In Common with Humans

Publishing news:

I’ve been working on spreadsheets, and accounting records, and contracts, and contract amendments, and book sales figures, and templates for printing reports and invoices and statements and packing slips…all that fun stuff that an intern would do if I could afford one. 🙂

Basically, I’ve been following my own advice–the advice I so glibly gave at Barbara Krasnoff’s talk at Readercon when I urged everyone to “get the professional infrastructure in place before you need it.” Of course, I had the accounting spreadsheets in place, and I’ve kept records of every book and every penny that’s come in and gone out. I’m scrupulous about that, with my personal finances as well as the business. But things have been growing and changing so fast, and so much has happened just in the last year–as I realized when I was writing my bio for this year’s Readercon Program Book. My business records had been built up in layers like the Weasleys’ house in Harry Potter. I’d add things for new books and new situations and not go back and change all the past items so they were consistent. Notes were scattered around here and there depending when a book came out. I didn’t have an easy way to generate reports and invoices and so on, each one had to be done manually, one at a time. Brodart caught me by surprise, and suddenly I was selling books to wholesalers–lots of books. I’ve gotten everything set up with Baker & Taylor now, and they want monthly statements. I need to start paying author royalties, and I’m overdue sending out quarterly reports.

All that is now fixed! I’ve slaved and snarled over the Spreadsheets From Hell, and reached one point where a solution so incredibly obvious suddenly penetrated my thick skull that I just felt like banging my head against the wall for an hour or two to knock the stupidity out of it. The recent news items about all the problems that Night Shade Books in San Francisco were having, and the accompanying bad PR, and their explanations including the plea that they “grew too fast” and didn’t have procedures and systems in place…I took all that as a serious object lesson. By Light Unseen Media is growing and I need to stay ahead of that growth–way ahead of it.

I actually had my very first panic attack over the sudden alarm that I might be too successful. I’ve just sent off some review copies that are a long shot, but could be extremely influential if the books are reviewed. I was in bed trying to sleep, and suddenly I thought: “but…but…what if Baker & Taylor gets tons of orders for this book, and I have to front all that money and print and ship them, and then I don’t get paid for months and months, and the profit margin is teensy anyway, and…” *gulp*!!! I finally got myself sternly by the scruff of the neck and reminded myself that this is one problem I’ll just have to manage when and if it manifests. But this is the head space that I’m starting to get into! I’m actually starting to worry more about getting a tiger by the tail than about tanking!

If you’re inferring from this that sales are rising steadily, you’re absolutely correct. Ebook sales are a big part of this, and I’m running right at the head of the pack with those. Obviously, there won’t be any capitalization problem there no matter how wildly successful the ebook editions get. 🙂 But print books are still important and I have no intentions whatsoever of discontinuing them.

This isn’t to say that the news isn’t a bit mixed. All of BLUM’s ebook titles are now up on Barnes & Noble for the Nook, the Apple iBookstore and the Kindle store. I just rectified all the ebook prices so every ebook in every market is the same price, $6.99, and the Kindle editions qualify for the 70% royalty rate. Smashwords is finally getting sales reports and payment from Barnes & Noble–and BLUM titles have sold! But we’re still waiting for the revenues from all the other vendors. Kobobooks still lists only our first three titles. The Sony ebookstore has finally listed two of our titles, and I’m waiting to see when and if the rest of them show up. I have a sneaky suspicion that they know my name at Sony by now, and it’s probably on somebody’s dart board. *wry look*

I’ve gotten a couple of returns from Lightning Source, which makes me grumpy. The returned books, however, are in mint condition so I’m sending them right back out, and I’ll pay the authors royalties on those sales, even though the returns count against net profits–if I can resell the books, the loss for both of us is minimized. Accounting is a bitch, but I’m very big on minimizing losses.

My biggest news, which I can post here because the letters to the authors are in the mail, is that I’m raising the royalty rate that I pay BLUM authors for ebooks. I’ve been following the controversy about ebook royalties in the writers’ communities and trade groups, and the counter arguments from the Big Six publishers moaning and groaning about how ebooks aren’t any less expensive to produce and they have to be priced high “to be fair to authors” (who riposte that the royalties they’re being paid for ebooks are monumentally UNfair). As far as I’m concerned, the Big Six megaconglomerates are completely off the mark when it comes to ebooks. They don’t understand where ebooks stand in readers’ psychological book hierarchy–ebooks are replacing the mass market paperback, NOT hardcovers–they’re insanely over-pricing them, and they’re very clearly screwing their authors on ebook editions. I think that as a publisher, not as an author! After I ran my own numbers in every possible direction, and looked at where the ebook markets are very obviously going, I decided that the authors’ trade groups were right. So as of this quarter, I’ll start paying a higher royalty for all ebook editions.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing in my, uh, night job for the last couple of days!

