Blog Without A Name

So, apparently the town didn’t spring for the jet fighter fly-over this year. Or, if they did, the jets executed their turn for the return flight in some airspace other than that directly over the Cat Farm. This? Was a Good Thing.

A Less Good Thing was the bee that got up under my hat and behind my sunglasses on this morning’s walk. I snatched off hat and sunglasses, whereupon my glasses spontaneously decided to test gravity, which I can report was operational at that moment, meaning that said glasses fell, lenses down, on the gravel, and, yes, they are now an excellent example of why you should never drop your glasses on gravel. Argh. Granted, they are — were — my back-up glasses, but that means I’m down to one pair, which — given adventures like the one just described — is so not a good idea.

Despite the bee, and gravity, and everything, I had a pleasant day. I learned lots of Stuff about WordPress, most of which I will forget by tomorrow morning. But, no matter, for!

Splinter Universe now occupies a space on the web.

There’s no story there yet, or much of anything else, and I’m told the RSS isn’t working, but still and all, I’m pretty happy with my day’s work.

Come the afternoon, after a supper of veggie cheeseburger on a bun, fresh carrots and baked beans, all washed down by Outrageous Ginger Ale (which was pretty dern good), I worked on “Kin Ties,” and watched the various thunderstorms come through.

Now, it’s time to knock off, get lunch and talk over tomorrow’s logistics with Steve. We need to be in Augusta early in order to drop Argent the Forester at Charlie’s Subaru for a little bit of work behind the nose, so of course the burning question is: Do we eat breakfast at home before we leave, or do we use the drop-off as an excuse to have breakfast out?

Decisions, decisions…

I hope everyone who celebrates had an enjoyable holiday.

Frequent readers of this periodical will recall that Lee and Miller had been commissioned to write a story for the front page of the new Baen website, said story to be featured in July.

The fact that we here in the Northern Hemisphere are now standing firmly on the Fourth Day of July, coupled with the fact that “Intelligent Design” has yet to appear on Baen’s front page has apparently occasioned some anxiety, to which we say, “Fear Not!” and also, “Stop hitting the refresh key before you sprain something!”

Baen swaps out its front page on the 15th of the month. “Intelligent Design” will therefore appear on — anyone?

Yes, thank you.

“Intelligent Design” will be published to the front page of the Baen website on Friday, July 15.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

1. Looked outside to see what the heck the birds were all in a tizzy about. Saw what looked to be a panda-face in the tree directly outside of my window. Called Steve, by which point the panda had morphed into Quiet — or Louder — one of the next-door-neighbor’s two identical grey Maine Coons, going birding. Steve and I mocked him through the screen, and he climbed back down, to play kitty-hides-in-the-grass at the base. We mocked him some more, and he left, doubtless to find a less-public tree.

2. Somebody took our mailbox off its post. So not funny. At least it’s in one piece, though Steve had to screw it back on to the pole.

3. Designed and ordered Moocards for WorldCon and beyond! Man, we do a lot of stuff.

4. Took an after-breakfast walk this morning — our new habit. It was only 72F/22C, but the 95% humidity made it feel like a morning at the ocean.

5. Registered the short story domain name and started building a site. Again forgot how to manage the damned menus in WordPress, so things will progress when I remember.

Today being Friday, there was no school. Steve and I rose in our own good time, had breakfast, made phone calls and eventually meandered out in the direction of the Big City of Augusta, with the intention of petitioning the Ghods of Tripilay to provide auspicious signs, portents, and of course numbers, for our upcoming trip to Reno and Minneapolis.

Off we went, cross-country, arriving to find that the Ghods had relocated to another place. This stratagem proved vain, and we found them despite it.

We had discovered for ourselves that scheduling the train trip to and from Reno was relatively simple; it was the addition of Minneapolis to the itinerary that provoked the devilish details. One is told that it is often thus, with Minneapolis.

In any case, and some while later, we came away from Tripleay, having had our courses truly plotted and our credit card read. Poor credit card.

May I just say? I believe that I’ll be well and truly sick to death of Chicago Union Station by the time this trip is done.

Also? I think I need more ebooks.

We came home through a patchwork of sunlight and downpour, had lunch and got down to work, which in my case was linking up all the free chapters of Lee and Miller material available from Baen to the Pinbeam Books site, and balancing the checkbook.

Tomorrow, I need to do something about all this unfinished fiction lying about the place, and to register the domain for the upcoming short story site. Finding an acceptable domain name was harder than you might imagine. It was, at least, harder that I imagined. In any case, that step is at last done, and now all I need to do is build the website. And write some stories.

