Journeyman

We stopped yesterday and picked up a couple bags of birdseed ... and today we've got birds. Grackles, red wings, cardinals (Mr. and Mrs.) doves, chickadees, titmice, sparrows ... it helps that we've also had a foot or so of very heavy wet snow and we've been lucky that the winds haven't taken the power lines with them so far. it is still snowing as i type ...

it is a good thing we don't plan to go out RSN ... since there's a wall of sense wet snow at the end of the driveway that we'll let out plowguy take care of, assuming he;s coming by. Not for *me* to handshovel, nossir.

Given a snow day ... I played in the dough and made some rolls. This dough is not quite working out the way we hoped yet -- while it is providing s nice tasty food, it isn't rising properly for us, so it is unusable in the sandwich mode. Sigh, I guess, and sigh again.

Also, the snow means we didn't take the 70 packed Skyblaze out to the PO. Monday and Tuessday ought to see most of the rest off.

I've spent much of the morning fiddling with SRM stuff trying to clear the way for a Liaden short story I'm working on ...
and among other things, this means that i had to get into the innards of the SRM catalog ... and I tried to figure out some short term coupons and finalyl said heck with it because it would be a pain in the neck for me -- and you, if you;re interested -- to fiddle with all those coupons ...
so I ended up  changing some prices ... the best deals may be
on Liaden Universe Companion 2 hardcover, and Partners in Necessity --

but I talk about there at more length:

http://serialuniverse.com/

now the wind is way up and the power's flickering, Guess i got this done just about it time!  Also, there's been some additions to the cover images over at Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039257&id=1385731027&l=bdab0db1d5 
the latest inclusion is cover #101 ... the German anthology with a translation of the Liaden story Fighting Chance.

The Double Vision time-line has slipped a bit, in part because I've been distracted by some other necessary business and in part because my printers tell me they'll need extra time because they've been lucky enough to be expanding despite the zombie apocalypse that has hurt so many businesses in Maine. So, we're now looking to late June or early July for shipping .... sigh.

The other reason for delay is that I clearly underestimated prep time working with old "finished" files. It continues to amaze me how many artifacts of word processing and publishing programs survive multiple conversions to come back and haunt me. In this case, deep in a proof, I now find letters in red, added by a copy editor some years back. Gah ... which brings up part of the point of the post: I need a few more eyes on the not-quite-ready Double Vision file, despite that they are, everyone, derived from previously published material, most, supposedly from the publication files.

Sharon's working on the Mouse and Dragon submission revision now that I've gone over it -- and rather than distract her with Double Vision, I'm looking for a few readers who can take a PDF file and look it over this weekend in search of dropped paragraphs, missing pages, and the like. If you're interested, please drop me a line at editor1 (that's at srmpublisher.com ) ... depending on how many readers I get I may ask for help on a chapter basis or a front/back basis.... again, editor1 ( at srmpublisher.com )

And in view of this delay, we'll be running the Double Vision subscription offer at srmpublisher.com through Monday morning...

Thanks!

Sunny this morning, which is good, thought the ground is still too damp for me to go do a tree census. Thanls for those of you who wrote here or in email with tree books suggestions. We decided that, given the current zombie apocalypse, we better just borrow some books from the library, which I have done. More on that later ....

Still calling for rain or chance of showers through Monday night ... May showers bring May mud -- you can count on it.

Yesterday I stayed home, working on Saltation... and in the midst of pouring rain we ended up with truck, truck, truck, including the new monitors for the office, a Smekday something or other book for Sharon, and the replacement router for the office.. which got delivered here as the old address of record -- go figure. At least I was here to keep it dry.

I'll go in for a short while today but may not have time to finagle the new router and all ...

Also yesterday, I got the electronic files of a chapbook project I'm hoping to have out in October. Looks like a busy few weeks coming up.

Saltation - finished rewiring a very difficult section which had to move from here to there in order to make a timing change work. We'll hope. This should have been done last week, and now time presses, alas.

This morning I'm: watering the cats, cooking chicken so we'll have some for the weekend writing extravaganza, looking over the the grocery list for when I come home from work, catching up on some email, printing some orders, finding socks that match, and maybe cutting a tomato so I can have a salad for lunch at work.

The day lily grounds are looking good; the tree that was dying last year is now dead and that means the lily-spot will have full sun. Zoom!

Yes, coffee. had some, will have some more.

Question for the masses: has the H1N1 virus affected your travel plans short term, midterm, or long term?

and just in case you got used to that toobie thing, a rerun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRXFIphZLpc

which is the Buzzy Multimedia video including a bit of Michael Shanks reading from Local Custom ...

So, yes, been away from the blog a few days.

