In Common with Humans

I have a new tiller for my garden!! I have wanted a tiller for decades. Seriously. I’ve been pining for one since before I bought this house.

My last update stopped before I got to the part about the yard work. I’ve been outside working for three to five hours on five of the past seven afternoons. My property is very fertile, and it keeps getting away from me. Last year, between my being off at conventions and events from March to October, and all the rain, I completely lost control of the yard work, but I hadn’t kept up with it the year before, either. This spring, my back yard was becoming engulfed with bushes, saplings, small trees, huge fallen branches, and tall weeds, blocking all the light and making most of the area unpassable. The little screen house, which is falling to wrack and ruin anyway, was so overgrown I could hardly get to the door. I was totally fiending to get out and do yard work and I felt like I couldn’t take the time. I seethed when my friends talked about their gardens and hated every gorgeous sunny day that I had to spend glued to the computer.

But I got some tasks wrapped up, or at least at a breathing spot, and I decided to at least try and get the lawns mowed. I have an electric mower, and if the grass, at least in a few of the thickest spots, gets too tall, the mower won’t go through it. Either I have to let it go for the season (hate that), weed-whack it (which is awful, this is not a nice little city building lot, this is a former orchard on a rural road with a house dropped into it) or pay someone to come in with a honking power mower (haven’t done that yet, but last year was the first time ever that I paid someone to clear the fall leaves).

So, on Monday, I thought I’d get all the tools and equipment out, arrange the monster electrical cord, clean and organize and WD-40 everything, and have it ready to go out and mow the lawns on Tuesday. I did that, and then I tried the mower out, to make sure it was working okay. I mowed some of the back, then I thought I might as well do the heaviest parts of the front yard rather than give them even one more day to grow higher.

Then I kept right on going! I got the whole front yard mowed on Monday, and I was in total bliss. What a load off my mind! And it was the nick of time, too.

On Tuesday, I finished up the back yard mowing, and then I fired up the chain saw. (Remember the chain saw that’s been sitting plaintively in my kitchen, scaring the Census taker and guilt-tripping me? I found its bottle of bar oil, too, so no excuse there.) I’ve been cutting and cutting and cutting–cutting down and then cutting up, into fire wood lengths. I had a huge brush pile that’s been sitting in my back yard for at least two years. It is now entirely gone. The whole back yard is so much lighter and tidier. But I have a lot more to do. I want as much of my property as possible to get as much sun as possible so I can really have garden space. I wanted a minimum half acre of land in mixed zoning so I could homestead and produce my own food. I don’t want to live in a wood lot! I may be taking down some pretty large trees.

I also decided to “repurpose” the little screen house. I’m hoping I can turn it into a greenhouse, something else I’ve wanted for years and years. I’ll have to keep you posted on that. It’s a strong possibility but I need to cut a lot more trees and branches to get enough light to that part of the yard. I’m also finally getting rid of junk and crap that’s been sitting in the yard or in the screen house for years. There are all sorts of reasons I haven’t done that before now, but I’m sick of it, the place looks like a dump.

Last year, I put tarps down in several places to kill the grass and clear areas for garden patches. That worked pretty well, but those patches have to be tilled up and cultivated now or they’ll just grow right back. It’s hard to rent a tiller that doesn’t require a pickup truck and at least one other person to even transport it. I’m now at a point where I need to dig the garden patches and plant, after which I can continue cutting and clearing and redoing the screen house at my leisure. It’s a little late to be planting but we were still having freeze warnings only two weeks ago, and the growing season runs later in the fall now.

So, today, I took a break from working outside, because I hurt all over and I have bruises all over from vigorously breaking up firewood against my shins and getting whacked by things that fought back (heh). I started thinking again about tillers. I decided to look at tillers online. I looked at Sears.com, and they had an electric tiller. All my tools are electric, I didn’t know you could get an electric tiller. It wasn’t a bad price, but it still was more than I felt I should spend.

Then I remembered that I have a $100 prepaid Visa card from Verizon–a bonus for signing up with them for my Internet and phone bundle. I didn’t want to just fritter that away, but I wasn’t sure what to use it for.

