So, what is the state of the writer and this writer’s business these days?
Well, I’m still grossly derelict in selling the little money-makers. I have had my copyrights back since March, but it’s taken time to get the books back up in new editions. Partly this is because this business has been very much a one-woman show. I write, I send out, I do everything but the books because husband found early on I’m really bad at both keeping track of what’s due and not transposing digits in the accounting. When time comes to pay taxes, it matters rather whether a payment was 135 or 531. So he pulled that away from me as soon as my earnings went over $500 a year.
Would you believe that was only 12 years ago? And that for most of the first five years I made 3 to 5k a year? Stupid career this, if you need to survive. Of course, that’s the other part of this: I took on all sorts of additional duties, because for most of our married life, I was making next to nothing (and often nothing, though the first year I made anything (19 years ago) I made $50. We went out and had pizza. We were so excited.
What I mean is, because we were living on one income and most of our friends were on two, and because I appreciated Dan’s putting his own art (composing, music, writing – like I do drawing and painting and writing) on hold so I could pursue mine with a roof over head and three meals a day, I viewed it as my duty to bridge that gap.
We were recently doing financials for the last 20 years (too long a story to tell) and our sons who were part of it of necessity were shocked on how little we actually lived on most of that time, because they know what their friends’ parents made. I had to explain “Well, think about it, they were taking trips to Europe for weeks every year, and we were taking three days in Denver, at Embassy Suites, because it was cheaper than two rooms, and gaming the free breakfast so we didn’t need to have lunch, and having dinner at Pete’s Kitchen, and going to Lakeside Amusement park instead of Elitch Gardens.” And the kids blinked and said “But that never felt deprived. It felt QUIRKY. I mean, we were eccentric, sure, not poor.” Of course we were poor too, but no we didn’t feel it, because as the kids put it “we had so much fun.”
But part of that coping – beyond vacation, and even to afford those vacations – was that I did a lot behind the scenes. When we found a decent ARC I stopped making clothes (I actually enjoy it, but it took a lot of time) but I still reupholstered every sofa we had until the last two sets (and the last two sets were bought used but in good condition. The last but one perished by cat – sigh.)
I got furniture free or very cheap and refinished/rehabilitated. I painted our own walls. I cooked our own food from scratch, often in batch jobs and froze when there was a difficult scheduling time ahead. We have laid carpet, built porches, seeded lawns, planned gardens (which is what upsets me about our current house. NOTHING but weeds grows there. I’m going to try mint.) The house before this one was bought in need of major rehabilitation, which I mostly did myself, painstakingly. (This one needs some, if I can find time, but it’s not in real trouble.)
The kids saw none of this. It was just what mom did (and they helped with as they got older.) It never occurred to them part of the reason we lived like this and not like their friends whose moms never sewed a curtain or hemmed a pair of pants was not because mom was quirky but because mom was poor. They naturally assumed our way was better. (In many things it is. We have a tendency to gain weight on both sides of this family and I shudder to think what the kids would be like if we’d fed them on fast food and never asked them to lift a finger.)
But that’s part of it, in time this because “the way we live” even for me. There are things I do because I’ve done them that way for thirty years.
Right now it’s interfering with my work –which does pay – because I have clue zero how to delegate. For instance #1 son cooks – better than I – and #2 is willing to learn. BUT I keep forgetting when they say “Give me two days a week to cook and clean.” To do just that. Because it’s been my job so long.
Same with laundry. I’ll hold on to ironing, thank you, partly because I’m in love with my industrial steam iron (shuddup. You have your kinks, I have mine) partly because that’s what I do while watching TV. BUT I should be delegating laundry, and they’re willing. I just keep FORGETTING to say “Let’s go downstairs and I’ll teach you how to separate out a load and the settings.”
(I don’t think I can get any of the guys to do the yard. Dan keeps muttering about buying Astroturf. I don’t blame them. It’s like heartbreak yard. One of these weekends I need to get one of them to help me build raised beds, plant those with bulbs next spring, and see if some form of creeping mint will do for the front beds.)
Anyway, we’ve got far afield. Sorry. My mind is going in all directions this morning – and I woke up very late – but part of the issue is that my habit of not delegating because we couldn’t has become ingrained. I don’t think of it even for writing.
I had a major breakthrough with contracting out editing, and I’ll do the same for putting it in create space, having found someone who will do it for me. And I have a cover being made, and will contract out another probably this week. BUT it took me months to even be able to let go to that level where I could say “I can let someone else do this.”
It took that long because it’s an habit of mind of and things established over years that MUST be broken, and that’s as hard for individuals as for society.
So… I’ve been remiss and my little whores novels haven’t been walking the literary streets selling their sassy selves, which means that I’m making less money than I should be, which – frankly – with the kids in college at the same time, is stupid and possibly criminal.
Among other things I don’t have anything in Kobo or Apple, except through NRP. And that needs to happen.
Also for things like No Will But His All Romance will need to happen.
I also must redo the early, fairly appalling covers.
Then there is the stuff I must or should write. Under MUST is of course the stuff contracted to Baen which is Through Fire this month – I might extend into first week of September, but I hope not – the second book of the Earth revolution, and then Darkship Revenge in December. But if I can, I’d like to wedge Bowl of Red between them – the next shifter book – because they’re bringing out an omnibus of the first two shifters and we should pound while the iron is hot.
But as Pam Uphoff pointed out, I need to get used to thinking of my indie stuff as “Must” too. Witchfinder is almost ready to go to betas (I now decided to obsess over “did I foreshadow enough?” At this point foreshadowing is more or less automatic, but this doing a chapter a week thing can bollix it.) And then I need three days to finish Shadow Gods (and as soon as I get going on that, I will commission cover for it.) That’s YA fantasy. There’s also another waiting in the wings which is YA SF. And I have promised a new one of the Musketeer Mysteries in December.