Monday we drove about 550 miles between going for Hexapuma the new coon cat (driving to Oneonta from Albany and coming on home from Oneonta) and Tuesday was something of catching up on lots of details all around and talking to the folks in Waterville with the office to let, again, about the space they have for lease.

What does Hexapuma look like? He's only two, so he doesn't have full growth yet, but he kind of looks like:

and at 11 pounds plus he looks fairly big...

Oh yeah. Spent parts of the rest of the week looking at and fiddling with leases; yesterday we signed on a small office in not-quite-downtown Waterville. The landlord will have a cleaning crew getting in over the weekend and will do some minor repairs as well; we may actually be able to start moving things in by the end of next week. Meanwhile, watch for a moving-in sale from SRM...

More as we have time...

So ...
today's "get *Something done, somehow, Steve* has resulted in a (mostly behind the scenes) upgrade of the srmpublisher shop at cafe press,which can be found at: http://www.cafepress.com/srmpublisher ...

and so I ask, since a boardwalk shop is all about stuff, talk to me about what other kinds or varities of stuff we should have there....

No day lily, count is zero. Might be a chance for our first tomato sometime this week, though ... summer comes late in Maine!

Chugging right along:
Did you know that May 10 is National Train Day? Is. See http://www.nationaltrainday.com/
News in Maine is that the Downeaster gets closer to Downeast! http://www.sunjournal.com/story/264124-3/MaineNews/Downeaster_may_expand_in_Maine/
... and so if the Downeaster comes to Brunswick, that'd make our trips south another 1/2 hour smoother.

Managed to get something up for Theo on Saltation yesterday, yay, team. At the time that was getting online I was making multiple trips to town, having gotten all the way to the driveway of the hospital for a bloodwork appointment before realizing I'd forgotten paperwork I needed to bring with. I was already feeling out of order because of the thick air, I guess. I have several routine doctor appointments this week, and .. .well see the end of the post.

Last night was chess night, which I went to despite still feeling under the weather, or under the pollen, at least. Arrived a little late, to find all available players in games. I waited, staring at other people's games, wondering why I was still there because my snuffle seemed suddenly well on way to sinus headache. Eventually a game ended, and it was my turn for some short games. In my first game...I let a won game wander away; changed my glasses from reading glasses to prescription glasses in middle of it but by then it was too late. Second game I won, almost accidentally, when my new opponent misread the motive for my early pawn spike and castled into my attack. Despite fierce resistance... and a blunder on my part ...I managed to pull that one out. My third game, I won on time. My opponent tried to show he had a won game (if the game had gone on) but... I don't trust instant at-board postmortems and besides that, I'd won, so I took the game and then went home very early, headache winning out over chess. Once home a quick snack and to bed fighting the headache, which mostly won. I did get a few hours sleep and slept right through breakfast as Rolanni got herself together and out to work.

Today is a high pollen count day, too, lucky me..and tomorrow looks to be as well. Wheee....

Meanwhile, we (as SRM) did manage to get in a few cases of books from the latest and last rescue of Meisha Merlin stuff. Some of the recent arrivals are not in as good shape as we'd like, looking like returns or warehouse age, since the warehouse was in some disarray there at the end, I gather -- watch for some specials!

And so it can be rumored...looks like our Credit Union mortgage specialist has managed to cut through some red tape we couldn't figure out and we'll be going to closing on our refi in near record time, all things considered. Given the labyrinthine path we've taken to get here --- I think we've worked through six government agencies and seven or eight or nine addresses as they merged, emerged, remerged, and renamed themselves since we first applied for the original mortgage ... so much for stable government, eh?

So, (thank you Walter) if all goes well, we'll be closing on the new, non-government mortgage on Thursday, at the credit union office. I am *so glad* we joined the credit union. And after it all, the difference on our monthly payment will be about enough for us to go out to breakfast once every other month. Well, that's useful. Hey, this'll happen in time for us to eat breakfast three times at WorldCon if we save up!

So, over there at at Second Life, I gave about an hour talk on Saturday, as part of the Second annual Second Life Book Fair. The talk went well, with only a minor bobble on the voice stuff in the early going, and if you visit Publishing Island you can find both the "regular" SRM Publisher store as well as the booth Shawna and Anhayla were kind enough to put together for us for the fair. I hope those of you in world will take the time to drop by and visit.

The booth has images and links to a bunch of our books and online stuff, and still has a note about a coupon... good at the srmpublisher.com.

