Author: Sharon

We’ll be doing this InfoDump in expiration date order.

Free Liaden Story Coming to Baen Front Page!
“Landed Alien,” will be published to the Baen front page on Wednesday, August 15 (that’s next Wednesday!), and will be free, free, free! for the reading. You will have to scroll down “below the fold” to see the beginning of the story.

One-of-a-kind Author Notes on Auction at eBay, Now!
The Green Folder containing the working notes, many handwritten, for the Lee and Miller Mouse and Dragon is up for auction! Sharon was lead writer for Mouse…and all of the handwritten notes are in her hand. Those interested may go here for more details. The auction ends on August 16, at 2:26 p.m. PDT. That is! Pacific Daylight Time.

Audible: 15 Liaden Novels at One Blow and Goodies, too!
In celebration of one of the largest single author, single day releases in audiobook history (is that cool or what?) Audible will be giving away free listening samples of the first book in all four Sequences, those being:

The Books of Before (Crystal Soldier, Crystal Dragon, Balance of Trade), Kevin Collins, narrator

The Space Regencies (Local Custom, Scout’s Progress, Mouse and Dragon), Bernadette Dunne

The Agent of Change Sequence (Agent of Change, Conflict of Honors, Carpe Diem, Plan B, I Dare), Andy Caploe

The Theo Waitley Sequence (Fledgling, Saltation, Ghost Ship, Dragon Ship), Eileen Stevens

It’s not live yet, but you’ll want this page right around September 4.

But, wait, there’s more!
Dragon Ship’s Official Book Day — aka, the day that the hardcover novel is Officially Released — is ALSO September 4. Are you guys gonna be busy or what?

Going One Month Back in Time. . .
The mass market of Ghost Ship is now available at a bookstore near you.

Aaaaand, Back to the Present
Two new eChapbooks, both writing-related, have gone up on Pinbeam books.

The first, “Reflections on Tinsori Light,” includes a foreword by Sharon Lee, the complete short story, “The Space at Tinsori Light,” and! the outline from which the story was built.

The second new book, “Writing Neep: Short Essays on the Writing Life,” by Sharon Lee, includes 15 essays collected from the author’s blog from 2006 through 2012.

Now, a Nature Note: Water is Wet
As some of you know, Sharon and Steve entertained a flood in their house on August 3; a feed line in the bathroom burst, filling the bathroom and the basement with plenty too much water.

What we want to say about that is? We’re fine. Yes, we were bummed that our plan to put all the good stuff on pallets overlooked the fact that water falls DOWN, too, but we got over that. We have homeowner’s insurance; it covers the cost of drying out everything that can be dried out. Yes, we have a deductible; yes, we lost some stuff; yes, sorting through is exhausting, but mostly what it is at this point? Is a headache. We really didn’t need this right now — We’re sure all of you know what we’re talking about, here. We’re doing the stuff that you do in the aftermath of your house flooding — coping with the adjustor, the flooring guy, and the plumber, and, hey, while we’re at it, the painter and the carpenter. It’s a mess, but — again, and truly: We’re fine.

Nobody needs to send us books, or big chunks of money, or computers, or — anything, really. It’s sweet that you care. If you feel you want to help in some way, well…the cats took some tragic losses — several favorite scratching posts were unrecoverable, as were some highly regarded blankets and cushions, and an extremely well-loved catnip mouse, and some cat-place towels, too. If you want to assist with things like that, OK, we appreciate the offers, and since the insurance payout will take a few days to make it through channels, we’ll accept small donations to srmATkorvalDOTcom — please no more than $10 or $12 per individual! We’ll make sure the cats are outfitted well, and we will tell them the name of their benefactor! Don’t expect a thank you note from them; they’re cats. Any overflow will go to the Waterville Homeless Shelter, which is our charity-of-choice.

Thank you all for your concern and care!

