Journeyman

Yes, it does happen. Shameless Self promotion time!

Maine folks, and nearby New England folks, especially those connected with various genre fandoms ... AK Cyrway, Patrick Shawn Bagley, Friends of Liad, NESFA, PortConMaine, Gibran Vogue Graham, Cirque du Geek, not to mention folks associated with the media .... ( Katy England hint hint, do you still have connections?, Dave Isaac got anyone you know in the literary community or a connection to the BDN or other papers for interviews? hey, Maine Writers and Publishers), heads up!

Your friendly local authors of the Liaden Universe(R) are set for a Meet and Greet-style signing at Barnes & Noble in Augusta come May 13, from 1 PM to 3 PM. Sounds good, right?

But hey, a perusal of the calendar reveals that Sunday, May 14 happens to be Mother's Day. We'd love to have a great turnout of SF fans in general and Liaden fans in particular for our event in the state capital's biggest bookstore and there's some concern that Mother's Day shopping may make it hard for folks to find out (or remember) our event.

If you can help get the word out about this, we appreciate it; if you can come on by, that'd be good, too. Could be some photo ops for you digital camera whiz-types.... If you know someone who'd be interested, please do share.

Here's the B&N link for you to share with friends, https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/9780061861478-0 [https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/9780061861478-0&h=ator7ckeyk2xamt7edafxrt8g0-guzohb70kieoz7jecxy16hv3cngfgf_8g_6-jugv_plzepujae_rwhhxn9y-gmaweukrh8ydq3g-p6km78eproolnhxuvx7ulj8-3ujx1lz70azj0&enc=azorboxrcdvvgmhtoznt49rowexsiu06v0ecmlq-eaweuhzgmv7tk9t3z5bgxza7tkf28gzfy_epi8bq49vq-al5nb195_c9punhx5swa3zqllziq4rmnth2jmv4ptqme-wbjoetyqhapyhxfhcn9ljwbcbglc4qv1-nb302kbdtqxzayrjdftofs0f-wkyrz0k&s=1_green]

If you happen to tell someone and they want to connect for a podcast, an interview, or for additional meet-the-author opportunities, you've got plenty of time to reach us.

Thanks In Advance, from both of us.

In the last week I've discovered that not everyone knows about our Splinter Universe website. Here's a link to a February page over there. You'll find a few voice files, pdfs, stories, splinters, and more over there ...

http://splinteruniverse.com/?p=1300

Dear Interwebz --

for those who have never met us in person, a chance to hear our voices and see us interact with each other... perhaps we'd be a perfect fit for your special library literary event, convention, meeting, or what have you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRp2APLF7Pw&feature=youtu.be yes, this is one of those somewhat delayed Lake Region TV interviews...

Also, there was this, shared with us today -- a NYT bestseller author discovers... guess who?
http://nalinisingh.blogspot.com/2011/12/friday-book-club_16.html

Steve

Don Blyly says --

"A great list of bestsellers this month: local authors Patricia Wrede and Kelly Barnhill both outsold that Martin guy, champion monster-whupper Larry Correia got all four of his paperback titles onto the list, Michael Z. Williamson did a little warmup for his run at the September #1 hardcover spot, and Sharon Lee and Steve Miller topped the hardcover list by an impressive margin for a third month in a row (although they're butting heads with the Warrior Sheep for the top spot on the trade paperback list)."

I think there's 9 Lee/ Lee & Miller titles on this list, from three different publishers, and not all of them Liaden, either .... not too bad.

http://unclehugo-edgar.livejournal.com/213666.html

And so as we move into summer we here at the Confusion factory are looking back a bit -- we've had a hectic 12 months and a day or two --

within the last 12 months we were in Orlando as Guests of Honor for last year's Oasis, then on to Chicago's Western suburb of Naperville for our joint Guest of Honor gig at DucKon. During those several weeks of Guest-of-Honor non-stop travel we decided to move forward on our search to relocate closer to the ocean in Maine in the next year or two, and have been working on that ever since ... but there were some delays (see following narrative). Part of that decision includes scaling back SRM because of space and time limitations (and the fact that we're running out of the cases Meisha Merlin titles that helped feed us for several years during the MM meltdown phase) -- expect some sales at srmpublisher.com starting tomorrow so we can eventually clear out the basement and be ready to move closer to the ocean by next December, if all else continues as is.

We had a bunch of Baen books come out (and more are on the way!), and then I went to AlbaCon in October ... and about a week after Albacon I ended up in the hospital for a week with pneumonia and a bonus diagnosis of cardiomypathy ... which led to the closing of the in-town SRM Publisher office and then to my ICD implant in January, as well as delayed publication of the annual chapbook, which finally turned up as Skyblaze.

The books continued to come out from Baen, and we continued to get offers to be guests at conventions, some of which we've now been able to schedule, including the RSN visit to PortConMaine. We also are looking forward to RenoVation -- WorldCon -- in Reno and a stop on the way home at Uncle Hugos for what may well be our biggest signing ever before the summer turns into September.