So, for the advertent, the coupon code is SLBF2008, and it was originally meant to be used for a free copy of The Tomorrow Log -- that is, free as in beer -- except that you still need to pay the postage. We still have some copies of The Tomorrow Log available, and at checkout entering the code ought to bring you a $6.99 discount. The trick is that I have expanded the coupon so it's good this week for a $6.99 break on anything on the SRM catalog, except postage.

Meanwhile, my morning check of things shows that we've got about 400 copies left of Liaden Universe Companion, Volume 1 -- mass market sized -- and with the costs of paper and shipping going up so rapidly I think the next printing, if there is one, will have to go to $12 to be practical. It's currently at $10, and since it carries within stories that took some folks years to accumulate in chapbook format, it's a great buy for readers catching up.

As a side note, with the recent hoorah about the Meisha Merlin warehouse close to mind, we have around 100 copies left of Partners in Necessity, a couple cases of The Tomorrow Log, and some Plan B trade paper and hardcovers, along with a dwindling supply of Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon, in trade size. Better buy it while we got it...

As for local stuff, it is raining hard at the moment -- it started last night while I was off at chess, making my ride home an adventure what with water-filled potholes and intermittent fog. As for chess, I lost my first few games but by the end of the evening was on a roll; I think it's been awhile since I've had multiple rated wins against Reverend Ed on the same night.

Tomorrow we're set for a gig in Augusta at B&N, around 5:30. There are door prizes for educators, and since the rain is now expected to continue only until midnight tonight it may be a great time for some lucky Liaden fan to come on out in the spring weather and win. We'd love to see you -- and if you read this blog, *do* introduce yourself!

Finally, I'm going to be participating in a fund-raiser for Clarion West. All details aren't set, but basically they have a write-a-thon where writers challenge themselves and ask folks to support the effort, with Clarion West getting $bucks to help the Workshop continue. My plan is to write a more or less hard sf story in the mode I was using when I started selling to Amazing ... who knows, it might work! Watch for details.

Up early today to take care of some SRM Publisher business ...we put it off from yesterday because of the traveling in snow stuff... and of course it snowed well into the evening, so our road, at least is well covered and the potholes are lurking. I'll be meeting up with fellow SFNovelist Jim Hetley, at Timmie's ... you know this is Maine when you see the "reserved for snowmobiles" parking section...

Coffee is made.

Sun on the horizon, or at least threatening to come up behind the stand of snow-coated trees. Moon has a section of sky with no clouds. The birds -- blue jays and doves and chickadees are all looking for breakfast, and to tell you the truth, I've only got about 5 lbs of really cheapo birdseed left. Who expected to be feeding this much this late? It doesn't help that the grackles and red wings are in town.

We're making plans to do another in-world Second Life appearance toward the end of April -- hope you can make it. Once I get the SRM Publisher catalog and korval.com rebuild finished (gie me a month or so for it all) I hope to start a weekly writer's coffee hour at the Friends of Liad Park. The park has been open for several years and features a horseshoe-shaped meeting area that lets you sit and talk without losing track of your your avatar or your audience. There's also an SRM Publisher "store" on the lot next door -- take a look.

Also -- if you're in Second Life and you haven't participated in the Sunflower growing, it may be worth a visit to Intel Island. Me -- as Elan Neruda -- I got my seed packet from Shawna Montgomery and thus every time I plant a sunflower in Second Life (with a chance to win a super gaming laptop!) Shawna also gets credit toward being top planter ... and each sunflower also goes toward an Intel donation to a conservation fund. If you're interested in participating in-world, drop Elan Neruda a note andI'll try to send to send you a Shawna seed-pack copy, or else track down almost anyone from Avalon in the Tiny Empires in-world game.

Me for breakfast!

Snow in the sky, soon to be on the wings of the crows and on my deck...

they tell us we'll have a couple inches of snow today, hooray. Ought to be pretty. One of the worst things about having a winter's worth of snow thawing to the ground is that there's also a winter's worth of dirt, dust, sand, soot, leaves, blown-paper, seed hulls, and bird-stuff among it. A reprieve is fine.

I'm going to be warming up the Subaru RSN for a quick morning trip to town. The Sube's headlight transplant was a success and the tire rotation was thrown in for free; the oil change .... was not gratis. On the other hand, we're set for spring a few weeks early.


The email log jam we experienced lat night is apparently over and I have on hand ten or fifteen real emails on the "where's my book" topic. I'm hoping that'll solve some of the half-dozen "moved -- no forwarding order" and "Undeliverable as addressed" things tucked in a box in the basement. The scary thing is that we've had a number of things come back with "Undeliverable as addressed" that have gone to the same address we've been using for people for more than ten years -- and they haven't moved.

More maybe in a bit, after we see what the PO Box brings.

Tomorrow, plans include a Janis Ian concert!