David McCandless was inspired to create a graphic image–just a pair of boxes in proportionate sizes–illustrating “cognitive surplus.” As discussed by writer Clay Shirky, this refers to “the idea of spare brainpower in the world’s collective mind just sitting there waiting, wanting, to be harnessed.” McCandless compares the 800 billion hours per year spent watching television just by American adults, to the 100 million hours, total, spent by everyone involved, to create the whole of Wikipedia.

Take a look.

And you know, this is always the very first thing I think when I hear the constant, perennial complaint from people that they “don’t have time”–that they don’t have time to write, don’t have time to create, don’t have time to exercise, don’t have time to cook healthy food, don’t have time to read. “How much time do you spend, every day, watching TV? Watching TV and doing nothing else?” And that’s not even considering the mind-numbing, paranoia-inducing, brain-washing, creativity-killing effects that every minute of TV has in and of itself. Just as a time-sink alone, it’s unparalleled in human history. You can do some things while you watch TV, including exercising and cooking healthy food. But if you seriously want to write–that TV’s got to be turned off, and not only while you’re actually writing.

Just think if everyone did that–and started reading, instead. Just think of it.

It’s been a low-energy week so far. Mostly I’ve been doing lots and lots and lots of catch-up, stuff that piled up long before Readercon while I worked on the cover design for Blood Justice (which will be changing somewhat, that was a hasty job) and then the Readercon Souvenir Book, and then Readercon prep. I guess I take my readings very seriously! I rehearsed the Theodore Sturgeon story, my own reading from The Longer the Fall and Shakespeare for hours. In fact, when I read over my con report, I realized that never had it been so obvious just what I truly enjoy about conventions. All I did was attend other people’s readings and do my own! I’m just not that interested in panels and talks, and being on panels is kind of stressful. Oh, it’s not stage fright, quite the contrary: I’m such a pathetic ham, drop me in front of an audience and I am so there. But I do panels very well because I do tons of homework for them, and I’m never sure what it all amounts to when the dust settles. You do the panel, the audience applauds politely (at least sometimes), and that’s it–off they stampede to the next event. It’s like being back in high school, all we need is the locker doors slamming in the halls. 🙂

I’ve been reading a lot of Readercon reports on other attendees’ blogs, and I feel like I went to a different convention than everyone else, because almost everyone else is talking about their favorite panels (none of those being the one that I was on) or readings that I didn’t get to. But I guess with Readercon’s incredibly dense schedule, that’s almost inevitable. The closest thing to a universally attended event at Readercon is Kirk Poland–and I didn’t go!

I’m definitely attending Albacon in October, however. I’ve gone for the last two years in a row and had a very good time, and that’s the only convention besides Readercon of which I can say that. I did enjoy Arisia, but they’ve now moved to a hotel where I shall not venture again, so I can’t attend Arisia as long as it stays there. Boskone is off my docket, as are ConBust and Pi-Con; tried them out, they’re not a good fit. But I’d kept Albacon as a tentative for this year and that got firmed up at Readercon. (Going to dinner with people at Readercon is perilous. 🙂 ) I’m looking forward to it! And I’m very glad I’m not trying to go to two conventions in August and juggle the big family get-together that always occurs that month. Last year, with Worldcon, family and Pi-Con one after the other, August was crazy–and I’d just released Gideon Redoak, too.

I finally got out and did yard work today. The freshly repaired lawn mower is working beautifully, and I’m trying very hard not to abuse it by trying to mow grass that’s too thick and heavy for it, or running over rocks. It’s been so hot and dry, the grass wasn’t as thick as it would have been in previous summers. Today I did a “preliminary catch up mowing” with the mower at its highest height setting to get the long overgrown grass. I got both the front and back yards done, and they look much tidier. In a few days, when the mown grass has dried out, I’ll go back and mow shorter and more thoroughly. But I finished just as a batch of thunderstorms was moving in. We had the most amazing sunset as a result: when I opened my eyes after sunset attunement, the very air was glowing golden, and the whole sky looked like it was on fire, with the setting sun illuminating the underside of the thunderclouds. It was unspeakably beautiful and very eerie at the same time, and it lasted for some minutes, the light growing deeper and ruddier as the sunset faded. While I watched, I saw a flash of cloud-to-cloud lightning lick across the glowing sky. Very strange!