Then I remembered that I have all these Cashback Bonus dollars in my Discover account, because I charge all my big purchases on the Discover card and then immediately pay off the full balance. I never used that, because I always forgot it was there.

The tiller at Sears was already $60 off MSRP, and that sale price ended today. If I ordered online, I got an additional $15 off. I could order and pay online for in-store pickup at the Sears up at Pheasant Lane Mall, meaning no shipping fees. And they had one tiller left in stock.

So, I put the order through, and within a half hour I got an email saying I could pick up the tiller. Sears is only open until 6:30 p.m. on Sunday and I’d assumed I’d have to go pick it up tomorrow. I drove up to Nashua and got the tiller. I can till the garden patches tomorrow!

I have a tiller! My very own tiller, at last! I can prep the gardens in the fall and plant early spring crops next year! And you know what it’s going to end up costing me out-of-pocket, after the sale price, discount, Verizon card and bonus dollars? About $30. Now that’s what I call a deal. I’ll let you know how well it works!

(I did dig the entire front yard garden patch by hand, with a mattock, spades and digging fork…once. That was all the character-building I need, thanks. The next time I do that, it will have to be a life-or-death survival situation. *wry smile*)

I’ve been noticing something rather odd this spring. Things are running about ten days ahead of their normal schedule. Has anyone else been struck by this? The dandelions, for example. The dandelions in my yard used to bloom on May 1, like clockwork. I was always amused by the way the dandelions all popped open on Beltane. This year, they all were blooming in mid-April. Now it’s the blackberries. Last summer, the rain in June ruined my blackberry crop. It rained all the time the canes were in flower, destroyed the blossoms and I only got a fraction of the berries I would have gotten (and then I lost some of those because I went to Montréal right when they peaked). All my blackberries bloomed this week. I don’t ever remember the blackberries blooming before June. I always notice because they have the sweetest fragrance on earth. I couldn’t find any flowers to put on the altar for my Beltane ritual on May 5, except a few violets. Everything I usually gather for the Beltane decorations had already blossomed and faded. (ETA: The peepers were early this year, too. Last year I didn’t hear them until March 31, this year they started on March 19.)

It’s just…odd. But I should get a terrific crop of blackberries this year, if the weather holds!

I found a lilac sapling growing up behind the house. I used to have big lilac bushes that bloomed heavily every spring. My mom loved lilacs. Every Mother’s Day I’d take her a huge bouquet of lilacs from my bushes. But after my mom passed away in 2006, all my lilac bushes died. I had no idea why.

Now this little sapling has sprung up, four years later. I’ll nurture it carefully and see how it fares. I miss my lilacs, I love them, too.

It’s been a while since I posted an update! Things have been kind of frustrating. Mercury turned direct on Tuesday the 11th and it seemed like everything slammed to a complete halt, rather than starting to unblock as you’d expect. I’m having such a complicated conglomeration of simultaneous related transits to my natal chart, it’s no wonder that my life feels gridlocked at the moment, but most of the transits are favorable, and with all the Venus, Jupiter, Uranus, 8th house, 5th house, and 2nd house involved I spend a lot of time grumpily wondering why more money hasn’t shown up. Oh, well.

Publishing news: right after my last post, the LCCN arrived for Blood Justice, and I sent the Advance Review Copy (ARC) to the printer. With a misspelled word on the back cover, arrrgggh! Fortunately I ordered a proof. That arrived promptly–I sure can’t fault Lulu.com for their turnaround time, that’s another reason I use them for ARCs. I fixed the cover, re-uploaded it and ordered the review ARCs, which should arrive any minute.

I’m just chewing over whether to send them right out or not. Library Journal has changed offices and asks that no more books be sent until after June 1. I’ll have to double-check Publishers Weekly, too, because they just changed owners and management. I can send all the ARCs except Library Journal’s now, or send them all on June 1. I just want to be sure I don’t forget to send the Library Journal copy, but I’ll also need to send Library Journal follow-up finished copies of The Longer the Fall.

And speaking of The Longer the Fall…gods. This book fought and fought against being written, now it’s resisting its own publication! This is BLUM’s fifth title and I’ve had more problems getting it into the supply channel than any of our books so far!

