In Common with Humans

It’s the Full Moon (12:18 p.m. UTC) and the inferior conjunction of Sun and retrograde Mercury (4:44 p.m. UTC) and today is definitely following a pattern. Have I mentioned lately that I hate retrograde Mercury?

I’ve been printing bound books with Lightning Source (LSI) since 2007. I’ve always set wholesale terms to industry standard, because the main reason I print with LSI is for bookstore and library sales. I make [lots] more money (and sales, period) with other types of sales, but LSI gets me into Ingram and Baker & Taylor. So I set a 55% wholesale discount, returnable, which cuts my profit margin to the bone, but I want books to be available in bookstores and this is the only way to do it at the moment. Up to now, I have never had a returned book with LSI–that’s one advantage of using the costlier-per-unit digital printing (I refuse to call it “POD” or “print on demand” and you shouldn’t, either. “Print quantity needed” or PQN is much more accurate). It minimizes returns because customers order only what they need.

Well, today I finally got some returns–and I’ve really taken a whack with them, because LSI charges me a return fee as well as debiting my account for the cost of the books. *grump* Getting a whole bunch all together like that suggests they’re all from one customer, and I have no idea who, or whether I can get that information from LSI. I know I’ve gotten spoiled, but I am definitely not a happy camper. LSI sends me the books (that’s what the fee is for), so I can recoup the cost selling them at a discount myself. In fact, if I can sell them direct, even at “used” prices, I’ll make a substantially higher profit than selling them wholesale through LSI (and I’ll pay my authors royalties on that, since it counts as net, being the books’ first sale). But that’s an “if” at the moment. I have no idea what shape the books will be in when they get here.

Kindle sales of Mortal Touch are continuing to rise, but I had another Kindle refund: this time for Gideon Redoak, and I have no idea why. Maybe I should check the formating of all those Kindle books, again. *sigh* But maybe the customer just couldn’t get through the torture scenes. 🙁 By the way: you may have seen it repeated, in all the discussion about the “ebook revolution,” that ebooks are better for publishers because they can’t be returned or refunded by customers. Not necessarily so!!! Amazon can and does refund Kindle editions and the publisher gets docked for the royalty. I don’t know what Apple’s policy is.

I shipped the Copyright Office the copies of Gideon Redoak they needed, and I sent the author comp copies of Krymsin Nocturnes. I’ve been at Staples (also the UPS dropoff) three days in a row! I’ve sent some review copies out, too.

Amazon finally added the cover image and Search Inside This Book feature to Krymsin Nocturnes’ paperback edition detail page. What I’m slightly more excited about is that Amazon has already picked up The Longer the Fall from Bowker/Books In Print and set up its skeleton detail page. I think that’s the earliest that I’ve spotted one of BLUM’s titles on Amazon! Powell’s Books has realized that Krymsin Nocturnes exists and now lists it, I’m still waiting for Borders and the Barnes & Noble ebook store to pick it up. Still absolute zippo from the Sony Reader Store Losers-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named-Until-They-List-BLUM’s-Books. :-p

Sunday’s church service went well, although we had low attendance. For the Beltane “sacrament” which I blessed and gave out during the service, I made little May Baskets. I got miniature baskets at Michael’s and put silk rosebuds in them along with hand-molded chocolates I made myself. There were about half a dozen baskets left over and I took them to the Pepperell library yesterday and gave them to the staff. I didn’t even realize until last night that I forgot to keep one for myself! I gave them all away!

I started the week having a wrestling match with my new printer. Its original installation disk didn’t work with Windows 7, IIRC, but Windows 7 automatically detected and installed the printer. Then I set up the wireless server as a virtual printer port, which was a completely separate process. Up to now, everything was working fine, but I hadn’t made a lot of demands on the printer.

