In Common with Humans

I’ve been writing, although not fiction, which is getting frustrating. I’m getting very fidgety to write more in my fictional universe! But I’ve been clearing out my old assignments on Blogcritics, which have been disgracefully neglected. I just posted two reviews over the weekend and I have two more to go. That actually feels pretty good. One of my reviews, of Cory Doctorow’s For the Win, was featured on the Blogcritics Books main page as an Editor’s Pick. That’s never happened to me before!

I’ve also been getting David Burton’s Blood Justice into the pipe. Its official release date is October 1, but the book is already available in numerous venues, including the Kindle edition. Right now the short runs of both print editions are on their way from Lightning Source, and I’ve updated the book page on BLUM with all active links, the PayPal buttons and downloadable mail order form. I’m happy to say that Blood Justice has been progressing into the supply line much more smoothly than The Longer the Fall did! I’m trying to ramp up my tweets, Facebook updates on BLUM’s page, blogging and so on–and it’s having immediate effects. Traffic to BLUM’s website and Facebook page has increased, which means I need to keep on updating. Gods, but Twitter is a time-sink, though!

That’s pretty much been my life since my last post! I made an unscheduled trip up to Dad’s on Saturday to help him with a technical muddle. I chaired Readercon Committee meeting on Sunday and that went fine. I’ve been feeling a little under the weather–I think I’m fending off some kind of virus. I’m exhausted, but don’t sleep well, I always seem to have a headache and sinus-ache, I’ve been slightly off-kilter. You’d think it was allergies, but I don’t have any. The wildly fluctuating weather doesn’t help. I had to hang all the laundry inside this week and that always makes me grumpy. It’s sunny, warm and humid today–80s, on September 29 in New England–but forecast to rain tomorrow and Friday. My sister is flying in from Chicago tomorrow and I’m picking her up at Logan in Boston; I hope the weather doesn’t delay her flight or complicate the pick-up. They just posted a “high wind alert” for exactly the time when her flight is arriving!

I did a lot of cooking (and dish-washing!) yesterday. I wasn’t really in the mood for it, but I needed the food. I got a lot of apples from Dad’s Cortland apple tree, most of which are scarred, bruised or misshapen, but they make delicious applesauce–which I then use in these fruit-oatmeal cookies that are practically a staple of my diet. I was out of cookies and bread, and I ended up making applesauce from scratch (peeling, cutting up and cooking a sink full of apples) just to make the cookies.

Plus, I came close to #breadfail for the first time in, I think, decades. I bake my own bread every week and it’s a very simple recipe, but this batch had too little flour and didn’t want to rise properly. It’s edible, but not terrific. I always use as little flour as I can get away with because that’s where most of the calories come from and I keep trying to winnow down the calories per ounce and get a lighter loaf. But with 100% whole wheat flour, if the dough is too soft it doesn’t have enough protein to rise properly, and I obviously hit the boundary wall on that. It wasn’t even intentional, either–I weighed out too little flour when I started and didn’t want to weigh more, so the poor results were just my own inertia! I meticulously calculate calories of everything I cook by weight (in grams), and sometimes it’s just a PITA.

The cookies, I will say, turned out unusually tasty. Nothing like using applesauce just cooked from fresh apples that were just picked off the tree. 🙂 I have enough for several more batches of cookies.

Fedex refunded the erroneous shipping charge on BLUM’s bank card. I haven’t heard anything further about the Search Local complaint. I’ve gotten very brusque with charities and whatnot who call me (even though I’m on the Do Not Call list), I just hung up on Planned Parenthood! (But jeez, $150 they wanted–are they kidding?!?)

Two of my friends lost their mothers last week, and another friend just started chemotherapy. It seems like there hasn’t been a day without a death in the publishing/writing communities or some mass murder or shooting in the news, including the ghastly one in Boston yesterday whose victims included a two-year-old. I need to catch up with the Globes, because if I don’t read the Globes, I don’t have newspaper for the bunny cage…and I’m scared to. 🙁 But at least we’re getting a brief respite from the political campaign robocalls.

I have now cycled to all of Season Two of True Blood, which certainly ended on a depressing note. I think it gave me an actual nightmare last night! 🙁 I’m not sure when I’ll be able to start watching Season Three. Much more happily, I can watch the new season of Fringe online, on Fox’s website, so my Friday cycling video is all set for a while. I sure have gotten spoiled: I’ve forgotten what it was like to have to wait a whole week to see what happens next!