Meanwhile the ebook revolution was spinning along and we finally jumped back into the fray with our chapbook backlist and more via our http://www.pinbeambooks.com website.

We made a big deal about getting the Liaden Universe material up for Kindle and Nook, because, heck, many of our fans seem to like the Korval gang and their friends (and enemies!). But -- it turns out some of the Liaden readers don't know about or realize there are other Lee & Miller mini-universes and short things out there -- and our quick announcements on the Liaden books may have failed readers looking for more. For one thing, we made no special mention of Fellow Travelers, which is *the* Liaden Universe chapbook that convinced us we needed to keep doing chapbooks way back when.

But there was a little more to the technical details of aiming at the secondary markets than we'd realized and some of the "other" chapbooks went up while we were concentrating on those details, like trying to figure out our Smashwords ( http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/rolanni/authors#published ) stuff (still not complete) because Smashwords is a practical way for us to get some of our books into the Apple system -- and though the books became available we weren't cheering them along the way we could have.

So: while we continue to add our existing ebooks to Smashwords one or two a day, where they slowly migrate into "premium catalogs" like Apple, you can still order the epub and other formatted other books for Kindle and Nook now if you don't want to wait. If you're looking for Lee & Miller stories you may have missed, try these locations at the Pinbeam Books catalog site -- http://www.pinbeambooks.com/ebooks-you-want-to-read/lee-and-miller/ which is some of our joint chapbooks as well as a novel (note that in Calamity's Child their is a Liaden story) ... and then there's Sharon's page (including links to her mystery novels!) http://www.pinbeambooks.com/ebooks-you-want-to-read/sharon-lee/ and my own, still in progress -- http://www.pinbeambooks.com/ebooks-you-want-to-read/steve-miller/ -- the poetry book TimeRags II will be added as time permits. TimeRags was my first book publication, way back in 1975.

So, we've been busy. You can help us clear the decks for summer travel by passing on the www.pinbeambooks.com website for your ebook reading friends and once the sales get up to SRM, doing something about them.

Here's a list of some of the chapbooks you may have missed, now findable electronically at the Pinbeam website, all available through major purveyors of ebooks for $2.99:

Chariot to the Stars -- a collections of my early fiction
Variations Three -- a collection of Sharon's early fiction
Endeavors of Will -- a collection of Sharon's fiction from her first 20 years of writing
The Cat's Job -- what can I say -- this has been a popular book for a long time. Each sale also helps keep Hexapuma in meds!
The Naming of Kinzel -- a young wizard, written years and years before Harry Potter. There's a lost Kinzel novel, by the way -- at one point we thought we'd make our living writing Kinzel stories!
Master Walk -- another universe we thought might make us a living -- I still think we may write in this one some more.
Quiet Magic -- a hers-mine-ours collection of Lee and Miller short fiction.
Fellow Travelers -- Adventures in the Liaden Universe number 2, I think...
and there's also a $4.99 novel, The Tomorrow Log, which also begs for a continuation and which we keep looking at to see how to go on with it ...

So I went downstairs and grabbed a "to go"  breakfast and coffee and have been going over the workshop stories. I have time before my appointment at the SFWA table and other duties, so I'm taking things slow.

So I didn't tell you about the experience of passing a blazing motorhome on the side of the road in Virginia on Tuesday, close enough that I could feel heat through the window glass despite having the airconditioner on at the time. Black smoke hung away from the road, the field next to the vehicle was starting to burn.  There were people sheltering on the other side of an underpass, looked like several sets of older couples -- they had with them some motorists who had stopped -- and the entire front half of the semi-bus style contraption was burning ... here's a slightly more newsy story -- with photo
http://www.whsv.com/home/headlines/99887794.html

The odd thing was that I'd spotted the smoke a few minutes before, off to my right but as traffic was cruising at 75 or so didn't  think much about it, assuming something industrial -- but then the road curved and cars began slowing  down and i realized this was not some purposeful event. Luckily, it was not a full-scale tragedy -- I have family members who are truckers and they have sometimes told of the scenes they've ween along the roads -- but it was impressive enough that I decided to stop and take a walk-around break at the pretty rest area at Mile 262

http://www.virginiadot.org/travel/map-ra-newmarketsb.asp ;

Coincidentally, this is one of my favorite highway rest areas ever, complete with wooded trails and flowers... and I (and Sharon and I) have stopped there a  few times in the past until it has become a looked for stop. Oddly, I'd overlooked it my planning this time around, so it was a welcome chance to climb wooden stairs under the big trees and sit on a picnic bench for a snack, despite the heat. I also spoke briefly with Big Kake and Little Jake -- two nearly identical Dalmations who happened to be ... wait for it ... mother and daughter.

Breakfast today, by the way, included this interaction:

Me, hearing that the charge was $7.92, handing over $8 -- a $5 bill and three gold-toned coins.

The cashier looked up.  "I don'  like dees dollars," he said, turning the coins over and looking me in the face.