Back when I was entering the ISBN numbers into Books In Print, for some reason, Bowkerlink wouldn’t accept the number for the hardcover edition. It was the last ISBN number in my original block of 10 numbers, and I couldn’t find any evidence that it was assigned to anything else. I emailed Bowker, and they finally replied apologizing. Whatever the hangup was, they’d fixed it, but it was annoying.

I started to set up the wholesale hardcover and paperback editions for The Longer the Fall on Lightning Source last Thursday, and I made the stupidest mistake. I selected the wrong option for the hardcover (from the long, crowded and very teeny font drop-down menu), and selected “trade cloth” instead of “trade cloth with dust jacket.” Lightning Source does not have a friendly user interface. If you screw up, you have to call your rep to fix it.

So I had to wait until the next day to call my rep, Joan, and correct the cover option. Then, she told me that the setup information said that I would be mailing them a cover to scan! I’d already uploaded the interior files for both editions and the cover file for the paperback, and I told Joan no way, I upload everything as digital files. She changed that. It wasn’t until I got off the phone that my neurons caught up and I thought, “wait a sec. Since I screwed up and chose NO dust jacket, how could I have said how I’d be sending the cover file??” The option to upload the cover file never reappeared, and I finally uploaded it as a “revision” which normally you get charged for. So far, I don’t seem to have been charged, but I wound up calling Joan again this week to make sure they had everything, because the titles seemed to be sitting “In Premedia” for a long time. I may have just been over-nervous, because Lightning Source typically has a 5-day turnaround from initial setup.

At this point, it looks as though the Lightning Source proofs are being printed and shipped–finally. In the meantime, I decided to upload The Longer the Fall to Smashwords, in hopes of making their shipment to the Sony eBookstore yesterday. I’d already gotten the file set up for Smashwords’ conversion system (which they colorfully call “the Meatgrinder”). That is…I thought I’d gotten a nice clean file ready.

I guess I hadn’t. I had to re-upload the Smashwords edition at least five times because it kept coming up with errors. Uploading wasn’t a speedy process, either. Once you upload to Smashwords, your book goes into “the queue” and twice the queue hung and hung and hung for hours. The first time I uploaded The Longer the Fall, it wasn’t finished until the next day!! And then it had error messages! I finally found and fixed all the nitty little formating anomalies (Smashwords insists on a Word file, which means I have to back-convert to Word from InDesign because I do all my final edits and changes in InDesign, and then go through the new Word file line by line. What…a…bitch) and got the book through the Meatgrinder without an error on Tuesday night. I put in the ISBN and distribution options and submitted The Longer the Fall for approval in Smashwords’ Premium Catalog. But it’s still “pending approval” now, so I’m starting to wonder if there are some other problems in there I’ll have to fix.

So, I didn’t make the Sony shipment this week, and I have no idea when the next shipments, to any of the venders, will go out from Smashwords. *sigh*

I hand-coded the html file for the Kindle edition, and uploaded it to Amazon with the cover image. The Kindle edition is all ready to go–I hope!!!! It looks okay in the viewer, anyway. I’m waiting until June 1 to push the button that makes it “live.”

I’ve been sending out review copies and review queries for Krymsin Nocturnes. So far, I’ve only gotten one positive response to a review query, and several declines. The nay-sayers all plead a huge backlog of review books, and that may well be true. But I’m cynical enough to wonder if “sorry, I’m buried in review books” isn’t just a nice way of saying, “I don’t think that book looks worth wasting my time on.” It only got reviewed by Publishers Weekly and Library Journal! But I’m still sending queries out. There are a lot of book review blogs!

Along with all this, I’ve been playing telephone tag and sending out fruitless emails. I’ve been trying to get in touch with someone at Borders–Borders.com only lists Mortal Touch of BLUM’s titles although our entire catalog meets their stated specifications (listed in Books In Print and available from Baker & Taylor). I’m trying to find out why the rest of the titles aren’t listed. You can buy BLUM’s books in South Africa, fer cryin’ out loud! We’re not good enough for Borders.com? I’m not demanding shelf space, mind, I just want to be listed on their website! I missed a call back from them today so now we’re officially playing tag. And I’m trying once more to track down the copyright information for a book I badly want to reprint. This one has really proven a hard nut to crack (author is deceased but some of his other titles are still in print. Who’s getting his royalty payments?).