This has been a bad week for my self-esteem for more than one reason, not all of which I can talk about in public. But I’m going to humble myself (which isn’t hard to do, at the moment) and share this story, by way of a public service announcement to others. Of course, I’m not assuming that anyone else will be as dumb as I was!

I pay almost all my bills online, and I monitor my bank and credit card accounts online, and for many of them I have “paperless billing.” So, I got an email in the wee hours of Thursday morning from Verizon, alerting me that my bill had been posted and I could pay it. But the amount seemed much higher than usual. I have a bundle with “unlimited calling” features, and the amount shouldn’t change unless I’ve made an international call or something, which I knew I hadn’t.

I checked, and on my bill was a Mystery Charge: $53.07 from a company called ILD Teleservices, and no other information at all. I looked them up, and found that they’re a third-party billing service with a somewhat shady reputation–there have been a lot of complaints about them. Their website was really friendly, though, and included up-front information about how to dispute a charge. However, it said that charges should say on whose behalf ILD is billing, and my Verizon bill did not. I didn’t have a clue. I did, however, have an unpleasant suspicion. I couldn’t call ILD or Verizon until business hours.

The next day, I got up and got on the phone. ILD was cheery and helpful and said that the charge was for a company called Search Local, Inc in Wayne, New Jersey–and it was a monthly charge. $49.95 plus tax a month for…well, for some kind of search engine business listing. I said–I was nice, but firm–that I had never, ever authorized such a thing, that I would never knowingly authorize any third-party charges to my phone bill, under any circumstances whatsoever. The ILD rep assured me that she would cancel all further charges and gave me a phone number to talk to Search Local, Inc. about getting a “refund.” She also advised me to have Verizon block third-party charges to my phone line.

I tried the number purportedly for Search Local, Inc….and as far as I could tell (because no business name was mentioned when the call was answered) it connected to ILD Teleservices’ voice mail. The voice mail said something about, “if you want to cancel your account, have your account number that was in the welcome letter you received…” I never received any “welcome letter,” by email or on paper. So, I had no documentation of any kind for my “account,” for which I was being billed $50 per month, nor for what kinds of obligations might be attached to it (like, say, a hefty “early termination fee” for cancelling). The call to Search Local Inc.’s number left me on hold for a couple of minutes and then disconnected.

I called Verizon. Verizon said they would cancel the charge, and I should just pay the bill with that amount subtracted. They also put a block on my number to prevent any such third-party billing in the future. Interestingly, the rep told me that “for legal reasons,” they couldn’t offer this service to a customer until the customer had a problem and requested it. The Verizon rep also advised me to report Search Local, Inc. to the Better Business Bureau and Attorney General’s Office. “If you don’t report it, they’ll just keep on doing this to other people,” she said earnestly. True enough.

You see, I’d figured out what happened. On September 2–here’s one benefit of keeping a really detailed daily journal, because I’d made a note of this–I got a call from a man who talked very fast and almost unintelligibly, I couldn’t understand much of what he said, but it was something about an online business listing, something-online-something-biz, and he “just wanted to confirm my information.”

Now, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday. Right there, when he wanted to “confirm my information,” there should have been red flags and klaxons and my Spidey sense going into migraine mode and the robot waving its arms and the whole thing. But it didn’t. I have no excuse: it was the fifth day of that last intense heat wave we had, I’d just gotten up, I was trying to get breakfast and things done, I was all focused on getting the sign from the church and getting to Dad’s for the game that afternoon, I was getting tons of campaign-related “survey” calls at the time, and I’d gotten calls similar to this before…those are all reasons, not excuses. I should have twigged to this con-man and I was played for a sucker. I was “slammed” and I fell for it. I know I didn’t hear anything about a fee, let alone a monthly one, and I didn’t think I could be ripped off when they didn’t have any credit card information. I didn’t realize that all they needed was my phone number and a way of tricking me into saying, however indirectly, “yes.”

Now I know!

I looked up more information about Search Local, Inc. They’ve been around for about a year. The New Jersey Better Business Bureau gives them a “C,” nine complaints, one unresolved. They don’t come up in a Google search. Their domain name, searchlocalonline.biz, is registered with GoDaddy and not hidden, the information comes right up on BetterWhois. But there’s no website associated with the domain name. The contact phone number connects to ILD Teleservices. They have an office address, who knows if that’s legit.