The black raspberries are almost finished, but the blackberries are starting to ripen. The bachelor’s buttons and marigolds are blooming in the garden, all the tomatoes are loaded with green fruit and the first few cherry tomatoes have ripened. I’ve officially eaten the first fruits from my garden! The zucchini and pumpkins have dozens of blossoms but don’t seem to have set any fruit yet. I still need to do some serious weeding (I was going to start that today, but the thunderstorms intervened).

Otherwise not much to report. I’ve been taking late night walks instead of cycling when it’s especially hot and humid. My town is so safe, peaceful and quiet–and I have such good night vision–that it’s really very pleasant to walk at 2:00 a.m. The weather was lovely for Dad’s band concert last night, but the grass on the Common is almost all dead, it’s been so hot and dry. I can feel the summer turning, though. Dawn is getting later (I know because I’m awake for it 🙂 ) and sunset is getting earlier each day. The heat won’t last much longer. Dad remarked last night that he only has three more concerts to go, and I said, “Where has the summer gone?” Kind of a shame. I’ll borrow a theme from several of my LJ friends and tell you what I’m wearing, right now and most of the time: Underwear. Jeans. A sports bra. And that is all. Ah, bliss! 🙂

My hat went to Readercon this weekend and had a great time, basking in attention and compliments. (My hat has gotten very popular lately and it’s something of a mystery!) I think that I went to Readercon, too, but I can’t quite remember! But I was only semi-attending, anyway, because I was commuting from home and I spent so much time prepping for my program events. I was pretty much invisible during the convention–I don’t think anyone knew I was on the Committee because I had a program participant badge, and no one actually knows who I am as a program participant because, well, no one really knows who I am. But they love my hat! 🙂

Readercon itself went very well this year. We sold out and had the highest attendance ever, some of the programming items were SRO, problems in any area were the barest minimum one could reasonably expect, and we heard lots of positive feedback and very few discouraging words. A good time was had by all, and that’s always gratifying. I went down early on Thursday to help out with set-up, and things were going so smoothly, I had nothing to do! It was lucky that I was there to sign for the Souvenir Book delivery, though, because that was a little earlier than promised. It came in thirteen boxes and looked good, or at least, I thought that it did. There were a couple of Committee meetings in the afternoon before the convention started and after that, I mainly chilled out and helped with a few things as needed.

On Thursday night, I attended readings. I enjoyed Jim Freund’s kick-off of the Theodore Sturgeon Tribute reading series with his reading of “A Saucer of Loneliness” at 8:00 p.m. After that, I heard my friend Elaine Isaak’s reading of her affecting zombie short story, which will be published in a New Hampshire-themed anthology in a few months. The last reader of the evening was F. Brett Cox, who read an excerpt from his unfinished novel about characters who had experienced a UFO contact years earlier. His selection included a rapid-fire summary of UFO history starting several centuries ago and was full of allusions and references that I recognized, and Mr. Cox’s overview of them was very well done. It’s always fun when you can identify allusions in fiction, but this was especially entertaining for its craft. After the readers concluded, I went home to bake two large pans of chocolate/chocolate chip brownies and rehearse Shakespeare and my own reading materials.

My normal working schedule now has me going to bed around 5:00 a.m. and getting up at 12:30 p.m. To get to Readercon, I was getting up at 8:00 a.m. and this, I think, is the main thing that tripped me up all weekend. I’m just getting too old to blithely go without sleep for three days at a time like I used to (being “nocturnal” generally means “sleepless” unless you’re an independently wealthy hermit 🙁 ).

My first programming item was on Friday from noon until 3:00 p.m., when I participated in the A Midsummer Night’s Dream reading with lots of really talented people. (I’d name them all, but there was some swapping around and fill-ins and I’d hate to leave anyone out.) It was tremendous fun and we had a surprisingly large and enthusiastic audience who enjoyed it with us. Afterwards, I attended “The Best of the Small Press” panel, with Washington Post book writer Michael Dirda, Gavin J. Grant of Small Beer Press, Sean Wallace of Prime Books and Robert Freeman Wexler, moderated by Rick Wilbur. For obvious reasons, I’m fascinated by anything related to small press publishing–this panel didn’t so much give an overview as discuss a number of general topics related to the theme.