I uploaded the rest of BLUM’s titles to Google Books because if Google does launch Google Editions (as rumor has it) and if Google Editions blows the book market out of the water (as rumor has it), I want BLUM to be right there with them. Of course, all these people who are so scared of Google must not have read the FAQ that explains that it can take two months for a submitted title to go “Live” on Google Books! Fortunately, I’d uploaded nice clean PDF files (actually, they’re the files I use for Amazon’s Search Inside This Book) and they went Live after only ten days.

When the going gets tough, tough geeks buy electronics–software, in this case. I pondered buying Adobe Creative Suite for so long, they launched CS5 while I was still making up my mind! So, the “upgrade” (based on the fact that I had InDesign CS4) was a little bit more expensive than for CS4. I decided it was an investment I really needed, though, especially after a fuss-up with a three-page PDF feature for the Readercon Souvenir Book, which I had to jump through hoops to adjust because I didn’t have the optimum software. Now I do! I ordered CS5 last week, paid a little extra for faster shipping (as a percentage of the total, it was diddly-squat) and it arrived on Tuesday. I’ve installed it but I still need to start learning Photoshop and Illustrator.

I think I’m going to have to continue this update in another post! It’s starting to get light outside, which means it’s my bedtime!

Happy Birthday, majkia!

News on the publishing front is largely good. The Advance Review Copy (ARC) of Blood Justice is almost ready to go to the printer. I finished going through the author’s edits, cleaned up the file, laid it out in InDesign and it looks great.

Layout is where the manuscript turns into a book, like the caterpillar into a butterfly, and it’s always exciting to watch that happening before my eyes. It’s just amazing how much difference the visual presentation of the material makes. I always agonize over fonts and decorative little dingbats, and every book has its own idiosyncracies: with Blood Justice, it’s short chapters, which called for different handling for the chapter headers. And I like to vary the styles of headers and footers and page numbers, too, just for fun. I’ll keep a series in the same style for consistency but BLUM doesn’t have a set style for all titles, like some small presses adopt. We offer a variety of fictional genres–contemporary fantasy, YA, gay historical romance, horror, thriller–and I try to design the books to reflect the fictional style.

The ARC cover is all set up, and I applied to the Library of Congress for the LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number, important if you sell to libraries, which I do). As soon as that arrives, off to the printer the ARC goes, but I’ll need to check the proof before I order the review copies. So far, I’ve always gotten the LCCN very fast, so I expect to be sending the files off in just another day or two.

Meanwhile, I downloaded the cover templates from Lightning Source for the paperback cover and hardcover dustjacket for The Longer the Fall, and I just need to drop my cover art into those and finish up all the text and design, and I can send those files off to Lightning Source and order proof copies. (Remember, release date is June 1 and you can pre-order an autographed copy from BLUM now!)

I tried running a Facebook ad for 30 days, and this time I set the amount I paid them high enough to actually get placement–1,476,080 impressions and 354 click-throughs to be precise, giving me a click-through rate of 0.024%. I have no idea whether that’s good or not, but it cost me a bundle and I don’t see any evidence that it increased either sales or traffic to my website, so I’m not going to continue the Facebook ads at this time. I’m still considering Google AdWords, and I am extending the ad I’ve been running on Bitten By Books. I’m going to add the thumbnail of Blood Justice’s cover to it as soon as the art is done.

Aside from publishing progress, the last several days have been rather demoralizing, for several reasons, which I mostly don’t want to get into. 🙁 But they include calls from National Grid’s credit department alerting me to the fact that I forgot to pay the electric bill last month–totally my fault.

I got up on Friday so groggy and sleepy that I walked right past the carnage in the living room to get my towel from the laundry room and didn’t even notice it. Not until I was about to get into the shower did I realize that I was looking at a big splotch of blood on the bathroom floor. That was nothing compared to the mess in the living room–the cats caught some little varmint and, well, you don’t need to know. I’m used to cleaning up barf every day when I get up, but peeling little bodies and scrubbing blood off the floors takes the eye-opener to a whole other level. I think the cats just got their revenge on me for the chipmunk.

