Author: Sharon

Eidolon: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number Fourteen has been uploaded to the Nook Store and to the Kindle Store. Look for it tomorrow, late afternoonish, I’d guess.

Today’s mail brings correspondence from the Scranton Claim Office of the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, which has a Chattanooga address. CIGNA imparts the happy news that it is rejecting payment of a bill for ambulance services submitted on our behalf by the Bangor Fire Department, because — wait for it — the Bangor Fire Department is not an approved vendor.

O, rly?

*sees long, acrimonious phone conversation in her very near future*

But, honestly, what can you expect from people who think Scranton’s in Tennessee?

OK, I’m calling it a night.

Stay safe, y’all.

Got lots of stuff done this weekend. Still got lots of stuff to do. Day-job not high on the list of things to do that seem either useful or remunerative.

Ah, well.

I’m still thinking about the best disposition of the things that fell out of my closet. Yes, when I decide what’s going up to eBay and when, I will let y’all know first.

No echapbooks created today. Maybe tomorrow. As of right now, the Compleat List of electrified, DRM-free chapbooks stands at eleven. Here are the titles:

Allies: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 12
Calamity’s Child
Fellow Travelers: AitLU Number 2
Halfling Moon: AitLU Number 16
Master Walk: Tales of the Advocacy Number One
Misfits: AitLU Number 15
Necessary Evils: AitLU Number 11
Skyblaze: AitLU Number 17
The Cat’s Job
Two Tales of Korval: AitLU Number 1
With Stars Underfoot: AitLU Number 10

The chapbooks are available from:

Barnes and Noble

Amazon.com

Amazon.uk

Amazon.de

Progress on the Book Presently known as George
37,038 words/100,000 OR 37.4% complete

School was nothing at all like guesting with Maelin and Wal Ter at Glavda Empri, and sharing their tutors and lessons.

The voting lists for the Hugos in all categories and for the Cambpell Award for Best New Writer have been announced.

This is the list from which the membership of this year’s upcoming WorldCon — Renovation, to be held in Reno, Nevada, August 17-21 — will vote. The winners of that round of voting will be announced at the Hugo Awards Ceremony on August 20.

Congratulations to all the finalists! And to everyone who put forth the effort to nominate — thank you!

Tips for supervising your secretary: If your secretary says she’s confused, she means she’s confused. The fact that you are not confused doesn’t mean that she’s not confused. And it is never, ever, not even if you’re in a really bad mood because someone is being confused about something that’s perfectly clear — it is never OK to respond to a declaration of confusion on the part of the party of the second part with, “You’re not confused,” and/or “This is not confusing.” That’s right up there with those perennial hits, “You’re wrong to feel that way,” and “I’m sorry if your feelings are hurt.”

In the Real World, I compiled and uploaded two more chapbooks this evening: Fellow Travelers: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number Two and Necessary Evils: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number Ten . They should be arriving at BN.com and an Amazon.com near you sometime over the weekend.

Speaking of, both Calamity’s Child and The Cat’s Job are now available. The Cat’s Job presents a little bit of a challenge to find, because I somehow munged the title. I will fix the title, but I can’t do it yet because Amazon Back Room says the book is only “publishing” in which state it cannot be amended, even though it’s actively for sale. You can’t make this stuff up. But! Be assured that once I can make it right, I will.

Sigh.

Show of hands: How many of y’all are really glad it’s Friday?

If I can make it ’til May 20 at the day-job, I’m golden. Deep breaths.

Two more chapbooks went up to BN and Amazon today — Calamity’s Child and The Cat’s Job, neither a mainline Liaden book, though “Sweet Waters” (in CChild) is a Liaden Universe® story. Anyhow, they should be making an appearance in the Kindle and BN stores within the next day.

Also, for those of you in Germany — Amazon today started selling Kindle books at amazon.de, which makes three storefronts for the price of one — Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.co.de

Thanks to sleary for her advice on how to handle the BN links. I’ll be getting back to that, um, soon.

And, just by the way — I’m behind on my email.

G’night.

1. Want a signed, first edition hardcover of Lee and Miller’s upcoming Ghost Ship, the Thrilling Sequel™ to I Dare and Saltation? You can pre-order yours here, but be quick, O quick! Pre-orders close on April 30.

In case you’ve missed all previous discussion of this, more details are available here, or here.

2. Pinbeam Books (aka Sharon and Steve) has been converting Adventures in the Liaden Universe® chapbooks Numbers One through Seventeen into ebooks in a seemingly random, but actually cunning, fashion, and posting them to the Kindle store and to the Nook store. We will eventually branch out to other vendors. Note the use of the word “eventually.” Also bear in mind that both editions (Kindle and Nook) are DRM-free. This means that your mobi device will be able to read chapbooks uploaded for Kindle and your ePub reader will be able to read those uploaded for Nook.

2A. A search on Adventures in the Liaden Universe in the Kindle store at Amazon should net a list of those titles currently available.