On Sunday night, I was preparing stacks of cartons of books to send out to Brodart and other places, and the printer started being wonky. It wouldn’t print at all; or it printed several copies of, say, a review packet and then just stopped halfway through a page. It wouldn’t print PDFs from Adobe Reader and that was a real problem because both UPS and the USPS generate their online mailing labels using Adobe Reader. I couldn’t print out mailing labels if Adobe Reader wouldn’t print–and I print PDFs for other reasons, too. I’m a slave to Adobe. 🙁

So the second thing I did on Monday as soon as I got up was drive to Staples to buy ink cartridges, because three of them showed as empty or nearly so on the status window and I thought that might be the problem. And indeed it may have been a contributing factor, but replacing them didn’t solve all the issues, including with Adobe Reader. I then theorized that the printer’s driver might have gotten corrupted, maybe by something related to that nonsense with McAfee’s defective update (have I mentioned lately that I hate McAfee? It came with the computer, though, and I haven’t gotten around to changing it). So I downloaded the full driver and utility package specifically for Windows 7 64-bit from HP’s website and installed it, and threw in a diagnostic utility as well. That seems to have solved the issues, at least, Adobe Reader now prints and so does everything else. So far. And I now have lots of spare ink cartridges. *wry smile* I ended up getting all the book orders out by 5:00 p.m. Monday, but I had to drive to Nashua twice in one day to do it. I just made UPS’s pickup by about 10 minutes.

The first thing I did on Monday was call Dad. I got up to hang-ups on the machine, and when I Googled the number, it came up as Emerson Hospital! 8-( Normally Dad wouldn’t be at Emerson, but you never know where he might have been when there was some emergency. I was sure a nurse or someone would have left a message to call, but maybe my machine wanked out. I called the number and got a fax (or modem) tone (although my machine should have taken a fax. Then I’d have gotten some stranger’s medical records, probably!). I called Dad at home, and he was fine and we spent 20 minutes discussing the NFL draft–which I’d have been more interested in discussing had I not been so fidgety to get to Staples and get my printer working, now that I knew Dad was okay. Sheesh.

I did Full Moon ritual last night, and tomorrow morning around 4:00 a.m. I’ll be dropping my car off at the dealership for maintenance and a state inspection sticker–before it expires for a change! I’m awful with getting the car inspected and I don’t get caught because the windshield wiper hides the sticker–and walking home just ahead of the dawn. With luck, there won’t be any expensive surprises and I can walk down and get the car tomorrow afternoon. It’s cold and rainy, but at least we haven’t had a foot of snow like northern Vermont! Hard to believe it’s forecast to be in the 80s this weekend.

I voted on Monday in what must have been Pepperell’s liveliest town election in decades. Our Town Clerk, an elected position, is retiring and there was a stampede for her job: seven candidates ran for the post! I voted for the sole man on the ballot, because he’s a freelance writer and the webmaster for the town website (which just won an award). Yes, I am guilty of voting for people like me, so sue me! I guess I’m not the only one because he won by a landslide. Yay. 🙂 Alas, I also went to the polls hoping to vote out an incumbent School Committee member and he barely managed to keep his seat, to my disappointment. I think the candidate who came in 13 votes behind him is going to try for a recount. It was a three-way race or she’d have won for sure. It’s too bad, because the town/gown tension between Pepperell, the school district and our current Superintendent of schools is reaching the red zone. Annual Town Meeting starts next Monday and I bet we’re going to have another marathon this year. They aren’t threatening to close the library but they are cutting the library’s budget, and I’m hearing noises that the cut is going to be challenged on Town Meeting floor. Ah, democracy…!

Happy Birthday,

musiquephan!

I know, it’s been a long time since I made an update. I put a lot of time and energy into a big family milestone, my dad’s 80th birthday on Monday, April 19. My sister flew out from Chicago for four days and I spent so much time at the lake, and had so much to unpack and put away when I finally got home from taking Jill to the airport, I felt like I’d been away at a convention!

But that doesn’t mean that publishing stuff stopped–on the contrary. Krymsin Nocturne’s official release date was April 15. As is inevitable when you deal with so many different third-party entities, things have been happening at all different times and with all different types of hiccups, hangups and unpredictability. (Mind you, this is what I go through with every book! Welcome to the cutting edge of independent publishing in 2010, where, if you’re doing it right, you’re doing everything from hardcover to iPad editions, all at the same time.)

The hardcover edition of Krymsin Nocturnes showed up on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but not the paperback. I checked my account at Lightning Source (LSI) and was puzzled by the fact that I never had the option to approve the paperback proof, although I ordered it, paid for it, and it was delivered with all good speed. I approved the hardcover proof, and that edition said “ready for printing and delivery” in my LSI library, but the paperback edition was still pending (although I’d already ordered a short run myself and it was on the way!). But that explains why Amazon and Barnes & Noble hadn’t picked up the paperback listing from Ingram.

