I know, it’s been a whole week without an update. Things have been extremely disrupted for the past eight days or so. A detailed account would only be tedious. Nothing major, but there’s just been one ridiculous pothole, pratfall and misfiring after another, many of them claiming hours of pointless or unplanned time out of my day. It was a holiday weekend and half the people I know seemed to be off at Wiscon or Balticon or Rites of Spring, or just back from BEA.
Publishing news:
I’m still not quite ready to officially announce The Longer the Fall. I put through the revised covers with Lightning Source Inc., and I have a copy of each edition on order, expedited with two-day shipping. If they’re still not okay, I’ll have to upload (and pay for) yet more “revisions.” I hope the covers will now be acceptable, but it kind of worries me that the same cover image is displayed for both editions with the book information on LSI, when the back covers are drastically different. I don’t know what’s going on there, so I’m just waiting, with a certain fatalism, for the sample books to arrive. (The covers are not interchangeable, one is the wrap-around paperback cover and one is a dust jacket, they aren’t even close in size.) I have orders to fill, and I’ll have to order the short runs and wait for them to be delivered before I can ship those.
Meanwhile, I punched through the Kindle edition, but it’s still being “reviewed” by Amazon. It should be available any minute now, though. The Smashwords edition was finally approved for the Premium Catalog and has already shipped to Barnes & Noble and Kobo, but will take several weeks to appear in their catalogs.
It turned out to be a good thing I waited to mail all the pre-publication review copies of Blood Justice at the same time, because I just found out that Publishers Weekly has moved to new offices, as well as Library Journal! All the ARCs went out today. Keep your fingers crossed!
Plans to help Dad get the docks in at the lake aborted three days in a row. I went up there on Friday afternoon, waited for two hours, and it turned out that through a complete miscommunication, Dad meant Saturday when we talked on Thursday. Once I got over being upset (partly because I was worried about where Dad was–he didn’t have his cell phone on him), I had a nice visit with Dad, but then I thought I’d be spending a chunk of the following day helping with the docks. So I planned for that, but just before I was going to leave the house on Saturday, Dad called and said they were postponing the docks for a variety of reasons. On Sunday, Dad was conducting a Memorial Day concert with the Townsend Military Band and the new plan was to do the docks after the concert. I went to Townsend for the concert, but when Dad arrived, he said the dock plans were postponed again–I can’t even remember why, now!
I certainly observed Memorial Day, in any event. The concert time was vaguely announced as “after the parade,” so I went to Townsend in time to see the end of the parade and the final ceremonies on the Common. I say “final” because Townsend takes Memorial Day very seriously and had a whole series of events starting at 9:30 a.m. and running until around 5:30 p.m. The ceremony I watched included speeches, readings of “In Flanders Fields” and The Gettysburg Address, a band number, taps, a prayer, a rifle volley and the placing of wreaths. After the concert, Dad and I went to a restaurant for supper. It was beautiful weather, although quite windy.
I’ve continued working out in my yard and garden most days. The screen house has made serious (not to say, amazing) progress in its transformation into a greenhouse. I’m ready to order the supplies I need to finish it (plywood, plastic sheeting and a piece of plastic to patch a hole in the roof). I got the vegetable garden entirely planted before the Full Moon on Thursday (in other words, everything was in during the waxing moon–just barely!). Most things are coming up, some of them just becoming visible here and there, some of them already bursting from the ground like they were being chased. None of the transplants have died or been eaten yet, not even an embryonic little basil sprig that I decided to go ahead and put in just for the heck of it–it’s growing, to my amazement. I’ve put in potatoes, with marigolds planted next to them, onions, garlic, basil, peppers, cherry tomatoes, standard tomatoes, Brussels sprouts with marigolds planted on both sides of them (I know you’re supposed to start Brussels sprouts in pots–but I planted them for the heck of it and they’re coming up), carrots, zucchini, small sugar pumpkins, and the row nearest the driveway is blue gladiola and bachelor’s buttons. I thought I’d plant flowers in BLUM’s colors. 🙂
We had a rip-roaring thunderstorm last Wednesday night, which gives you a good clue about where my head is at: at the first, completely unexpected BOOM, I leapt from my chair and went running out to bring in the chain saw, which I’d left outside with the garden equipment. Lightning was flashing away and I was madly pulling tarps over things and rescuing my chain saw! On Thursday, I did a Full Moon ritual. I’ve made four trips, so far, to the transfer station with a car full of crap, and there will be many more such trips through the coming months.
The topper, however, occurred yesterday–when I ended up at the Registry of Motor Vehicles for a chunk of the afternoon. It seems that I’d let my driver’s license expire…ages ago! I didn’t have a clue! Nor did anyone else! It’s not like I ever look at it! I was trying to cash the Verizon prepaid debit card at the bank and they asked for ID. I gave them my license, and the teller told me it had expired! EEP!!!! So I went scurrying straight down to the Registry office in Leominster, after filling out the application online and printing it out, which expedited the renewal significantly. I didn’t get into trouble for driving around on an expired license–I mean, it’s a technicality, I’m a good driver with a clean record, but it’s still illegal! 8-( I barely squeaked by the vision test because of my bad right eye, but fortunately, the Registry person passed me. I guess my penance is that my license now has the most gawd-awful photo in history…no, really. I defy you to beat this one. But, as this experience proves, odds are that almost no one will ever see it! *wry smile*
Today, I took the electric lawn mower to the repair shop. 🙁 I have a reel mower on which one of the wheels had seized up, and I applied WD-40 to it–with success! The reel mower works perfectly now! It badly needs sharpening, however, and I’m wondering if my Dremel tool will handle that job. The reel mower would be helpful for trimming the thickest areas of the lawn between power mowings (doing that with the weed whacker is a pain). WD-40 is my BFF…I’m just sayin’!!!
The way things have been going, I’m very glad that I didn’t try to attend a convention or gathering this past weekend! But I won’t be doing conventions for a while, and at some point I’ll make a post explaining why in more detail. I hope all my friends who went to events had a great time! Right now, I’m fervently hoping that Dad’s first weekly band concert of the season won’t be rained out tomorrow night–“scattered thunderstorms” are in the forecast, and you never know where they’ll end up scattering.