At 4:00 p.m., I was a designated “participant” for Cecilia Tan‘s presentation, “How Electrons Have Changed Writing and Reading.” I wasn’t needed as a contributor for that so I just listened to the discussion, all of which covered information I’m very familiar with about ebooks, ereaders and recent changes in the industry. After that, I wanted to rehearse my own readings some more, so I found a place to do that for about two hours.

I was scheduled for a Kaffeeklatsch at 8:00 p.m. I’d baked the brownies for that, and I had Hershey’s Kisses in By Light Unseen Media’s colors (silver, blue and purple) and some flyers and things for the table. Alas, only one person, my author friend Morven Westfield, came to my Kaffeeklatsch. I knew it was a long shot and many of the Kaffeeklatsches were not well attended. We shared the room with author Jeff Hecht’s equally bereft Kaffeeklatsch, and the three of us had a very lively and enjoyable conversation for an hour. At 9:00 p.m. GoH Nalo Hopkinson came in for her Kaffeeklatsch, and I gave them some of the brownies and Kisses. I was a little bummed out, because it would have been fun to talk about publishing and vampires and whatever with some interested people, but that’s the way it goes!

By the time the Meet the Pros(e) Party started, quite late, I was very tired and didn’t have any party energy. I stayed to hear the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award winner for 2010 (Mark Clifton), chatted about screenplay writing, and went home to get a lot of chores done and fall into bed.

On Saturday I was up bright and early to donate the remaining brownies to the Tiptree Bake Sale and go to the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading at 10:00 a.m. This included several new readers I’d never heard before as well as some of my friends in Broad Universe, and was very well attended. Immediately afterwards, at 11:00 a.m., I did my own reading, a chapter from my newly released novel The Longer the Fall. I think I had the largest audience that I have ever had for a reading, but I ran out of time and had to cut myself off, which I didn’t expect after all my rehearsing! I’d clocked that chapter a dozen times at about 22-23 minutes, but when I’m playing to an audience, I always slow down and it does create problems.

At 12:00 p.m. I read my assigned story in the Theodore Sturgeon tribute, “Like Yesterday.” I went right after Samuel R. Delany, and I knew exactly what that meant: I slipped into the jam-packed, SRO room for the end of his reading, then watched everyone but about two audience members and the Sturgeons follow Mr. Delany out. 🙁 But I had a few listeners, including the wonderful person who, after a minute of agonizing, chose to stay and hear me read over going to a panel with John Crowley, which is absolutely the most flattering thing that’s ever happened to me at a con! My reading went very well and I signed a release for the recording, so it may be available as a podcast or download at some point. I was honored to meet Noël Sturgeon, Theodore’s daughter (he had seven children), and her son, who looks eerily like Christian Slater. The thirteen-volume collection of Sturgeon’s work is an impressive achievement. I spoke briefly about why a vampire monomaniac would admire Sturgeon–for his outside-the-box treatment of the vampire theme, Some of Your Blood–and how I can still quote chunks of the very first Sturgeon story I ever read, at age 12, “Bianca’s Hands.”

And after that…I crashed. I had a veggie wrap from the lunch concession and then sat in a chair by the windows near the elevators, pecking away at a journal entry on my netbook and watching the rain storm that (I learned later) flooded Storrow Drive in Boston with four feet of water. The only reason I was conscious (technically) was because I couldn’t lie down! I sat a while in the Green Room looking like a coma patient: eyes open, nobody home! I revived enough to go to K.A. Laity’s eclectic reading at 3:30 p.m. She began by playing a bit on a Finnish musical instrument called, I think, a kantele, then read the first half of a long zombie/Western crossover story that was so entertaining, we made her stay and read the whole thing. (It was the last event in that room for the afternoon so we were darned if we were going to be left hanging!)

I had a very nice dinner in the pub with Morven and K.A. Laity, but Morven had to leave after dinner. At 8:00 p.m. the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition was scheduled, and this is not my cuppa. I was happy to be invited to join Shira Lipkin and some of her very talented friends in an impromptu group reading of Twelfth Night until 10:00 p.m. I really enjoyed that! When we broke off, I went up to the Con Suite to check out the gourmet desserts being offered by Boskone and Philcon, and they were indeed fancy. (I used the stairs instead of the elevators as much as possible, and this was the first time the stairs were crowded, as Kirk Poland had also just let out.) Then, while I could still drive, I headed home to do some personal work and fall into bed.