I called my rep at LSI and got a message saying she was out of the office for the rest of the week, and giving the number for another person who was taking care of her clients. I called that poor person and left a message on her voice mail, with a somewhat futile feeling. But I must give LSI some kudos. The second rep called me back within about 20 minutes! She manually fixed the proof approval (the glitch remains a mystery) and soon after that the paperback edition showed as “ready.” It now appears on Amazon and Barnes & Noble–but Amazon still doesn’t display the cover image for either bound edition. The Kindle edition’s cover image is uploaded with the book file, but it’s the only detail page that shows the cover. (The Kindle edition of Krymsin Nocturnes is already selling, too.)

I based the Search Inside This Book file on the paperback edition and its ISBN, so I was waiting to upload that until Amazon listed the paperback. Sometimes that solves the cover image problem, which Amazon can be very slow to get in place. Amazon detail pages go up in chunks–it can be rather fascinating to watch them evolve if you’re not too impatient. The Publishers Weekly review is up on the detail pages, and they all cross-link to each other. The Search Inside This Book file is still going through the approval process.

Meanwhile I updated PayPal to handle direct sales of Krymsin Nocturnes, and added links to its detail page on BLUM’s website as they went live and I confirmed them. Indiebound, the listing for independent bookstores, picked up the title; I’m still waiting for Borders and Powells Books. People have been “sampling” Krymsin Nocturnes on Smashwords, and I added it as a paperback and PDF download to BLUM’s Annex on Lulu.com. Just today, I went shopping in Nashua and stopped by the Apple Store again to sneak a look at the demo iPads. I was very pleased to see that Krymsin Nocturnes is already in the iBookstore along with BLUM’s other titles. However, apparently it takes Barnes & Noble six to eight weeks to update its ebook catalog, and as for Sony…let’s not even go there. I am thoroughly peeved with Sony at this point. It was Sony who replied to me, after I submitted multiple “applications” to them, telling me to sign up with Smashwords, and now Sony is just dicking around with Smashwords. Mark Coker says they’re “taking it a day at a time with Sony.”

The short run of hardcover and paperback editions of Krymsin Nocturnes arrived on Tuesday, and I’ve been packing up all the orders I’ve gotten so far from Brodart and a bookstore out in Oregon who placed an order by phone. I have many comp and review copies to send out, as well. I love it when I get a stack of cartons full of books and they quickly turn into empty cartons! Empty book cartons = bliss 🙂 (Cerridwen sure thinks so. I have the worst time keeping her from sleeping in the inventory. As far as she’s concerned, the packing paper LSI uses is heaven on earth.)

Meanwhile, less delightfully, the United States Copyright office (a.k.a. “the beauracracy so slow it actually operates in a different space-time continuum”) contacted me to say that I did the copyright registration for Gideon Redoak all wrong and I have to resend stuff to them…which means I have to do Cat the Vamp over, too, and might as well before the Copyright Office contacts me about that book sometime in the next millennium. *groan*

I’m running an ad on Bitten by Books and an ad on Facebook, but so far, I’m not seeing an uptick in traffic on BLUM’s website or a noticeable increase in sales, which is a bit disappointing. I had set a trial ad running on Facebook with a low per-click “bid” (what I pay for the ad) and low per-day maximum. Apparently, Facebook bases your “impressions” (i.e. the number of times and places it displays your ad in a sidebar) on how much you’re paying them, along with other factors. I raised my “bid” substantially this week and now my ad (which was flat-lined, 0 impressions and 0 clicks) is getting tens of thousands of impressions and some click-throughs, but of course it’s also costing me money as a result, and we’ll have to see if it’s worth the investment. Mortal Touch is still my strongest seller, and the Kindle edition in particular is selling faster and faster all the time.

Today I received the first purchase order from Brodart for The Longer the Fall! I uploaded the cover image to Bowkerlink/Books in Print as well as putting it on my own websites. I’m still waiting hopefully for a couple of cover blurbs, not sure what will happen with those.

