Year: 2011

Yes, I’m reading the Chronicles of Wooster. Rereading, actually, thanks to Project Gutenberg. I first read them out of the public library when I was no doubt “too young” to do so. However, I was more than tall enough to get them down from the shelves, I could fit my entire given name, in cursive, on a library card, and my mother was on record with the librarian as stating that she didn’t give a damn’ what books the kid checked out, as long as she didn’t incur any late fees.

One of those rare and blessed cases in which everyone wins.

So, anyway, on the Nook — hight Paladin, which I think I forgot to report; who can pin down the reference for that? — is Right Ho, Jeeves, which I’m reading now (and from which I gain the Interesting Information that Bertie’s school friend Sipperly had at one time been trying to get himself engaged to Elizabeth Moon), and, in reserve, a collection of short stories, My Man Jeeves. I will, as time permits, peruse the lists to see if any more of the novels have been converted; I can see where they’re going to come in Very Handy in the coming months.

I think I may have also forgotten to report that I got my hair cut at the local posh salon, mostly to trim off the more egregious points and angles, and get the bangs out of the eyes so I’m not a danger on the roads. While I was there, I had a bottle of purple ink up-ended over my head. I’m not entirely purple, which I think would be a bit much, but I do have definite purple stripes. Which pleases me.

The young woman who took me in hand at the salon — and who was enthusiastically in favor of the purple — interestingly said, “Your haircut is too simple for who you are,” which may be so, but, given my Utter Lack of Talent in the fixing of my own hair may also be wise. Anyhow, interesting, as was the venue — a big open room with large windows and skylights, a few artfully worn oriental carpets scattered about a hardwood floor. Full length mirrors enclosed in wide floral antiqued frames, leaning casually against the wall. It looked nice, but was noisy as heck. They need draperies, or pennants or something to muffle the racket of hairdryers and voices.

In other Interesting News, Steve lets me know that we have this moment in time 333 pledges for signed copies of Ghost Ship. This means we have surpassed the lower limit, and that there Will Be Signed Books. As there is no upper limit, we are continuing to take pledges (not orders — orders come later; we’ll tell you when) until April 1. At that time, we will send The Number to Uncle Hugo’s. Uncle Hugo’s will speak with Baen and a print-run for signed books will be set.

People have asked when Ghost Ship will be published — that would be August first-ish.

People have asked what Ghost Ship is about — it is the sequel to I Dare in the Agent of Change Sequence and the sequel to Saltation in the Theo Waitley Sequence.

People have worried that non-US residents will not be able to order books. Non-US residents may of course order books, when the time comes to order. Uncle Hugo’s ships worldwide. When the order webpage goes live, it will have a postage component. I cannot tell you what the postage will be at this time (and neither can Uncle Hugo’s) because. . .wait for it. . .Ghost Ship hasn’t been printed yet and therefore no one knows how much it weighs.

If you’re coming late to the party, and want to pledge for a first-run hardcover copy of Ghost Ship signed by both authors, instructions for doing so are here

And, now, “Intelligent Design” having passed out of my hands and into Steve’s, it’s time for me to do some chores.

This weekend has got to be a working weekend. But I’m telling you — the pull of that triple-full-moon? Attracts the Rolanni every bit as much as the tides.

At the moment, up here in the mid-country, we have wind — gusts up to 53 miles per hour. That’s some Serious dust in the air. Not to mention the widow-makers that are getting shaken out of the trees. Oh, look, the wind is combing the forest’s hair…

For the coming week — I have a rematch scheduled at the sleep lab on Monday night, this time to fit a mask and ascertain the proper and necessary air pressure. What fun. That means I’ll be late to work on Tuesday, but, happily, Spring Break starts tomorrow. Not, yanno, that I get time off, but the students will be off-campus, and the faculty will scatter like mice. Good time to catch up the work that I had to let slide through at the beginning of the semester.