Then there’s stuff I’d LIKE to do, like the rest of the bios for Henry VIII’s queens. This is good to do because they’re perennial sellers, no matter who writes them, and because they would help support No Will But His, one of my reversals. I wrote Plain Jane in three days, so it should be possible, right?
And there are others, of course. The guys and I were talking about each of us taking one of the Bennet girls and writing their post P & P story – shorttish novel. (I want Lydia.)
And there’s my half finished stuff that the earstwhile agent wouldn’t send out.
The question is: HOW do I do all that.
I’ve been talking to Kevin Anderson (yes, he IS a bad influence) and I’ve isolated three factors that should allow me to increase production:
1- Get healthy. This involves not just reducing stress, but getting the hvac fixed, which hopefully happens this September. (I’ll call them and remind them next week that I’m waiting on a part.)
2- Figure out everything I can offload, including editing, illustration, etc – this is harder than it seems because until stuff IS out and earning, I have to do all this on a shoe string budget. Ditto for household work. Until the boys move out, household work will eat some amount of time, the trick is to minimize how much.
3- Systematize (totally a word, shut up – actually it is, it’s just an abomination) my production. What this means is that you can train your mind to do certain tasks at a certain time. So, schedule things in at this time or that. This is very hard to do because in this business there’s always snags and emergencies. But if I set myself into doing creative writing mornings, research for next book afternoons, publishing on Saturdays, I think life will be easier.
The snag with that last, of course, is scheduling in off time, which must be done.
How fast could I write? I don’t know.
Look I can and have written books in three days or two weeks. The issue was the days/weeks/months of silence in between.
How many of those silences were caused by knowing what I was writing would never be sent out, let alone sell? How many were caused by knowing that the babies would just be dropped down the volcano? And how many were the natural result of “refilling” the well?
I don’t know. Traditional publishing was such a warm bucket of fail that it’s hard to distinguish what Dave Freer calls “Battle fatigue” from the necessary breaks of a creative mind between projects.
What I mean is, there are things all of us in publishing have accepted as “natural” that are no more natural than my economizing housekeeping ways – but just the way things were, and what we got used to.
Kevin tells me he’s now at a place that he’s thinking “Why not a book a month?”
I’m not there yet, but I can see being there, maybe in two years, when the boys are out of the house (hopefully, barring disaster) and I can afford (if the indie earns) to pay someone to come clean and do the boxes twice a week and if I’ve managed to create new habits of work.
So, at fifty, I’m embarking on an adventure where everything is new. This is good. Wouldn’t want to live in boring times. (Oh, wouldn’t I ever!)
Fortunately on the way there, I have a lot of half-finished/almost finished/needs rewriting stuff like Shadow Gods. And I am now (WHY? WHY? WHY?) doing two novels at a chapter a week, and that will also feed it.
First – very first goal, though is distressing and getting healthy. (Yes, a program of exercise is part of this. The challenge is always winter because I HATE cold.)
To that end this weekend has been a success. In the writing end… — waggles hand – only so so. This weekend was plagued with equipment failure TM including Dan’s laptop having the megrims, so it made it hard to get stuff done.
But I am much less stressed, and hopefully the state of the writer will progress… And there will be more stuff up for you to buy.
There will be a new chapter of Elf’s Blood in an hour or so up at MGC.
According To Hoyt 
Industrial steam iron? Rotary or press?
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press.
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Can’t describe how much I am chortling over the vision of you wearing top hat & goggles, a billowing duster and leather gauntlets, working that steam press to iron out plot wrinkles. Chris Muir needs to update your sketch.
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And to be honest it’s a baby one. It’s designed for start-up businesses, which is part of why I bought it three years ago. I thought “if the writing goes t*ts up!” It’s one of my perversions that I ENJOY ironing.
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My Lady was a quilter until her various ills made it impossible. She had a Miele rotary iron to iron large ares of fabric. I kept thinking about trying to learn to do shirts on it, but never did. We’ve sold it (to another quilter).
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URL? For the press I mean.
No, seriously.
And if you want I can give you the the email address of a friend of mine who quit doing graphic design (worked for one of the top design firms in Chicago for 6-8 years) to go be a Special Forces Soldier. He’s willing to talk about doing covers, and might know an illustrator or two.
Also my eldest daughter is a fairly talented artist (including illustration) and is into S.F., but currently has little or no business acumen.
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Did someone say graphic artist? My little brother is one, and pretty good at it. He’s been doing my covers for print books, and covers for the Tiny Publishing Bidness for a while now.
Alex – email addy is alex-at-3iiisgraphicstudios-dot-comcom.
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We need to have a listing for Epub helpers
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What kind of help do you need? I’m in the process of learning Sigil but there’s plenty that I don’t know. Oh, I have learned to create/modify Table of Contents with Sigil.
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Oh, I’m okay with that — I use Atlantis.
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I’ve been meaning to put together something like that in my (heh) copious spare time. Maybe after WorldCon. *looks despairingly at calendar and to-do list*
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If you send an email to friday book plug, Charlie and I will include indie publishing support personnel in the next plug.
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I need to do that. There should be stuff up on Amazon tomorrow. Writing, though.
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I will do that. Also, I still owe you a post – I’ll work on that while we drive tomorrow (not like there’s much else to do between here and San Antonio!).
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I use IndieBookLauncher dot com. They’re an a la carte company with a very broad selection of prices and services available.
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Yes, please.
I’ve been scouring your sites for a way to contact re: offering services / business opportunities.
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Send to book.plug.friday@gmail.com. Preferably with an email page.
