39. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
38. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
37. Tiger’s Chance, Jan Henry, illustrated by Hilary Knight (re-read)
36. Carousel Tides, Sharon Lee (1st read for pleasure)
35. The Fall of Kings, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman (e)
34. Play of Passion, Nalini Singh (read aloud with Steve)
33. Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner (re-re-&c-read) (e)
32. Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner (re-re-&c-read) (e)
31. Incarnate, Jodi Meadows (e)
30. Discount Armageddon, Seanan McGuire (e)
29. Tiger Eye, Majorie M. Liu (e)
28. Visitor, C. J. Cherryh (read aloud with Steve)
27. To Have and to Hold, Nalini Singh (e)
26. The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard
25. Bride of the Rat God, Barbara Hambly (e)
24. Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire (e)
23. Maximum Ice, Kay Kenyon (e)
22. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull (re-re-re-re-read)
21. Wheel of the Infinite, Martha Wells (e)
20. Algonquin Cat, Val Schaffner, illustrated by Hilary Knight
19. Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear
18. Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie
17. When Falcons Fall, C.S. Harris
16. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Winifred Watson (re-re-re-&c-read)
15. Uprooted, Naomi Novik
14. Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers (re-re-re-read)
13. Written in Red, Anne Bishop
12. Andy & Don, Daniel de Visé
11. The Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
10. Foxglove Summer, Ben Aaronovitch
9. Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch
8. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
7. Whispers Underground, Ben Aaronovitch
6. Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
5. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
4. Conflict of Honors, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (e) (re-read)
3. Mort, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
2. The Sculptor, Scott McCloud
1. A Short History of a Small Place, T.R. Pearson
Category: Blog
Books read in 2016
38. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
37. Tiger’s Chance, Jan Henry, illustrated by Hilary Knight (re-read)
36. Carousel Tides, Sharon Lee (1st read for pleasure)
35. The Fall of Kings, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman (e)
34. Play of Passion, Nalini Singh (read aloud with Steve)
33. Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner (re-re-&c-read) (e)
32. Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner (re-re-&c-read) (e)
31. Incarnate, Jodi Meadows (e)
30. Discount Armageddon, Seanan McGuire (e)
29. Tiger Eye, Majorie M. Liu (e)
28. Visitor, C. J. Cherryh (read aloud with Steve)
27. To Have and to Hold, Nalini Singh (e)
26. The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard
25. Bride of the Rat God, Barbara Hambly (e)
24. Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire (e)
23. Maximum Ice, Kay Kenyon (e)
22. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull (re-re-re-re-read)
21. Wheel of the Infinite, Martha Wells (e)
20. Algonquin Cat, Val Schaffner, illustrated by Hilary Knight
19. Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear
18. Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie
17. When Falcons Fall, C.S. Harris
16. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Winifred Watson (re-re-re-&c-read)
15. Uprooted, Naomi Novik
14. Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers (re-re-re-read)
13. Written in Red, Anne Bishop
12. Andy & Don, Daniel de Visé
11. The Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
10. Foxglove Summer, Ben Aaronovitch
9. Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch
8. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
7. Whispers Underground, Ben Aaronovitch
6. Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
5. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
4. Conflict of Honors, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (e) (re-read)
3. Mort, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
2. The Sculptor, Scott McCloud
1. A Short History of a Small Place, T.R. Pearson
It’s Anything-Can-Happen Day!
. . .and a marvelous thing has happened already.
As I sit here, drinking my first cup of coffee, and updating this blog. . .
Alliance of Equals has achieved. . .
201 reader reviews on Amazon (US)!
Thank you all so very, very much.
And, oh, hey — you over in the corner, who hadn’t gotten a chance to write a review yet? Yeah, you.
Your review will be most welcome, too. We don’t have to stop at 201; though we can certainly take a well-deserved breather.
*everybody breathe*
Aaaaaah.
So, OK. Today is a hospital day, which means I need to move on to my second cup of coffee realsoonnow. There’s bidness to be done when I return, seeing as I finished writing a scene yesterday, instead of doing bidness.
Tomorrow is, so I say now, as full a writing day as I can manage (note to Self: put cell phones in freezer), and a screening of Kubo and the Two Strings (which, for a wonder, will be appearing at the Waterville Flagship Cinema) penciled in for Friday.
