Long delayed update

Yes, I know, I haven’t made a post here in a while. That is partly because of the passing of my friend, Anne Fraser (annef on LJ) on April 3rd. I just couldn’t think of anything to say in a general public setting. My real emotions were (and are) complicated and conflicted, but strong enough to make anything less than full disclosure seem hollow. I still haven’t even told my family about Anne’s passing. But talking about anything else somehow didn’t seem appropriate.

Yes, I’m still going to publish Gideon Redoak, and one or even two others, if I can manage it. I’m very sorry that Anne won’t get to see her work in book form. But life is hard and that’s the way things work out sometimes.

ConBust went very well and I had a wonderful time. I enjoyed rooming with my old friend and fellow author Morven Westfield, hanging out with other members of Broad Universe, and attending events at the convention. This was the friendliest, most laid-back, and most unpretentious convention I’ve been to since I got back onto the con circuit last fall, and it’s a definite for next year. I sold two copies of Mortal Touch at the Broad Universe table, and the Rapid Fire Reading went very well. (Alas: since I was the one taking photos of the readers, there is no photo of me!) I thought I read well, everybody else read well, we had a decent-size audience and they seemed entertained and attentive. The fact that I had to keep putting air into one of my car’s tires all weekend was a minor nuisance, really! Especially considering that Smith College has a free parking garage. (The tire is now fixed.) I even did one promotional five-minute Tarot reading (the other customer didn’t seem to want one), and it was an excellent reading. (Buy a copy of Mortal Touch from Withywindle Books and you can have a five-minute Tarot reading, too! I’ll record it and send it as a video or MP3 file!)

Of course, having had a wonderful time, I drove home wondering what I would have to deal with when I got home. So far, after every convention I’ve attended, I’ve gotten home to some crisis, complication, or problem. After World Fantasy, I came home to the message about my mammogram. After Boskone, I came home and had to replace my bed and my exercycle. I came home from ConBust with the whole “Amazon is forcing everyone to use Booksurge, everybody boycott Amazon” uproar in full bore, having blown up that weekend while I was at the convention.

I won’t get into the details of my outlook on that here, except to say that I felt far more threatened by the prospect of an Amazon boycott gaining any real legs, than the possibility that I might need to set up titles with Amazon. For many technical reasons, setting up with Amazon (CreateSpace or BookSurge) not only is a minor inconvenience for me, but I will actually make a higher profit on Amazon sales. I can understand why people who made different (and IMHO, unprofessional) publishing choices are upset, but Amazon’s policy shift won’t hurt me in the final analysis, at all. An Amazon boycott, when I’ve been beating my head against the walls trying to think of ways to improve my Amazon sales, is another story–that really could hurt me. Because of that, I got all emotionally involved with the controversy and made huge long posts to various forums arguing about the issues.

Then, while that was still going full-blast (as it did for at least another week)–on Thursday after ConBust, I got the news about Anne. So, yeah, I’d have to say that the two weeks after ConBust weren’t my most productive.

But I’m getting back on track now, and I’ve dealt constructively with at least one stressor. For the last couple of years, I’ve only been getting the bare minimum done out in my yards–which basically meant the spring and fall raking and mowing the lawn, what there is of it. A lot of brush and weeds and bushes that I’d cut or cleared several years ago were taking over again. Last summer, I burned out the motor (again) on my electric lawn mower because the grass got too thick, and I never got to the fall raking at all. Then, my homeowner’s insurance company sent an inspector, and the insurance company sent me a letter about the bushes growing against the house, and one or two other things. So, even though I’m even busier now than I was last fall, I knew I couldn’t just keep on letting the property go.

So I decided that, weather permitting, I’d go out every day and do a bit of yard work: an hour or two, every single day. I wouldn’t be goal-oriented on “finishing” anything, I’d just plug away relentlessly, and the work would have to get done–I only have half an acre! I’d go out during a period of the day which can be a sort of “dead zone” for me–after I feed the cats at 4:00pm and before sunset attunement.

On April 9th, I started doing that. Every single day, except one when it rained, I put in an hour to 2-1/2 hours outside. The upshot of it is that the yards were entirely raked, well ahead of my neighbors or the grass turning green, and I cleared out the entire east side of the house to bare ground and will be planting grass, and I’m clearing out the beds around the house again, and I’m even going to plant some bulbs and herbs and a few other things. There is still a ton to do, but if I keep up this routine, it will get done! Meanwhile, I can watch my neighbors get to their yard work and not feel the slightest twinge of guilt or fidgets!

As often happens when you neglect your gardens, I had a mystery and a surprise.

The mystery is the fate of my lilacs. Since I moved into the house in 1989, I’d had big lilac bushes by the back of the house. My mom loved lilacs, and she had the worst time growing them. She never did get the ones at the lake house to bloom. Every spring, I’d always take her a big armful of lilacs from my bushes. Well…after my mom passed away in autumn, 2006, all my lilacs died. I pulled out the last bits of them this spring. I have no lilacs now, and I have no idea why.

The surprise is my holly bush. I love holly, and my folks gave me two bushes for my birthday a couple of years ago. I took too long getting them into the ground, and one died. The other had been struggling and struggling. The last time I looked at it closely, it seemed to be all dead branches with one leafed branch sticking out of one side. That got all shrouded in weeds and tall grass last summer, and then it snowed very early and covered everything up. I was planning to replace the holly bushes this year.

With the final demise of the lilacs, I cleared everything out of that back patch. And here is what I found:

I desperately need a chipper/shredder, and I may pile everything up, get it organized, and rent one for a day or two. I also need to figure out what to do about a lawn mower, especially since I’ll be seeding or reseeding the bare places as I clear them off. But the next power tool I’ll be firing up is the chain saw. Ah, country life!