Hmmm. I wonder if there’s enough time to take a nap before bedtime…

American Rose, Karen Abbott
The Bull God, Roberta Gellis (e)
Sin in the Second City, Karen Abbott
Of Blood and Honey, Stina Leicht (e)
The God Engines, John Scalzi (e)
Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key, Kage Baker (e)
Unseen, Rachel Caine
Total Eclipse, Rachel Caine
Weight of Stone, Laura Anne Gilman
The Story of Chicago May, Nuala O’Faolain

Dear Friends of Liad, and all the Ships at Sea:

Those of you who have been with us for a long time recall that our former publisher made signed editions of first-run hardcovers available to readers by pre-order only. A good number of you used to take advantage of this, and from time to time (to time to time) we hear from some of you, wondering when this will be available again.

Well. . .we and Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore have an idea about that, just in time for GHOST SHIP. But we need your help.

The scheme: Baen will tip-in (which is to say, they’ll bind in a special, extra page) signature sheets for GHOST SHIP, to meet pre-orders only. The orders will be placed with, and filled by Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore in Minneapolis, one of the great indie SF bookstores in the country. Sharon and Steve will sign as many signature pages as there are pre-orders to match.

The catch: Baen needs a guarantee of at least 100 pre-orders; it’s not cost-effective to bind in the extra page for less than that number.

This is where you — yes, YOU; we know who you are — come in.

We need a preliminary count, so we can show Baen that this Crazy Idea is gonna work, and to give Uncle Hugo’s an idea of what they’re getting into, here.

So! The Call To Action!

If you — if you really, truly, cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die will order a first-run hardcover of GHOST SHIP signed by both authors, please send an email to this special address — ghost_shipATkorvalDOTcom (where The Usual replaces AT and DOT) and tell us how many you’ll buy.

NOTE: Cover price for GHOST SHIP is $25. Uncle Hugo’s offers a flat $6 shipping fee in the US; two GHOST SHIPs travel for the same six bucks as one GHOST SHIP. Overseas orders will have to have their postage figured on a case-by-case basis, just like we’ve been doing here at the Confusion Factory.

If we get promises for at least 100 signed copies of GHOST SHIP, the project will go forth. If we fall below that number, no copies will be available. If we go above that number — that would be awesome.

We know that this is a lot of info, so below is a recap in bullet-points:

*If you will buy a signed copy of GHOST SHIP by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (no fibbing, now), write to ghost_shipATkorvalDOTcom and *say so* BEFORE APRIL 1, 2011

*If you have questions about this Crazy Idea, write to fledglingATkorvalDOTcom

*This is a preliminary count only. Do not sent shipping info to this address. See next point.

*Once we have a count, and assuming that count equals or exceeds 100 books, Uncle Hugo’s will set up a pre-order webpage. We will publish the URL of this webpage in all venues available to us, just like we’ve posted this InfoDumpling. You will have to go to this page and ACTUALLY ORDER your book(s). Your credit card will not be charged until your book has actually shipped.

*If the initial promise does not meet the 100 book mark, there will be no signed copies available.

*Signed copies of GHOST SHIP will not (that’s NOT) be available directly from Lee and Miller.

Phew.

Thanks so much for listening, and for your support of our work across the years.

Sharon and Steve

Oh, it’ll be back, likely spinning some unbelievable-but-amusing vignette of the plot-line that got away. It’s done this before.

In the meantime, I have two loaves of bread in the oven — I must say that the cold-rise bread is tasty. And so easy! Well. Except for the part where Hexapuma tries to leap into the oven to help me set in (or take out) the pans. Blackened Coon Cat is so not on the menu.

It was snowing today when I came home from the day-job. Big, sloppy, wet flakes that splattered on the windscreen when they struck. How big were those snowflakes, you wonder? They were each the size of a chickadee. Six of them were a white-out.

Once home, I paid bills, and did a bit of overdue bookkeeping. And now? I’m beat, and foresee an early bedtime.

