Yesterday was intermittent ...

We had snow/sleet turning to snow/ice pellets turning to ice pellets/snow to ice pellets/freezing rain to freezing mist to mist and back again... a real mess.

over the day I was working, as I could, on the new catalog; things got hairy though because somewhere between here and there we were having both cable (call it connectivity) interruptions as well as power fluctuation and outages. We're on the last mile of cable and in the midst of thick woods -- ten years ago we were just about at ground zero of the ice storm --

Starting yesterday around 4 PM until about 1 AM this morning I must have heard the UPS klaxons a few dozen times; Sharon came sliding home from work and we read and used laptops rather than fight the fight with trying to get cable back online consistently, then we broke for early cheese and baloney sammich with pink wine instead of trying to cook anything.

Meanwhile, today in bright sun, work goes forth on several SRM projects ... we've looked at several offices in the last weeks and have been gnawing at getting the database-crashed orders out to readers. if you ordered from SRM between October and January and haven't seen something you thought you should have, please check the order email for an address to email me so I can check it out. We had around a dozen orders that could not be delivered as addressed and a number of others that seem to have just ... evaporated. I'd really like to get this stuff cleaned up before the new catalog goes online. Speaking of which:

Those of you who have been given the secret SRM Publisher test-site info, feel free to take a look at the updated catalog, which is almost showing form and function. RSN, we hope.

Oh yes, sometime I need to update the word-counts for Saltation .. .right now I have no clue how far along it actually is, wordwise.

Today is trash day ... guess I better skate the trash out to the "curb" ... which is about a 60 inch tall pile of snow at the end of the drive. With temps to go to the 40s today, it'll be damp later.

Note to SFWAns: I'm not fond of getting let's recast the Nebulas. We could start now and have the revamped format in place for 2010.

Follow on to recent topics:


1: About the Google thing I mentioned recently ... it does look like those numbers/locations are slowly rising. At the link below is posted a banner and HTML you can use to add a Saltation link directly to your own website ... do drop down and read the posts to find the correct one ...

http://community.livejournal.com/theo_waitley/45502.html?nc=6

There are some spoilers on the Theo Waitley pages there, so caution is advised if you've never visited that community before.


2: Liaden Universe Companion #1, the mass market edition, from SRM Publisher, Ltd...should be at Boskone. I've held an advance copy in my hands, hurrah! Within a few days of the end of Boskone will be in the bookstores and convention dealers SRM Publisher deals with directly. We ought also to have it online by then as well; but we're still working on that online catalog.

3: With the snowy conditions today I still need to get out to the PO and mail some stuff; I expect this'll add and extra hour or two to the getting around.

4: Last night was chess night in Waterville and company was thin, in part I expect due to the expected snow and ice. John an Mark got a few games in but then Mark challenged me to a club-rated game and I'm not sure about what else may have happened in other games as our game was pretty intense. I tried a variation on one of my favortie openings with white, one that invites an attack. Alas, I miscounted early and ended up a piece for a pawn down with bishops of opposite colors, and given the strange pawn structure and king placement by the middle game I traded my remaining rook to go black bishop against white bishop and rook... and offered a draw. Mark declined, and I connected the black bishop with the passed pawn on the king side, locking black out of my side and slowly advancing diagonally with the king despite being a piece down. Managed to queen a pawn, forcing Mark's rook off the board to take it... and then had a passed pawn on one side of the board and a potential passer on the other ... at which point I declined the draw offer and took the game on time, so I picked up a few points and moved up a position in the club ladder. Wheee....

5: Also about rankings... kind of scary to have the revisions on screen while the book is already on sale...Duainfey was running at Amazon.com Sales Rank: #105,863 for a book due in September...
http://www.amazon.com/Duainfey-Sharon-Lee/dp/1416555528 which I guess isn't too bad for our first dark fantasy novel, 7 months before publication.

If you haven't seen my notes elsewhere, I'm reminding those folks interested in DenVention...
please get your room reservations in, RSN. We're told rooms are getting harder to find
since WorldCon will be sharing Denver with several other large conventions...

Especially take note: if you're planning for a party suite you have to talk to the committee
RSN and get your suite request into the suite lottery... else you may be left on the
outside looking in.

FWIW, the Friends of Liad have started the process, so we hope you'll be able to see us there.
SRM may have a party -- suite-space willing. If you're interested in being part of a
special-interest ( say ... Theo Waitley...) party or breakfast or get together... do let us know.
If you want to help any Liaden-oriented party ... let us know.

If you're familiar with Denver's convention center area, is there any place you'd suggest for a
Friends of Liad breakfast? I'm not sure I have a count to hand, but I do think that in
San Jose, Toronto, and Boston we sat more than a dozen to breakfast -- in fact at Toronto
we might have had 24 among multiple tables (and one heck of a waitress!).