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What’s a iron? Haven’t had one for 14 years of course when I was with my Dad there was their iron. Of course I left there in 2009.
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*warm bucket of fail* I like that turn of phrase and plan to steal and use it at soonest opportunity.
I’m kind of in a depressing slump in one way – sales of my own books are off in August – and I had never noticed it so markedly before.
On the bright side, I finally got a buyer for my California real estate. Three acres of howling unimproved wilderness, burnt-over in the 2003 fires. The offer is for about what I paid for it, so that’s to the good. I bought it originally to eventually build a house on, near to my parents when I retired. But I decided three years ago to let it go, and do my retirement cabin here in the Texas Hill Country, instead. It’s a little bit of a wrench, even though I only set foot on the land once.
Novelettes about the Bennett girls, eh? I’d do Mary … the plain and hardworking one who plays the piano so very grimly.
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Celia, so are mine. I’m down from $400 to $150. So we shall mingle our tears.
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Sob … I’m down from $225-$200 to … under a hundred. My sales haven’t been that crappy in months. If I hadn’t done a book club meeting where they had read the Trilogy for their selection, this month would have been an absolute wash.
On the bright side, though – I have the new book coming in November, and it’s a sequel to the Trilogy, so I have that going for me.
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Truthfully, I would be thrilled with the low number you posted, but that’s me. I haven’t been able to do ANY writing for two weeks now, ever since the rains started. Today is drier, but we have to defrost the freezer (1953 model, still runs well, but is NOT a “frost-free”). I hope to get back to converting everything to HTML this evening, after it’s done. I have to admit, the HTML version looks MUCH more professional.
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feeling the same way about their numbers lol ;-) I wish… maybe someday.
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I’ve been defrosting my refrigerator/freezer every 3-10 days for the past year or so (3 days when it was hot with high humidity), because I couldn’t afford to replace the heating element for the defroster.
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Are you sure it’s the heating element? When ours packed it in, the first time, it turned out to be the heating element ‘thermostat’ – a little device that looked like a thimble with wires that was attached to the heating element. It failed, no current was passed, and *ice-ice, baby*.
Second time, it was the timer motor – it never clicked over to the defrost cycle. The heating element’s a thick (well, thick for certain values of thick…) bar that electricity flows through – it’s rare for that to fail.
A book that might help –
http://www.amazon.com/Cheap-And-Easy-Refrigerator-Repair/dp/1890386111/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1377482183&sr=8-3&keywords=refrigerator+repair
One of these used might save you a good bit of money if you’re halfway decent with a screwdriver, have long arms (why do they put those things in the BACK?) and have an appliance parts store nearby.
Plus, there’s usually a wiring diagram for your unit either on the back of the fridge or on a sheet of paper or sticker inside the kickplate in the front. It’s not hard, per se, but the first time I paid some bozo $200 to come out and not fix the problem was the last…
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Yes. It happened once before, and the repair cost me $360. This time, I checked myself, and the element inside is broken. Apparently it was a known problem with this model, as the newer replacement is a two-element heater bulb.
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Man. Obsolescence goes in before the name goes on, eh?
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Yeah. No kidding.
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Robert wants Mary. He might have a mini-crush on the nerdy Bennet. (Writer kids, falling in love with characters.)
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Well, shucky-darn. Here I had a plot turn of her falling for a much older eccentric inventor gentleman, sort of like Charles Babbage, and helping him invent something tremendously eccentric.
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The eccentricity of the cams are what allow the computations to be made.
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Oh, and Celia, you totally can do it. These things SELL.
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Hmm – I might totally do it. But my revisioning of the Lone Ranger and Tonto in a historically accurate setting in Texas in the 1840-1850 time frame has to come first. After the current big movie version with Tonto as an Apache with a dead bird on his head as Jack Sparrow in the Far West, I think a radical rethink may be the only hope for the Lone Ranger franchise…
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File the serial numbers off but good. Those radio franchises can get mean.
Of course, it’s ultimately all about Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook (sp?).
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Historically accurate means he ain’t “lone” — so if they come after you for trademark infringement you’ve got that defense. Now, if his unit was wiped out and stricken from the TOE he might be unattached from the chain of command and thus a lone operator … still weakens the rights holders lines of assault.
And drop the silver bullets. Might be he finds a lode of depleted uranium, although carrying those in his belt loops might have … interesting … effects. The Glow’n’ Ranger!!!
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He’s not finding depleted uranium in 18-anything. And natural uranium would only result in some…excitement during casting.
The reason depleted uranium was widely used in anti-tank round is because it’s flammable, so when it struck the tank armor it kept the round sharp as it penetrated. The density wasn’t frowned upon either.
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Shucks, let him discover a place where natural spring water drained through a uranium patch vein in an old mine …
Or, while recovering from his wounds suffered at the guns of the
CavendishSinjin* gang he sees a meteor crash in the high plains, a meteor which contains unusual and extremely dense metal which he is able to mine for his bullets …Anything so she doesn’t give him silver.
*Sinjin is toff pronunciation of St James, where the Cavendish Hotel is located:
I’m not sure I understand how flammability would result in keeping the round sharp. Could you expand on that, or was it a typo?
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My understanding is that the process of deformation that would blunt the tip also heats the material to the ignition point, causing the blunted portion to burn away, meaning the solid projectile keeps its point. Wikipedia says that material fracturing is what keeps the projectile sharp, and uranium’s pyrophoric properties are useful for the incendiary effects.
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I always thought that the density of depleted uranium was the primary reason it’s used. At projectile speeds, inflammability shouldn’t matter that much; certainly not as much as momentum and shape.
Regarding radioactivity, considering the amount of Carbon-14 in your body, depleted uranium is considerably less radioactive than you are.