However, before I go, I did want to tell those who may not have seen it elsewhere that the SFSite has posted the results of its readers’ poll for Best Ten Books of 2010. I love this list, which, by the time you count the Honourable Mentions becomes the Twenty-Six Best Books of 2010. And! Not only is it generous in measure, it’s a really good list of books you might want to check into, if you, like me, are constantly behind the year in your reading.

Anyhow, on that list, over at the SFSite, we have Saltation by Lee and Miller tied at Number 10 with Changes, the 12th Harry Dresden novel by Jim Butcher.

But wait, I’m not finished yet!

Down in the Honourable Mentions, Mouse and Dragon by Lee and Miller is tied with Horns by Joe Hill for the Number 15 slot, while Carousel Tides by Sharon Lee is tied with Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord for Number 18.

Three books in a Top 26 list? Not too shabby, says I.

And, now — the bread is done. Gotta race Hex to the oven.

. . .shamelessly stolen from matociquala — first lines from “my” works in progress.  I’ll note that my list is much shorter than hers, so if you want more tasty nuggets, hie yourself over to her LJ.

“Intelligent Design”
It was, Er Thom yos’Galan Clan Korval thought, an entirely unsubtle letter.

The book currently known as George:
Inside the duct, it was hot and wet — nothing new there, thought Kezzi, shifting her weight carefully.

Untitled Kate Archer short story:
When I was a kid, my grandmother had a dog.

The Bull God, Roberta Gellis (e)
Sin in the Second City, Karen Abbott
Of Blood and Honey, Stina Leicht (e)
The God Engines, John Scalzi (e)
Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key, Kage Baker (e)
Unseen, Rachel Caine
Total Eclipse, Rachel Caine
Weight of Stone, Laura Anne Gilman
The Story of Chicago May, Nuala O’Faolain

Tonight, Steve and I are going to see “The King’s Speech,” possibly the last people on the planet to do so.  We will, I believe, be home before the snow — I believe it’s to start as snow — begins, around midnight, heralding the arrival of what I make to be three solid days of various sorts of precipitation.  This?  Will be fun, considering that the driveway is already a quagmire.

The first year we were in this house, we had a sudden and exceptionally sodden Mud Season.  In fact, we lost a UPS truck in the driveway, when the driver inadvertently backed onto the supersaturated service.  He was able to leap to the safety of the tarmac, but there was no saving the truck.  It’s still under there; occasionally a mud-smeared box or plastic envelope will rise to the surface.  And I must say that the driveway is much more stable in that section.

While I’m here, I want to remind the procrastinators among us — you know who you are — that there’s still time to vote in the Locus Poll for your favorite work of science fiction and fantasy from 2010.  Drop-down boxes helpfully give the titles of those works which appear on the Locus Recommended Reading List; write-in spaces are also provided.

The Locus Poll is a reader poll. Anyone can vote. Please only vote once. Mr. Kelly takes a dim, dim view of “ballot box stuffing.” As he should. If you participate, please also be truthful about your gender. Mr. Kelly has in the past had a difficult time believing that women read SF in numbers.

 

 

Did Saturday chores and finally got back with the revisioning of “Intelligent Design.” The back-brain, which has been busily feeding me Cool! Stuff! for George is not appreciative. I have carefully explained that, if we finish the story now, we won’t have to stop working on George until it’s done, but since when does logic weigh with the Boys in the Basement?

I’d meant to get a nap today, but, what with one thing and another, that never happened. Feeling a little loopy, perhaps as a consequence, or as a side-effect of actually doing some work for the first time in more than a week.

Mozart is on my his rocking chair, emitting sleep rays. Hah! I shall foil him by retreating to the kitchen for lunch.

Hope everybody had a fine day and a relaxing evening.