On Sunday, I was up early and off to be a “participant” in the Interstitial Arts Foundation Town Meeting at 10:00 a.m. I just listened to the discussion here since there were plenty of active participants and it was well-attended. Right after that I was a “participant” for Barbara Krasnoff’s presentation, “How to Write for a Living When You Can’t Live Off Your Fiction.” This event, which Barbara did last year as a Kaffeeklatsch, was SRO and could easily have filled one of the larger state rooms. I did make some contributions to this discussion (possibly because I was actually awake, at least briefly!). When that concluded, I went to the Con Suite to nosh leftover breakfast goodies from the Viable Paradise breakfast spread and various snacks, which was a big mistake on my part.

I think I was a little nervous about my last programming event at 1:00 p.m., my only real panel: “Racial Diversity and Cover Art” with GoH Nalo Hopkinson, N.K. Jemison and Alaya Dawn Johnson, moderated by Tor Books editor Liz Gorinsky. I was on the panel because I’ve published a book, Krymsin Nocturnes, by an African American author, Joseph Armstead, with black characters, and the black hero of the book is on the cover, and I have quite an interesting story about that. I told that story, and the rest of the discussion involved other stories about cover art controversies and related issues, such as the categorization and shelving of books by Writers of Color. It seemed to go well, and after the panel, an audience member came up and bought the copy of Krymsin Nocturnes I’d held up to illustrate my story! But I still felt just a bit…uncomfortably self-conscious for the rest of the afternoon, I’m not sure why. Fatigue probably had something to do with it.

At 3:30 p.m. I went to the “debriefing” that ends the con, which was very lightly attended–no one had any complaints! For the next few hours we had some Committee meetings and post-con clean-up and business, and finally I headed home with a car full of leftover food from the Green Room and Con Suite. So ended a very successful Readercon.

I’m honestly not sure what people thought of the Souvenir Book. I heard precisely two comments about it on Thursday, both of them basically, “looks good.” That was it: I didn’t get one single further piece of feedback, positive or negative, about the Souvenir Book, not even when I asked point-blank. It doesn’t look like I’ll be doing it next year, anyway. I actually don’t think people read the Souvenir Book, at least not at the con–there’s so much else to do, and it’s all people have time for to read enough of the Program Guide to figure out what program items they want to see. But if you were at Readercon, please do read the fiction pieces by Nalo Hopkinson and Charles Stross in the Souvenir Book, at the very least, because both of them are really entertaining. 🙂

…since the days when we rocked and rolled so much, Fort Devens made us “off limits” to base personnel! (That is a true story.)

Wow. My kitchen window thermometer hit 102° today before it started slipping back down. I only saw it at 101° yesterday–it probably went higher, because the Official High For Pepperell yesterday was 102° and my house usually runs a degree or two higher. The dewpoint was a gasping 70°, and it’s still really high–71° right now. That’s pretty much Aqua-lung territory. The poor animals are perfectly miserable; I don’t have pets, I have throw rugs. You’d think the cats would go down into the crawl space, where they regularly prowl around for critters, but I guess they’re not the brightest lights on the tree!

Tomorrow Readercon starts! I’m commuting to the con, which takes some of the pressure off. I can run home every night to do more reading prep, print out or retrieve things I need, bake brownies for the By Light Unseen Media Kaffeeklatsch (8:00 p.m. on Friday night!), take care of the animals and incidently, do a New Moon/Solar Eclipse ritual on Saturday night. (I’m not going to try to squeeze in workouts, though: I’ll give my muscles a few days off and then shock them when I resume on Monday. That tends to give you great results, actually, as long as you don’t do it too often.)

I feel a little silly, actually. Readercon is the only con I’m definitely attending this year. A few months ago, I wasn’t going to do any programming. I’d gotten discouraged by my convention experiences over the past two years and figured I’d just hang out and schmooze all weekend. Then the invitation for program signup went out, and I couldn’t resist…then I thought maybe I’d put in for a BLUM Kaffeeklatsch, and what the heck, couldn’t hurt to ask for a reading time, and hey, the Sturgeon read-a-thon sounded really fun, and so did the A Midsummer Night’s Dream read-through, and…now my name in the Program Book Index has this huge list of numbers after it! 8-( But not a lot of panels or things, it’s a lot of fun stuff–fun for everyone, I hope, not just the participants! My Sturgeon story, “Like Yesterday,” which was originally published in Rolling Stone, is an absolute hoot. I’m reading it at 12:00 p.m. Saturday, come enjoy! Especially if “you don’t remember the 60s because you were there,” ha! 😉

Yesterday (having spent the holiday weekend working) I took a goof-off break and went up to the lake to hang out with Dad and my sister, niece and nephew. I feel kind of bad that I’ve seen so little of them, not to mention the cousins that were visiting over the holiday weekend–I only saw them on Friday evening! We had dinner and played games and went swimming…and went swimming…and went swimming…and paddled the paddle boat around, and it was quite a nice time. I baked a pie using black raspberries from my back yard and the foolproof, but rich, butter pastry recipe that is now my standard pastry formula, and it came out delectably well. Everyone is visiting again in August and I should be able to enjoy more time with them then.

