In Common with Humans

*grump*

I used to get colds very rarely–and I still never get the flu. But since I left the Job From Hell at the pesthouse, er, shelter, my immune system hasn’t been getting challenged as regularly. Your immune system is like everything else, use it or lose it! I’m just way too isolated these days, working at home and still having very little social life (I’m trying to improve that, though!). So, when I go to conventions or hang out with people these days, I tend to get a cold. Nothing serious, just enough to be damned annoying. The most bothersome thing is that the colds make me retain fluid and feel all bloated. I actually was coming down with this one before 3Pi-Con, so I can’t blame the convention for it. I probably picked it up running around with my sister and her crew. I had a slight cold after Boskone but not after Readercon.

So, I’ve got this tiny little cold, not nearly enough to prevent me from doing anything at all, including workouts and mowing the lawn which I’m finishing today. It’s just enough to make me retain fluid, sleep even worse than usual, and feel cranky. On top of that, I succumbed to Cerridwen’s desperate and unceasing begging and let her go out a few times and now I have two patches of mild poison ivy rash on my right arm. I never learn!

Today is the 11th anniversary of my vampire research website By Light Unseen. It went live on August 29, 1997–the date given as “Judgment Day” in the second Terminator movie–and the rest is history. 🙂 I didn’t mark this year’s anniversary with a whole slew of new articles like last year, but I did finally move BLU to its own domain a few months ago, so we continue to evolve!

All summer I’ve been puzzling over what wildlife was making a particular rasping call at night. I wasn’t sure if it was an insect or a vertebrate. I finally found out, because Cerridwen caught one (poor little bastard): some kind of frog! It seems odd, because there aren’t any bodies of water close by. But there must be a healthy population of these frogs because I hear them all night long in the summer. They’re yellowish, about an inch and a half long, and make a two-note sound: “rasp-rasp. rasp-rasp. rasp-rasp.” They’re loud, too.

I went to my dad’s last band concert for the season last night. They ran much later than usual because they were rained out so many times. “America the Beautiful” has been running through my head all day.

Today is the forty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.

You can listen to it here. It still gives me the chills.

I had planned to include this speech in one of my novels and decided I couldn’t do the event justice.

*sigh*

Ursula K. LeGuin wrote a story called “SQ.” It’s too good a story to give away spoilers if you’ve never read it. If you have read it, you’ll understand what I’m talking about when I say that I am starting to feel exactly like the narrator of “SQ” by the end of the story.

Too many people are operating in full crisis mode when there is no crisis. It’s tiring. I just can’t deal with people who are functioning on a 100% non-rational level. 🙁

On the plus side: 3Pi-Con was absolutely fan-fucking-tastic. I had a great time!! I’m going next year! The sole negative fallout is that now I’m grumping that I can’t go to Dragoncon, because I’m all psyched up and I know several people who are going. Michelle Belanger even needs a roommate. (I’m about 14 inches shorter than she is, she wouldn’t even know I was there. *g*) But it’s neither the time, the hotel rate or the convention membership that’s the problem…it’s the fucking traveling. I don’t want to fly post-9/11 for a lot of reasons, it’s too far to drive, and getting to Atlanta is simply too big a hassle.

Maybe next year!

I’ve sent in the programming questionnaire for Albacon, and I think I’ll go ahead and book the hotel room and then see who wants to room with me. 🙂

I sold two copies of Mortal Touch at 3Pi-Con and gave two complimentary Tarot readings; I’ve sold two Kindle editions in the last three days, and the Amazon detail page is up for the hardcover edition.

Now I’m going to go to bed and read more of Phoebe Wray’s Jemma7729 that I swapped her for a copy of Mortal Touch. It’s good so far!

I’ll be doing panels, a reading and generally hanging out at 3Pi-Con in West Springfield, MA this weekend, August 22-24.

On Friday night, I’ll be reading from Mortal Touch at 8:00 p.m.

On Saturday, I will be in a panel on “How to Get Published” at 1:00 p.m., a workshop/panel on “Tarot and Writing” at 2:00 p.m., and “Could Literary Vampires Exist in the Modern World?” at 11:00 p.m. (and that’s not the latest event on the schedule for Saturday!) At 5:00 p.m. I’ll be participating in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading, along with my sister Broads Morven Westfield, Phoebe Wray, Elaine Isaak, Trisha Wooldridge and Michelle Murrain.

Otherwise, I’ll be going to events, hanging out, and helping with the Broad Universe table. I’m offering my usual Convention Special of a free, five-minute, three-card Tarot reading for every copy of Mortal Touch that you buy. 3Pi-Con has at-the-door admission, so if you’re in the area, check it out!

