Category: Housekeeping

Housekeeping

So, I’ve done a little tidying up here at the website.

Notably, I’ve added two pages:  2023 Interviews with Lee and Miller  and The Big List of Lee and Miller Interviews

The Big List also includes book reviews, series overviews, two videos of Steve and me reading from Trader’s Leap — one at the MarsCon Main Stage and the other at Mysterious Galaxy.

In the process of doing all that, I stumbled across the speech I gave in February 2010 at Colby College as part of a series, in which women who worked at Colby, and who also embraced avocations and/or second careers, talked about that second career.  I talked, surprisingly, about science fiction and my writing career.  I had, honestly, forgotten that was on the site, and listened to it yesterday as I was cleaning up.  It’s legitimately informative, and I recommend you check it out — text and audio are provided.  Here’s the link.

In other news, Salvage Right has a whopping 478 reviews/ratings at the Vast Waterway.  Steve and I thank all of you who have taken time to post a review.  We also ask those of you who have read Salvage Right to please review it.  Wouldn’t 500 reviews be awesome?

Steve and I are also still on the interview trail.  Yesterday we hosted the Portland Press Herald right here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory, and tomorrow afternoon, we have a podcast interview scheduled with Legendarium, and a couple more upcoming into September.

. .  . and that’s all the news.

Everybody stay safe, and be as happy as you can.

The Writing Life Saturday Edition

So, today so far I’ve gone through one Banker’s box full of “our papers.”  These particular papers are notes, chapters, and character sketches intended to be a Liaden Universe® novel, working title Fifth of Five.

Alas Fifth of Five died messily, and we had to scrap it.  All, however, was not lost, because from the ashes of Fifth of Five arose both Accepting the Lance and Trader’s Leap.

Oh, hey, I think I see what our problem was.

Anyhow, once I get it into a proper traveling box, those papers will be traveling to the Lee-and-Miller Archive at Northern Illinois University.

I have other boxes to go through, and some file drawers.  In fact, the impetus for this project was the fact that all the drawers are full and no, I am not, at this time in my life, buying more file cabinets.

Going through old manuscripts is . . . unexpectedly soothing.  So, a soothing Saturday on my end of things, with a side of laundry, and printing some things.

Steve has been cooking up a storm — poaching chicken and browning ground beef — we’ll have plenty of “leftovers” to provide the basis of supper next week.

The cats have been variously supervising my progress through the Banker’s box, and Steve’s cooking endeavors.  Right now, Sprite is in my co-pilot’s chair, Trooper, my most enthusiastic overseer, is back in his box on my desk, Belle is in Steve’s office, and Firefly — could be anywhere, honestly.

Fans of Firefly will like to know that she’s starting to make real progress on this come-to-the-lap thing.  She even visited me this morning at breakfast.  Steve quick-wittedly snapped a shot, so I even have photographic evidence, to wit!

The process of making ebooks and paper books

This is how Pinbeam Books (that’s Sharon Lee and Steve Miller) makes book.

  1.  We collect, or write, or write and collect, the stories to be published.
  2.  We put them into form, compile them, and call for Tyop Hunters.
  3.  At this point, we may or may not put the ebook up for pre-order on Amazon only by promising to upload the completed file by a certain date.
  4. Tyop Hunter results are entered into the ebook file.
  5. The corrected ebook is uploaded to Amazon and All The Usual Suspects, for pre-order or for sale, depending on how long it has taken to complete 4, above.
  6. At this point, we are free to use the clean and corrected ebook file as a base for the paper book edition.  Unlike ebooks, one must be committed to producing a paper book now.  It is not possible to set up a paper book for pre-order by promising to upload the file by a certain date.  It’s all or nothing.  This is why the paper book variously goes on sale before, after, or on the very day that the ebook edition drops.
  7. Once the paper book has been compiled and uploaded, Amazon puts it on sale and sometimes remembers to associate it with the catalog page for the ebook edition.  This is the step where you, the reader, can Actually Purchase the paper edition.

Please refer to this procedure in future, if there are any questions about the availability of a paper edition of a new Pinbeam Books book.

Thank you for your attention.

I can see all obstacles in my way

So, it’s been an exciting few days here at the Confusion Factory.  For the first time in five years, I have a new pair of glasses.  Also!  We opened the Hummer Bar, starting with two choices of venue — the Flying Saucer and the Hot Air Balloon.  Not fifteen minutes after we opened our doors, we served our first customer, and there has been a steady flow, since.  I anticipate opening the annex in the front garden sometime in the coming week, and possibly relocating the Hot Air Balloon venue from the back deck to an existing feeding station in the back yard.