So, I reported them to both the Better Business Bureau and the state Attorney General’s Office. I just want that on file in case there are more shoes to drop (Verizon didn’t think that was likely, but I’m not relaxing about all this for a while yet).

So, that sucked down a lot of wasted time and caused me stress (and some humiliation) that I didn’t need. On top of that, last night I found a Mystery Charge on BLUM’s bank card–from Fedex. The charge listed a tracking number and Fedex’s phone number, but I had to wait until business hours today to call them. I tried looking up the tracking number online and it wouldn’t show the names or address of either sender or recipient, just the shipment’s routing, from Waukegan, IL to Herndon, VA. I thought it might be something related to book returns from a wholesaler, but I hadn’t gotten any books back, and the shipment had been made on September 14. Anyway, when I called Fedex today, they looked up the sender and recipient, and neither one was anybody I’d ever heard of or had anything to do with me, books or publishing. It looks like someone charged a shipment to my Fedex account–and I’ll be generous and assume it was a mistake. It wasn’t a large amount. Fedex said they’d reverse the charge and charge back to the shipper, but I’m not sure if my account will get a refund or what, so I’m watching that now and I may have to call Fedex again. *sigh*

It’s been a frustrating couple of days. 🙁 But thank the gods for online banking and bill-pay! I check all my accounts several times a week and I’m so glad I can!

Merry Mabon, Happy Autumn Equinox, Blessed Sukkoth, and a bounteous Harvest Full Moon to you!

Facebook seems to be down. Hmm. I tried entering hashtags on Twitter to see if it was just me, and obviously it’s not–but most of the tweets that came up were in Spanish! And I could read them all, demonstrating that my Spanish remains good enough to read tweets, at least. I wish my Welsh did–I seriously need to reclaim those skills, I’ve just been lazy. Plus, I need to learn French…well, more than I know now. I can read tweets in French, too, but that’s about it.

Wow, that was a ramble…probably because I’m hungry. I’m fasting until ritual tonight (Equinox turns at 10:57 p.m. local time, 11:09 p.m. EDT). This will probably make it inadvisable for me to do much online, heh. (*SNARL*…what? what?) But I have tons to do–and I’ve already gotten so much accomplished the last few days!

I approved the proofs for the Lightning Source editions of Blood Justice and the short runs have been ordered and are on the way. The Kindle edition is ready to go live. The BLUM Annex edition on Lulu.com is already live, so if you’d really, really like to get a paperback or PDF copy of Blood Justice right now (you do! Yes, you do! You just don’t know it yet!) you can order it here. I have a bonus offer for postcards from Tu-Vets so a batch of promotional postcards is next, I’ll be ordering those today.

The edits are back for Applewood so I should be announcing the release date pretty soon.

The BLUM party at Albacon will be Saturday night in the Con Suite from 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Afterwards I’ll be participating in the erotic fiction reading (18+), which is not to be missed. You might want to bring a fan or a nice cold drink with you. And don’t miss my solo reading on Saturday at 4:00 p.m.!

I’ve finally started creating an online portfolio on DeviantArt. I’ve uploaded the art for the last three book covers I’ve done, and I hope to be building a comprehensive gallery there. If you want to check it out so far, I’m at http://vyrdolak.deviantart.com/.

By Light Unseen Media is now listed on Preditors & Editors! It’s taken four years to get on there, but we’re listed! We exist! It’s just a neutral mention, neither “recommended” nor (and I hope, never will be) “not recommended.” But so many writers are referred to P&E to check out prospective markets, I just feel like not seeing us mentioned at all carries a negative message in and of itself. Now we’re there. We’re accepting queries! We’re just not reading them…no, seriously, I’m a bit backlogged and I apologize for the delay to all those whose queries are in my queue, and I will be getting back to you soon. I’m really ramping up the productivity levels!

Speaking of which, I’ve got ritual prep and lots more to do and I need to keep busy, so I won’t think about how hungry I am. Hope everyone is having a good day!

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!

Hurricane Earl was a non-event here, as I expected. When I got up yesterday, the ground was completely dry and you wouldn’t even have guessed that it rained. I noticed one ten-minute spurt of solid rain and aside from that, we had some spits and sprinkles, mostly not even that, and much less wind than yesterday, which was quite breezy. Well, I’m just as happy that the coast didn’t get hit by a destructive storm, but we still really need the rain. The tomatoes are ripening again, after a short hiatus caused by the four days of rain and gloom two weeks ago.

