Month: July 2011

So, lemmesee.

Did some necessary chores today, including WorldCon planning with Steve. Wrote a new Lee and Miller bio, got a buncha bills lined up to pay. Going to have to do some more set-up over the next little while so things can get paid while we’re away. Man, bill-pay is the best!

Still hacking away at the Big Pile o’Email. This could take some time.

It’s remotely possible that I’ve actually fixed the RSS feed problem for Splinter Universe. Which would mean that anyone who subscribed should have gotten a notification that the page has been updated to warn people that the last chunk of The Cards of Fortunate Destiny splinter is available here

Remember! “Kin Ties” goes up on August 12!

Continuing the to-do theme, I added a page to the Pinbeam Books site.

What else?

Oh, did I remember to say here that there are pdfs of flyers available off of Welcome to Liad — here, in fact — so, if you’re going to a convention or a library event, or if you belong to a reader’s group — feel free to print out the flyers for the freebie table, or other distribution? Consider it said.

In other news, it’s been threatening to rain here all day, and hasn’t spat out a drop yet. Maybe tonight. At least, she said, rapping her knuckles firmly on the surface of the dining room table, the Big Heat Wave seems to be over.

Thanks to the folks who suggested LJ-Book for taking my journal entries off of LJ. I had tried to use it…some while back, and it didn’t seem to work — i.e., it took the information and spun in space, then confessed that it couldn’t actually make a book. Does anyone know what’s with that? I’m pretty sure the blog’s in UTF-8.

And now? To the couch!

For the last four-and-a-half years, this poem was taped to the day-job’s office door, right over the knob, where I could see it every day as I inserted the key into the lock.

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look back at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.

–Adrienne Rich, Prospective Immigrants Please Note

I peeled the paper off the door today and brought it home, where I write to you from the dining room table, lighter by a couple keys and a whole lot of anger.

Life is good.

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7th Sigma by Steven Gould
Bone Shop by T.A. Pratt
Bones of Faerie by Jenni Lee Simner
The Brahms Deception by Louise Marley
Carousel Tides by Sharon Lee
The Cloud Road by Martha Wells
Dangerous Water by Juliet E. McKenna
The Dread Hammer by Trey Shiels
Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman
Fright Court by Mindy Klasky
The Heretic by Joseph Nassise
House of the Star by Caitlin Brennan
Indigo Springs by A.M. Dellamonica
Jade Tiger by Jenn Reese
Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis
Medium Dead by Chris Dolley
Midnight at Spanish Gardens by Alma Alexander
Play Dead by John Levitt
Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready
The Snow Queen’s Shadow by Jim C. Hines
Spellcast by Barbara Ashford
The Spirit Lens by Carol Berg
TruthSeeker by C.E. Murphy
Up Against It by M.J. Locke
With Fate Conspire by Marie Brennan

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Here ends the advert.

* * *

LiveJournal is still down, alack and alas. I suppose it will eventually rise again from its own ashes. In the meantime, I’ve been keeping busy outlining the next (after “Kin Ties”) story to be uploaded to Splinter Universe, which is entitled “Guaranteed Delivery.” The plan is to write that on the train to Reno. We’ll see how well that plan works out.

I’m re-reading the first 45,000+/- words of George in order to get back with those characters and plotlines. I also have some workshop submissions to read over and comment on.

You’d think that’d be enough to keep me out of trouble for awhile,and so it ought, which is why the back-brain helpfully came up with the three (relatively) tiny changes that need to be made in The Cards of Fortunate Design in order to allow the narrative to move forth. While it’s lovely that the back-brain is being so diligent, this really does sorta fall under the heading of Useless Information, since pay copy comes first.

Sigh. Writer’s brains are scary, scary things.

Speaking of which, tomorrow I’m for the day-job.

Only two more days of school.

And! Cowboys and Aliens opens on Friday.

Life? Is sweet.

[nocrosspost]

Yesterday, we drove around in the pretty day, looking at houses and trying to revision the future. You’d think, with us being scifi writers and all, that this would be easy. You’d be wrong. There’s something about revisioning your own future that puts a little bit of wistfulness into the exercise.

So, anyway, our explorations took us into deepest Waterville, then down to the big city of Bath. While it would be Very Cool Indeed to live in the City of Ships, I’m not sure Bath has my wholehearted backing. It’s busier than Waterville — that would be the fault of Bath Iron Works, from which those ships in the city tagline emerge — has an actual downtown, and runs on just slightly more than half the population. Bath seems to look to Brunswick for most of its important services, so perhaps we ought to do likewise.