Piece o’cake.

I hope everyone who celebrates July Fourth as a holiday has a lovely one. Me, I hope that the town has failed of hiring stunt jets to overfly the parade this year. I could do without the adrenaline surge.

. . .only eight more days of school.

We here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory have received several boxes of books over the last few days. Here our models show a few:

First, Steve, with the ever-popular Ghost Ship arc and brand-new! Saltation mass market:

Next up is Sharon, boldly attempting the same ensemble.  Not as fetching as Steve, alas, but points for sheer nerve:

And, finally, effortlessly outshining the rest of the company, Mozart, who reads in bed:

I hear from Mr. Blyly that he has today received 34 cases, 852 pounds, 680 individual autographed copies of Ghost Ship. In hardcover.

Yes, the street date for Ghost Ship, unsigned, is August 2. Yes, that means Mr. Blyly has received the signed books that required special handling more than a month ahead of that date. No, no one involved in this transaction knows why, but I think we can safely say that this is not Mr. Blyly’s fault. Nor ours.

I trust that this is clear.

Thirty-four cases of hardcover book makes, as I know from long experience of receiving cases of books to sign from Meisha Merlin back in the day, Quite A Large Pile there in the middle of the living-room-or-store. Mr. Blyly would, quite naturally, like to remove this impediment to commerce from the doorway and aisles of his store in as timely a fashion as possible.

So! If you want your book RIGHT NOW, and don’t care to have it personalized (there is a July 15 deadline for requesting personalization; those that request personalizations will have to wait for us — that’s Steve and Sharon — to get our sorry tails to Minneapolis sometime in the middle of August, find a pen and get to work), write to Mr. Blyly at unclehugoATaolDOTcom and tell him that you want your book mailed immediately.

If Mr. Blyly does not receive your direction to mail your book(s) immediately, he will be in honor forced to hold it/them until after the July 15 deadline for personalization requests.

I trust that this is also clear.

Excellent.

I confidently leave the matter in your capable hands.

Well…I went to a convention. PortConMaine — you’ve heard me talk about it here before. As expected, I had a very good time, and welcomed the chance to stretch my con-going muscles a bit before WorldCon.

Steve and I had been guests at PortCon, back in…’04?, I think, when it was held in the Best Western Merrye Manor. This year’s venue — the Wyndham in South Portland (aka, the Round Towers) — was significantly larger, but still not quite large enough to hold the whole convention, necessitating the addition of A Big Tent — which really is a Big Tent, set up in the side parking lot — where the biggish items of programming — the techno dance, and the masquerade, to mention two that leap to mind — were scheduled.

Steve and I were writer guests of honor this year. We presented a couple of craft-related panels to a polite, cheerful, and welcoming audience — really, if I had to pick one thing that stands out for me from both of the PortCons we’ve managed to attend it would be the general attitude of cheerful politeness.

Since all of our events were on Saturday, and the con hotel was sold out, we opted to stay in Old Orchard Beach, and add a little bit of sea air into an already rarefied atmosphere. This worked out well, too. On Friday evening, after we left the con, we attended the Grand Opening of Jumpin Jake’s Seafood Restaurant, where we were pleased to listen to the Jerks of Grass while enjoying a really excellent dinner.

Saturday morning, we arrived at The Round Towers early (so as to secure a parking spot; no easy feat), and ate breakfast on-site before immersing ourselves.

Sunday morning, we had a leisurely breakfast at Michelle’s Garden Cafe before heading back to the con.

We had an interview arranged for 1:00 with Emmanuel and Maura from Nerd Caliber.  At about 11, I left Steve to roam the dealer’s room and settled into a ‘way too comfy chair in the lobby of the bar to read.  I hadn’t turned too many pages on the Nook when I heard a very soft, “Ms. Lee?” and looked up to find that the NerdCaliber squad had arrived early.  Maura confessed that she had recognized, not me, grey head bent over Nook, but The Starry Jacket of Many Titles.

We extracted Steve from the vendor area, appealed to Chairman Patrick for a quiet spot — which was cheerfully and politely provided, with an absolute minimum of fuss (and thank you! to the nice man who was building a deck in the game room and gave up his corner table to us) — and had us a delightful interview.  At the end, Maura asked if she could take some stills of TSJoMT.  I took it off, and we arranged it on the table so that it could be shot — and so its fame continues to precede it — and me.