I hope everyone is having a great Labor Day weekend! It’s just another working weekend for me. I’m continuing with editing, and I’m watching paint dry. No, seriously. 🙂 I’m doing a project for which I have to match a shade of paint, which is proving quite tricky, and I can’t see exactly what I’ve got until it dries–which, being latex and/or acrylic paint, it does very fast. People joke about “watching paint dry” but you’d be surprised how suspenseful it can be! *wry smile*

I dug the potatoes, and I have slightly more than two and half pounds. Since the seed potatoes were sold by the pound, I know I planted just about one pound exactly, so I’ve gotten a 250% return in edible crop, which isn’t bad. I’d have done much better if I hadn’t neglected the garden earlier in the summer! All the same, considering how little money I invested, I can confidently say that my garden has produced more than enough food to completely recoup its cost, and it’s still going. Plus, I ate, baked and froze quarts of black raspberries and blackberries, and those were pure freebies.

I wish I had something more exciting to say, but it’s just quiet, quiet, quiet here. Publishing work isn’t very exciting most of the time.

Sitting here waiting for just-barely-Hurricane Earl to arrive, but without much suspense because it appears increasingly less likely that Earl will affect us much this far inland. At the moment, he’s been downgraded to a Category 1 and seems to be veering east, seawards. We need the rain desperately, but I’m only expecting a sprinkle or two the ways things are shaping up!

It’s been many years since either September 1 or Labor Day felt like “the end of summer” to me (and not just because so many schools now start classes in August). Summer, and its weather, lasts at least until the Autumn Equinox, and that’s probably going to be even more true as the climate warms. We just had five straight days of temperatures in the 90s, today is only slightly cooler with my thermometer topping out at 86°. Last night I went up to Dad’s to visit and watch the Patriots’ final preseason game. I went up early and had a long, lovely swim in the lake, which was positively balmy after five clear, calm days of hot sun warming the water. There were a couple of boats out (ours are both still out of commission, although I got updates on the progress [or not] of repairs), and I disturbed three ducks that were relaxing on our new float when I went down to the dock.

I’m glad my swim was so pleasant because the game was rather disappointing. *sigh* I hope the Patriots’ performance in the preseason games doesn’t really portend how they’ll do in the regular season. Dad is already all excited, though! His computer, and its new sound card, is working great; this week, Dad asked me to set up a used printer he bought to go with his laptop, and that’s all set.

The new cover art for Blood Justice is done, and now I need to design the full cover and dust jacket templates. Mr. Burton likes the art, and made some suggestions for minor changes, all of which I implemented. September book sales have hit the ground running, I’m amazed. Typically, sales have been dropping off at the beginning of each month and then picking up again, but not this time! I got a large direct deposit from Amazon for Kindle sales, which definitely improved my day.

By Light Unseen Media will be throwing a party in the Con Suite at Albacon–I’ll be posting more information as plans take shape, but it should be fun! “Room parties” are always so cramped, and many hotels are starting to restrict them–“sponsoring” the Con Suite is a great idea. I’d thought about doing that at this past Readercon but didn’t get my act together in time.

The Skype conferencing for last Sunday’s Readercon Committee meeting was a great success, and I’m finally getting the full schedule of meetings confirmed between now and next year’s con. Whew. Pre-registration for Readercon 22 is now open, with a special low rate through September 15 because we didn’t have early registration available at this year’s Readercon. You can register online with PayPal or download a form.

Otherwise, there isn’t much news. I’ve been busy and productive, but it’s been all cover art, BLUM business, and Readercon business. Magda, by the way, is back to more-or-less her normal behavior. I think she and Cerridwen have been getting into some fights when I’m not around. 🙁

It’s been a long week, although highly productive. I’ve been working on new cover art for Blood Justice, edits for BLUM’s next release, and preparations for Readercon Committee meetings, all of which have been highly engrossing and time consuming.