Blogs and Other Webly Things of Note:
Theo_Waitley is the discussion group for readers of Fledgling and Saltation: http://community.livejournal.com/theo_waitley/
Where Dragons Rest: http://community.livejournal.com/liaden_readers/
Steve Miller’s blog, Journeyman: http://kinzel.livejournal.com/
Sharon Lee’s blog, Eagles over the Kennebec: http://rolanni.livejournal.com/
Sharon Lee’s “Professional” blog: http://sharonleewriter.com
Splinter Universe Discussion List: http://splinterverse.livejournal.com
Facebook Connections — please feel free to add us!
http://facebook.com/kinzel — Steve Miller
http://facebook.com/rolanni — Sharon Lee

Splinter Universe: http://www.splinteruniverse.comfeatures outtakes, splinters, and oddities from the Lee&Miller writing career, currently changes irregularly.

Welcome to Liad — The official homepage for Liaden Universe(R) news — http://www.korval.com

Liaden Interest Groups on Facebook
Clan Korval: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=38719490864&ref=ts
Friends of Liad: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=16280839259&ref=ts
Flaran chamenthi: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=2213414696&ref=ts

GoodReads
Sharon’s Author Page:http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/57980.Sharon_Lee <http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/57980.Sharon_Lee>

Twitter

*Steve’s on Twitter*: http://twitter.com/bechimo
*Sharon’s on Twitter, too*: http://twitter.com/ClanKorval

DISCLAIMER STUFF
This InfoDump is a product of the Liaden Universe®, accept no imitations. You have received this message because you asked for it. If you wish to *subscribe* to the Liaden Universe® email list, to *unsubscribe* from the Liaden Universe® email list, or to*change* your delivery email address, go here: http://www.fireopal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/liadenuniversenews

 

 

Had I known that this important piece of business would be taken up at the Chicago WorldCon, I would have done my utmost to attend.  Since I cannot attend, I urge all of you who are attending to please go to the Business Meeting and support the following resolution.

Yngvi is not a louse.

Thank you.

In other news, I am completely exhausted, and going to go fall on my face, now.

Tomorrow, the Green Folder will hit eBay.  Watch the skies.

Or eBay.

…that’s probably the better choice.

Yes, going now…

…no, really.

…right now…

 

I had been going to put the Green Folder up at Ebay tomorrow.  That may still happen, but isn’t the way the Smart Money bets, given the sudden infusion of an insurance adjuster and an interview into the works.  Thursday morning, for sure.  Watch this space for details and pointers.

From another corner of the internet comes news of The Geek Girl Project, which by itself is a very cool thing.  But even cooler, is that they’ve reviewed a Lee and Miller novel as a “Book for Writers.”

This amuses me on several levels.  For one thing, we had many years ago been told to fear for our career, because we were “writers writers,” and such always starved.  It’s nice to see this coming around again on the guitar, and without the starving part.

The second amusing thing is?  That the book under review is Agent of Change.

From yet another corner of the internet, we have confirmation from Audible.com that they will be offering free listening samples of the first book in all four Sequences.  It’s not live yet, but you’ll want this page right around September 4.

And that, I believe, is all the news that’s fit to print.

Everybody have a good evening.

Signal boost first.

Emma Bull, author of one of my favorite books ever, War for the Oaks, and many other fine novels, is preparing for surgery on her thyroid.  Steve Brust, author of the Vlad Taltos novels, among other fine work, is about to go into the hospital to have a defibrilator installed.

Scott Lynch has the details, and he’s being pro-active in fundraising.  Go here; read all about it.  Please do what you can.

Thanks.

* * *

The Question has to do with interest in a potential auction item.  I have here in my hand, having ferreted it out of the file cabinet, a green expanding file with a Laurel Burch sticky note slapped to the front.  On the sticky note in my hand is:  “notes — mouse & dragon.”

The material in this folder is unique.  Those who were following along for the writing of Mouse and Dragon will recall my saying that this was a book that wanted to be written out by hand first.  There’s more than a legal pad of handwritten notes in this file.  There are typed out notes by chapter, and by concept. There is a draft manuscript, the original pitch document, chapters that took wrong turns, and several sheets of brightly colored paper.  No, I don’t know why.

