Updates (and downdates)

Today’s astrological transit is Sun opposing the Midheaven of my natal chart, which tends to make it a good day to stay in bed. Robert Hand writes, “Demoralizing ego defeats are quite likely with this transit.” I haven’t had that so much as just a lot of ups and downs, and little jabs, rather than “defeats,” to my ego. You know the kind of thing–you know that you just need to roll it off, but you feel all self-conscious, and you keep feeling that way even when you forget exactly why.

I was about to make a somewhat feisty comment on someone else’s LJ, and Dad called before I could finish, with a long conversation about a situation he’s tangentially involved with. By the time I finished that call, I’d thought better of posting the comment and deleted the draft, which I’m sure is just as well. I’d also missed sunset attunement–oh, well!

Cat the Vamp got a…not so good review. Ouch. But a lot of it was addressing things that I know are edgy about that book and were bound to offend some people. That’s part of why I wanted to publish it, because it’s not a warm fuzzy P.C. kind of book–it’s not written by a Mormon! But…ouch. I thanked the reviewer for her candor.

I’ve been troubled by the fact that over the past six months or so there have been several “refunds” of the Kindle edition of Mortal Touch and I didn’t know why. No one contacted me or posted a negative user review and I have no way of asking Amazon why the book was “refunded.” Last night I downloaded the html file to see if there was a problem with the formatting. Well…ouch. There was. The Kindle edition of Mortal Touch has been selling well and I guess most people haven’t had a problem with the formatting, but…ouch. I hate to feel that I looked like an amateur! Mortal Touch was my first Kindle book, and now I format and html-code files especially for the Kindle conversion, which I didn’t do the first time.

I spent all of last night hand-editing the html and then re-uploaded the corrected file. But then, it became unavailable while Amazon “reviewed” it. Something about “improving the Kindle experience.” I wanted to lower its price, too, and got a message saying the book would be unavailable for at least 24 hours if I lowered its price! Maybe I just have bad timing, doing this right in the middle of the whole Macmillan kerfluffle. I just hated for Mortal Touch to be offline because it’s selling so well as a Kindle, and now I’d fixed the formatting issues. It’s back up now–and now it’s designated “Live” on my Dashboard, like the Kindle editions of Cat the Vamp and Gideon Redoak. Before, they were “Live” and Mortal Touch was “Ready.” I have no idea what the difference is. They all sold Kindle editions.

I went to the post office and was surprised to see that the ARCs of The Longer the Fall had arrived. They’ll go out tomorrow! I also had a big official-looking envelope from the IRS that made me all nervous until I realized it was the 1099-MISC forms I’d ordered, silly me! Now those have to go out–and I’ll have to write them by hand. They’re multiple carbon forms, and I don’t have a typewriter anymore, or a printer that will print them!

I’m still getting my bearings with the new computer, especially the keyboard and Thunderbird replacing Eudora after so many years using the latter. I’ve also just implemented some drastic changes to my daily schedule and routines, because what I was doing just wasn’t working–but that needs its own post.