And that? Is all I got.
No, wait; it’s not.
I’ve got a snippet. Here y’are:
Best to accomplish the task at once, while biology was ascendant.
There was no need for the mentor to suffer, after all.
In which Rolanni is up before breakfast
As I write this, Alliance of Equals has 195 reader reviews on Amazon; a slim five reviews from 200. Can we make the goal? Heck, can we crack the goal? Only you can make a difference.
So, yesterday, I removed the (pieces of the) wicker manuscript cat basket from the desk to the trash can. A couple hours later, Trooper Discovered that it was missing. He did not, however, call in another coon cat to act as witness. I assumed that he was giving the basket an opportunity to return on its own.
His patience was rewarded later in the day, when Steve arrived home from errand-running with a Very Classy shallow wooden box and/or serving tray. I placed it on my desk in the place where the wicker basket had been, and placed a towel in it.
Here’s the Box, awaiting a tenant:
The Box sat, bereft, for a couple of hours, while Trooper helped me write from his Usual Position:
After I had finished work for the day, he walked across the desk, as is his habit, and discovered the New Box.
There commenced about six minutes of Intense Study, before a Theory was formed:
I anticipate more Inspection and Theorizing today before a Final Verdict is returned. Color me Cautiously Optimistic.
#
Progress on Book the Next is going to be difficult to quantify by word count for the next while. Word count is a blunt instrument at best, but it does give people who are not down here among the commas and the semicolons some feeling of Progress.
Right now, as a result of the Structure Wars, there is more novel written than appears in the master file. Those words will eventually come home to momma, but for now, they’re rusticating over there in a waiting file. For my own peace of mind, I don’t want to count them until they’re woven in.
All of which boils down to: No word counts for you, for the foreseeable future.
I will be posting snippets, however, just to let you know that Work Is Going Forward.
Here’s a snippet now:
“One usually pursues the weather in such moments,” he commented. “However, it has been so much the same lately, there is scarcely anything to be said.”
Monday’s news and reviews
So, Book the Next is moving once more. I had to recuse myself from writing while I got the structure sorted out. I very rarely have to wrestle a book’s structure three falls out of five, so, hey — new experience. Yay?
Spell Bound, including two Archers Beach stories by Sharon Lee, is now for sale on Amazon, BN, iBooks, Kobo, as well as Scribd, Tolino, 24Symbols, and Page Foundry.
Pinbeam Books does have a new distributor, and the first batch of five books will be going up in September. Watch the skies.
Also! All Pinbeam chapbooks have been taken off-sale at Smashwords and brought over to Draft2Digital. I’m really glad I didn’t know exactly how much work that was going to be when I decided to make the move.
The cats, by which I of course mean the coon cats, have, in a surfeit of love, broken the wicker basket that was for some years the manuscript-in-progress basket. I suppose it was inevitable. Wicker can only bear so much. I’m now of two minds — should I replace the basket with a sturdier basket? Or! Should I just remove the remains of the wicker basket and not replace it at all? It’s not like I can use it for manuscripts anymore, after all. And I Have Faith that cats will use that corner of the desk, whether there’s a basket there or not.
Experimentation may be in order.
As I write this, there are 193 reader reviews of Alliance of Equals on Amazon! We only need seven! more! to hit our goal of 200 reviews. Thanks to everyone who took the time — and, if you haven’t reviewed, and do have a couple minutes — that would be so very awesome.
In Cat Garden news, I have arrived at and installed two solar light-sticks — one green; one blue. The green one appears to return more sunlight to the garden at night than the blue one — but it’s early days. The blue may need some extra time to stoke up. One needs be patient with items bought on clearance.
I think that’s all I’ve got this morning. It’s to the gym, then home and work for me.
How’s your Monday shaping up?