If there is any interest in this this one of a kind collection of papers, I’ll put it up on eBay.  If there’s no interest, I’ll stick it back in the file cabinet until things get tight, and then (as I have in the past with similar items) throw it away.

Let me know, ‘k?

The Kimono of the Geisha-Diva Ichimaru, Barry Till, Michiko Warkentyne, Judith Patt
Partials, Dan Wells
Starters, Lissa Price
A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs (read aloud w/Steve)
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin
From Whence You Came, Laura Anne Gilman (e)
Frederica, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
No Dominion, C.E. Murphy (e)
The Prestige, Christopher Priest
Cuttlefish, Dave Freer
Intruder, C.J. Cherryh (read aloud w/Steve)
Blameless, Gail Carriger (e)
Changeless, Gail Carriger (e)
The Quiet Gentleman, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Unbroken, Rachel Caine
The Talisman Ring, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Sylvester / OR, The Wicked Uncle, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Death and Resurrection, R. A. MacAvoy
The Unknown Ajax, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Black Sheep, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses, Diane Duane (e)
The Reluctant Widow, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Friday’s Child, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Dragon Ship manuscript, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (e)
Kim, Rudyard Kipling (e)
Regency Buck, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter (e)
Chimera, Rob Thurman (e)

 

This post intends to gather and answer questions asked in various corners of Teh Internets.  If I’ve missed a question, remind me below and I’ll do my humble best.

First, thanks so much for your concern and your willingness to help and to sacrifice your own things for us.  Steve and I are touched.  No, really.  You guys are great.

But!  Please don’t send us your copies of our books — not even your “extra” copies.  There’s no need.  Yes, the authors’ copies that were stored in the basement are pretty much pulp, but let me explain what I meant when I said “authors’ copies.”

Authors typically get between 10 and 30 copies of their own books, shipped from the printer upon publication.  The number is formalized in the contract, and is part of the compensation due the author from the publisher.  These are the books that were in the basement, and they are used for Good Deeds, mostly.

For instance, if someone writes to us (as has happened several times, now) looking for replacements for their books that were lost in a fire (or a flood, imagine), we replace the set from our authors’ copies.  We do this gratis; losing favorite books is awful, and insurance companies, at least in my experience, aren’t that generous with payouts.

From the stash in the basement also come the books we send to auctions, donate to raffles, and give away in contests.  Occasionally, when things are thin, we have sold some of those books in order to keep the cats in cat food — which they tell us is also a Good Deed.

So, yes, a loss — and the sight of dead books is something I find extremely distressing — but a loss to the community, more than a loss to us personally.  Steve has a full run of every book we’ve ever written on his office bookshelves.  I have the same.  There’s a third set in the living room.  We’re good.

Handmade soap, on the other hand, I will gratefully receive, but!  I’m tough to buy for.  I don’t like sweet smells — no roses, or lily of the valley, or petunia.  I’m partial to lavender, citrus, vanilla, sage…  Since I live in Maine and the winters are drying, I also had soaps that were moisturizing.  Know that I’ve gotten gift soaps before that my nose disagreed with; those soaps go to the Waterville Homeless Shelter.

Edited to add, thanks to djbp for the reminder:  Address to send soap:

Sharon Lee
PO Box 1586
Waterville Maine 04903-1586

Thank you so very much for asking.

Um. . .No, we don’t have a mud floor in the basement.  It’s a half-finished basement — by which I mean that the side on the right-hand side of the stairs is paneled and carpeted, with built-in bookshelves and a woodstove; and the left-hand side of the stairs is naked concrete floor and sheetrock walls.  The cat’s room is there; the oil tank lives there, and beyond that is a small woodroom.

However!  We currently have mud in the finished part of the basement, because the water in its coursing through the floors and the ceilings, picked up dust and. . .stuff, which it rained down onto the carpet, making it not only very, very wet, but slippery and dangerous underfoot.

. . .and I think that’s all the questions.  If I’ve forgotten yours, please ask again.

 

 

Yesterday started out well…

Got up early-ish, ate breakfast with Steve, started a load of bath towels washing, read and marked up Chapter Six of Carousel Sun, ate an early lunch because our first interview was scheduled at 2.