My long-held dream of living at the ocean seems to be receding beyond recall, which is sad, but not tragic. I got to have a pretty major dream fulfilled in my lifetime, and lots of people don’t even get that.

At the moment, I’m still hoping for sea air, but I suspect we’ll wind up moving into Waterville at the last, if we can find something that meets the points on The List. Which we haven’t yet, so — still looking. Which means that, as of right now, anything is still possible.

My big projects for the morning, besides trying to figure out a way to keep Scrabble from drinking out of my water glass when I leave my desk, was to draft an InfoDump, which is now in Steve’s hand; clarify the bios at korval.com so that people (hopefully) no longer have the notion that there will be two more books on the shelves of whatever bookstores happen to be left by the first quarter of 2012.

(Just to save y’all the trouble of jumping over to korval.com to look, we have two books due at Baen by the first quarter of 2012, those being Dragon Ship and George. Due at Baen is not even remotely “will be published.” Figure at the very least, a year between turn-in date and publication date.)

After lunch, I’m to the couch for a plotting session — outlining the next short story so I can write it on the train to Reno, and also getting some forward motion on George.

I still have Stuff to do for WorldCon; hoping to get all that together and into the mail to Willing Volunteers sometime toward the…end of this week/beginning of next week.

In the meantime, I have reports that the RSS feed is “not working” at Splinter Universe, which I take to mean that the page doesn’t update to those subscribed to the feed when I add a new note to it. The construction and care of RSS feeds are a Mystery to me (see Luddite Author) — if WordPress says the page has an RSS feed, then I take it at its word. I understand that this may not be wise. If someone who knows from RSS feeds can help, that would be super.

If the RSS feed can’t be made to work, we may have to abandon the website idea and go to a subscription situation for the upcoming stories. Something where subscribers would sign into an email list for $X and I would email stories to the members of the list only. I’d rather not do that, since it doesn’t suit all of my nefarious purposes, besides involving a Lot More Record-keeping (I’m getting out of the record-keeping bidness, here), but it can be done, I guess.

And now?

It’s time for lunch.

[/nocrosspost]

Today, I did nothing I intended to do. Well. That’s not exactly true. I did add the bio pages to korval.com (you can see them here and also here). Steve made a new banner and I uploaded that, too.

I did a blog entry about the end of the world, again.

I answered some, though by no means all, of my overdue email.

I downloaded a buncha fairy tale books from Gutenberg for Paladin, and also bought him some newer books from BN.

I washed the dishes.

I screwed up my new glasses — definitely didn’t have that on the to-do list.

I did not, alas, finish up with the printing for WorldCon, or do any writing, other than bios, blogs, and email.

I think tomorrow will be a writing day, no matter how many Shiny! Things! have to be done.

And, to the kind folks who keep adding me to circles and things over on Google+ — I appreciate your attention, but don’t expect this bear to dance soon, if ever. I can’t for the life of me understand what it is that Google thinks I want with this Wonderful! New! Venue! and the whole circle things just, er, makes my head spin.

Whereby hangs a sort-of funny story, but. . .not this evening. This evening, I’m getting off of this infernal machine and joining my husband for lunch.

Hope everyone’s staying cool, and being sensible in the heat.

Big Box Bookstores are in the news this week.

Most of you will have heard that Borders is closing all its remaining stores, not only leaving a Huge Freaking Hole (henceforthly “HFH”) as well as a Big Empty Building (BEB) in the center of some towns where Borders had successfully driven out the indies and small chains to become the only bookstore. Bangor, Maine is gonna be hurting — it lost Walden a couple years ago, and now Borders is going. There’s Mr. Paperback, of course — an instate chain that’s survived by being small, and by altering its business model so that it sells more plushies, greeting cards and “gift items” than books — BookMarc’s, downtown, a “general” bookstore with a heavy slant toward mystery and Maine books, and another all-Maine-all-the-time store — Betty’s, I think? (Mr. Hetley informs me that Betts Bookstore went digital some years back and only handles books written by the estimable Mr. King.) Not a lot of bookstores to serve what passes for a biggish city up this way.

