Category: Blog

With Steve’s connivance, Binjali got to his state inspection today. The shop boss called me mid-morning to say that “The Subaru passed inspection.” But! “There’s a pretty major leak in the tranny line. We can replace the line if you want; cost about twenty, twenty-five dollars.”

I do love a system where a car can pass its yearly inspection, but still have a ruptured transmission line. I gave my permission to proceed with the needed repair and after work I settled my honest debt, picked up the car and drove home.

Once at my own desk, I undertook to compile Two Tales of Korval: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number One for uploading to Smashwords, which took about an hour and a half, working from an html file. In order to convert it to a document acceptable to Smashwords’ Meatgrinder, all the code has to be stripped out, which isn’t exactly hard, but is time-consuming, most especially the part where you have to delete the html code for itals and put in the Word itals. And then going through the document one word at a time to make sure that you haven’t missed any < or >.

Be that as is, Two Tales is now available on Smashwords, for them what indulges.

The ironic part of this whole exercise is that we went with Smashwords so that they could do the hard work and distribute to Apple. It would, however, appear that our publications, even meatground and verified do not meet Apple’s Stringent and Exacting Standards for publications it will permit to be listed in the iBooks store. Some things? Are just too much trouble.

I know I said I’d put the unbound copy of I Dare up on eBay last week. Time got away from me, and that didn’t happen. Now, it just seems reasonable to wait until after the upcoming US high holiday — Memorial Day, celebrated Monday, May 30. Watch this space for an announcement that the auction has gone live.

I’ve been spending a fair amount of thought on how to design the delivery of the linked short stories I talked about here a little while ago. Serializing a novel is fairly straightforward — you write a chapter, you post a chapter; when the chapter earns its piece of the action, or the next posting day arrives, whichever comes first, you lather-rinse-repeat.

Short stories seem to be something different. It’s my impression that, for web serialization, one must publish something at least once a week to keep reader interest, and I’m pretty sure I can’t sustain an output of a short story a week for very long before my brain explodes.

I’d thought of just writing a short story a quarter and publishing it directly to Nook/Kindle/Smashwords (hmm; not sure Smashwords allows single short story publication — must check), but that would leave folks who are looking for a serialization out in left field.

Anybody have any idea how a series of short stories would work as a web serial? I know some authors have taken subscriptions and mailed the story when complete to subscribers. This also doesn’t seem to be completely satisfactory, but I could be wrong.

So! Brainstorming session’s open! Who’s got something to say?

The clock just chimed 8 p.m.

Rolanni looks up and wonders what she did all day.

Um, right.

Gave up on Apple and decided to let Smashwords be our distributor to the iBookstore and a couple of other things they do. This is by far the easier course.

Which is not to say it’s easy. Three hours to convert Variations Three into — wait for it — a doc file. We here at the Cat Farm do not do doc files, nor do we do Word. I don’t have a firm count on the number of computational devices there are in this house, but I guarantee that not one of them has Word on its hard drive.

So! That meant I had to follow the user manual — which is attitudinal and annoying — and refrib for doing the work in Open Office and saving as a doc file. Gah.

Three hours later, however, the file I submitted to Smashwords was accepted by the so-poetically named Meatgrinder, is now for sale in multiple formats on the Smashwords site, and will be coming soon to an iBookstore near you.

The next book, she said firmly, will go quicker, now that I know what I’m doing — I heard that — and can make templates and cut-n-paste chunks of the stuff that Smashwords needs to have in its files for its own comfort.

I signed a Whole Buncha blank pages. And did the dishes!

I also started building a Pinbeam Books site. It’s here. I have for the moment forgotten how to get rid of all that nonsense on the sidebar. Maybe tomorrow. And most of the links aren’t live. But at least the books are listed and it doesn’t look like a ghost site to drive-by visitors.

The auction for the red leather edition of Pilots Choice is over. The winning bid was $510. As the winning bidder is a long-time Liaden fan — I don’t know if I’m allowed to say more than that — I’m very pleased.

Sometime this week coming, let’s say I throw the unbound copy of I Dare up on eBay and we’ll see what happens. Sound like fun?

And now — where the hell did the day go? — I’m going to go find lunch, and my husband, and probably a glass of wine.

G’night.

MacDuff the Mac having at long last achieved a state of onlineness, persuaded by Time-Warner tech support last evening that there is, oh, yes, indeed, an internet in these greeny climes to which he has been exiled — today we chose faces decided to get on with downloading the needed software to make and upload books to the iBookstore.

This proved…difficult. Indeed, though much has been accomplished in pursuit of said software, yet it eludes both my hand and MacDuff’s hard drive. This is not, I hasten to say, the fault of either my hand or MacDuff. No, I lay this failure squarely at the feet of Steve Jobs.

In order to access iTunes Connect, which is the door behind which the special! software! is hidden, one must obtain an Apple ID and a password. This was done and my email address duly certified. I then went to iTunes Connect, certain that iTunes Producer would very shortly be in my possession, doubtless for a small fee.

In this I proved to be optimistic. For though I enter the Apple ID I had just verified and the password, ditto, iTunes Connect stands steadfast in its refusal to allow me to pass the door, stating Apple ID does not have permission to access iTunes Connect.

What I can’t figure out is if this means ever or only until the new ID and password filter through Apple Universe, though, really, how long ought that to take?

I also can’t figure out if there isn’t somewhere else besides iTunes Connect where one might obtain this all-important program. It being Appleware, probably not.

Welladay.

I also today talked on the phone with my sister, changed out old files for new, and signed about 100 of the 800 pages to be tipped in to specially pre-ordered volumes of Ghost Ship. It’s amusing how weird your signature looks after you’ve signed it only a hundred times. I may have a new name altogether by the time I get to sheet 800.

