Journeyman

Still not snowing ... is anyone getting snow out of this mess? Sharon is reporting a flock of robins at the college campus ...I guess they fled the snowfields of Pennsylvania and Maryland for more comfortable weather in Maine.

Yesterday I found this: who can name the source? No, it does not belong to one of Maine's well-loved Great Striped Northern Ravens.

Meanwhile, I noted earlier in a tweet ( if you twitter, you can follow bechimo ) that at 6 AM this morning ...
6 AM -- Lee & Miller do Space Opera! Amazon says: Space Opera: Mouse and Dragon #29;Fledgling #43: Saltation #89: Dragon Variation #99   ... this deserves a bit of discussion. For one thing three of these books are yet unpublished -- so you can join in if you haven't ordered or pre-ordered, or please, go to your local indie bookstore and make sure they'll have them on publication date.  For another, Amazon has chosen to muddy waters by throwing kindle books among the paper ones, and more, I think among the books those books are some of their special offer (i.e. FREE) kindle books.  And then ...

Really, would you call Rachel Caine's Weather Warden books space opera? Earth Abides? Brave new World? John Birmingham's alternate history thrillers? No? me too -- but they've snuck into Space Opera at Amazon ... sigh. Databases are useful. Accurate databases are *more useful* ...

Have to get the trash out, catch you later!

I know, I know, you haven't seen much of me lately over here. Have you seen my recent post at
http://srmpublisher.livejournal.com/ ? ... which has some details of what's been happening on other fronts, including what I hope is the final version of the cover for Eidolon.

Today we ended up at the beach for breakfast, up to the mall to replace something we'd bought broken a couple weeks ago, then *around* the mall where Waldenbooks is now a "watch for a new store" zone, then to Borders which was fresh out of the 4 copies of Duainfey we were going to sign but will order more, then all around Portland trying to buy some stuff locally that I ended ended up ordering online after all ... and all that travel meant we got to do leaf-peeping on the side. The day was clear at the ocean in the morning, but as it wore on we had a lot of clouds and breeze; a great day to be out and about.

And while we were out and about we were recognized a number of places on account of the article and photo that was in the Portland, Augusta, and Waterville papers; at one shop in Augusta we were hailed with "What a greeatttt write-up! I told my girl-friend 'look, these guys are customers of mine!'" And in a shop in China an acquaintance said about the same thing when we stopped in the convenience store to pick-up leaf-peeping supplies.

Oh yeah, did I mention that 20 years ago this morning we woke after our first night in Maine to discover the our Beretta (Bandit) was covered in snow right outside our rented tourist cabin. On October 3, 1988 we got to Maine and discovered that the house we'd thought we'd leased was not available after all, that the job I thought I had was poof-evaporated, and that Mainers were willing to help out a couple of flat-land strangers (with a car full of cats and a truck full of life) who wanted to stay.