The cover art is coming out much better this time, thanks to some very good and graciously proposed suggestions from the author, Mr. Burton. He was getting poor feedback–and so was I, and I did not like the way the cover initially came out. But his suggestions allowed a design to gel when it simply refused to, before–which has proven something of an object lesson for me in asking my authors for input on their covers. My workspace is currently cluttered with art model and anatomy books, but I’ve only had to pose with multiple mirrors once so far. *wry smile*

Blood Justice got a pre-publication review from Publishers Weekly, and I’ve already gotten the first purchase order from Brodart. I’ve been talking to Barnes & Noble about an author event for Mr. Burton–Barnes & Noble requires documentation that books are returnable, and they won’t have that until the book is set up with Baker & Taylor and Ingram, so I want to be sure and let Mr. Burton’s local B&N know as soon as the book is set up.

Edits are…edits, but they’re chugging along. In other publishing news, By Light Unseen Media is now accredited with the Better Business Bureau. All of our ebook editions finally have appeared in both the Sony Reader Store and Kobobooks.com. I have no idea what the holdup was and I have no idea why the logjam suddenly broke! We’re still not in Borders’ ebook store, however, and Borders is supposed to be getting their ebooks from Kobo, so I don’t know what the story is there. Book sales have slowed down a bit, it’s the August doldrums.

The main challenges with chairing Readercon meetings have been locating meeting spaces and setting up to conference call via Skype, since it’s much easier to find a meeting space with wi-fi or a network connection available than to find one with a free phone line to use with a speaker phone. In any event, speaker phones aren’t made for large meetings: we always had trouble with callers hearing the attendees at the meeting. I’ve been testing a set-up with my laptops, large USB omnidirectional microphone and speakers, and it should work very well. But it remains to be seen how it does in the actual meeting. I’m keeping my fingers crossed! But it doesn’t seem difficult to run conference calls on Skype, and you can conference Skype accounts and phone numbers together, which is really convenient. I have two Skype accounts (don’t ask) and three computers with Skype on them (don’t ask, seriously) so I had fun experimenting with conference-calling myself. 🙂 The big mic picked up loud and clear from 12 feet away.

There’s not much other news. It rained for four straight days last week, Sunday through Wednesday. Now the lawns are green and fluffing out, so I’ll have to mow pretty soon. The zucchini, which I’d thought were done for the summer, have three more little zucchini started on them. Alas, the weather is now forecast to be hot and dry into the foreseeable future, and the outdoor watering ban is still in effect. Earlier in the summer, I had been thinking of doing some fall plantings , like peas or spinach; but if I can’t water, there’s very little point. The second planting of garlic I put in the day the watering ban was implemented was a total waste of time. 🙁 Soon-to-be-Hurricane Earl is aimed our way but may be shunted off to sea.

I’ve been eating tomatoes, fresh basil, onions and zucchini from my garden, though, along with lots of produce from local farms. I’ve been making these chopped tomato and basil salads: dice fresh tomatoes and toss with finely chopped fresh basil, garlic and onion, add a dash of parmesan cheese, and let it stand for several hours so the flavors can steep. Wow, is that good!

I went to Dad’s on Thursday evening for the Patriots preseason game, which was kind of a downer. It wasn’t just that the Pats lost, ultimately, by one point; they just didn’t seem to be playing very well. But I took a shoe box full of spare sound cards with me and replaced the dead sound card in Dad’s computer, and connected a USB port expander that he bought at Staples, so that was fruitful.

I’m cycling to True Blood and enjoying it, and I’m amazed at how fast the turnaround is on the DVDs. I mailed the first one back and Blockbuster got it the next day! That’s important, because they send the next one in your queue on receipt of the return. I’m a bit worried, though, because no sooner have I started using Blockbuster’s rent-by-mail service than they announce they’re applying for bankruptcy! Only Chapter 11, they say they’re doing a “planned restructuring.” That plan includes closing hundreds of stores which will leave many people unemployed, which sucks. I signed up with Blockbuster and killed them! 🙁

I went to one of the local 24-hour convenience stores, White Hen Pantry, which has been here in Pepperell for as long as I can remember, and their shelves were all being emptied out. I asked if they were closing, and they told me that the whole chain has been bought by 7-11, and it’s going to be a 7-11 store. They will no longer be selling the deli food and sandwiches that, based on my observation, are very popular in town. We have a number of little places that sell subs, sandwiches and similar food, though, and they’re probably all cheering, heh. We have a new Italian/Tuscan restaurant opening on Main Street, taking over a former bank. This will be the second eatery on Main Street that occupies a former bank, because that’s what the Dunkin Donuts used to be. Interesting pattern to ponder…

Magda has been acting very odd for a couple of days now: she’s been hiding. I have no idea where, since she simply appears like a ghost without giving me a clue whence she came, then vanishes again just as mysteriously. I’ve tried searching the house for her without seeing so much as a flash of tail. She usually comes and gets all cuddly about once a day, and she hasn’t been doing that. I don’t have any idea what could have spooked her. I’ve vacuumed a couple of times, but this behavior started well after that, and the other cats are acting normal. It’s just plain weird.