I was going to be interviewing Andy Caploe, who has narrated the Agent of Change Sequence — five books; the most Liaden books read by any one narrator.  I called Studio C at 2, as arranged, and reached Neal (Neil?), who said that he had a text from Andy, who was running late due to traffic.  Could I call back in  five minutes?

I did that, again reaching Neal (whose spelling we will arbitrarily peg at Neal), who said that Andy had arrived and was getting a cup of coffee.  I held on a couple minutes; Andy arrived on the other end of the line; apologizing for being late, but offering, by way explanation, that Neal had told him that Mercury was in retrograde.

Studio C then dropped the line and I had to call back.  When I reached Andy again I remarked that Mercury didn’t seem to be in retrograde so much as it had crashed into the moon.

*cue laugh track*

So, the interview, which was, I think, proceeding well.  We were, in fact, nearing the close of the hour when I heard Steve yell.  I excused myself, ran down the hall, saw that the bathroom, where I thought the sound had come from was empty, so Steve clearly hadn’t fallen — no, wait.  The bathroom floor, I saw then, was three inches deep in water.

Back to the phone, hurried explanation to my friends in Studio C, back to the bathroom, where I snatched open the dryer and threw all of my clean! dry! towels onto the floor in an attempt to soak up what I could.  At this point, I thought that the washer was the culprit — not unreasonable; it’s an old washer — but that turned out not to be the case.

Water was gushing out from under the sink.  I waded in, and tried to twist the cut-off, but it was frozen.  Steve, who all this while was down in the basement, which, as it turns out, is the real scene of carnage, at this juncture shut off the electricity.

This was because the water, not content with flooding the bathroom, had seeped under the vinyl floor, found a beam and followed in to the basement ceiling, where it proceeded to execute a cloudburst.  Water was pouring out of the ceiling, taking down fiberglass tiles, and spraying from the ceiling lights.

I grabbed my cellphone, went outside, where I could just about muster one bar o’power, and called the plumber.

I’ll stop for a moment to remind those reading this that the adventure under description has happened on a Friday afternoon.  In Maine.  Some Maine businesses don’t even operate on Fridays during the summer.  Many close at noon, a leftover, I guess, from the old days, when folks moved outside of the city, to “camp,” for July and August.

I fully expected that I would get an answering machine at the plumber’s number, inviting me to call back on Monday.

Happily, Amanda answered the phone.  I explained the problem as best I could with the cellphone fading in and out.  Amanda dispatched Mike, who arrived in about 20 minutes, armed with the Biggest Wrench in the Universe(tm).  He deployed this weapon against the cut-off under the sink, which never stood a chance.

While Mike was on his way, I called the insurance company.  This was considerably more fraught.  First I got Deb, who started to take my information, then the phone failed.

When I called back, the connection was even worse, and. . .

The young lady at the insurance company couldn’t find our account.

That was good for a few minutes of comedy.

Mike having arrived in the midst of this, and wielded the BWU to our advantage, came out onto the deck and asked us if we wanted someone to come out to deal with the flood and the insurance company and “all.”

We agreed that this, in fact, was exactly what we wanted.

And so in due time arrived Jason the Remediation Guy.

Now, what the basement cloudburst chiefly rained all over was the remains of the SRM Publisher business, including computers, phones, shredders, paper records, the remaining stock of chapbooks, etc., and once more for good measure, etc.

But, directly under that beam that the water followed to the basement?  Sitting up on pallets, because in the spring, sometimes the floor in the basement gets damp?  Were all of our authors’ copies.

I need to catalog the losses for the arrival of the insurance adjustor on “probably Monday,” but the basement is still too muddy to attempt that yet.  I can’t even think about how many books we’ve lost.

I think that the books on the other side of the basement, in the bookshelves — our books, as opposed to our books that we wrote — I think those are dry.  It’s hard to get over to that side of the basement, because that’s where Jason and I piled all the stuff that seemed salvageable yesterday, to get him the floor space he needed to set up his drying equipment.

