Category: Shameless Self-Promotion

All righty, then!

First up, a reminder:  Sharon Lee and Steve Miller will be reading from and signing copies of the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of Agent of Change at Children’s Book Cellar, 52 Main Street, Waterville, Maine 04901, on Friday, November 2, from 7:30-9 pm.  Looking forward to seeing you — yes, you! — there.

If you are unable to attend the November 2 event, and you want a signed copy of the anniversary Agent of Change, with the awesome Sam Kennedy cover, you may send an email before November 2 to Ellen Richmond at kidsbookscellarATmyfairpointDOTnet, with “Lee and Miller” in the subject line. In the body of the letter let Ellen know how many books you want, your snail address, and any personalization request you may have. She will contact you for further necessary information.

So, we attended the Community Health Needs Assessment as our Floating Day Off, on Thursday.  It was interesting, and even informative.  I had been under the impression that the event was hosted by one of the area hospitals; in fact it is an on-going collaborative effort of about eight different hospitals, clinics and health associations.  The meant that there were a lot of professionals present, which was fine; one of the problems identified by our table (all civilians, saving the facilitator and the note-taker) was a lack of access to care, including a lack of doctors, a lack of transportation to get to doctors, and a lack of those activities supportive of good health.

Unfortunately, the lack of access which was so obvious to the public eye was invisible to the professional eye, as we found when it came time to rank the most pressing needs in our community.  The vote went along, dare I say, party lines, with the professionals pushing for programmatic solutions to things like the opoid crisis and self-harm.  That was a little disappointing.  Our facilitator thanked our table for our real-world perspective, but I’m not completely certain that she has any high-level ears available to her.

One of the things that seems obvious to me (warning) is that, if this is about COMMUNITY Health Needs, then the COMMUNITY needs to get involved.  The city needs to get on-board with providing, say, a real bus service, so people can get to their appointments on time.  The clinics need to coordinate; health and exercise classes in the city need to be expanded, supported, and advertised.

The whole community aspect was pointed up when the meeting was breaking up and one of our table’s participants handed the facilitator a card.  She shook her head, and said, “The hospital does all its printing in house.”  “That’s right,” came the answer, “and they put the guy who used to do their printing out of business.”

If we’re all in this together, we can’t solve our problems by working separately.

So, that.

We haven’t quite settled on the upcoming week’s Floating Day Off; much depends on the outcome of phone calls that need to be made tomorrow.  For today, I need to vacuum the house, and then get to work.

Oh!  I keep meaning to show y’all this. . .The Carousel Corner in my bookshelf.

In the spirit of getting bidness outta the way first:  Someone — maybe on this blog?  I’ve lost the note itself — asked me to “list” all of our work eligible for this year’s Dragon Awards.  Herewith! the list:

Neogenesis, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Baen Books, January 2018  Category: Best SF Novel

The Dragon Awards are apparently open to anyone who wishes to participate.  Here’s your link.

So, that.

One of my on-board tasks is to proofread the manuscript for Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume Four, due at the publisher in August.  I just finished proofing “Street Cred,” and damn! that’s a good story.  I realize that it’s not cool to be pleased with your own work, but, hey, I’ve never been cool.

And, it really is a good story.

Let see, what else?

Ah.  June 27th marked our second month in the New Location.  Time flies and all like that.  I’ve made my peace with the dishwasher, more or less; and while I still don’t quite comprehend the new dryer, progress is being made on that road.

One of the many things that amuses me about this house is that, yesterday, I walked a mile and a half.  This was exclusively inside the house, going from my office at the top of the short arm of the U, around to the laundry room, in the middle of the long arm of the U (directly across from my office, as the crow flies, if crows could fly through windows), and back again.

Though the first mad flood has been stemmed, we still from time to time entertain contractors.  Tree Guy says he’s going to take down the two dead pines “next week” but hasn’t called to set, y’know, an actual day.  Also, it may have escaped his notice that Wednesday is the Fourth of July.  Cleaning Guy, who was supposed to have come by yesterday morning, cancelled because a tree had fallen on his mother’s house and he was needed to help with the clean-up.  So, we’re waiting for another call from him to reschedule.  And the War Engineer is supposed to drop by on his own schedule to finish getting rid of the useless bits of the fence.

Work continues to go forward on Accepting the Lance.  Mind you, it’s not going as quickly as I would wish, which was ever the case, but going forward is Good.  I’m perhaps being over-gentle with it, given how suddenly and completely its predecessor died the True Death.  We don’t want that to happen again; oh, no, we do not.

Reporting from the land of More Excitement Than You Can Possibly Stand, after I became unable to drink caffeinated coffee, I settled on Twining’s Irish Breakfast Tea as my caffeine delivery system.  It has a nice mouth feel, and has the darkish taste of coffee.  Sort of.

Steve recently got me a box of Twining’s Lapsang Souchong, and. . .man, that’s interesting.  I don’t know that I’m going to make it my Only Tea, but I’m definitely going to keep a box around.

And that?  Is all I’ve got.  Going to be a busy weekend, what with writing and proofing and all.  Also, by Maine standards, at least, a hot weekend, as I suppose is proper as we in the US run up to Independence Day, the quintessential summer holiday.  Which reminds me that I have to find where Waterville stages its fireworks. . .

Everybody stay cool.