Recap of a productive week and a half

I guess I just haven’t been in a posting mood…and I’m still not, really, but I hate to go a full two weeks without an update. I’ve definitely been busy, though!

In the publishing arena, I finished the wrap-around cover design for the dust jacket and trade paperback cover for Blood Justice, and I’ve set up the title on Lightning Source. I’ve already got several purchase orders from Brodart to fill, and the proof of the paperback edition has been shipped. I hand-coded the file into html and set up the Kindle edition, and I’ve created the epub edition, which looks darned nice if I do say so myself. I added the title to Google Books, uploaded the cover images to Bowkerlink, and added the two print editions to my catalog with Baker & Taylor. And I’m still not done! But we’re definitely ramping up to the October 1 release date.

I finished the edits for our next title, Applewood, and sent them to the author, Brendan Myers. That took about two weeks because I stopped midway to get the Blood Justice cover finished, and the second editing pass always involves me reading the entire book aloud, and listening to it as well as reading it. Now Mr. Myers and I are bouncing cover ideas back and forth. As soon as we hammer out the edits and the ARC is ready to go out for pre-pub reviews, I’ll announce the release date.

I wanted to redo the 2010 Titles flyer that I made earlier this year and send it to conventions and other venues for their freebie tables. I received a mailing from Foolscap, in Seattle, asking for freebie materials and that gave me the incentive to do something different. I decided to have a lot of flyers printed, and when I compared prices, I found that Tu-Vets, a company recommended by people in IPNE, offered rates far lower than the company I had been dealing with. I ordered 500 copies, offset, for a really low price–and someone phoned me, just to confirm my order! The flyers arrived yesterday (Ninja UPS guy outdid himself: he was so stealthy, he didn’t even scare the cats, which is usually how I know he’s dropped something off. He must have walked up the driveway…in felt shoes!). Gods, they’re gorgeous. Heavy weight glossy paper, beautiful printing job. Tu-Vets is my new BFF!

Now I’m emailing conventions to see if I can send them direct, or if I’ll need to ask around and find folks attending who might take flyers for me. I made a list of SFF conventions just in the U.S. and Canada through November, and I was amazed: there are 20+ of them! In two and a half months! That doesn’t count Comic Cons, anime cons, or a myriad other events where people might be interested in BLUM’s books and which might have freebie racks.

I sent Foolscap their flyers today, and I’m also placing ads in some convention souvenir and program books. A lot of genre fans read those, so it’s certainly targeted marketing. 🙂

Lots of emails working out my schedule with Albacon, which is shaping up: I’ve posted it on my author blog. Lots of emails about various BLUM business stuff, and lots of emails about Readercon business. I need to send out more queries to reviewers for our 2010 titles, and start querying for Blood Justice.

While I was doing all that, I also did a project for the Ashby UU church–that’s the paint that was drying in my last entry. It was a very precise lettering job. The church has signboards listing each minister from the dawn of time the church’s founding to the present, and our current minister needed to be added. I offered to do this last May, didn’t hear anything, and then on August 30 the minister emailed me asking if one of the Parish Committee members had gotten the sign to me. Um, no, said I, I didn’t even know the church wanted me to do it! So I drove up and got the sign, brought it home, did the painting within one week, and had it back at the church in time for the first service of the church year on September 12.

It came out quite well–I had to replicate the lettering style of the previous artist, in two colors, and the lettering was all done free hand. I’ve gotten spoiled with digital graphic work, I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be down on the floor, balancing on my knees and the tips of my fingers, painstakingly applying paint with teeny little brushes…and not breathing. I was concentrating so hard, I’d hold my breath so I wouldn’t move! Of course, I have this pen tablet for computer art now and sometimes that requires unbreathing concentration, too…which makes me envy my vampire characters for yet another reason. True art demands suffering. *g*

I could do without the kind of stress I went through this Monday, however, where I got scared into panic attacks over Dad three times…all without need, Dad is okay. But first, I got up to a message on the machine from my sister, who was worried because she couldn’t reach Dad. I’d just been up there for the Patriots game the night before, and Dad was in great spirits afterwards, so I was pretty sure he was all right. I contacted him and he was having trouble with his phone. But then, at around 8:30 p.m., Dad called me to say he was in the ER! He’d had such a violent gastric attack, he worried it might be something more serious and called 911. At that time, he was returning to normal but he thought the hospital was going to keep him overnight.

Yeah, as if. At 12:30 a.m., I started getting a series of phone calls from the hospital, in which the caller apparently couldn’t hear me, and one of us would hang up and they immediately called again. As you can imagine, I was flipping out wondering why the hospital was calling me at that time of night. I finally called them. It turned out that they were discharging Dad…in the middle of the night. Just booting him out! And he had no way to get home because he went to the ER by ambulance! I mean, gods, you’d think he was making trouble or something, an 80-year-old man with no way of getting home and they’re saying, you can sit in the waiting room until the cab company opens or you can get a ride from someone. I was pretty unhappy with them! I drove up there and picked up Dad and took him home, and that actually worked fine for me because I was awake and working, anyway and now I didn’t have to worry about getting a call early in the morning. But, yeesh. I had more heart palpitations on Monday than I usually have in a month! (Not to mention that I’d gambled and hung the laundry outside and it got poured on–we even had lightning and thunder! All the times this summer when the rain missed us…fooey.)

We had a primary election this week, so the phone was busy with campaign robocalls (and even a few live ones). Another big campaign fad now is the oversize postcard direct mailing. As the election approaches, the postcards get bigger and bigger. A couple more weeks, and I’d have been able to line the bunny cage with one or two of them…which is all they’re good for. *snort* The bunny would be delighted, he eats the cards with enthusiasm. Before I went out to vote, I went through the postcards and made notes, and I had this huge sheaf of them. What a waste. Campaign season is getting to be like Christmas shopping season, it just keeps expanding!

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