I have a church service to do on Sunday (Unitarian, themed around Beltane, Ashby First Parish in Ashby, Massachusetts, all are welcome!) so I’m woolgathering from finishing that right now. I was pleased to find a perfect book for the children’s story at the library today, and I have crafts materials for the “sacrament” to give out. I still have to write the sermon, though! My dad got the first season of Fringe for his birthday, and generously loaned it to me for cycling videos. I’m really enjoying it. In fact…it’s time to go cycle through another episode! Funny how I do so much good writing right before I stop procrastinating and break for workout! Having trouble with writer’s block? I have a suggestion. 😉

I’ve been pretty quiet for the past 10 days. Mostly, this has been due to prepping for, celebrating and recovering from Dad’s 80th birthday, which was on Monday. My sister flew out from Chicago last Friday and was here until Tuesday morning, when I drove her to the airport literally at the crack of dawn. Dad’s birthday was a huge success, but quite a lot went into accomplishing that.

Dad was really dreading this birthday, he said, and he seemed really down and depressed. He was going through his annual indecision about conducting the Townsend Military Band concerts this summer, and this time he seemed more determined to quit than in the past. He was getting so tired during the concerts, he said, and he was sick of “arguing with people.” He needed to start working on the music folders and he hadn’t started yet. And he was down because his friend who has been staying at the house was talking more about moving out, and he was depressed about his weight and his health, and…well, he was just down. Of course, he misses Mom a lot, too.

So, my sister and I were really concerned, and my sister said that she felt bad that she wasn’t giving Dad “a really big present of some kind.” But when asked, Dad just said there was nothing he wanted. I was going to redesign his business card for him, but it seemed like every time we talked, we never got as far as that topic, and then I wasn’t sure he needed a card if he was going to quit conducting the band.

Last Wednesday, I was chewing all this over, and I had an inspiration on what to give Dad for a gift. For at least a couple of years now, Dad has been talking about flat-screen TVs. My sister and brother-in-law have one, and dad comes home from visiting in Chicago talking about how amazing it is. He’ll look at them in stores, and he came really close to buying one. But then he just wouldn’t do it: the cost ran into his Depression-era frugality wall and he wouldn’t spend the money. He’d keep bringing up the subject, but then he’d insist that his very large old conventional TV “has just as good a picture as those flat screens, really” and “I don’t think those flat screen TVs are any better than my TV” and so on. But he’d keep talking about them. And of course, he’s super into watching football, and he watches a lot of TV. He has a Comcast bundle, with digital TV and high speed Internet, and twice he offered to pay for me to have cable turned back on in my house and I had to reiterate that I hate cable, never watch TV and didn’t want it, no matter who paid for it. But TV is important to Dad.

But the clincher, finally, was when Dad came down to see my new computer, which has a 22-inch HD monitor, and I was showing him some of the things I was doing with it. I showed him one of the iTunes programs I download. Dad was really impressed. “That’s even better than your TV!” he exclaimed. I think he then said something about his TV being perfectly good, etc. But his TV has had a few misadventures, including almost falling on my niece once (it weighs a couple hundred pounds), and has some burned out pixels right in the center of the screen and an off-color blotch on one side of the picture.

So, last Wednesday I called my sister and suggested that we go halvsies and buy Dad a flat screen HD TV for his birthday. We’d have to surprise him, because if we asked him about it first, he’d never agree. But I was sure that he’d be pleased if it was just presented to him as a birthday surprise. Jill liked the idea, so I spent the next couple of days researching TVs online.

Of course, we immediately ran into some disparities of shopping styles, since I prefer to buy electronics online, happily set up everything myself, and am very geeky, while my sister is a total technophobe who lets her hubbie handle all the electronics purchasing, prefers to buy in a store and will pay for the store to come in and install. I deferred to Jill in all of that, because it wasn’t vital for me to get my way when I wasn’t paying for the whole thing. There was a brand new discount electronics store in the area called Ultimate Electronics, and we decided to check that place out first.

Jill flew in Friday afternoon, and I went up and spent the evening with everyone at the lake. For the next four days, I spent so much time at the lake, and consequently was so off my usual routines and backlogged on my work, I felt like I’d been away at a convention! The weekend got off to a slightly bumpy start, and we did wind up in one big painful conversation about stuff Dad was unhappy about, but that was on Saturday night. He’d gone to see a movie with Jill, and after that, Jill and I went TV shopping, and we were still keeping his gift a secret.