The bathroom…most of the stuff that had been in the vanity under the sink was a loss.  Soap — wonderful, handmade soaps that I sort of hoard against the bad times — all gone.  Powders, and — well…Minor stuff, really, in the balance.

The vinyl floor in the bathroom is a dead loss.  Jason’s removing it as I type.  The vanity, the wallpaper, the walls — still question marks.  Though there have been super-dryers working the room since yesterday afternoon, so we might have gotten to it before the water had a chance to really soak into the walls.

The towels are hanging over the deck rail — they’re still soaked, even after dripping all night.

The floor of the cat room in the basement, is damp.  The cat boxes are up on pallets, so the guys can use the facilities.  They’re really being very good about the whole situation, though they clearly don’t approve of floods as entertainment.

Mozart right now is sleeping in the co-pilot’s chair next to me.  Scrabble is on top of the file cabinet.  Socks is supervising Jason.

Steve has gone into town to take on groceries, pick up prescriptions and other usual Saturday chores.

. . .and that’s the weekend so far.

It can only go up from here, right?

Lots of excitement here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory today.

First, two boxes of this arrived:

My photography skills being what they are, you can’t really see it well — but! the view screen is actually silvered, and Theo’s hand stands out almost in 3D.  Very cool cover!

In other news, Truth triumphed in a small but important way today.  Not, unfortunately, before I had given myself a headache over the whole thing, but triumph is good.  And the filing got done, too.

I don’t think I mentioned that, yesterday, Steve interviewed Kevin Collins, the narrator of the Books of Before (Crystal Soldier, Crystal Dragon, Balance of Trade) as part of a special giveaway Audible has up its sleeve.  Tomorrow, I’ll be interviewing Andy Caploe, the narrator of the Agent of Change Sequence, and Steve will be interviewing Eileen Stevens, who narrates the Theo Waitley books.

Carousel Sun proceeds at a stately pace.  One of Kate’s immediate problems, of course, is to find a replacement for the carousel horse that’s gone missing.  Which means she’s going to have to come up with something that’s different, in style and in age, from the rest of the animals on the carousel.  It struck me that this is a dilemma that many of the restored carousels must have — if all the animals from the old, say, PTC* machine haven’t been recovered, or cannot be restored, they may have to fill in with Dentzel animals, or even new-made animals.  So, what you’ll have is mixed carousels — all vintage, but not necessarily original to that particular machine.  That’s an odd thing to think about, that. . .mixing of styles and kinds.  It had used to be, of course, that each company’s machines were recognizable.  That’s not necessarily so, anymore.

Well.  I suppose we’re lucky that there are any old wooden carousels at all, not to mention people who are willing to keep them.

And on that note, I believe I’ll go find some aspirin and a coon cat.

Everybody have a good night.

Progress on Carousel Sun
17,275/100,000  OR 17.27% complete

—–

*PTC = Philadelphia Toboggan Company

By my calculations, all US t-shirts and most, if not all, overseas t-shirts should now have found their forever homes.

If you did not (that’s NOT) receive your t-shirt, please drop me a note at rolanniATkorvalDOTcom.

Thanks!

Partials, Dan Wells
Starters, Lissa Price
A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs (read aloud w/Steve)
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin
From Whence You Came, Laura Anne Gilman (e)
Frederica, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
No Dominion, C.E. Murphy (e)
The Prestige, Christopher Priest
Cuttlefish, Dave Freer
Intruder, C.J. Cherryh (read aloud w/Steve)
Blameless, Gail Carriger (e)
Changeless, Gail Carriger (e)
The Quiet Gentleman, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Unbroken, Rachel Caine
The Talisman Ring, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Sylvester / OR, The Wicked Uncle, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Death and Resurrection, R. A. MacAvoy
The Unknown Ajax, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Black Sheep, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses, Diane Duane (e)
The Reluctant Widow, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Friday’s Child, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Dragon Ship manuscript, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (e)
Kim, Rudyard Kipling (e)
Regency Buck, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter (e)
Chimera, Rob Thurman (e)