2B. A search on “Adventures in the Liaden Universe” (mind the quotes — very important) in the NookBook store at BN.com should ditto.*

3. If you were having a bad day and took refuge under a rock yesterday, I repeat — The Ghost Ship eArc is now available from Webscriptions.

3A. If you have read, or will soon read, the above-referenced eArc and want to talk about it in a spoilery fashion, I ask, on behalf of those readers who will not read the story until August, when the hardcover is published, to please make use of the Liaden Spoilers Community, here, where a lively conversation is already in play.

4. Thank you for your kind attention.

——-
*Geek Help Requested: Why can I hot-link to specific book pages on Amazon and those links function both at sharonleewriter.com and LJ, but! hot-links to specific book pages that function at sharonleewriter.com are redirected (I think by BN?) to the front page? I like to make it as easy possible to part people from their money help people buy books. Is there a (legal, non-violent) way to get around the redirect?

Thanks!

Please, no spoilers or discussion of the plot of Ghost Ship in this venue — the book doesn’t come out until August, remember, and many people following this blog are Strong and Upstanding and wait until hardcopy publication to get their fix story.

If you Simply! Must! talk plot/character/story arc/continuity, please use the spoiler group, over here

Thank you for respecting your fellow readers.

What it says up above there.

Here’s the link.

An “eArc” is an electronic Advance Reading Copy.  It will contain errors.  It does cost more than the corrected ebook, coming in early August.  What you get for your money is this:  You get to read the story four-and-a-half-months before the Whole Rest of the Entire World!

Is that cool, or what?

Meant to get an InfoDump out today; that didn’t happen. Meant to update the coming attractions page; that didn’t happen, either. Meant to get with SRM end-of-year bookkeping — nope, not that, either.

Well, jayzus, woman, what did you do all weekend?

Last night, Steve and I made pizza. That was fun. And more fun had in the eating of it.

Let see…today I got MacDuff the G4 onto the desk and rigged out with a monitor, keyboard and mouse to call his own. Haven’t squared him up with the Cat Farm internet connection yet –could be I got a bad piece of Cat5 cable. Hah! We haff oder cables. My ghod, don’t we just.

What else? Configured, compiled and uploaded Allies: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 12 to the Kindle and the Nook stores. As of this writing, BN is lagging behind by two ebooks (Allies and Halfling Moon); they were doing server maintenance this weekend, so I’d look for Liaden ebooks in the Nook store sometime Monday afternoon.

For those playing along at home, Liaden chapbooks currently available in electrik format are: Two Tales of Korval: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number One; Allies: AitLU Number Twelve; Halfling Moon, AitLU Number Sixteen; and Skyblaze: AitLU Number Seventeen.

The reason for the out-of-sequence choices is that Skyblaze, Halfling Moon, and Allies contain stories that may make the Ghost Ship reading experience slightly richer. We hear from Toni at Baen that the Ghost Ship eArc may hit Webscriptions sometime during the coming week.

Um, I got all geeked out about the fact that the Liaden Universe® is Number One in the GeekSpeak Magazine List of Top 13 Recommendations

What else did I do? Various bits of housework. And I just now finished printing out the galleys for The Crystal Variation, which is due back at Baen no later than May 2. That’s just under 1200 pages to be copyread, for those keeping score. Yes, I do believe that the omnibus edition will be shipped with its own wheelbarrow.

Oh, and I did some very minor bits of work on George, creeping along into the depths of Chapter Fifteen. Go, me.

And now? Now, I’m calling a day, going to go find my husband, a sammich and a glass of wine. Perhaps there will be reading outloud. That would be pleasant.

Progress on the Book Presently known as George
35,575 words/100,000 OR 35.58% complete

“Two nos in the course of one meal is rather too many,” his mother noted. “Especially for so short a meal as breakfast. Pray strive to limit your use of the negative until at least tomorrow lunch-time, my son.”

So, a bad week on at least three fronts, and not looking to get better anytime soon. Gah. Why does life always Happen when we have a book on deadline?

Oh, wait.

Anyhow. One step at a time. Slow and steady wins the race. Not a door closes but a window opens (yeah, says a friend; so you can throw yourself out of it). Inner calm.

I did this evening re-compile a version of Skyblaze without several egregious typos and uploaded the corrected file to both Amazon and BN. No, I don’t know what happens next, or how you get a corrected file.

I also this evening compiled Halfling Moon: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 16 and uploaded it to both the Nook Store and the Kindle Store. I expect the listings will be along sometime this weekend.

And now, because I am Sick to Death of people (it’s nothing personal; I’m an introvert — I get sick to death of people. Being hit on the nose with a newspaper by clueless idiots does not improve this tendency, but I digress.), I am going to be scarce for the weekend. I have a lot of stuff to do that’s not going to do itself (what is with that, exactly?), so I’d best get doing. I’ll be back around on Monday — I mean, I have to go to the day-job on Monday, anyway, so I might as well have something pleasant to balance it out.

What’re you doing this weekend that’s fun?