Before I went up to the lake, I went to Nashua with seven packages of book orders to drop off with UPS, and ran a couple of errands. I checked an iPad in the Apple store and The Longer the Fall is live in the iBookstore! (Come to my reading at Readercon, Saturday at 11:00 a.m., and hear Chapter Four. 🙂 ) I made some follow-up phone calls and took care of various business matters that were on hold over the holiday. And I won a contest! I won a drawing on Bitten By Books for Holly Black’s new book and a pair of black leather gloves! That’s cool–I never win anything!

Anyway, back to work! My printer, or possibly it’s the wireless printer server, is being annoyingly uncooperative. I might just move the blasted thing in here and connect it directly because I’m printing cards and special forms and other things that I don’t want to mess up and waste ink and special papers. What a pain, grrf. On the other hand…I’ve gotten accustomed to all my sophisticated technology so fast–listen to me whine! I’m so spoiled! *wry smile*

At 1:30 p.m. this afternoon, my kitchen window thermometer read 99°. There is a dry well under my clothesline with a flat concrete cap. I went out in bare feet to hang up the laundry (which probably dried in 0.3 seconds), and the concrete cap was so hot, I couldn’t stand on it in my bare feet!

It’s glorious. It can be like this every single day from now to October! I don’t want to go near anyplace with air conditioning! (Alas, I’ll have to for Readercon–don’t be surprised if I’m outside the hotel basking in the heat as often as possible!). I don’t even have an air conditioned car, far less an air conditioner in my house. Eight months of the year, I freeze with my thermostat turned down to 56°. For two years, we basically haven’t had a summer, it’s been so cold and rainy. It’s summer! At long, long, last, it’s finally summer.

You’re not going to hear me complain about the heat! Not even when I finally get out to mow the lawn! Not even when I’m doing my workouts at 3:00 a.m. with the fan on full blast a foot away and I’m mopping myself with a cold cloth just to get through the routine! Not me! I’ve been waiting so long for this! This is what summer should be!

Mind you, I love winter too–in its place in the cycle. But I get so sick of being so cold, and wearing three layers of clothes indoors and hauling in firewood every day and going to the compost pile in the snow. Besides, I have a garden, and I don’t want that awful fungus thing to hit my tomatoes and potatoes. Weather like this makes that less likely.

I’m working hard on BLUM business and Readercon prep, and it looks like I can take some time tomorrow to go up to the lake and hang out a bit with my sister, niece and nephew. I’m going to make a pie from the black raspberries I’m picking in the back yard, they’re peaking now. I’ve picked a short chapter from The Longer the Fall for my reading, and read through the Sturgeon story, which is very funny, biting satire. I’m getting book shipments packed up and ready to send tomorrow and working on my financial records. So much to do! But tomorrow–I’m going swimming. 🙂

Back to work!

I get to read Puck in the Readercon A Midsummer Night’s Dream reading!

At least, I hope I do. I won’t get all invested in it because the email says, “Parts subject to change.” But I really wanted to read Puck. I didn’t think there was a chance in Perdition, even though there are those who might regard me as, well, a bit Puckish. *wry smile* But this will be so much fun, I honestly don’t care what part I read!

I’m not the only Puck, I’m just reading that part for the first hour, Acts I and II. After that I read Helena. Isn’t she supposed to be the tall one? I’ll stand on a chair. 🙂

Goodness, I have three things to rehearse now! My reading, Theodore Sturgeon’s story and Shakespeare! I better start working on them!

I hope everyone is having a great Independence Day. It’s just another work day for me. I’m catching up on things that got backlogged while I worked on cover designs and Souvenir Books–purchase orders and accounting stuff, mostly.