Not only is the folding of Borders bad for towns, readers, and lovers of bookstores, it’s also bad for publishers and writers. What a surprise, right? Less shelf space means less books sold on impulse to those browsing the shelves, and to that population that still exists — though we here on the so-called World Wide Web tend to discount them — who Don’t Do The Internet, and the majority of readers (the last number I heard was 70%) who Don’t Do Ebooks. This means less revenue — and even less revenue, since Borders didn’t exactly pay its honorable debts before it cocked up its toes.

Now, bad as all the above is, it was a longish time in coming. There were red lights and warning signs. Publishers had time to make contingency plans, to cut their fulfillments to Borders, to sit back and wait. There certainly was still loss, but there was a certain amount of control in latter days in regard to how much loss.

If the economy were in better shape, I might say, well, look! A chance for indy bookstores to rise and fill the newly created hole in the market.

The economy, however, sucks, and all the critters on all sides of the aisles in DC seem determined not to fix that, so forgive me for not being sanguine about the imminent rise of a bookstore indy class.

So, anyhow, Borders.

But, wait, there’s more!

Kris Rusch reports this, received from a BN employee: “We were notified at our B&N location this week that in the next couple of weeks we will be receiving a ‘massive returns download.’ To coincide with this outflux of books we will be adding 3 more of the massive toys and games displays, as well as expanding gift and the digital presence.” (here’s the rest)

Yes, that’s right, not only did Borders go out of business owing publishers money, now these same publishers are going to get hit with Massive Returns from BN. That means, instead of cash inflowing to publishers, so that publishers can do things like, oh, pay authors among those other, universally familiar necessities such as keeping the lights on, making payroll, and continuing business operations — the publishers will owe BN for the stock returned (“stock” in this case meaning books); stock that, with the demise of Borders, has no other sales venue to which it might go. Stock that will sit in the publishers’ warehouses until it must, for tax-saving purposes, be remaindered or pulped.

Pop quiz: Who benefits from books pulped en masse?

Yes, that’s right — nobody.

A word about that “owing BN.” The antiquated and terrifying so-called “system” of bookselling runs to a large degree on counters. Therefore, the Massive Return doesn’t necessarily mean that BN will expect a check in the mail, though it might have some deal where a percentage of the Return must be made in cash. However, it will by this action gain a sizeable Tab, which means that all new books shipped for Some Time will be provided for free — and accepted at full return rate when they come back in a couple months.

…which means that the future cashflow of publishers is borked fifteen ways from Thursday, and therefore their ability to pay authors, keep the lights on, make payroll, and continuing to produce books.

Well, then. . .interesting times for the next while, eh? Kris Rusch’s estimate is that everything will be comfy again (insofar as &c, the Usual Rules Apply) by, oh, 2015. Unless, of course, something else Interesting Happens before.

Back when I was an Ace Reporter for the Town Line weekly newspaper out our very own China, Maine, it was my very great pleasure (at 25 cents the column inch and 50 cents for every photograph used) every year at the end of July to cover what would have been the Albion Fair, had Albion been even a teensy bit bigger, or, yanno, had a fairgrounds. As it was, the celebration was called Albion Fun Day, it was held inside and on the lawn of the elementary school, and it encompassed everything from the judging of baked goods and Vegetables of Unusual Size, to frog jumps, to dance competitions, to make-yourself-a-laughing-stock-by-trying-to-climb-the-rope-bridge, to pie eating contests.

It was at Albion Fun Day, in fact, that I first heard a square dance called to “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.”

Good times. Good times.

Well.

It was hot in the attic office at the day-job today — much the same as everywhere else. After work, I stopped by Pearle Vision and picked up my new pair of back-up glasses. They’re a little loose, so I’ll stop tomorrow on my way home and have them tightened, and that should be that.

At home, I performed such mundane but needful tasks as cleaning and refilling the cat fountain and the hummingbird feeders. I also added the penultimate Splinter of The Cards of Fortunate Destiny here, and in a moment I’ll get up and go scoop out the cat boxes.

The glamor! I’mtellinya, as we used to say in my home town.

Oh, and the back-brain kicked up another detail for “Kin Ties” — see? This is why we let the story rest, rather than rushing to publish; so you’ll have the best reading experience possible. Really, it’s all about you. — which I’ll weave in to the appropriate spot this evening, too.

Which I think really will be enough work for one day.

Tomorrow, the day-job again.

Only three more days of school.