After that I went up to Nashua and dropped a UPS package off at Staples, where three robed Buddhist monks were leaving the store just ahead of me, having bought, it appeared, a printer. But the rest of my planned errands in Nashua were a waste of time: the gas station was jammed with cars so I didn’t get gas, and there were picketers at Shaw’s. I won’t cross a picket line (and I knew about this labor dispute with Shaw’s and really don’t want to shop there anymore, anyway), so I came back to Pepperell and shopped at Donelan’s. Today, the Sunday Globe was delivered with all the ad inserts, magazine section and so on from last week’s paper! The newspaper is dated May 9, all the supplements are May 2!

I’m going to be so glad when Mercury turns direct! Although what’s hitting me has a lot more to do with long-term Saturn and Uranus transits and they’re going to be in effect for a while. 🙁 I took blankets off my bed, washed them and put them away, and now it’s freezing cold; I’m still struggling with my eating and meal patterns, making another rearrangement of those today in hopes of getting them under tighter control. I’m on the last episode of Season One of Fringe and I’ve already downloaded the Season Two opener for tomorrow’s cycling. I’m hooked! And I’m trying very hard to ignore what day it is today. *sigh* I did have a nice chat with Dad today, though.

First, Happy True Beltane–today is the solar cross-quarter point, when the Sun passes 15°00′ of Taurus and is exactly halfway between the Vernal Equinox and Summer Solstice. That’s what the “cross quarter Sabbats” are all about, really–each one falls in one of the four fixed Zodiacal signs and marks the exact midpoint of its season. Their “traditional” dates have gone all over the place with calendar changes and Christian appropriation and whatnot. It’s always a toss-up, of course, whether you consider the high holidays to be most significant as social/cultural constructs or as objective earth/cosmic measuring points. You could make equally valid cases for both, and nothing prevents you from celebrating both (if Christians have “Holy Weeks,” so can Pagans!). As a solitary practitioner and an astrologer, I mark the solar cycle by preference (and the lunar one, for the New and Full Moons). But that’s just me.

And, Feliz Cinco de Mayo for those who never tire of raising a glass for an Independence Day bash! 🙂

I’m finishing up the author’s edits for Blood Justice, which look great. Expect the release date and a cover image very soon!

I’d be done with that already but I’ve had meetings three nights in a row, which is quite enough, thank you! On Sunday, I attended church Annual Meeting. Since I served as the Chair of the Parish Committee last year, I needed to write up the Parish Committee report beforehand. To do that, I collected the minutes of the year’s meetings. In evidence of just how much changing computers, ISPs, and email clients scrambled my routines and habits, I had to retrieve all those minutes from four different places, both online and off! I also prepped pot luck food. We enjoyed a “Stone Soup Fruit Salad,” the leftovers from which have fed me for two days. 🙂

Pepperell’s Annual Town Meeting didn’t have pot luck food, but I did do considerable reading and prep beforehand to make sure I was informed about the issues. We ran for a full two nights, Monday and last night, and I’m very unhappy with several of the votes on Monday night. Turnout was disgracefully low and my respect for most of my fellow townsfolk is at an all-time low at the moment. Once again, the library got sodomized, with an amendment to level-fund its budget voted down. But at least we didn’t get held hostage for three weeks by some Me Party/Libertarian trying to rewrite the town budget on Town Meeting floor, like last year. I got up and spoke both nights, and I know I got a big round of applause last night; I honestly can’t remember if people applauded on Monday! But in both cases I was “preaching to the choir” and I didn’t sway anyone on Monday who wasn’t there to vote for the library to begin with (that’s what I spoke on, Monday night). My thoughts about the NMRSD school budget (which passed) are best left unsaid. :-p

Last night I did my Tarot reading for the new octave (calendar octave, I mean, the coming six weeks) and I’m not happy about it at all. I got up early to do my Beltane ritual this morning and then went back to bed, but got very little sleep either before or afterwards. All things considered, I’m not in a great mood at the moment. *sigh* However, I just had the most delightful talk with the Census taker, who came to the house because I only have a post office box and hence don’t get a form in the mail. I talked the poor man’s ear off and he’s interested in BLUM’s books and took one of my business cards. 🙂 He was a little alarmed by the chain saw sitting in the kitchen, I can’t imagine why! It’s not even plugged in! *wry grin* It’s going to be there for a while because at this rate, the next time I get outside to do yard work will be the fall raking. 🙁