If anyone is curious, we’ve been in an intra-eclipse phase. There was a total eclipse of the Sun at the New Moon on August 1st, and there is a lunar eclipse at the Full Moon tomorrow. Intra-eclipse periods tend to be marked with upsets, reversals, paradoxes, over-emotionalism, crises and just plain weirdness. I don’t know about anyone else, but this one has been hitting me especially hard. My life has just been insane for the last two weeks, especially this week.

My sister Jill and her family have been visiting up at the lake, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time with them. In consequence, I haven’t been getting much work done–most days I haven’t even partially highlighted one thing on my to-do list, which is distressing. I’ve gotten a little more writing done, but that’s all. The hardest part has been that nothing has been planned, partly due to the weather and cancellations of things. I’d wake up to a phone call or message on my machine and suddenly my entire day was changed and I was running off.

On Monday, I joined everyone up in Nashua, unexpectedly, because they changed their plans due to the weather forecast. Monday I usually get laundry and errands done, while Tuesday is chores and more errands. This Monday, I did the laundry, hung it all inside for the umpteenth time this summer because it was raining, went up to Nashua and did abbreviated shopping for myself, then drove up Rte 3 and met my dad and sister, et al for lunch and a movie. Trouble is, I really can’t eat out any more because my diet is now so restricted, and I’ve recently cut down my food intake overall to about a third of what I was eating. So, I just ordered a little side dish of vegetables–and then didn’t finish it, because it seemed to have some kind of sweet sauce on it, and in restaurants, that means corn syrup.

We all went to see “Dark Knight.” I hated it. I’ll talk more about that later.

Then we went to Staples for all my niece’s and nephew’s school supplies. That was successful for them, but in the course of fussing over whether I had a discount card they could use, I lost one of my own receipts. I keep all my receipts and I hate it when I lose one, so I was very disgruntled later on when I got home and couldn’t find it.

On Tuesday, I got up, changed the litter boxes and bunny cage, took the trash and recyclables to the transfer station, baked a blackberry pie for my sister from scratch (blackberries from my yard, homemade 100% whole wheat crust), did my workout and went up to the lake for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Alas, my brother-in-law had doleful news. He had brought his sailboat out a couple of weeks earlier, planning to keep it at the lake here permanently. It’s about thirty years old, and while he was out sailing that afternoon, the entire housing for the mast broke. My dad called a local guy he knows who does bodywork on cars and it appears that the sailboat might be repaired. But my b-i-l was seriously bummed. Anyway, I had supper with everyone and played a 3-1/2 hour D&D adventure with my 13-year-old nephew DMing (he’s actually pretty good) and got home quite late.

The pie, at least, came out perfectly and was a huge success. Here’s a picture

I’m really grouchy, so I did this meme. It did not improve my mood.

Ganked from lourdesmont, majkia and halfmoon_mollie:

After you die… Guardian Angel After death, you will exist as a guardian angel in order to protect your still-living loved ones. You might even inspire a classic Christmas movie.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

This in spite of the fact that I would take advantage of the drunk person (if they were cute enough) and my last thought upon the end of the world would unquestionably be, “damn humans.” Be nice to me, you might wind up with me as your guardian angel!

A few things I forgot!

• This week, I also decided to add Mortal Touch to Google’s Book Search program, so I formatted and uploaded files for that. Those files were “processing,” the last I checked.
• I finished reading a review copy of a book called (take a deep breath) What’s Stopping You? Shatter the 9 Most Common Myths Keeping You from Starting Your Own Business, wrote the review, and I’m just letting it “sit” before I do final revisions and upload it to Blogcritics, where they will be surprised to see that I am still alive. 🙁 The publicist for this book’s authors has e-mailed me three times asking about the review! I can’t fault her on her follow-up, if anyone is looking for a publicist, contact me and I’ll send you her name. 🙂
• I started reading another book I got a free review copy of for Blogcritics, Vampyres of Hollywood by Adrienne Barbeau and Michael Scott. This one is very entertaining!
• I paid out my very first author advance. (I would have paid another one by now, but somebody hasn’t sent the PayPal information yet and will require another nudge.)
• I got a check for book sales from Lightning Source, although it was for considerably less than the advance. Ah, well.
• I’ve written another 1,500 words on The Longer the Fall, and will have more done before I go to bed tonight. I’m at the part that’s very hard to write.

It’s been a busy week! I’m glad we didn’t get hit by a tornado, it would have been such a nuisance!

Here it is, 08/08/08! I hope everyone is having an agreeable day. I went to the library and borrowed “Brokeback Mountain” to get me through the next two cycling sessions. (I never sit and watch a DVD anymore, I watch everything while I’m cycling now.) At last I’ll get to see it! Poor Heath…

Here is what “scattered showers” look like:

Kind of looks like the entire Northeast is growing mold, doesn’t it? That’s what it feels like! My dad’s band concert was rained out last night again, for the fifth time. They’ve been rained out as many times as they’ve played! Everything is wet, all the time. I can’t mow the lawns because I have an electric lawn mower and the grass is too wet. It’s August 8th and I’m wearing a sweatshirt because I’m cold. This is one summer for the books, and not in a good way! The above radar shot has been typical day after day after day. A couple of hours ago–I kid you not–it was pouring rain, the sun was shining, and there were two close lightning strikes with big booms of thunder–all at the same time!