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Density is one factor. The inflammability isn’t so much a concern at projectile speeds, but rather when the projectile is slowing down.
I deliberately passed over the radioactivity aspect. Plus the idea that radioactive material glows. (If only it were so. My job would be much easier)
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I love the way you guys get all wonky about this stuff. (Grins.)
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Two options, since the silvery metals that come from meteorites, like Palladium, Osmium and Irridium, have meltin points in the 3-5K degrees F, the best he could do is leave them in as inclusions in his lead balls to act as frangible AP rounds, with the downside that any sliver protruding would scour the barrel and since they weigh different than the lead they would act like a bubble and might cause the bullet to wobble and yaw in flight from being off-ballance.
He could instead have melted down the unit silverware, that was actually fine metal pewter (Tin and Copper and a trace of silver and Antimony) that was contemptuously thrown away by the raiders (I can see the scene where he is scrabbling it up from the side of a gully as the last thing to save). Pewter is supposed to be harder than pure lead, but you can scratch it with a butterknife, and I suspect it would tend to shatter rather than deform making it a nasty anti-personel round
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The potassium-40 contributes a lot more radioactivity than carbon-14 does, in your body. (Carbon-14 does have some interesting side effects, like what if it’s in the DNA molecule? But that’s not a problem for other people.)
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Depleted Uranium is called that because they sucked almost all the radioactive bits out for something else.
It’s used for anti-tank rounds not just because it’s denser than a democrat, but because it’s really, really hard and useless for almost everything else.
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Well, it’s still radioactive. Its half-life is so long that only 1 has passed since the formation of the Earth, but it still decays.
It’s not useless for anything else. Flywheels, counterweights, or anything else you need high densities for. It also, with a paint job or other coating, makes really good shielding for gamma radiation.
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No children for the ranger.
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Agreed – Natty and Chingachgook … I am so scribbling down notes for the reboot … especially about the pewter bullets with meteorite inclusions. But yes, I would have to file the serial numbers off the concept. The mask would have to go, also. In the old days, it would have attracted much more attention…
Maybe I could make the Tonto character into a Delaware, who had been raised for a while in a Quaker-run orphanage, so that he spoke English well.
I had some other thoughts here …
http://www.celiahayes.com/archives/1470
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If he just lowers his hat a lot, it would have more effect than a mask, I think.
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Maybe I’ve just watched/read too many of the wrong sorts of Westerns, but the phrase “I’d recognize him a mile off; nobody sits a horse like John Ringo” comes to mind, suggesting that mask or hat would be futile.
Perhaps those among us more riding knowledgeable could opine whether an individual’s manner of setting astride is truly so distinctive?
IIRC, the mask wasn’t so much to allow a secret identity (no John Reid by day, Lone Ranger at night bipolarity) but to establish him as an anonymous personification of Justice. “Who was that masked man?” was not an inquiry about identity.
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YES–it is…
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Same as walking.
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Shakespeare’s characters would not really have spoken in iambic pentameter. The ability of half-masks to utterly conceal the identity of the wearer is, like blank verse, a convention that allows the work to ascend peaks of drama impossible without it.
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yes — but if Celia wants it realistic… It’s like when I wrote my Shakespeare trilogy I made it a LOT more madcap and high flung, so it felt like Shakespeare. Realistic would call for something else.
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Oh, yes – pulling a wide-brimmed hat over his eyes, and a cotton or silk bandanna over his nose and mouth would eliminate the mask to hide identity very thoroughly.
The horse, though – a horse of particularly fine color, or unusual color or markings – that would stand out at a distance. The skill and style of the rider would also be obvious at a distance to anyone who knew them particularly well. But this is the far west in the early days. You wouldn’t have to get very far from your home to be anonymous, although chance-met strangers might know of you, or your family, if you brought it up. There’s a lot of scope in filing the numbers off the Lone Ranger concept and doing it fresh and historically realistic.
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Again, I do not think the mask was to hide a secret identity so much as to render the rider an anonymous personification of justice. ‘Tain’t like he had family to protect.
He was the outsider, the man with no name and no interest in the battle beyond justice* being done and law** upheld.
*We can debate the question of how an outsider is to determine what justice actually ought be in another line.
**Although, as he would oppose illegitimate law, corrupt sheriffs and Judge Roy Bean-types, the question of “whose law” might arise.
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RES, he upholds the “natural law” the Founders appealed to.
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Oh! He’s an agent for the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God…
Oh, man, you could play with that. You could play a lot with that.
WordPress.com snelson134 commented: “RES, he upholds the “natural law” the Founders appealed to.”
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Brilliant.
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I am going to take this and run with it. Not in the Western genre, though.
I’m thinking less Lone Ranger, more Space Ghost.
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One caveat. No monkeys. Maybe xenophobic, anthropomorphic bobcats. With kilts. And knives.
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Racoons.
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Raccoon can be a “thief”, bobcat can kick butt. Kind of like BeastMaster, with slightly different animal(-like) companions.
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It’s been done.
http://youtu.be/yThHUrjcqZA
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Yes, that Space Ghost. Not the corny talk show version, though. I’ve always been a fan of one of the characters he inspired – Nexus. But I think you could do something interesting with a representative of some kind of incarnation of Justice or Natural Law that exists in the universe. In a sense, isn’t that sort of what Lensman was?
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In a broadly interpreted fashion, I suppose.
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Zach– I would read about a Space Ghost…
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Cyn – He seems to be talking about this Space Ghost.