I got a purchase order from Brodart that kind of surprised me: for a hardcover of Mortal Touch. Good thing I ordered a small supply of them, because I never expected that hardcover edition to be a big seller! Mortal Touch is growing “legs” in a way that is just astonishing me. I hope that The Longer the Fall will do as well, but, well…we’ll see. I’ll mention in passing that you can get personally autographed copies of both books if you order direct from By Light Unseen Media, and pre-order links for The Longer the Fall are up now! 🙂

I’ve closed down all distractions online for the time being, and I need to get back to edits! Almost done!

Calan Mai Hapus!

If you’re not Welsh, Happy traditional Beltane!

It’s very nice here, sunny and 85 degrees. Too bad I’m glued to my computer, weekends are heavy work days for me. But I’ve washed two blankets (that badly needed it) and hung them out on the line! True, or sidereal Beltane is Wednesday, May 5 (at 2:54 p.m. UTC) and that’s when I do my formal observance.

Today I got another Brodart purchase order for The Longer the Fall–which, remember, isn’t coming out until June 1!

It’s my biggest single Brodart order yet.

And, Barnes & Noble already lists both the hardcover and paperback editions of The Longer the Fall on its website–with the Publishers Weekly review.

The funny thing is, all the attention on The Longer the Fall, which hasn’t even been released yet, is making me more excited about finishing All the Shadows of the Rainbow! Which I suppose is a good sign. 🙂 I’m just hoping I can get all the requisite research done for All the Shadows of the Rainbow without getting detained by the Dept. of Homeland Security! (I’ll let my readers wonder why that’s a concern, heh)

By the way, Happy May Eve / Walpurgisnacht to everyone! And to novelfriend, Happy Birthday! 🙂

Krymsin Nocturnes got a pre-pub review from Library Journal. I didn’t even know about it. They posted it to the Barnes & Noble detail page–it should be posted to the Amazon pages, too, but isn’t yet–and the author spotted it and just emailed me. I am so stoked!! That’s BLUM’s first pre-pub review from Library Journal and makes two pre-pubs for Krymsin Nocturnes! Which explains the big order of hardcover copies on LSI this week. All together, folks: “The first of many!” Hold that thought!

I need to stop bouncing now. 🙂

…but golly, it was a lovely walk home from the dealership this morning! I love, love, love being out and about in the hours between midnight and dawn. I rarely am these days because, unlike the booming 80s years, practically nothing is open at night anymore. I used to do my grocery shopping at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. but those days are long gone.

It was nippy last night for April, 38 degrees. I left the key and paperwork in the drop box. The sky was barely starting to pale–local sunrise was 5:44 a.m. and it was then about 4:15–but the birds were starting to sing. The clouds had cleared and I was accompanied by a perfectly round, butter-yellow Full Moon in the southwest sky the whole way.

It’s always interesting to note all the smells on the air. I’d have enjoyed them even more if it hadn’t been quite so cold and given me the sniffles. 🙁 Here, dryer sheets–someone was up early (or late) doing their laundry. A whiff of cooking smell, someone up making breakfast. Skunk, as I passed a brushy stretch–maybe a nest of babies nearby. Sweet flowery smell, not sure what. Odd chemical smell, couldn’t quite ID it. Horses. Someone on Main Street has chickens, I could hear the roosters crowing faintly from inside their barn as I walked by. A few cars and trucks passed me. I couldn’t help wondering where they were going at 4:30 a.m.–early commuters? Late partyers? Emergency? Insomnia? But I’m sure they wondered exactly the same thing about me!

I just got back from picking up the car, and it was almost as nice a walk down: sunny, clear blue sky, milder temperatures, quite a blustery wind today. The car has four new tires and a new inspection sticker, and the only “repair” work was some adjustments to the throttle that I requested because it was a little sticky in cold weather this winter. That Aveo is a damned reliable car. The guy at the dealership said that I’ve owned it exactly five years and one day as of today, which is hard to believe! (And the loan isn’t paid off yet. *sigh*) I probably should trade it in for something newer and “greener,” but I really love that car, and it’s running so well.