I’ve had a busy week, though. I finished the dust jacket for the hardcover edition of Mortal Touch, assigned an ISBN to that edition, entered it into Bowker/Books in Print, and uploaded it to Lightning Source (the printer). The proof is on the way. I made all the little corrections I wanted to make to the text–all very minor things, they didn’t affect the typesetting or anything, but I wanted to fix them. The proof copy from Lulu with the color adjustments to the front cover came back, and it’s just the way I wanted it. So, I’ve uploaded “revisions” to the cover and book block of the paperback edition at Lightning Source and that proof is on the way. If it’s okay, I’ll be ordering another short run, because I’m down to the last carton of the first print run and I am hoping to hand-sell a significant number of books between now and the end of the year. I formatted a PDF e-book edition, with “bookmarks” so the PDF has a clickable table of contents, and I’ve assigned an ISBN number to that. I’m still pondering how to distribute the e-book edition, though. The last edition I need to set up is the audiobook.

Part of this is setting up the protocols and procedures for all future titles, because from now on, everything I publish will be released in all these editions simultaneously, except possibly the audiobook editions, because they take longer to produce.

I do have a minor quandary, though. I “went live” on CreateSpace because someone posted to the SPAN e-group that the last day for Amazon’s “free setup” on CreateSpace Pro was July 31st. No sooner did I punch through Mortal Touch on CreateSpace, than Amazon extended the “free setup” to December 31st! And then, something else happened. After a month with no Amazon sales, suddenly I got a whole batch of them, all at once. Whether this had anything to do with my switching to CreateSpace or not, I don’t know. I was wondering if Amazon subtly ramped up the promotion on its own books, by dropping them into their “also bought” combinations on other book pages, and so on. But maybe the flurry of sales was just a coincidence (it was both the print and the Kindle edition). I can’t complain about sales, and I earn 2-1/2 times as much per book on the CreateSpace edition as I do with Lightning Source, because of the deep discount I give to the wholesalers. But here’s my quandary: I want to upload the adjusted cover and corrected book block to CreateSpace. If I do that, the book will be taken offline until I approve the new proof. I hate to do that if my sales are picking up! So, I’m chewing that over. I need to correct the Kindle edition, too, but that’s instantaneous.

It’s the first week of the month, so I’ve had meetings. On Monday night was church Parish committee meeting. On Tuesday was the IPNE Member Call-in at 4:00 p.m. and the IPBE Board conference call at 7:00 p.m., which went until 8:30 because we spent so much time talking about the “publishing university” event we’re hosting in November. This Saturday evening is the monthly online meeting, in IRC, of a vampiric community group I’m in.

Wednesday was solar Lughnasadh–the day when the Sun was at the literal midpoint, 15 degrees of Leo, between Solstice and Equinox. I got up about a half hour early to get my ritual done. In the afternoon I did the Tarot reading for the octave, which was perfectly ghastly. It started with The Tower and ended with Death, and nothing in between was much of an improvement. I just don’t think I can read the Tarot for myself, *sigh*.

My sister and her family are arriving tomorrow night for a week, so I’ll be spending some time with them. I talked to my dad last night but forgot to ask whether he got the power boat working. My sister wants to take the kids water skiing a lot of the time they’re here–but that will depend on the weather, too. No water skiing in thunderstorms!

There’s a fucking tornado warning up!!!!

TORNADO WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAUNTON MA
239 PM EDT THU AUG 7 2008

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN TAUNTON HAS ISSUED A

* TORNADO WARNING FOR…
WEST CENTRAL WORCESTER COUNTY IN CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS…
SOUTHEASTERN FRANKLIN COUNTY IN WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS…
CENTRAL HAMPSHIRE COUNTY IN WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS…
THIS INCLUDES THE CITY OF AMHERST…

* UNTIL 330 PM EDT

* AT 236 PM EDT…TRAINED WEATHER SPOTTERS REPORTED A FUNNEL CLOUD
NEAR NEW SALEM…OR 11 MILES NORTHEAST OF AMHERST…MOVING EAST AT
10 MPH.

* THE TORNADO WILL BE NEAR…
NEW SALEM BY 250 PM EDT…
PETERSHAM AND 6 MILES SOUTHWEST OF PHILLIPSTON BY 330 PM EDT…

If I don’t get another chance, goodbye, everyone, it’s been great knowing you! 8-(