The Readercon 21 Souvenir Book looks terrific. I approved the proof on Friday and it will be delivered to the hotel on Thursday, the first day of the convention. Picking up my sister, niece and nephew after I checked the proof went smoothly, although Logan International Airport has some serious deficiencies in the communications area. I got pretty frustrated trying to find out where to meet incoming passengers who don’t have checked baggage. It turns out all incoming passengers are funneled straight down to the baggage claim area–they’re strictly separating incoming passengers from the gate area and departing passengers now. Trouble is, the baggage claim area, at least in Terminal C, looks like a grungy basement with very few places to sit–it doesn’t look like a waiting area where they expect people to be waiting to meet arrivals, and it’s not at all clear where the arriving passengers will be coming from. By comparison, Manchester (NH) is a model of clarity and cleanliness. Logan also has a whole new way of paying for the parking garage, which is similar to the new “Charlie Card” system in the T and probably was implemented at the same time (MassPort runs them both). It’s not hard to use, but it’s not explained very well (I have a Charlie Card, so I didn’t have a problem with the parking payment machine, but I tremble for people who aren’t used to the system!). It also cost me $12 to park for about 90 minutes.

But, we all fit, snugly, into my little Aveo and got out of the airport, and were going in the opposite direction to most of the impressive Friday-afternoon-of-a-holiday-weekend traffic back-ups on I-95 and Rte 3. I had dinner with folks at the lake and even got a nice refreshing swim with a borrowed swim suit. (I didn’t bring anything of my own with me because I completely emptied the car out to make sure I had room for four people, luggage and my nephew’s trumpet.)

I went to Pepperell’s fireworks show last night. I donated money toward the fireworks earlier this year, because the town funding was zeroed out at Town Meeting. Pepperell is very proud of its annual “Fourth of July Gala,” but they do a lot of fund-raising all year and people argued that they could raise a bit more money, or not do fireworks. They raised the money. The fireworks were spectacular and the viewing was prime. They were practically going off straight overhead, which was very cool. Alas, I always find the rest of Pepperell’s “Gala” to be awfully…honky-tonk. But I suppose if I want it to change, I should join the Fourth of July Committee, and not just whine! I walked down and back, which is so much simpler than trying to drive and park–there was a huge crowd, probably even bigger this year because so many towns have cancelled their fireworks due to the economy. I applauded the veterans whose names were read, stood up for the National Anthem, and read queries on Pig while we all waited for the fireworks to start (which I also did at the airport on Friday–read on Pig, I mean, not applaud veterans, although I might have had I seen some 🙂 ). Pig’s getting a lot of mileage these days! 🙂 So, it was an agreeable couple of hours, and constitutes my Independence Day observance this year.

I got a few additions to my Readercon schedule from the Programming committee (who are also spending the holiday weekend working!). These aren’t major items for me–they’re discussions for which I am a designated “participant.”

Friday 4:00 p.m. How Electrons have Changed Writing and Reading. Discussion leader, Cecilia Tan.

Sunday 10:00 a.m. Interstitial Arts Foundation Town Meeting. Discussion leader, Sarah Smith.

Sunday 11:00 a.m. How to Write for a Living When You Can’t Live Off Your Fiction. Discussion leader, Barbara Krasnoff.

I just have to say…I have totally lost all respect for Neil Gaiman at this point. Being a popular author just means you’re lucky, it doesn’t make you God. Gaiman should refrain from trashing entire fictional genres of which he is obviously, and painfully, ignorant in the extreme. I’m really sick of ignorami who jump on the vampire bandwagon and make stupid pronouncements just because they know that will get them some attention–and I don’t care how big a Celebrity they are. Of course, loudly pontificating about topics you’re completely clueless about is practically a national pasttime in America these days. To paraphrase Up the Down Staircase: “He don’t know nothin’ and he’s tryin’ to teach it.” *heavy sigh* (I wouldn’t be so harsh, but this is his second offense.)

Back to work…I’m wrestling with spreadsheets and mail merge, without the cooperation of the printer which decided to hang everything up until it got a new magenta ink cartridge. *grump*

How busy have I been? I’ve been so busy that I have two checks sitting here that I haven’t gotten to the bank yet to deposit! Yes, that’s “checks,” plural. That’s too busy! 🙁

The Readercon 21 Souvenir Book went to the printer yesterday afternoon. Tomorrow morning I’m getting up early to drive into Somerville to check the proof, and I hope, approve it. There would have to be something really egregiously wrong with it for me not to approve it, though! After that, I can finally relax about the Souvenir Book–but I can’t relax too much because I’m going straight to Logan Airport from the printer to pick up my sister, niece and nephew who are flying in from Chicago to spend the holiday with Dad. I don’t know how much I’ll see of them because I have tons of backlogged BLUM work to clear up and tons of Readercon prep to do (see below). But they’re certainly going to have spectacular weather for a vacation week on the lake, wow.