We went to Ultimate Electronics, where we were so obviously serious shoppers as we pored over the pros and cons of different models and sizes, that the sales associate came over and gave us each a bottle of free spring water! We finally decided on a Toshiba, a 40-inch HD LED model within our budget, and I popped for a filtering power strip and a set of component video cables for the DVD player. We got an extended service plan and paid for delivery and installation when the store said they could deliver Monday, on Dad’s birthday. We’re splitting the cost evenly, but Jill put it all on her credit card because she gets frequent flyer mile credits that way. 🙂

By Sunday, the weekend really started to improve. Dad’s decided to conduct the Townsend band after all, and he and Jill got his music library inventoried. He wants to take a week off to go on a trip in July and he negotiated that with the band’s manager. (It’s the one week that I’d miss his concert because of Readercon, too, how perfect is that?) One of Dad’s issues in the painful conversation had been his feeling that he “couldn’t play his music” in his house because people asked him to turn it off. Jill and I were completely mystified by this, so on Sunday, we turned Dad’s stereo on while he was napping so the classical music station was playing when Dad got up. Then we asked him to get his turntable going, because we weren’t sure how it worked and we didn’t want to fiddle with it. We all listened to some of Dad’s records. As far as I could see, we ALL enjoyed the music, both popular vocals and classical, and this seemed to mean a LOT to Dad.

We were spending several hours each evening watching DVDs of Fringe, which Dad has become totally enthralled by. Now, I wanted to see Fringe a lot, and I’m really enjoying it, but I just can’t stand to simply sit and watch TV anymore. Sitting there for hours at a time four nights in a row really taxed my endurance, I have to admit. So, on Sunday afternoon when Jill suggested that maybe we could watch a video, I’d said, “No, let’s do something interactive–how about playing a game or doing a jigsaw puzzle or something?” Jill and I found the coolest puzzle down in the basement that none of us had done before. It was a very old jigsaw puzzle with an 18th century painting as its picture. Jill, Dad and I all worked on it and we finished it the same night. But at one point, trying to find some information on the painting, we turned the box over, and there were penciled notes on the bottom: a name, and “completed” with a date in 1938. Then there was another date in 1940. That’s how old that puzzle is, and I don’t think it’s been used much since because it’s almost mint condition. One of my folks picked it up at a yard sale or something, and it’s more than 70 years old!

I love that kind of stuff.

I cooked sauteed veggies and broiled fish for dinner on Sunday. Then we told dad about his present, because he needed to decide what to do with his old TV. The store installation crew would take it away if he wanted them to, but we thought he might like to think about his options ahead of time. Well…Dad was just blown away to be getting a flat screen TV. He was so thrilled, he didn’t make a single peep about it’s being too expensive or oh-you-shouldn’t-have. “I never thought I’d get one of those,” he said. He elected to have the old one hauled away.

The TV was delivered on Monday, right on time. I cooked Dad his requests for a birthday dinner: meatloaf, gravy and mash, and his “birthday cake” was a key lime pie, which I made from scratch with the butter pastry crust I’d used for the quiche in December and filling made from fresh limes. It had a whipped cream topping on which I put these little plastic figurines of marching band players that Jill brought with her from Chicago–those were really cute–and candles. So, dinner was all Dad’s favorites, and everything came out perfectly. Dad’s friend wants the recipe for the meat loaf and I’ll have to reconstruct it, because it was one of those, “Take a large bowl and start throwing stuff into it” kind of things. 🙂

On Monday, Dad said it was the best birthday he’d ever had. 🙂 He’s already upgraded his Comcast cable to HD and gotten the new cable box for it. And he has it just in time for the NFL draft!

I stayed at the house after everyone went to bed on Monday night, and sat up working on Pig, because Jill and I were leaving for the airport at 4:00 a.m. I’d be getting home just a little later than my usual bed time these days; Jill was going straight to work when she arrived in Chicago! I was pretty wiped out, but I wasn’t driving recklessly, and there was really no excuse for the cop in Jaffrey, New Hampshire who pulled me over and claimed I was traveling 41 mph in a 30 mph zone. (gasp) He gave me a warning. *grump* Aside from that, the airport run went smoothly!

The reason I’m just now “recovering” from the weekend is two-fold: first, after the painful conversation on Saturday evening I got almost no sleep, and was already dragging from that. Second, as soon as I got home Tuesday morning I came down with a brief but intense bout of gastric upset, which I haven’t heard affected anyone else, so I don’t think it was anything we ate. I’m so rarely sick, this knocked me right off balance, and I still was exhausted and low-energy as a result most of yesterday. I still managed to get up on Tuesday, do a bunch of chores and make my biweekly trip to the transfer station with the trash and recyclables, and I did my laundry up at Dad’s house on Monday so I could maximize my time up there. But I skipped workout on Tuesday night and it takes a lot for me to do that.