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Well– not in my cartoon mind filing system *sigh. However, Space Ghost story would be interesting…as a space fight, saver?, ummm or something like it… lol
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And now you can!:-)
http://www.amazon.com/Carmen-Mirandas-Ghost-Haunting-Station/dp/0671698648
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Nope– I meant by someone in this group… human wave space ghost…
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My folks wear silk scarves when they’re riding– covered from eyes to shirt. Cooler, and you can breath. Cotton works, too.
If you combine that with the mask, and tugged down hat, nobody will SEE the mask unless they’re looking.
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bandana– a three-corner scarf tied loosely around the neck and pulled up when riding or in dust… also used by the ranch hands in the mid-70s. It was one piece of equipment that was useful in Western environments even today.
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Maybe I could make the Tonto character into a Delaware, who had been raised for a while in a Quaker-run orphanage, so that he spoke English well.
Catholic and/or immigrant sheepherding groups did “Indian schools,” too– my grandmother and her siblings went to one. (her mom was the teacher; good one, too, grandma went to college at 16)
The Basques focused on English to keep from getting cheated, IIRC– might have that?
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It cracked me up when I found out that Tonto was originally imagined as a good ol’ Michigander/Wisconsin Potawatomi. (Though it made perfect sense for a Detroit-based show.) So basically, he was supposed to also be an immigrant into the West. Admittedly, it’s story-useful to have a local buddy….
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I suppose if you really wanted to pull a mind-scramble you could make Tonto be a Kalapuya or Nez Perce. Then you could have him muttering in Chinook jargon.
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Sorry – I have got to make him a member of a semi-agreeable tribe known to have members volunteering as scouts in Texas in the 1840s – which would make him either a Delaware/Lenni Lenape, Tonkawa or Lipan/Eastern Apache. The Delaware/Lenni look to have an interesting history which would make a fluent English-speaker among them not all that uncommon. It would be so much fun to write the characters this way – the sole surviving Ranger being earnest, humorless and kind of dorkily endearing, yet dedicated to justice, and his best friend Indian buddy the confident and humorous one – yet also drawn to the pursuit of justice …
Yeah, that would be so much fun, writing a series of short story adventures. Anyone come up with a better overall title than “The Ranger, Alone”?
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He could be a debt collector for a period equivalent of a loan shark, riding the range to collect overdue vigorish: The Loan Ranger. In this version when a guy says he has an itchy trigger finger it is because it has almost healed since Tonto broke it. In his spare time he solves crimes and defends ranchers against other debt collectors efforts to steal their spreads.
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“One riot, One Ranger”
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Having the Ranger older, highly experienced and cynical about the state of the world, rather than the more usual naïve might be interesting, as well.
Silver could use a bit more explanation as well. However howlingly funny I found the “Spirit Horse” of this years film, you really can’t just go out and capture an incredibly good wild horse.
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Of course, there’s the fun and games of “training him to carry a human” *after* you catch the horse. [Wink]
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Wanna borrow a cap and ball revolver?
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Don’t need to, this time around SPQR, but thanks for the offer. When I was researching for writing Adelsverein, I had a friend who put me in touch with an antique gun enthusiast, who gave us the whole rundown on his perfect replica Paterson Colt and Walker Colt. Very informative. It did surprise me that the Paterson was so small, relatively (I have small hands and it was very comfortable for me to hold) … but the Walker absolutely monstrously huge.
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Depending on the specific period in the Texas area, you could also use various models of Sharps, or the Hall rifle, which was used during the Mexican-American war – The only US breech loading flintlock.
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The Walker was designed for cavalry, the term “horse pistol” originates here, because the larger caliber was thought more effective for killing enemy cavalry mounts.
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I think its the economy, a lot of my clients’ are seeing slow down this summer and there is some clues to that in some economic data.
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It seems to be normal in summer for indies, anyway. I suspect reluctance to take the kindle/ereader on summer trips. I mean, Dan and I lost some paperbacks on trips to Portugal, but a kindle would be devastatingly more expensive. (I suspect hc sales fall in summer too, but i have no proof) but also people doing more stuff outside, and for our own little community more traveling for cons. This year it took an exceptional whack, yes. Which is why back list books reasonably priced (I’m putting anything previously released at 4.50 with three-book omnibus-es at 9.99 for ease of affordability) will do well in the long winter of our discontent. And please, can you email me at sff.net? Where I am, I can’t access the other emails.
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Yep. Dead, dead, dead. I’m hustling to put up some new stuff in hopes that it’ll help, or at least be available in October, which was when sales picked up last year. And it’ll get them off my schedule, as I’m going to make an effort to get everything up on Kobo and CreateSpace in September and October.
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Ditto although someone bought one of everything last week. (Thank you, whoever you are!) I’ve got a release for October, and am thinking about trying to get one of the Colplatshki novels out in Jan and the Azdhagi novel in Feb.
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Putting up the new stuff really helped.
Or maybe it’s just that everyone is back from vacation.
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I’m still new at this game, but I’m not seeing much in the way of a slowdown, except for the normal slide as my books come off the 30-day ‘Hot New Releases’ list at Amazon.
My first SF novel came out in mid-May, and my second in mid-July. (A memoir will follow in mid-September, and the third novel in the series in late November or early December.) By the end of August I’ll have sold well over 10,000 copies of the first two in 3½ months on the market.
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Do you attribute your high sales numbers to having a blog?
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That’s part of it, but only as a starter. My blog readership kicks up each title in the first couple of days to where it appears on Amazon’s ‘hot new releases’ and ‘best seller’ lists. Once it’s there, it develops its own momentum among readers scanning those lists to see what’s new. I wrote about my marketing plan in more detail over at Mad Genius Club a few weeks back:
http://madgeniusclub.com/2013/07/24/guest-post-by-peter-grant/
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Yes. I remembered reading that, and it sounded as if your blog gave you the first platform to jump to the second platform, the Hot Releases page at Amazon. Then you got the eyeballs on a good product. It’s pretty awesome and impressive, and I’m looking forward to reading your book.