The weather is gorgeous and I got very spoiled last week. But, I’m mostly working on editing at the moment, taking a break between that and avoiding getting to cycling. My very first Blockbuster rent-by-mail DVD arrived today. I can start cycling to Season Two of True Blood. I can finally see Season Two of True Blood!

Book sales seem to be picking up again after flatlining for a couple of days. I’d put through some changes on Amazon that finally posted to the detail pages, that might have been part of the issue.

Baker & Taylor has been scaring me to death in a most annoying fashion. Either they work a 24-hour shift down there or they have an automated system designed to avoid peak hours–but their faxes come in at around 4:00 a.m. The trouble is, because of health issues in my family, when I get an unexpected phone call at that time of night, I have a panic attack. I’m an insomniac at the best of times, the last thing I need right before bed is an adrenaline rush! I’m finally learning not to panic unless I don’t hear the fax beep, but it’s taken three or four pre-dawn calls to get there. At least I’m getting book orders, but, gods. I have enough white hair, the blue shows up very well as it is, thank you very much! 🙁

This week’s local paper reports that the town wells are at their lowest levels ever, on top of the Bemis well still being offline. The mandatory outside water use ban remains in effect indefinitely. We might get some serious rain on Monday. (Of course. Laundry day! But I can’t complain!) I’ll keep my fingers crossed! If we don’t get some good soaking rains, we’ll have a dud foliage season, and that wouldn’t be good for the local economy at all. On the bright side of that topic–okay, the slightly less gloomy side–today the Labor Department reported that Massachusetts reported strong job gains in July. That’s great, because employed people can buy books. 🙂

As far as my garden goes, I’m getting lots of tomatoes, but not more than I can eat (and I gave some to Dad). The marigolds and cornflowers are thriving in the dry conditions and will be included in my garden every year from now on. I won’t give up on the carrots until the very last bell has rung, but I don’t have high hopes.

I’m unhappy because my August issue of Locus, which was supposedly mailed on July 29, still hasn’t arrived, and I’ve been told that at least one of BLUM’s titles is listed in it. The June issue was very late, too. I was just on the point of asking Locus to send another copy (which they will do) when it arrived. It’s a pain–I subscribe precisely to get the magazine in a timelier fashion than I’d get it from the newsstand, and there hardly seems to be any point! The Fortean Times is delivered like clockwork and it’s printed in the U.K.!

I went up to Dad’s for a little quality time watching the Patriots’ pre-season game last night. I think Dad finds me a bit of a downer. I take the plays very seriously and I never assume that they’re going to win until the final call, no matter what the spread is at the half. Dad gets so enthusiastic in predicting how well the team will do…and then when they lose, you can actually see the dark rain cloud following him around and leaving puddles on the floor. 🙁 I don’t like it when they lose, either, but I tend to critique the plays more harshly no matter what the score is. I’m not a fun football buddy. :-(.

I hope everyone attending 5Pi-Con this weekend is having a wonderful time!

I suppose it’s high time I made an update and bumped my rant about “Dr. Laura” down a spot. Final comments at the end of this post.

Last week, I spent six days in a row with family from Chicago and New York up at Dad’s. I got lots of really long, wonderful swims in the lake, did some boating, baked pies and fruit cobbler, ate food I rarely eat like ice cream and corn on the cob, watched home fireworks over the lake (ours and some neighbors’) saw the Roman Polanski movie The Ghost Writer on DVD (interesting but ultimately unsatisfying, partly because the protagonist couldn’t possibly have been a writer, he was too dumb! Sheesh!), and generally hung out. Dad’s last Townsend band concert for the season barely dodged a possible rain-out and enjoyed a large and appreciative audience, and my nephew sat in with them and played trumpet. It was cloudy for the peak nights of the Perseid meteor showers, but I saw one very bright meteor on Friday night. I saw that one because I was hanging out laundry at 2:00 a.m. thanks to a bottle of sunscreen leaking all over my swim bag. Ah, summer!