Progress on “Intelligent Design”
8,178 out of 10,000 words OR 81.78% complete

A reader asked what my interest in Sin in the Second City — the history of the Everleigh brothel in Chicago — was. The short answer is that I’m interested in the demimonde. We do work with certain types of. . .unsavory. . .individuals in our books and stories. Audrey Breckstone, for instance, runs a whorehouse in Boss Conrad’s territory on Surebleak, so reading about Chicago May and the Everleigh sisters could be annointed as “research.” But, yanno, everything’s research when you write fiction — see “grist for the mill.”

What also interested me about the Everleigh’s story was the fabric of Chicago at the turn of the century (frequent auditors of this journal will recall that I’m also guilty of reading The Devil in the White City), of which the club, and the Levee and the First Ward were all vibrant strands, the larger fabric of the nation at the time, and the. . .ease with which sexual hysteria gave birth to what became the FBI.

I must say that Sin in the Second City is miles above The Story of Chicago May in terms of author competence and, therefore, this reader’s enjoyment. Nuala O’Faolain seemed, at best, baffled by her subject, frustrated with actions that made no sense to a memoirist trying to get into another woman’s head. Ultimately, her attempt left me unsatisfied, and a little annoyed at her whispered conclusion that such women as May, really, don’t deserve the scrutiny of history.

Karen Abbott, on the other hand, is a reporter. She writes a clean hand, and brings a firm, largely non-judgmental voice to her narrative. Her book was a pleasure to read, and I came away from it with a nice headful of thoughts and ideas. Ms. Abbott learned that very valuable lesson — News (and History) is People.

Granted, part of the difference in the richness of the narration is the available records. May left a book, written after she was “reformed” and apparently none too factual. There were some police and prison records, a few newspaper reports. She was a part of the scenery of her time, only briefly elevated to newswothiness by her membership in a particularly inept criminal enterprise.

The Everleigh sisters, on the other hand, strove to be seen, to make a mark, to be favorably reviewed. Their club was patronized by Chicago’s wealthiest and best-placed men. They were firm pillars of the First Ward, if only for the staggering amount of protection money they paid.

They were also interesting to me because of their enlightened business model. They ran a whorehouse in Chicago in the early 1900s. At a time when their nearest competitor was charging $10 (in 1900-bucks, now) a trick, the Everleigh “butterflies” charged a whopping $50 per client. The girls were seen by a real doctor retained by the house, who, among other benefits, advised them to adopt what the Chicago Vice Commission some years later characterized as “perversion” in order to avoid disease and “other problems.” An Everleigh harlot could expect to earn (“take-home pay,” if you will) between $50 and $400 a week (in 1900-bucks). The “butterflies” were the healthiest, best-paid sex workers in the city of Chicago. It was a business model that succeeded brilliantly, and by its success ought to have inspired others to take up their methods.

Politics and people being what they are, of course that didn’t happen.

. . .This is all aside the “morality” of the business, of course, “morality” being a slippery stair at best. And certainly even high-class whores were subject to the various environmental dangers of living in the Levee, the quintessential Bad Neighborhood.

. . .which reminds me — notice the Writer Brain at work — of an article I read not too long ago about the uranium mines in. . .Colorado? There was “proved” a connection between working the mines to a high incidence of cancers among the mine workers, and so the mines were shut. No other business came to replace it, which is, if Maine is any measure, About Par, leaving the people out of pocket and wanting to work.

Every single person the reporter investigating this place spoke to bemoaned the loss of the “good jobs.” Yes, lots of people in town died of cancer, but the jobs in the mines were “good jobs” they were glad to have them, and they would return to the mine in a heartbeat if it were opened again. Life, the interviewees said, though not in so many words, is dangerous; people die here. It’s how we live and provide for our families that’s important.

. . .and — last diversion, I promise — a few years ago, I was reading histories of Indian abductions. At that time, a reader asked me why on earth I was reading that stuff. And I answered that I supposed the back-brain wanted it for something, and I had learned not to inquire too closely into these matters.

Years later, I now know why the back-brain wanted abduction stories, so — research. It’s all around you.