Speaking of lawns and yards and gardens — it has been a banner year for daffodils.  Honestly, I don’t remember that we had this many daffodils, but my memory is a little patchy in spots nowadays, and it’s hard to argue against daffodils, so I’m just pleased to see them.

We — by which I of course mean Jeremy the Landscaping Guy — have installed three more cedar trees (emerald arborvitae), which fills in the line between our house and the Neighbors to the Right. This should have been done last year, but a lot of things didn’t get done last year.

The day after the Planting of the Cedars, we entertained Robbie the Arborist, who took down several trees in the back that had been fatally damaged in the big winter wind storms.  Sadly, two of them were birch trees, and their absence really changes the view from my office windows.

Pete the Builder has accomplished the long-awaited steps from the deck to the back yard.  Still some more work to do there, but having the stairs in place, and thus a second way out of the house in case of emergency, is a huge relief.

Up next week is a visit from the Dump Guy, to give us a quote on taking down the shed in the back, similarly damaged in the winds, and hauling it away, along with various repositories of Actual Junk in the garage and elsewhere.

We’re also looking for a return of Jeremy the Landscaping Guy, bearing two red maples (acer rubrum red sunset), and a Snowdance Japanese tree lilac, for the front lawn, the maples to provide shade, and the Snowdancer because it’s gorgeous, and neither one of us could resist the name.  As soon as the City tells us where the sewer and water lines are, we’ll have them planted, and then we can take a breather.

. . .except for getting the book finished and turned in, and three short stories written.  Yeah, yeah, piece o’cake.

Here have a picture of the Hummer Bar:

Today’s blog title brought to you by Johnny Nash, “I Can See Clearly Now.”  Here’s your link.

We’re back!

There was a database catastrophe at our web hosting facility, which brought down sharonleewriter.com, splinteruniverse.com, and pinbeambooks.com for a few days.  We are back now, and in catch-up mode.

So, let’s catch up!

1  The Wrong Lance, Splinter Universe Presents, Volume 2 has been compiled into an ebook and is available for preorder from The Usual Suspects.  Here’s a so-called “universal” link.  Here’s the link for the Kindle edition.

1a  YES, the ebook will be available from Baen, but not until Release Day.  Baen does not have the ability to take pre-orders for Pinbeam Books (the Lee&Miller Publishing Arm)

1b  YES, there will be a paper book, but not until (or a little before or after).  Amazon is our source for paper books, and Amazon has not so far been able to figure out how to allow people to pre-order paper books

1c  If you want to talk about The Wrong Lance with other readers, a discussion area has been created for you, here

2  The eARC of Trader’s Leap, the 23rd novel in the Liaden Universe® created and authored by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller is now available for download.  Here’s your link

2a  If you’d like to read a sample of Trader’s Leap, that starts here

3  You may preorder a signed (not personalized) copy of the Trader’s Leap hardcover from Uncle Hugo’s SF Bookstore.  Here’s your link

3a  For those who have not heard the news, Uncles Hugo and Edgar were lost to the Minneapolis riots.  The owner, Mr. Blyly (aka the Uncle), wished to make signed books available to long-time customers and Liaden Universe® readers.  The only way this could be made to work was for Baen to have the printer send Steve and me pages for us to sign.  These pages will be bound into a set of books and sent to Mr. Blyly.  This process of binding in a special page is in the industry called “tipped in,” which technical description you will see on the catalog page linked above.

3b  Trader’s Leap hardcover may also, of course, be preordered from your favorite bookstore, whatever it is.

3c  You may not preorder the ebook edition of Trader’s Leap from your favorite bookstore as yet.  This is because of how Baen markets its bundles and eARCS and that’s all I know on the subject.

3d  There is no word yet on an audio edition.

4  If you have read the Trader’s Leap eARC and Want To Talk About It, a Spoiler Discussion space has been set up here

 

In which the trolls go a bridge too far

This message is for those of you who primarily connect with me through Goodreads.  I am, in the face of the ongoing carnage and lack of oversight demonstrated on Goodreads*, removing my account — in fact, I would have already removed it, save that the instructions provided on-site for deleting an account are, um — inaccurate.  It will take Goodreads 5 days to get back to me on this.

Apparently, authors can not leave the system entirely — Goodreads will still record new books and publish reviews — like Amazon.  But I will not be directly involved even in the small way that I did participate.