Now that everyone has gone home (my niece and nephew start school today!! 8-( ), I’m back to work, from which I am goldbricking to write this post. I have a book to edit and covers to design as my top priorities this week, and I’ve been shutting things down and sitting on the couch with Pig to read manuscripts in order to reduce potential distractions. Therefore there’s not much news. The watering ban is still in effect, and all the rain is missing Pepperell. The big tomatoes are ripening all at once and I’m eating tomatoes every day; the rest of the garden is faring about as you’d expect. In another week or so I’ll dig the potatoes and see what we’ve got. I’ve gone back to cycling for aerobics, and I’m [finally, after long resistance] trying out Blockbuster’s rent-by-mail service, starting with season two of True Blood. I refuse to sign up with Netflix because I hate their pop-up ads so much, I don’t want to give them my business. I already have a Blockbuster store account, and they’ll accept PayPal. They also have Being Human and other obscure interesting things I’ve wanted to see. It’s cheaper than iTunes, and there are many shows and movies I’d like to see, and cycle to, once without owning them permanently.

Speaking of cover designs, Orbit Books has been doing tongue-in-cheek overviews of fantasy cover art trends for 2008 and 2009. They’re really funny! Part One shows a chart of general cover motifs or cliches; Part Two lists characteristics of heroines on urban fantasy covers.

Media Bistro commented on a bit of trivia about Edith Wharton, who wrote a novel on scraps of brown wrapping paper at age 11 because her mother didn’t want her to be a writer and wouldn’t let her have writing paper. Media Bistro asked readers what they wrote on as a child, and in a later post, reported some of the most unusual answers.

Mostly, I wrote on lined school paper in pen or pencil, but I did have an unusual medium. I worked in a public library that used five-part carbon forms to order books. Each form consisted of four detachable index card size sections (so the pages were about 5″ x 12″) with carbon paper between the different color layers. The bottom layer was card stock and when you’d typed up the orders and separated them, the last one created a temporary card to put in the card catalogue until the book arrived (and now you know how long ago that was!). However, the library only needed two thin forms and the card, so one of my tasks involved removing the unneeded two sheets and their carbons from each form and throwing them away. Except, of course, I didn’t throw them away–I brought them home, hundreds and hundreds of them, and used them as typing paper. I wrote most of a novel on a stack of those long narrow sheets, about two inches thick. I also did a fair amount of writing in those saddle-stapled exam “blue books” I scrounged at school. I’m a serious scavenger. 🙂

Last and least: Many people have commented on “Dr. Laura’s” melt-down. Like me, other commentators pointed out that “the N-bomb” was the least of the issues with what she said. (Indeed, in a different context, it wouldn’t even be an issue: it’s a word, it has a history, we know it’s offensive, people say it, there it is. The problems lie in what “Dr. Laura” said, and thinks, about it.) Since then, “Dr. Laura” has announced that she is cancelling her radio program and retreating to the Internet, where she can join the ranks of notorious toxic bloggers and wreak her damage that way. She complains that she’s doing this to “regain her First Amendment rights.” Have you ever noticed that the people who proclaim their “First Amendment rights” most loudly, and make themselves sound so victimized and oppressed, are always the people who are egregiously abusing those rights, and bemoaning the fact that their hate-speech and verbal battery is being challenged? I wish “Dr. Laura” was capable of recognizing why she offended people, and understand why she’s racist, sexist, homophobic and hurtful…but she isn’t capable of seeing that, and she never will be.

That’s no reason not to give her a hard time, of course. *wry smile*

I already knew that Laura Schlessinger was a pin-headed, homophobic, arrogant, self-involved, narcissistic piece of slime…but this racist rant from her radio show simply takes my breath away. We should send her a white hood and a gasoline-soaked cross with a note that says, “here–this should save you some time and effort in getting your real feelings out there.”

Listen to this. Don’t eat anything first.

(source: Media Matters)

This woman should be taken off the air, now. She’s already done more harm with her bigoted, ignorant attitudes about sexuality, relationships and health than almost anyone now alive. But this really takes the cake. And now she’s apologizing for saying “nigger” out loud? Hon…you don’t get it. You so don’t get it. Those words were the least of the problems with what you just said. You should apologize for breathing.

No. Skip the apology. Just stop doing it.