Ebook News You Can Use
Those of you who purchase ebooks from Amazon need to be aware of the following:
a. The Kindle edition of omnibus The Crystal Variation, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, including the novels Crystal Soldier, Crystal Dragon, and Balance of Trade — has been taken off-sale by Amazon pending correction of “serious quality issues.” These issues are “misspellings.” Amazon forwarded the list of 144 instances of misspelled words to Baen, which forwarded it to us. More than a dozen of those “misspelled” words are “cermacrete.” We also have “ISBN” identified as a “misspelled” word. Also, cantra, kais, qwint, Iloheen, aetherium, autoshout — you get the idea. Steve and I have each made a pass down the list and have so far identified three Actual Misspelled Words, and one that I need to research, but believe to be a spacing problem. The process from here goes like this: We tell Baen which words are Actually Misspelled. A Baen editor will fix those errors. The Baen Ebook Team will then recompile the omnibus and shuffle it into its various formats, including forwarding a “clean copy” to Amazon. Amazon will then, at some point, put the book back on sale.
If you would like to purchase an electronic copy of The Crystal Variation in the immediate future, your best choice of vendor would be Baen Ebooks, which offers the book for sale in All Formats Known to Man or Clutch. Here’s the link.
b. Amazon has also stopped selling Courier Run, an echapbook containing two Liaden stories by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, for Serious Quality Issues. In a Surprising Plot Twist, this title shows as being Live and On Sale from my publisher’s dashboard. KDP support is Researching the Issue and promises an answer by August 18 — next Thursday.
If you would like to purchase this echapbook before next Thursday, please seek it elsewhere — BN, Kobo, iBooks still offer it for sale.
c. Sleeping with the Enemy was also briefly off-sale at Amazon, but its honor has been redeemed and it is now on-sale in the Kindle store, as well as at the rest of the Usual Suspects.
d. Spell Bound, an echapbook collecting “Will-o’-the-wisp” and “The Wolf’s Bride,” two Archers Beach stories previously published on Splinter Universe, is now for sale at the Amazon Kindle store (after a brief tussle in which Amazon insisted that the content was available “freely on the web” and therefore I had no right to publish the compilation), and! at Kobo, and iBooks. BN will presumably get around to publishing sometime soon.
A related note: Since these stories have been collected, they have been removed from Splinter Universe.
Today, it is rainy and cool at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory. I plan a quiet, working day. I realize that we are very fortunate in our weather. All of you who labor under Dangerous Heat Advisories — please be alert and take good care of yourselves.
Books read in 2016
37. Tiger’s Chance, Jan Henry, illustrated by Hilary Knight (re-read)
36. Carousel Tides, Sharon Lee (1st read for pleasure)
35. The Fall of Kings, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman (e)
34. Play of Passion, Nalini Singh (read aloud with Steve)
33. Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner (re-re-&c-read) (e)
32. Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner (re-re-&c-read) (e)
31. Incarnate, Jodi Meadows (e)
30. Discount Armageddon, Seanan McGuire (e)
29. Tiger Eye, Majorie M. Liu (e)
28. Visitor, C. J. Cherryh (read aloud with Steve)
27. To Have and to Hold, Nalini Singh (e)
26. The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard
25. Bride of the Rat God, Barbara Hambly (e)
24. Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire (e)
23. Maximum Ice, Kay Kenyon (e)
22. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull (re-re-re-re-read)
21. Wheel of the Infinite, Martha Wells (e)
20. Algonquin Cat, Val Schaffner, illustrated by Hilary Knight
19. Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear
18. Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie
17. When Falcons Fall, C.S. Harris
16. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Winifred Watson (re-re-re-&c-read)
15. Uprooted, Naomi Novik
14. Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers (re-re-re-read)
13. Written in Red, Anne Bishop
12. Andy & Don, Daniel de Visé
11. The Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
10. Foxglove Summer, Ben Aaronovitch
9. Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch
8. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
7. Whispers Underground, Ben Aaronovitch
6. Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
5. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
4. Conflict of Honors, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (e) (re-read)
3. Mort, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
2. The Sculptor, Scott McCloud
1. A Short History of a Small Place, T.R. Pearson
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends
The Chaos conditions here at the Confusion Factory remain unfortunately high. On the more-or-less positive side of the scale, the replacement for the ded phone arrived yesterday, has survived the night, and successfully found its sim card this morning.
So, fingers crossed.
Also on the plus side? Alliance of Equals has, as of This Moment, a cool 180 reader reviews on Amazon. That’s only 20 reviews short of the 200-review goal! Thank you, thank you!
Today, because mindless tasks are soothing in their way, I’m going to be getting all the ebook tasks that are on my plate Off of my plate and onto someone else’s.