Those who wish, can bookmark and follow this blog.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

__________________________

*For those who have not been following the story of carnage and lack of oversight, I offer this synopsis of events, compiled by Jason Sanford.

And she is moving very slowly, rising up above the earth

So, here we are in 2020.  I’ve been warned not to date checks with just /20, because some Bad People could just add, oh “19” to that and steal my check.  I’m sure that’s good advice, but, really I hardly write checks anymore, and when I do, I always date them fully, to wit:  “January 4, 2020,” because old habits die hard, if they die at all.

In related news, many-to-all (depending on your news source) of the credit unions in Maine are off-line as the result of mysterious “connectivity problem.”  This is not as much fun as it may at first seem.

We here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory are clinging to our last few precious Not-Sundays.  There’s writing to do and writing being done, as well as chores, of a sort, but it’s all being done in a soft bubble, almost a “deadline free zone,” which we all know there’s no such thing, but — it’s been pleasant to pretend for a week or two.

Deadlines and doctors appointments return Monday morning, quite early, so we’ll be getting back into the Daily Push realsoonnow.

My first-in task today is to clean the so-called Boy’s Bathroom, and to steam clean the kitchen floor.  After that, there’s the final sweep at the WIP.  After much banging my head against various metaphorical, logical, and fictional walls, I have figured out how to straighten the last kink in the last scene.  Go me.  The entire corrected manuscript ought, I think, be on its way to Madame by the end of the week, and then?  I won’t have anything to do.  [Cue laugh track]

Looking ahead, Steve and I will be attending Boskone in mid-February, and!  We will be Guests of Honor at NarniaCon, aka the Coat Check Con.  NarniaCon hosts a scavenger hunt within Boskone entire; this year’s hunt will be based on the game of Clue.

. . .and that’s where we stand at the moment, still inside the bubble, with the cats napping inside, and the sky grey with snow clouds, outside.

Today’s blog title brought to you by one of my hometown bands, Talking Heads:  And She Was.

Calling the Mighty Tyop Hunters!

MIGHTY TYOP HUNTERS! Your hour is NOW!

If you have found TYPOS* in the eARC of Accepting the Lance, you may send them to me at rolanniATkorvalDOTcom. However, you may only do so until 9 PM EASTERN, Monday, September 9.

The format for sending typos is to send a few identifying words around the typo so it can be found (my pagination is not your Kindle’s pagination; this is a True Fact, so page numbers are useless).

This is correct format for reporting a typo: “Very nearly as bad! Perhaps I ought not to remark at all, but merely flout my skill in becoming silence.” QUERY: Should “flout” be “flaunt”?

*WHAT TYPOS ARE: Spelling errors. Wrong words. Missing words. Wrong character name and/or misspelled character name.

WHAT TYPOS ARE NOT: Grammar “errors” ESPECIALLY in dialogue. Sentences you don’t like. We’re not writing at this point; we’re seeking to make the existing narrative as clean as possible.

Everybody psyched?

Go!

Wednesday Updatery

I do like Mr. Higgs’ dress blues.

In other news, the Dead River guy arrived two hours early for his 10 am appointment to do the annual cleaning and testing of the boiler. Happily, the office called ahead and woke us up, so we put pants on. I threw the cats into the back hallway, so that they didn’t go downstairs to help the boiler guy, whose work is located in the Goblin Room. Boiler guy has departed, leaving us with the happy news of work not covered under the annual contract which will need doing in warmer weather. This will apparently be a zoo, because of the Numerous Zones we have in this house, and the fact that all of the lines will have to be drained before the work is done. They will then need to be refilled, and air in the lines is apparently A Thing.

Today, I have some Administrative Stuff to do, along with prep for Steve’s visit to the Cardiac Center tomorrow. We’re wanted there at 6:30 am so…wow, yeah. Prep. I already have two paperbacks in my backpack, a portable battery in case the phone needs recharging on the fly, a notebook, pens, and a couple of oatmeal bars — so the essentials are covered, at least.

I have explained the upcoming schedule to each of the cats. Possibly, Scrabble believes me; the coon cats unanimously think I need a nap.

The story, as yet titleless, stands at just under 5,000 words; it should be right around 20,000 by the time everything plays out.  I will not be taking it with me to work on at the Cardiac Center, because that would be pointless.

Also, no, I have not looked yet at the half-a-book (which also need a title) which is due in September, nor yet have I read Accepting the Lance.  Next week things will become more regularized.  She said sternly.

I believe this brings everybody current.

Stay well, and happy.