Sunday evening, we wound down with dinner at JJ’s, did a short walk around town, and headed back to our room, there to sleep the sleep of the justly exhausted.

Monday, we came home via the Maine Mall and Hunt’s Photography, arriving somewhat later in the day than we had planned, to discover a sadly depleted Hexapuma, who had apparently taken exception to the back-up auxiliary cat-sitter and failed to eat or drink until she produced Steve, or, in a pinch, Sharon.  Needless to say, the results of this autocratic and dictatorial behavior won Hex a visit to his friend Dr. Slack this morning, where he was rehydrated and allowed to return home, with a recheck-up scheduled for tomorrow morning.

In between playing cat taxi, I formatted The Tomorrow Log and uploaded it to Smashwords, so there’s an end to that project.

And, after having been warmish and glary all day, it’s now cloudy, accompanied by a small breeze.  P’rhaps we’ll have a thunderstorm. That would be pleasant.

Still a little bit of laundry to do, and I have to shift all my Stuff out of my purple bag into the new red bag that arrived while I was away in the South.  Tomorrow is, I see by the calendar, Wednesday, which means I’m due at the day-job.

Only ten more days of school.

So! Endeavors of Will and TimeRags II have been uploaded to the Smashfolk.  The score at halftime there being:  8 books in the premium catalog; 17 awaiting Judgement.  In the meantime, the only — did I say ONLY? — book yet to be uploaded is. . .The Tomorrow Log.  Which is going to have to wait a couple days.

The day-job was somewhat horrid today; tomorrow, I have an “exit interview,” whatever that is. One would suppose an exit interview would happen. . .closer to the actual exit, but — apparently not.

In the meantime, and looking ahead, Steve has located my vehicle for me.  On sale, too!

And with that, I’m outta here.  Remember!  This weekend!  in Portland, Maine!  PortConMaine!  Be there, or be Totally UnCool.

 

So, today, I broke down and got a haircut. I told Ashley, the long-suffering and cheerful stylist who drew the short straw, that I was going to an anime convention. Reasonably enough, she gave me an anime haircut. Steve professes it very classy. I think it needs a couple of purple stripes.

Shorn, I descended upon the Hannaford to take on supplies and came home in an unexpectedly hot and bright solstice afternoon.

Today, I have upload to Smashwords Calamity’s Child, Quiet Magic, and The Naming of Kinzel.  Books awaiting transmogrification are:  The Tomorrow Log, Endeavors of Will, and TimeRags II.

Once again, these books do take a while to go through the Smashwords’ Premium Catalog process.  Eventually — note this very important word — Eventually, I say, all Miller-and-Lee chapbooks, plus The Tomorrow Log will be available in the Apple Store, in the Sony Store, in the Kobo Store, and in places like Scrollmotion and Diesel.

Jeff VanderMeer of Underland Press is building a book to be entitled If You Lived Here and is soliciting nominations of readers’ most beloved Science Fiction and Fantasy universe.  (Why, yes, the Liaden Universe® is eligible for nomination.)  You may nominate up to three worlds, science fiction and/or fantasy.  Be warned!  This is an essay test — you have to explain why you love and would want to live in each world that you nominate.

Fans of Mozart take note:  He’s a little under the weather today; we administered pain meds and he perked up enough to have something to eat — wet food this time, thank ghod.  He’d thank all of you for your concern and good wishes, if he wasn’t, yanno, a cat, so I thank you in his stead.

And now, having done work, and achieved anime hair, I’m outta here, for tomorrow?  Is Wednesday and I must go to school.

 

Up early to take Mozart to the vet’s to have dental work done, then home for a visit from the c-pap nurse, eat lunch, and go back into town to pick Mozart up from the vet’s.

Between all that, Steve and I took a walk; I did. . .all? Really? of the laundry, and converted Eidolon, Misfits, Halfling Moon, Skyblaze, and The Cat’s Job into Smashbooks.  This leaves only four chapbooks, a slim volume of poetry and a novel to convert.

I do believe I’ll be pleased to see the back of this particular project.

For those of an opinionated turn of mind, NPR is looking to compile a list of the 100 Best SF and Fantasy books. You can submit your favorites here. Please note that the rules allow the nomination of a series as one work — the Liaden Universe® novels do qualify.

It’s somehow gotten later than I thought it would be by this time, if that makes any sense. The pain meds seem to have worn off poor Mo, who now can’t quite settle down. I offered him some wet food, but, no, he wanted cat crunchies. Made my teeth hurt, just watching him.

Regardless of which, I ought to get something to eat, my own self.