If you've been following this blog you know we're changing some stuff -- like
a major amount of our email traffic -- around over at SRM. The first part of the
move has been stable for about seven hours now, and the srmpublisher email test-emails have
worked for the last dozen hours or so. That's a good sign.

Also, and I know this is buried deep, I should mention Theo Waitley again ...
Theo's set for three weeks going on four at this point. Now all I have to do is fix the
"Duh!" moment written into the second chapter and all will be well for next Monday...

And oh yes, watch for a Second Life talk on the Fledgling-Saltation project.
Coming up on February 2, the rough draft runs:


Fledgling and Saltation: Living Under The Shadow of the Digital
Deadline

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller ventured into the storyteller bowl arena last
year with the Fledgling, a Liaden Universe novel produced a chapter-a-week
in rough draft and supported by donations. Steve Miller shares the
history and some of the benefits and pitfalls of internet serialization.

Alas, before coffee I have forgotten the exact times in RL or SL .. watch for news.

First,
if you haven't seen it yet, Liaden Universe Infodump #65 is online on Rolanni's blog...
http://rolanni.livejournal.com/304716.html including news about recent publications, near instant availability of an eARC, and our convention schedule for next year, and the fact that Dragon Tides is late and will be late -- but we don't yet know how late.

By the way, we've been trying to get this information out to the FoL list but haven't seen it "come back" yet. We've been having some serious problems with ewmail connectivity locally of late and aren't sure if this is the change to Road Runner haunting us or not.

Next, here's an update on a project to bring the future to many children. Is it risky? Probably. Is it happening? Yes -- One Laptop Per Child. A laptop designed to help children learn how to learn, in the roughest conditions.

http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php

We're planning on giving one ourselves, even after getting our eee PCs for our anniversary.. Maybe Boskone can have an OLPC and eee pc room somewhere, who knows?

Did I mention that the major commercial interests (Micrsoft and Intel, in this case) seem to be doing their best to make sure OLPC does not get the foothold it is after? Microsoft is dropping the cost of their operating system in some countries to near $0 to try to keep Linux and the OLPC out of the hands of people who might grow up not thinking of MSoft as be all in software. Intel seems to be trying to countersell a machine to many countries so AMDs chips won't be the big guns of this changetime...

Another article on the OLPC: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,314802,00.html


v1.002

So ...

recently:

Duainfey has been electronically shipped to editor and agent... which means we can expect sometime in the future to get a revision letter. Count on it. Meanwhile, there's a rumor afoot that someone will be doing a podcast of the first half of Misfits....who knew?

I have so far packed about 10 percent of the signed hardback second volume of Liaden Universe Companions; they along with about 4 percent of the trade papers are either at the PO or will be at the PO today. We're shipping, as much as possible, in a first-in, first-out process, so if you ordered in May your books will be awhile because a lot of people ordered ahead of you in November and December. I am *really* sorry we don't have our in-town office set up yet... soon, I hope, soon.

Can you say plot holes? I knew you could... We watched some more of Peter Gunn last night, a great way to relax after a hard weekend of revision. Guess what -- you mostly only noticed the plot holes *after* the show was over, so hey, that's entertainment for you -- first to watch and be drawn in (and amazed at how many people smoked and carried guns)and next to say, after, "Oh, but hey!..."

Pretty day yesterday, looks like a warmer one today, which may not be pretty after all if the air quality dips again.

Thanks for all the pre-orders on Dragon Tide. I do apologize for getting to that so late, but I didn't want to be running two pre-order databases at once if I could avoid it. Remind me someone, in a day or two I'll post a PDF ofthe Dragon Tide flyer so you can snarf some down for cons if you're going that way.

With luck, chess tonight.

Contracts ...

I told Rolanni I'd have something done today, Friday, when she gets home from the college. Now ... it looks like I need to write about 4000 unanticipated words to get that done... oh, my. I'll start that in a few minutes, you betcha.

Our printer is sending 6 somethings of "office use" trade papers of Liaden Universe® Companion Volume 2. Might arrive today. The problem I'm having is trying to figure out if they've sent 6 copies or 6 cases. News at 11? The *real* problem is that the online page showing how many of what has been dispatched has ... untraditional... abbreviations making it hard to decipher. So, if you see a post later today of the traditional "truck, truck" variety, you'll know I know.

And if I haven't mentioned it here, I should. The traditional -- "Oh, the hardback will be a few days more" is happening ... and this from a printer unrelated to the previous 5 or 6 inflictions. Go figure.

When it comes to keeping your health records online. For example, Microsoft seems bent on owning your records and your computer...
http://www.linuxmednews.com/1191521272 ... it seems to say here that if you use their new "service" they can mess with your computer at whim, and let anyone they name mess with it at whim, to protect themselves. Let the sicko beware?