The day has been gray and clammy, threatening rain at any moment, though only now has the rain actually begun, in a dispirited, grumpy sort of way.

Scrabble is asleep in the copilot’s chair, directly next to MacDuff. Mozart naps on the arm of the sofa, the position from which he supervised my signing; Hexapuma is Worshipping His Steve.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend. What’s doing?

___________
To history buffs, the year was 4171 A.U.C. To Christians, it was 3418. To Moslems, it was the middle of the year 2882. But by common reckoning, the year was 1461.

–Header for Chapter One of Starwell ©1968 by Alexei Panshin

The auction for the rare! leather-bound edition! of the rare! Lee and Miller original omnibus Pilots Choice (including the full text of Liaden Universe® novels Local Custom and Scout’s Progress) goes over tomorrow, Sunday, May 15, at 1500 PDT. If you were thinking about bidding, or just want to reserve a seat in the studio audience, time is getting short.

Here’s the link

Library Wars Volume 1: Love and War, Kiiro Yumi
The Perilous Gard, Elizabeth Marie Pope
Edie Ernst, USO Singer — Allied Spy, Brooke McEldowney
Silver Phoenix, Cindy Pon
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson (e)
Foreigner, C.J. Cherryh (read aloud with Steve)
Betrayer, C.J. Cherryh (read out loud with Steve)
Right-Ho, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse (e)
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

The Perilous Gard, Elizabeth Marie Pope
Edie Ernst, USO Singer — Allied Spy, Brooke McEldowney
Silver Phoenix, Cindy Pon
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson (e)
Foreigner, C.J. Cherryh (read aloud with Steve)
Betrayer, C.J. Cherryh (read out loud with Steve)
Right-Ho, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse (e)
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

1. Steve is on his way home. Last contact was from “someplace in New York.” First contact was from “above Harrisburg,” and I thought, “Well, he’ll be home in a couple hours, then.” sigh. All these years and I’m still not used to Harrisburg being a loooooong way from home.

2. The auction for the leather-bound edition is live until Sunday-coming! Take a look! Go on, you know you want to…

3. Today’s paycheck from the day-job makes available the news that honest labor pays about $6700 less thus far than setting up as a professional liar. This year, anyhow.

4. Still trying to work the brain down from overdrive. Haven’t had to cope with the full “can’t stop! gotta think!” for…years and years. I wonder if that means that the cpap machine blowing air into my skull is actually, um, working.

. . .and wonders, if so, if that’s what you call your double-edged blade.

5. In service of number 4, above, I’ll be on the couch, reading The Perilous Gard.

One of the things I tell beginning writers when I talk to them is to write what they love; that nobody sees out of their eyes but them; that the effort of raising their voice is worth any consequence.

Everybody saw xkcd this morning, right?

I’ve just uploaded the last of the chapbooks — twenty-five in all. I note that, as of the present moment, twenty-four of those chapbooks are available in DRM-free ePub format from BN.com; Endeavors of Will, which went up only moments ago is still in the review stage.

Amazon is “reviewing” six chapbooks, which means they’re not yet in the sales database. The account has, perhaps, been frozen, pending the resolution of the “Chariot to the Stars” issue, reported here yesterday; or it may just be that Amazon is slow this weekend.

I will list all of the elektrified chapbooks below. For the Liaden stories and the various questions of what appears where when and published by whom, I see that Someone has been very busy at the wiki and has gathered all that information into one place. Thank you, Someone.

Pinbeam Books (aka Sharon Lee and Steve Miller) chapbooks available in DRM-free ePub (Nook) and mobi (Kindle) format:

Two Tales of Korval: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number One
Fellow Travelers: AitLU Number Two
Duty Bound: AitLU Number Three
Certain Symmetry: AitLU Number Four
Trading in Futures: AitLU Number Five
Changeling: AitLU Number Six
Loose Cannon: AitLU Number Seven
Shadows and Shades: AitLU Number Eight
Quiet Knives: AitLU Number Nine
With Stars Underfoot: AitLU Number Ten
Necessary Evils: AitLU Number Eleven
Allies: AitLU Number Twelve
Dragon Tide: AitLU Number Thirteen
Eidolon: AitLU Number Fourteen
Misfits: AitLU Number Fifteen
Halfling Moon: AitLU Number Sixteen
Skyblaze: AitLU Number Seventeen

Calamity’s Child
The Cat’s Job
Chariot to the Stars
Endeavors of Will
Master Walk
The Naming of Kinzel
Quiet Magic
Variations Three

…My next task forward of this is to build a bookstore page, and elektrify The Tomorrow Log and also Time Rags. However! What I am going to do immediately, now that this part of the larger task is behind me — is proofread the galleys for Ghost Ship.

So, I’m getting the last chapbook — Endeavors of Will, by Sharon Lee, as the luck decreed — ready to be elektrified, and in doing so, I’m typing in the story history for the copyright page.

Stolen Laughter first published in Dragonfields, Winter 1983
The Winter Consort first published in SPAWAO Showcase, August 1982
Stormshelter first published in Worlds Lost, Times Forgotten, March 1981
The Pretender first published in Owlflight, January 1981
The Silver Pathway first published in Owlflight, July 1981
The Girl, The Cat, and Deviant first published in Star Triad, February 1981
A Matter of Ceremony first published in Amazing Stories, May 1980
The Handsome Prince first published in Fantasy Book, May 1982
Cards first published in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, September 1981

These stories aren’t just old enough to vote; they probably own their own homes.

Age aside, I do think that my very favorite magazine title ever is Worlds Lost, Time Forgotten.