So that’s where most of my energy has been going! But given how well Dad’s birthday turned out, it was certainly worth it!

Here is the art for the wrap-around cover for The Longer the Fall, without any lettering or text.

Whew. Now I need to finish the cover, and do an animated graphic ad that will be running on Bitten By Books as soon as I get it to her.

The Longer the Fall got a pre-publication review from Publishers Weekly. I don’t have a direct link, the review is on this page, in “SF/Fantasy/Horror” about three-fourths of the way down.

I’m going to be really, really excited when the shock wears off and I don’t have ten huge projects taking up all my conscious thoughts. 🙂

This makes three of By Light Unseen Media’s titles out of five reviewed by PW now! Now if I could just crack Library Journal and Booklist.

Quick update, just in case anyone’s missed me–I’ve been completely immersed in cover art, this time for The Longer the Fall. I’m still working on it, so this post is me woolgathering and has to be short. 🙂

Mortal Touch and Gideon Redoak just appeared in the Kobo catalog. They had Cat the Vamp up but not the other two, which puzzled me until I took a closer look at my Smashwords dashboard and realized that Smashwords shipped Cat the Vamp two weeks before the other titles–why, I have no idea! But they’re all up now, and Krymsin Nocturnes should go to Kobo in the next shipment on April 12. Still waiting for Sony, Mark Coker promises they’ll be shipping this coming week, now that the ISBN issue is settled, or getting there. BLUM’s titles are all ISBNed and ready to go. I have to say, I am not impressed with Sony’s rod-up-the-ass attitude toward small press publishers all along, and if the Sony Reader ends up in the same historical dustbin as the Betamax and the eight-track tape, it will serve them right.

I got a very nice little bit of throw-away feedback about a project I did last year. I don’t know about you, but “perfect” is one of those words that just gives me nice tingly warm fuzzies–especially when it pops into a conversation spontaneously and unasked. 🙂

I wish I could convince Locus magazine not to list BLUM’s books as “print on demand” and available only from the publisher. We’re available in all bookstores through major wholesalers, and I give a whacking retail discount to get them in there! Not to mention that two of our titles so far have been reviewed by Publisher’s Weekly! I’m glad Locus lists the books, but they’re really misrepresenting us and probably doing more harm than good. I suppose I should courteously address this with them, not that I expect that to help. I determined right from the start that I was not going to waste time and energy flinging my body at the ramparts of Traditional Publishing Bigotries, the way I see other small publishers and authors do–not me, I’m a revolutionary, I’m just going around the back way. 🙂 But I still get annoyed sometimes by the self-defeating hidebound attitudes. I’ll just have to take out an ad in Locus. When you can’t beat ’em, pay ’em! Never fails! 🙂

Pending advertising is, indeed, a major reason that I’m putting so much time into cover designs…which I need to get back to. But more on that soon!

I’m getting all twitchy because I want to write, damn it, and I can’t–top priorities right now are graphic design, marketing stuff and editing. *sigh*

I need to shut down distractions and get work done, so this update will be brief!

Krymsin Nocturnes shipped to the iBookstore last night!

Kindle sales were strong in February and March–by strong, I mean, six times the sales for January. I still have no idea what is driving those sales…except that they suddenly jumped right about the time that Apple announced the iPad and the Big Boys started fighting with Amazon over the whole “wholesale/agency pricing” conflict. The first few days of April, it looked like Kindle sales had suddenly dropped dead…then they picked up again, and have now caught up with the pace of sales for the past two months. Smashwords is going to be sending out quarterly royalties for all its third-party vendor sales soon, and we have no idea what these are because those sales currently don’t show up on our dashboard at Smashwords. I know I haven’t sold many books directly from Smashwords itself, but the free ebook promotional offer last month got quite a response, I was amazed. We’ll see…

It’s 88 degrees, breezy, dry, sunny…still feels like spring to me, though. And there’s now a “Red Flag” fire danger warning up. Gods forbid we get bored and complacent just because the weather is nice! *wry look*

Cool! My favorite flour company, King Arthur, is launching a gluten-free line of products. I bake with King Arthur flour exclusively. They’re an employee-owned and operated company based in Vermont. Gluten is not a problem for me personally (nothing is, I have the digestion of a goat and the metabolism of a lizard 🙁 ). But it’s been on my radar lately due to several of my ‘Net friends dealing with gluten-sensitivity and related health woes.

