Updates on the eaves of the storm…

Here we are, waiting for the rain to start–again. Not just a little spring shower, no, they’re forecasting another three to six inches of rain through early Wednesday, followed by possible “major” flooding (again). Tomorrow is the Full Moon so the coast will see “astronomical high tides” along with easterly winds. It always rains on laundry day, *grump*. (I don’t own a dryer, everything has to hang in the laundry room to dry.) I’ll be doing a Full Moon ritual tomorrow night. There are some interesting astrological tie-ins this month.

Speaking of astrology, I got a pleasing surprise when I was switching my Internet subscriptions around. I had been getting the iVillage/astrology.com sun sign horoscopes, just to amuse myself, but every month I calculated the real transits to my natal chart and wrote them in my date book (the Celestial Guide astrological calendar from QuickSilver Productions, which isn’t merely a date book, it’s a whole almanac). I’d been wishing I could afford software that would run my transit calculations, and I was also looking for some widget that would display a real-time planetary wheel on my desktop. I hadn’t been able to find one.

I was very surprised when I went to astrology.com to sign up for the horoscope emails again and found something entirely different. Maybe I’d never entered my complete birth chart information before. I signed up for the “daily forecast” instead of the horoscope and started getting a daily email with every single real transit to my real natal chart listed on it, repeated each day that the transit is in orb, and each transit accompanied by a little graph showing where it is in its progress. Everything that I was laboriously doing by hand, plus visual aids, and totally free!

The “daily forecast” takes a bit longer to read than the sun sign horoscopes. *wry smile* But then, unlike the silly horoscopes, this report actually means something. But that’s not all. I’d been reading these for a couple of weeks before I even noticed the link at the top of each one: “today’s chart wheel.” I clicked on that, and bingo: up pops a chart wheel displaying my natal chart in the center with that day’s transiting planets around the outside…all accurate, and absolutely free! I just sat there with my jaw dropped, thinking, “when did this all happen?”

It’s kind of cool when you get something you really like and use, without even having to ask for it, entirely free of charge!

And speaking of birthdays…I was reminded of a silly bit of trivia this weekend. I think I noticed it when I read the books and forgot about it. Twilight’s Edward Cullen has the same birthday as mine: June 20. It’s not as common a birth date as most, for some odd reason.

And speaking of things you don’t want…the Account Cancelation Saga appears to finally be over. I didn’t hear back from Ms. Billing Department after I left my last message, but the next day, my NET1plus email and Postini accounts had finally been canceled. It doesn’t feel like much of a victory, though…the whole mess was just ridiculously and unnecessarily complicated, stressful and prolonged.

I’ve been turning the cover art into the the bookcover and dust jacket for Krymsin Nocturnes, and those are nearly done. I’ve formulated a new theory, however. I think this huge push toward ebooks is a massive conspiracy, coordinated by a secret underground cabal of colluding graphic artists whose nefarious goal is to never have to design a dust jacket ever again.

Just kidding. Well, mostly. 🙂 Dust jackets are a PITA, though–bleed width, trim width, flap width, flap bend, spine wrap…and it all has to be perfect or the cover and spine text will be misaligned. I guess they’re like a lot of things, you go through all the agony because they’re so effing cool-looking when they’re done. 🙂

And speaking of ebooks and astrology…um-hm. I never heard back from Apple about making BLUM’s titles available in the iBookstore (although a rumor went out that Apple posted a job opening for someone to liaison with small publishers). The launch date for the iPad and iBookstore is still supposed to be April 3. Today, one of my transits was Sun conjunct Part of Fortune. I got an email from Smashwords. Smashwords has signed a deal with Apple for their members to sell their titles in the iBookstore–possibly by April 3, when the store launches.

I’d wondered about that, but Mark Coker was playing this pretty close to the vest. With all the Amazon/Macmillan/pricing uproar, I can’t blame him. Apple is setting some stern rules, and I spent some time on my Smashwords dashboard tonight checking the three titles and adding or changing information. It turns out that not only Apple, but Sony, wanted all the Smashwords titles to have unique ISBNs, and that’s why Sony still hasn’t picked up BLUM’s (or any Smashwords) titles. I’ve been dedicating an ISBN to each title specifically for the Smashwords ebook edition, and I put that on the copyright page of each book. But Smashwords only just added a function to list the ISBN as part of the book’s “metadata” in its catalog.

So I’ve done that, and now, supposedly, the titles may be “shipped” to the Sony store very soon (and about time!!), and with luck, they’ll be going out to the iBookstore by April 3. We shall see. Apple has also set strict pricing formulas, the least of which is that every price has to end in 99. (*sigh*) I dropped all the prices by a penny. I was already up to par on just about everything else, unless there’s something wanky about the ePub formating, and I sure hope not.

And speaking of ebooks…I’ve been taking my netbook, Pigwidgeon, to bed with me and reading ebooks and manuscripts on him, and I’ve been amazed at how comfortable he is to read on. A couple of months ago, I had a bunch of queries to get through and I wasn’t feeling well, so I went to bed early with the queries on Pig. I figured I’d fall right to sleep, but it was so easy to snuggle in bed with Pig, I read for over two hours. He weighs less than some books, he’s very easy to hold in one hand with a thumb over the PgDwn key, and he does something no book can do: he keeps my hands warm! So, I’ve downloaded the free Kindle PC app onto Pig and I’m going to try out some Kindle books. I’m definitely becoming an ebook convert.

I love bound books. But when I’m really reading, I get lost in the material. I’m just as happy reading from a screen as a page, it’s the words that count. But that’s just me. We shan’t get into how unutterably pathetic it is that I’m so attached to my computers that I’m now taking them to bed with me, shall we? *wry grin* (it was only a matter of time…!)