I’m also going to continue trying to bring the new phone nearer to the Look and Feel of the old phone. One of the things that’s giving me the hardest time is that my old phone — as does the replacement phone, of course — takes voice commands. All you have to do is name the voice and give it a wake-up phrase. The former phone’s resident spirit was named Hasan, who is now, of course, ded. So I’m having to cast about for a new name and phrase. This shouldn’t be difficult, but I have Grave Reservations about the probable lifetime of the replacement phone, and I don’t want to be responsible for the death of another genuis loci.
Well. It doesn’t have to be decided today. Today is ebooks, and I’d better get to it.
Y’all have a good day, wherever you are.
Today’s blog title brought to you by Janis Joplin, “Mercedes Benz.” Here’s your link.
Here, have a picture of the coon cats, making the bed.
Books read in 2016
36. Carousel Tides, Sharon Lee (1st read for pleasure)
35. The Fall of Kings, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman (e)
34. Play of Passion, Nalini Singh (read aloud with Steve)
33. Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner (re-re-&c-read) (e)
32. Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner (re-re-&c-read) (e)
31. Incarnate, Jodi Meadows (e)
30. Discount Armageddon, Seanan McGuire (e)
29. Tiger Eye, Majorie M. Liu (e)
28. Visitor, C. J. Cherryh (read aloud with Steve)
27. To Have and to Hold, Nalini Singh (e)
26. The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard
25. Bride of the Rat God, Barbara Hambly (e)
24. Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire (e)
23. Maximum Ice, Kay Kenyon (e)
22. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull (re-re-re-re-read)
21. Wheel of the Infinite, Martha Wells (e)
20. Algonquin Cat, Val Schaffner, illustrated by Hilary Knight
19. Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear
18. Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie
17. When Falcons Fall, C.S. Harris
16. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Winifred Watson (re-re-re-&c-read)
15. Uprooted, Naomi Novik
14. Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers (re-re-re-read)
13. Written in Red, Anne Bishop
12. Andy & Don, Daniel de Visé
11. The Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
10. Foxglove Summer, Ben Aaronovitch
9. Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch
8. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
7. Whispers Underground, Ben Aaronovitch
6. Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
5. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
4. Conflict of Honors, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (e) (re-read)
3. Mort, Terry Pratchett (read aloud with Steve)
2. The Sculptor, Scott McCloud
1. A Short History of a Small Place, T.R. Pearson
The Adventure Continues
So, the phone, she is ded. A new phone is promised, though what kind and exactly when it will arrive have sorta been left up in the air. I have made a note on the Calendar that Rules All to Call the Verizon store on Tuesday (sigh), if they don’t call me on Monday to provide Solid Information, and, ideally, a pick-up time.
On the Silver Lining front — had things fallen otherwise, this would have happened just as we were getting ready to leap onto a train to Kansas City.
So, that.
I dropped my broken necklace off at the jewelry store, and talked briefly with the jeweler, who says that, instead of soldering the break, and since there’s such a tiny segment of chain involved, she would remove the broken bit and feed the new end into the clamp end of the clasp. It will either be ready on Monday, or in two weeks, because she was going on vacation, and couldn’t be sure she’d get to it before she left.
Dollar Store only had short spike solar lights in stock. On the plus side, they cost just $1 apiece.
Kmart stocked solar lights which were more like what I’d had in mind — but they want $25 for one, single light, so that’s a non-starter. Research continues.
We lost power last night, in solidarity with downtown (so to speak) Winslow, Benton, and a couple other towns I don’t recall right now — at about 9:00 pm. The generator performed its function, and we here at the Cat Farm continued about our business, basically unimpeded. Thanks to everyone who helped us make the generator a reality!
As of this morning, Alliance of Equals has received 169 reader reviews at Amazon! Only 31 more until we reach our 200-reviews goal! You guys rock!
Also, by way of a Watch the Skies: Yesterday, we signed a contract with an ebook distributor, in order to widen the reach of Pinbeam Books. We’ll let you know when the books are available from the new distributor.
And that? Is all I’ve got. Today has got to be a work day, given the hours lost to the Dying of the Phone, so I’ll be shutting the internet down, directly I publish this blog entry.
Everybody stay cool.