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I find it dismaying it’s not enough to get me on the Hot releases. Though of course, mine are trad, which is different. Next time, I shall go to Peter’s blog. :-P
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Sarah, we can always get Oleg Volk to do some nudes for your covers. I’m sure some of your readers would volunteer as models. (Not me – I don’t want to blind others with splendor . . . )
;-)
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I’d need to lose 60 lbs. There’s rather too much of my splendorous self right now.
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That is why such pictures ought be drawings, not photos. A proper artist ought be able to draw you as you’re supposed to look, not the way you actually do.
Sure, haven’t you noticed how drawn most of those catwalk strutters actually are? (I confess — I nowadays skim the occasional Vickie’s Secret catalog that reaches the house primarily to marvel at how few curves them gals actually have; they need that lingerie to create the illusion of curvature where mostly straight lines live.)
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Peter, go talk Erin Palette into it, as she owes some cheesecake photos to her readers for a fund raiser. ;-)
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Hmmmm, on second thought, looking over Chris Muir’s “strips” this weekend, the drawing idea has merit. Hypothetically speaking.
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(Chuckling like Beavis and Butthead) Heh-heh. You said “strips” in connection with Chris Muir. Heh-heh. Heh.
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I think you could do it. You just have to coordinate us. Your fans want you to do well. So…. When you mentioned how pre-orders helped, I went and pre-ordered AFGM. For your next release, indie or traditional, just bat your eyelashes, look winsome, and tell us “You knuckleheads better click within the next two days so I shoot up the charts or else.” We won’t all remember the significance of that otherwise, and, clearly, the more who participate the better.
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Possible. The huns aren’t very coordinated. “The individualists failed to organize.”
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Hey! I only trip two, maybe three times a day! Hardly ever drop stuff! ::cough, cough:: For some definitions of “ever” and “hardly.”
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I meant as a group, but you too? I can trip on a flat sidewalk, particularly if I’m thinking of something else. People give me the ODDEST looks.
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Oh wow–I am a tripper too ;-) except when I am on a boat or running.
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Now, you see, it’s not that we’re clumsy. It’s that we’re efficient, by not wasting energy lifting our feet higher than necessary. This, unfortunately, allows minor variations to catch us by surprise.
Gotta know how to spin it. :-)
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Yep– made me dizzy ;-)
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No worries. I will lie in wait to remind you.
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Take old junker motherboard. Hang from ceiling, with decorative chains if you have leftovers from Halloween/Totally Sekrit Torture Dungeon I know nothing about. Show to recalcitrant laptop and whisper meaningfully, “That could be you…”
I’m a software tester. You cannot show fear to computers, they sense it like sharks sense blood. Make THEM fear YOU ;-)
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I treat computers the way I treat small children and animals. They all sense fear. Do not let them sense fear.
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I have found that the incantation “Computer, if you don’t play nice I shall take and axe to you major databanks and give you a reprogramming you’ll never forget.” (a paraphrase of Douglas Adams) works wonders.
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I leave a couple of half-disassembled ones lying around in sight.
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Thanks.
You’ve described how to intimidate the hulking brutish hardware, but its animating spirit(s) can do even more terrible terrible damage: damage all the worse for lying in ambush until it’s too late. How do you do intimidate the software? ;-)
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Oh, that’s easy. Compile a list of malicious sites, and tell them that you will replace them, but not until after you have visited all these sites and gotten them tons of viruses.
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Oh, that’s easy. “Behave, or I shall replace you with a small Perl script.” (not a typo.) Yep, I can scare hardware *and* software.
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Given that all but one of my coworkers in my department work almost exclusively in Perl, the software around us isn’t afraid of it any more.
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I know Perl. Or rather, husband does.
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I wrote Perl scripts but I didn’t admit it. I had a certain youngster working for me, who was notorious for getting all enthusiastic about trying to implement certain tasks in Perl that were better off not so implemented. At least by her …
But that was another career … besides the wench is dead.
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I prefer Java. As a Mad Scientist being able to create my own objects and override prior implementations pleases me mightily. I also have plans to feature inheritance (in the coding sense) in an upcoming novel. Bwahaha.
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Uh … I sorta … well … I sorta predate Java. Although I could tell some really cool “get off my lawn” style stories about X Window System source code … if you hold my cane for me while I tell it.
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It’s too bad I didn’t get more comfortable with computers when younger. It’s too bad I didn’t know about Moore’s Law at that time.
Back then I tried to minimize my interaction with computers because of how overhyped they were, and I was slow to realize that Moore’s Law was keeping pace with the overhyping.
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HAH!
My first job was writing PL/1 on a mainframe. I was a Young Turk at that place, though — I added the first subroutine to a program that, printed out, was three inches high.
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Mathematica.
I’m a hamhanded coder at best, so I like its ability to give a quick first-look answer before I commit to serious number crunching.
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Now, I like object-oriented languages best, but gawd, did I have a hard time learning them. I wasn’t able to afford classes, so had to do it myself, and had the darnedest time getting the whole event-driven thing to gel in my head. Having learned my programming in the ’80s (primarily PASCAL and BASIC, but some Fortran), then not really doing anything with it for over 10 years, the old ways were kind of ossified in there.
I will have to say this about Perl – it’s got a LOT of functionality that can be had from external libraries. But it’s got some really weird holes, too.
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My favorite part of Perl:
x = x + 1 if (x == 0);
Reads brilliantly. Guaranteed to make anyone unfamiliar without go into meltdown.
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My co-workers would write that:
x++ if (!x);
That one will really cause a meltdown.