I pulled a pocketful of change out, pennies, a few quarters, and three or four more of "dees dollars" -- "What I have on me. We use these coins up north in Maine."

He shrugged, moved his change in the drawer around a little to make a place for them, and gave me my change.  

Oh, I know Canadians use coins in palce of bills at the low end -- how about Europeans?

And last night was the Guest of Honor dinner, which went well I thought, even though several people I was expecting to be there for dinner were not -- but lasagna, cheesecake, and a sititng at a table with folks sharing good conversation on topics like Andre Norton's publishing and residential history, fanzines, the fate of old collections  -- hey, good stuff. Right beside me sat Doug Fratz, who bought an article from me many years ago for his excellent review and commentary semi-pro zine THRUST SF. 

So SFWA table and dealers room coming up for me today. Hope to see some of you there!

NASFIC -- also known this year as RECONSTRUCTION  -- will be in Raleigh, NC in August. I'll be there.

http://www.reconstructionsf.org/

I mention this especially for those of you who may be in reasonable travel distance -- and have never been to an SF convention. This con bodes to be considerably smaller than your average Worldcon, and hence more accessible size-wise to first timers, while at the same time having a really good program participant list -- far larger and more diverse than an average regional convention --  http://www.reconstructionsf.org/?page_id=254 ...

and, we're going to do what we can about having a Friends of Liad breakfast, to boot. One of the reasons I mention this now is that the Marriott's room block for the con is closed, and the Sheraton is filling rapidly. Also -- convention pre-registration closes July 15, after which you'll need to do the buy-at-the-door thing, which is doable but not nearly as much fun as being preregistered.  You can take care of the business of joining the convention http://www.reconstructionsf.org/?page_id=6 if you want -- and if you just want to help out and can't make the convention, there's a supporting member option as well so you can help US fandom have it's American field day while the Worldcon is off visiting Australia.

While I'm at this let me mention that fellow Baen author Eric Flint is Guest of Honor, Brad Foster is Artists Guest of Honor, Juanita Coulson is Fan GoH ... and our editor and publisher at Baen, Toni Weisskopf, is the Toastmaster. You'll definitely be able to see some of today's best if you come on out to this! Party, listen and study, buy books and t-shirts, see and buy art -- this is a festival, and you get to take part.

Hi there -- we've been busy -- how about you?

We discover this morning, while sorting mail as the rain falls outside, that Fledgling (the mass market) was apparently the sole Baen book to make the Locus bestseller list in the June issue -- I think that covers March. Fledgling is listed as #10 in mass markets, and that's not too bad, is it? We're wondering what will show when July rolls around...

Yes, we are home from Oasis 23, which was a lovely convention. The Amtrak trip down was flawless, which was good since the drive to the station was fraught with Boston traffic tricks, turning what ought to have been a six hour run into a near eight-hour experience. Luckily, we'd brought a pack of CDs to listen to.

We arrived in Florida on  Thursday May 27, and left June 3rd... and had a blast.

We got to spend quality time variously on panels, signing, in the consuite and in the bar with fellow GoH Rob Balder (of Erfworld and Partially Clips) as well as guests Ben Bova, Jack McDevitt, and others. FoL and concom member Susan Cole took us on a tour of Orlando and got us to a couple of nice restaurants (yep, we got to add another Italian eatery to our lists of been there done that!) and after the con we visited the Pirates dinner theater on our own.  Besides signing a lot of books at the con we hit a bunch of area bookstores with pens in hand.  We had a host of fellow panelists and the panels were excellent!  And a fun thing -- someone with time on his hands was visiting Orlando from California and happened to turn a page in the entertainment section of the Orlando Sentinel -- to see a photo of us with information about Oasis -- and thus found himself at his first SF convention ever, because as he told us "you guys are my favorite authors ever! I couldn't believe you'd be here just when I got here!" 

We'll hope conventions we bew a habit for him, and are one for you, and  we're sorry if you were close to Oasis and missed us ...

The only downside of the trip was the (probably air-conditioner induced) dry-throat cough and cold I caught -- which elevated itself into sneezing/coughing/low fever just as we were getting ready to Amtrak home. I was able to sleep much of the return trip in our roomette,
which helped me be ready for driving some yesterday after we broke our travel Friday night in East Greenbush. Little did we know that we just missed some adventure on the way home, because some of the remarkable weather we saw near Lewiston. ME *really was* remarkable -- http://www.sunjournal.com/oxford-hills/story/858030 -- we may have been saved from actually seeing the funnel cloud by my suggestion of a Dairy Queen stop for a milkshake to help soothe my sore throat.

More as time and memory permit!

Oh yeah, we're hoping to see as many of you as we can at Duckon -- come on out!

Dear Friends of Liad (and all the ships in space) --

Geek Speak Magazine is doing an interview with Lee and Miller (hey, one of them is me!) and a line to get your comments on the Liaden stuff has been opened up:

http://community.livejournal.com/liaden_readers/22768.html 

feel free to join in and share, and post to book lists and discussions groups where appropriate, if you would be so kind ...

Thanks!

Steve