RIP Sis

I'm heartbroken by the loss of my sister, Donna French, today. Donna passed away shortly after 3:00 EDT this afternoon due to complications of heart disease. Donna was 68. She had suffered a series of health problems over the past year and a half, culminating in several heart episodes beginning this fall. Each one left her a little weaker, and after the last one on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving she simply wasn't recovering.

Donna made the decision late last week to stop fighting and let nature take its course. She went home under hospice care and rested comfortably until the end. I'm so thankful that I was able to see her last night when she was particularly alert. She acknowledged when I told her I loved her and squeezed my hand.

Because she was much older than I, Donna was in many respects like a second mom when I was very little. After I grew up, she was extremely supportive of my in all my endeavors and forgiving of my mistakes. As she struggled in recent months we grew closer and I feel blessed to have been there for her as she had been there for me. I will miss her terribly.

Happy December 2016!

Another month has come and gone (that fast - yikes!). It was a wonderful month and sales were great coming into the Christmas season. Thanks to everyone who bought, listened, followed me on Twitter, or just stopped by. Some cool things happened last month.

Actually one cool thing happened in October and I just found out about it. Envato, the group that includes AudioJungle where I have about 30 tracks for sale, ran a contest for the best music for drone video. Completely unknown to me, my royalty-free track "Positive Corporate" was nominated by a high-selling artist called Vertigomusic. Thanks to Vertigomusic for honoring me that way.

Speaking of drones (I know, again with the drones!) I now have a collection of drone-style royalty-free tracks I call "Dronescapes" available in a collection on Pond5. You can check it out here.

Last but not least, I'm trying something with my main website. I've signed up for the McAfee SECURE program. It's one of those things were McAfee declares your site "secure" and displays their special logo to the first 500 visitors per month. There's no charge for that, and frankly even with referral spam I have less than 500 visitors a month on average at this point. Since I can't/don't want to spend the money for SSL right now, I thought this would be worth a try. We'll see.

Thanks for reading. If you like to keep up with my doings, I am on Twitter more often than I post here, although most of it is promotional (and "gratitudinal"). Anyway, please follow me @thisbrucesmith on Twitter if you don't already.