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A lot of the work I do is command line stuff across the network in a Windows environment, using DOS batch file language.
I’s schizo, I is..
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you know, if you make it to the con… the thought of your meeting the (Un)Stable boys (when I was in Austen fandom my persona was Mrs. Bennett — look, like you wouldn’t want to shriek and behave very badly in your off time — and since she didn’t have sons, when I talked of the boys I called them the Stable Boys. It took about a month for EVERYONE to call them the (UN)Stable boys. They were 7 and 10 at the time.) I fear for the world. I do.
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And the rumor that I sent anonymous death threats to Larry Wall is a foul foul lie … it was my brother.
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Undead Roman Ratcatchers Have Brothers!!!!
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Maybe it was my sister … yeah, my younger sister.
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Would that be Julia, or Julia (Gosh, your parents lacked imagination!)
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Yep. Look ’em in the eye and tell them, “I’m going to break you so hard you’ll go screaming back to your Amiga mommy.” — and mean it.
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Calmly get up, leave the room, come back with a hammer, give the offending machine a significant look, and set the hammer down within easy reach.
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Ooh! I’ll have to try that with the stuff from the Totally Sekrit Torture Dungeon (TM) that no one knows about. Maybe with alligator clips and a battery… Not that I know anything about things like that, of course.
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Whew! For a moment there, I thought you were working up to announcing closure of ATH. (A suspicious person—not I, of course—might wonder if you were building the tension on purpose.)
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actually since that never crossed my mind, it wasn’t meant at all. The tension you picked up on was probably residuals from week from h*ll.
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Hell pays residuals???? (Yeah — but the check usually bounces … after you’ve used ot to pay the light bill.)
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Re. exercise. Maybe we should start a writers mileage challenge for the fall and winter. I’ve been slacking off because of the overly-warm weather (I know, it’s called ‘summer.’ Happens every year.)
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yes. We totally should.
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I’m not a writer but would like to monitor that.
Earlier in the year I was doing well in the local state park. Unfortunately, I can’t stand humidity, especially humidity and heat. A blast of both discombobulated my walking and my sleep, and I should get back into rhythm.
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Yes– I need to go back to writing on three different novels that I dropped around November last year *sigh. Having to put up what I write (daily? weekly?) would get me back in the groove.
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Mine would have to be measured in times up and down the stairs (if I’m alert enough to keep count), since my walking is limited to about 100 yards. I do climb the stairs frequently — the food and coffee is upstairs, my computer, books and stamps are all downstairs.
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Use dailymile.com or runkeeper.com . Both allow you to see what your friends are doing
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It’d be more likely, I think, to be a permanently wandering tangent comment thread on the posts here – especially as it’s likely to start accumulating oddities in measuring: “I got 3 miles, and 2000 words.” “Well, I got 500 stairs, and 2500 words.” “It was 6 tomatoes (or penguins) for me, with 4 chapters edited and a short uploaded. Oh, and 1.5 on the recumbent exercycle.”
We’re Odd and individual creatures.
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I’ll post some thing at the end of my posts starting tomorrow…
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As my children would say, I am totally down for this.
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Yesterday I got 8 miles and 300 words and 100 antiwords.
(An antiword, when written, annihilates the nearest word leaving no result but a possibly improved manuscript. Writers have yet to produce antiwords in isolation.)
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“Antiwords.” I am sooooo stealing that.
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‘Tain’t original with me.
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I was at Bar Camp GR this weekend and one of the presenters talked about advertising and promotion. And how it drove sales. I realized that there was just too much there for me to pick up normally. I need to hire a Google AdWords maven to do things I cannot. Not because I’m too slow, but because I’d do a cruddy job of it. Same for my cover art. And I think EVERY indie needs to hire out copy editing. Typos know their writer’s brain and exactly how to hide.
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Yes, on the copy editing, but I’d been trading with friends. And editing is more complex than COPY editing.
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I discovered recently that this can happen to editors as well. I did the copy edit on a novel just a couple of weeks after doing the line edits, and without any other projects in between. It took me twice as long as normal, because my brain had absorbed too much of the book the first time and I had to constantly refocus to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Next time I’m going to make sure I do another book between edits, even if I have to write one myself to do so!
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Speaking of promotion, I found this on Instapundit yesterday, and began reading it. I haven’t finished yet, and haven’t made an opinion yet. I’d appreciate feedback…
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I read that yesterday off of Instapundit, too. It all looks great, but like too much. Kris Rusch would have writers rely more on word of mouth, and has repeatedly noted the importance of having lots of product. I put my first novel up in May, and am working on final edits of another before giving it to some folks who have agreed to beta read it for me. If I’m diligent, I might have it up by year’s end. This seems like better marketing than spending all my time on actually marketing. Like I said, however, I speak from the vantage of someone who has just one book up and is not ready to start a blog.
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The question is always Would you be better off writing?
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Yes! Exactly that. And, double yes for someone like me with only one book out so far.
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Now that I’m not on the tablet — Grin — the other thing is that Dean says the blog tours do nothing.
I think it’s edgy. I think blog tours can launch you, if done in the right places, at the right time, and you are a total unknown. After that not so much. All the big sellers I know didn’t do but one or two blog appearances at friends’ blogs.
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From what I’ve seen (and I’m by no means an expert), blog tours / blog reviews / blog mentions / guest posts work if you chose your blogs wisely.
Does your host blog have a large enough audience to be worth the time spent marketing? Is that an audience that would be interested in your work? Is it a market segment with purchasing power? Is it tapped out from constant “buy this / buy that”, is it a nearly non-commercial, or is it a place go to see what to get?