The postcard for Blood Justice arrived from Vistaprint and looks great! I made a new promotional color flyer for BLUM’s 2010 titles so far and I just mailed a packet off by priority mail to David Burton, who will be promoting Blood Justice at the San Diego Comic-Con. I saved a few postcards and flyers to put out at Readercon, and I’ll be doing more promo materials to send to other cons.

UPS left the postcards on the side stoop, probably because the newspaper box was stuffed with two Boston Globes that I hadn’t even gotten down to retrieve yet. They have now joined the stack of a week’s worth (and counting…) of Globes waiting to be read! 🙁

I’ve gotten the lawn mower back from the repair shop but I have no idea when I’ll actually get out to mow the lawn! The black raspberries are ripening and I’m picking about a half-cup per day. The blackberries will be coming in a little later and I’m going to be buried in those. I might have to make jelly or wine or something else that requires huge amounts of fruit!

Dad’s concert went fine tonight–the weather was a little chilly, but there was no rain or even the slightest threat thereof, which was…a novelty, to say the least. *wry look* In fact, some of the grass on the Common was downright brown. The fund raising group doing the “lawn party,” as they call it, was the Townsend Rod and Gun Club, which had an assortment of lifesize and life-like fiberglass animals scattered around the Common, some of them, I swear, with bullet holes in them. There was also more weaponry being carried around (granted, mostly of the bow and knife variety) than you usually see in a public venue these days, although both the Minutemen and the veterans’ groups have done rifle volleys at concerts for special occasions. Someone had a rather impressive crossbow. I also was chatting with a guy who was spinning angora rabbit hair with a spinning wheel, right there on the Common! That was fascinating! I learned to spin with a drop spindle but it’s not something I have time for these days–I still have a half-finished pair of socks languishing here. 🙁

I have a schedule for Readercon, although there may be some last-minute changes. The Program committee is still getting feedback from the pros and making adjustments where necessary. But, if you’re coming to Readercon, here’s some of what I’ll be doing:

Friday:

12:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Midsummer Night’s Dream Reading. I’m sure this will be an absolute hoot. I have no idea exactly what and when I’ll be reading yet, and I hope I get to read more than two lines as Second Fairy or something (that’s pretty much what I did in high school, *sigh*).

8:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. By Light Unseen Media Kaffeeklatsch. Open to aspiring authors and anyone seriously interested in the business side of writing for small press publishing. I’ll be blunt and honest about what I look for in a manuscript and what will make me buy one story and reject ten others. Here’s your opportunity to ask a publisher for honest advice, and to tell me your thoughts and ideas about the process! There will be chocolate. (I believe there is a sign-up for Kaffeeklatsches at the Registration tables.)

10:15 p.m. on Meet the Pros(e) Party. I’ll be there, collecting stickers. 🙂

Saturday

11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Reading. My first solo reading at a Readercon! I’ll be reading from my just-released novel, The Longer the Fall.

12:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m. My relay in the Theodore Sturgeon Readings Marathon. I’m reading “Like Yesterday.” I intend to do it full justice. You’ll enjoy it. 🙂

Sunday

1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Racial Diversity and Cover Art. “Nearly thirty years ago the racially mixed title character of Heinlein’s Friday was portrayed in the cover artwork as pure white, and little apparent progress has been made since: as Bloomsbury Publishing demonstrated last year with its handling of Justine Larbalestier’s Liar and Jaclyn Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass, characters of color are still being whitewashed or simply not allowed on the cover at all. If Will Smith can be a sci-fi action hero, why can’t we see his look-alike on the cover of a book?”
I’m participating with Liz Gorinsky (Leader), Nalo Hopkinson (GoH), N.K. Jemisin and Alaya Dawn Johnson.
This is my only panel, and I’m very pleased to be on it. I’ve published a book by an African-American author, Krymsin Nocturnes, and it was that book’s main Character of Color, Montgomery Quinn, who galvanized me to completely change how I do cover designs–because Quinn had to be on that cover. There were no ifs, ands or buts about it–there was no way he could not be on the cover. So, when all the #racefail controversies about “whitewashing” covers and publishers’ supposed rationales for not putting Characters of Color on the covers of books came up, I was interested on a very personal level, because I had the opposite experience. This should be quite a fascinating panel!

And that’s all the time I can spend on tonight’s post!

To all my Canadian friends–

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!!