…because I got my hands on an iPad instead. Yessireebob, it only took three days for this Mensan and Harvard alumnus to finally think of going to the shiny new Apple Store at Pheasant Lane Mall and looking at one of their demo iPads to see if By Light Unseen Media’s titles really do show up in the iBookstore. You think maybe I spend a little too much of my life online? “‘Store?’ What is this ‘store’ of which you speak? You mean it’s an actual building? How quaint!” *wry smile*

The Apple Store is a very new addition to the mall, but I certainly knew it was there. (Evidently Best Buy has iPads, too, and I didn’t think of them, either. And I have a Best Buy card!) It was busy but not jammed, and they had many demo iPads for people to try out. A very helpful sales associate named Ashley came over and helped me get into iBooks and look up books by title and by publisher name. And here they are!

I took that photo with my digital camera, but Ashley emailed me a screenshot–on the spot, right from that iPad–so I’ve got one of those, too. We’re in the iBookstore!! I was totally stoked, thanked Ashley copiously and wandered out of the store in a sparkly pink haze. *g* I went and petted the bunnies in Debbie’s pet store and then went to Panera up the road and bought half a dozen fancy bagels. (I recommend the Asiago cheese bagel. Yum!)

The iPad itself…well, it is nifty. It felt very natural to use. I didn’t have any trouble with the interface and the whole touch screen thing. I tried typing with the keypad, too–easy! But taken altogether…it just didn’t grab me, you know? And I’m definitely grabbable. I can think of several things over my life where, the instant I saw them, the very first look, I was a goner. MUST. HAVE. THAT. MUST HAVE. Even though it took years, in most cases, for me to finally get one. I felt that way the very first time I saw an ad for the Betamax–although by the time we finally got such an item, the Betamax had dropped off the evolutionary dead end and we got a VCR–but that was okay. I felt that way about the Bowflex. One look. Must have. The very first laptop computer I ever saw; the very first touchpad; the very first little netbook computer, at a convention. Love at first sight. Must have.

And not once have I ever been disappointed when I fulfilled one of these instantaneous obsessions–in fact, in every case, I’ve been even happier with the item than I expected (says the person who has worn out parts of her Bowflex and is now sleeping with her Netbook). So this is a pretty unerring instinct when it hits. But the iPad just doesn’t do that for me. I’m afraid I’m in the same camp as Cory Doctorow and the makers: the things I get excited about are things that make me work, and give me tools to do work, and don’t make it too easy. I like things I can tinker with and add to and connect to other things and use to make new things of my own. The iPad is another example of Apple’s attitude, “don’t bother your pretty little head with how it works, we’ve provided everything you could possibly need, just go play with your shiny toy and have fun.” That just doesn’t appeal to me. It’s the same reason I couldn’t be less interested in going to Disney World–and Disney and Apple have a LOT in common. I had more fun up in Montréal this summer, wandering around with a map and my netbook and a wi-fi connection, pushing the limits of my French and exploring and learning the ropes, than I ever would have in some shiny pre-packaged, polished vacation deal in a resort or cruise ship. I’m a DIY addict, every step of the way.

But that’s just me. As a publisher, if hundreds of thousands of people are buying iPads so fast their credit cards warp, I’m on board–hand over that Kool-ade! *g* The iPad is definitely pretty, and funky–you remember the finger-operated wall-sized computer screens in Minority Report? The iPad evokes that, it’s very tactile. I can’t fairly “review” it because I didn’t play with it for very long. I couldn’t have bought one even if I’d wanted to. The store in Pheasant Lane is sold out!

Second place (only second?!? What were they thinking???) in the 2010 New York Daily Record/Sunday News Peeps Diorama Contest had me absolutely rolling on the floor. Behold “The Peeplight Saga: Race through Volterra.”

And there is something to artists having an affinity with more than one form of art.

“When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser.”
– Keith Richards, quoted in The Book Side of Keith Richards

Rocker Keith Richards, an idol of Johnny Depp’s who appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End as Jack Sparrow’s daddy, Captain Teague, reveals in his forthcoming autobiography, Life, that he’s a monster bibliomaniac with enormous personal libraries. He must have loved playing this scene in POTC3!