And if you hurry, this link may show you a pretty good photo of a heron flying along above the Sebasticook... one of the several rivers we cross nearly daily. http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/includes/global2/centralmaine/photos/071005-lg_1855010167.jpg
... a great area this is for bird watchers...

To words, to words!

Well, heck:

First few minutes of Theo's installment today was slightly confused and slightly late -- the cover proofs for Liaden Universe Companion #2 are in house, having arrived right around the launch time ... and needing to sign and then to show them off (with trepidation) to the FEDEX guy who is a fan ...

So I came back after interruption to launch Theo, which I decided to do manually since the last time I tried the auto-upload we glitched. So, we glitched today with the first two attempts ... from the wrong folder. Distracted 'R Us.

Meanwhile,
I think after consideration that we could actually use a glitchwiki type page to fix the growing number of minor errors/typos/goof-ups attaching themselves to the Fledgling site. Mmaybe we need an actual glitchwiki, I don't know. Thoughts? do we need a page for each chapter or just a thread here for each 5 chapters?

I'm behind schedule on several things today and need to look at the proofs besides, so I may not get back here until tomorrow, but your thoughts on a glitchwiki are welcome.

....
Also meanwhile, it is a wonderfully pretty day outside, my lunch is cooking, and I need a clear head to stare at the proofs with. Perhaps we'll get several sets of eyes on this if we can...

Wheee.......

Right,

up early this morning, with some bit-wrestling to do to get the Fledgling episode we finished late yesterday evening ready to pour into the web-container for uploading this morning. Wide awake well before 6 AM, I am, and partly because of the punny dream that woke me just as Rolanni's alarm clock went off...

In the dream I/we are on a panel discussion at a convention (something I've likely logged at least a thousand hours at, now that I think of it)and someone on the panel, one of the note-taking sort, has asked a question about our books tending toward the multi-genre, you know, romance and SF, sf and mystery, science fiction with fantastic elements.... and I'm answering a question and saying, "Yes, right. That's exactly what happens in (that story) .... Val Con is faced with a lot of problems at once and he has to solve them like a mystery novel."

"And which one is that?"

So I point over to whichever book it was, in a stack of the mass markets paperbacks sitting there in the show-and-tell pile ((you did know that's what they are, the books authors lug around all day long at a con, waiting for their chance to wave the things at the back of the ballroom where the six hundred bespectacled fans can easily see the details lovingly obscured by the typography, right, the show-and-tell pile?)) and I point out whichever mass market book I'm discussing and the person I'm paneling with picks it up and says, panelist like, "So if we want to send readers who know they like problem solving to your books, this one's an example of Val Con yos'Phelium, Ace detective?"

And then he woke up, as they say. Sigh... been there and done that, really.

Last few days have been a rush of stuff inside because one, it needs done and two) weather's been lousy hot and muggy, with intermittent rain and thunderstorms, and occasional power glitches. I quick day lily census leaves us less than a dozen for the next few days, so summer is clearly winding down. Last evening Rolanni and I exchanged hostages quite late, I getting the current Duainfey installment (umm ... "isn't this ' must' supposed to be 'much' here where the magic has built up..?" and she arriving at Theo's place " OK, where all these guys rush in and she turns to face them, you we're typing so fast all your ' 's ' are ' ;s ' .... and dinner was a leisurely mutual cross-genre dissection over a glass of pink box-wine (hi there, Doc Narbon!) and a chicken-and-cheese sandwich on whole wheat (one with, one without, mustard.)

By the way, we're waiting for the coffee to come around again on the guitar. I'm not tired. Or proud....

On today's agenda: sending out a few dozen more notes to folks who have pre-ordered Liaden Universe Companion #2, telling them... the books are late. Slowly we turn. Inch by inch. Step by step. Mile by mile....

Fledgling is up. Went up ... hours ago!

Today and tomorrow I am continuing with sending out email letters to Liaden Universe Companion folks, one at a time, to make sure we got the merges right. Is taking awhile, yessir. When I'm not doing that, I'm doing the galley proof of Crystal Dragon.

Yesterday 2 day lilies, the day before, 7. This morning it was nearly frosty at 37.9 degrees... and the lily count is: 4.

Over the weekend I located another in-town office candidate for SRM. This one is close enough to the college that Rolanni and I could have lunch together some days.

Right ...

Fledgling chapter 24 -- some of you call this a "fix" -- got online around 11:48 this morning at 2800 words or so.

Today part of my job is packing stuff for SRM Publisher, part is renaming a kingdom/world splinter for Lee & Miller.

Chapter 21 of the Fledgling Podcast is up. Thanks, Sam!

Today's lily count: 4.

Off to work again.