look look look, come outside.” Which is basically exactly how one would expect a dog to speak. 

The owner described bringing an unknown package into the house, and the dog ran away to push the buttons for “help no no help help” which is also about what I expect goes on in a scared pup’s mind.

In another video, the dog tried to push a button, and the button wasn’t working. The dog paused and then pushed the buttons for “No. Help.” 

In yet another (which the owner seemed impressed by), Stella said “come eat come play.” The owner asked the dog which she wanted to do, to eat or to play? And the dog clarified “come eat.” After eating, then the dog tried to instigate play. So the dog may have been able to understand a short spoken question, and how “questions and answers” work, and also understands sequences, even if she can’t express them (”I want to eat, THEN I want to play”)

Stella can even recount short-term memories, like when her family returned from the beach for dinner and she said “water good, no eat, play”

By the way, the owner uses the buttons as well, which probably really helps reinforce their meaning. She uses them to say things like “Stella all done eat” or “Stella and Christina go outside, bye!”