When authors spend a lot of time doing blog tours on small-audience blogs, it’s akin to doing a weekday signing during working hours at a low-traffic bookstore… you can put a lot of work into very low returns. Similarly, putting up a formatted standard interview with padding and boring questions on a page where no one’s heard of you – much better to have something really catchy to say, that will attract their attention. Finally, a writer posting on a writing blog is likely to only be seen by an audience of… other writers. (Not a highly moneyed impulse-buying group.) Marketing to teenagers is hit and miss on disposable income, as well.
Lest anyone protest about the exposure gained here at ATH, I’ll say this isn’t a writing blog. This is a social commentary blog by a writer – this crowd isn’t here for “when to break the ‘never use the passive voice’ rule” posts; they’re here for the debate and philosophy, bad puns and musical references.
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No. Never the puns.
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Speak for yourself. I come for the puns. I stay for the politics and to look for news about sequels. (Because, um, A Few Good Men doesn’t close flat any more, and I’m concerned about the binding holding up until I can get the next.)
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Zen is being a b*tch to write but if I deliver this month (pray. PRAY hard) you should have it next Jan then DSRevenge come summer.
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There are puns here?? I don’t believe it. I’ve never noticed any.
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Puns? And here I was wondering about all the typos… :mrgreen:
Maybe I just exposed our hostess’s cunning plan, one of them anyway.
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And the sarcasm. Our five chief weapons are debate, philosophy, bad puns, musical references, and sarcasm.
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And semi-obscure pop culture references. Our six chief weapons are debate, philosophy, bad puns, musical references, sarcasm and semi-obscure pop culture references.
Sigh. When I was young we couldn’t afford sarcasm. We had to make do with irony and we was darn glad to have it. We only wished we could have afforded sarcasm.
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Seven! Our Seven chief weapons are– Shall I come in again?
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And an unmitigated devotion to personal liberty. Our six chief weapons are….
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I am officially on suspension for excessive Four Yorkshiremen for the remainder of August.
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I got some really nice sales for about a week from you mentioning my book on one of your lists and your being linked by instapundit. The same day you did your list I asked a blogger I read on space policy to mention my book, and that got cross-linked by others. It was pretty thrilling for several days, even though it wasn’t dozens and dozens or anything. It’s gotten very slow since that all wore off, however. So, I’ve used those avenues up, and feel it’s time to get the next book ready. Besides, I like doing that more.
The other day at MGC Karen Myers talked about putting the first few pages of a related work at the end of another, and that seems very clever. But, again, one must have more than one novel or story out. (Talking to myself here, obviously: “More product” has been the mantra for a few weeks now).
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of course on the sample. AND a link. It works. You’re reading along, you like it, you read the new chapter of nextbestthing
and then you have a click to buy.
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Some day, when I have far too much time on my hands, I’ll go back and add sample chapters and Also by Author pages to all prior books Calmer Half has published.
Thank G-d clicking publish isn’t the last time you can change a book!
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yep. for series, I intend to go back and add every time I add a book. Yay.
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I think it’s probably a bit excessive but coneptually sound. There’s no reason not to take his plan and cut out bits you don’t like when you adapt it to your own book(s). It is certainly true that it is very easy to forget to do some things that are easy, cheap and can’t hurt (e.g. putting links to your website in your book, adding an extract of the next WIP, or making sure that you have all the right amazon… links on your website)
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Yeah, most of those things are easy to do. I was a blogger long before I was an indy author, so it was easy to remember to blog about the current and upcoming books, post teaser chapters, etc – and link deeply and promiscuously to other authors and book-blogs … but if you are coming the notion of marketing your book, some of this might be a titch new.
Marketing – what it boils down to is – who are the potential readers of your book, and where to you go – internet or meatspace – in order to put it in front of them.
One of the founding members of the internet indy author circle I belong to is a dear little retired mid-west missionary lady who writes mostly Christian historicals and romance. (Janet Elaine Smith, if anyone wonders about this.) But she has about twenty under her belt, and is also the most relentlessly creative marketer among us. She always has a box of her books in the trunk of her car, always has a handful of her author business cards and postcards with information on her latest book in her purse, and whenever anyone casually asks her what she does, she says that she is an author. The next question is – well, what have you written/have you written a book/ what is your book about – and they she lays it on them – gracefully, of course. She even upsells to people who come selling stuff door to door, or telemarketers trying to sell stuff to her! She also does a lot of craft shows – hey, people are there to spend money, right?
She has always said that if you take up writing a lot of books, every book you have out there is an advertisement for all the others. A reader who finds one of your books and loves it – they’ll go looking for others.
I know – preaching to the choir, I am. But when I get old, I wanna be like Janet Elaine. (Only not so much the Christian romance,)
PS – Mike W. – thanks for the Amazon review of the Trilogy! Much appreciated, and I only just noticed it. Talk about not keeping on top of things..
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On repairing and maintaining homes, and in my case, mini ranches. Why should you spend good money doing things you can do yourself–and why the H**l do people deliberately handicap themselves by being unable to do them?
That used to be my mantra. Now the age is starting to show; the agility, flexibility and will to climb under sinks and remove, clean or replace is fading fast. Can’t take the heat etc., etc. Gah. Replacing fence boards didn’t used to be so tiring! I have learned to utilize a young man in need of financial augmentation for some things. But in an emergency, I know how to do all sorts of stuff, and I can do them myself at need.
All of which is a longwinded way of saying that if you have done enough covers, editing, copy, editing, formatting, and conversions to really, really know how it works, you will know if the people you are now hiring are doing it right. If the time they are taking is reasonable, if the price they charge reflects the value to you.
If you don’t have the knowledge, how can you judge?
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And what was that about two books at a chapter a week? Where are you hiding the other one?
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Oh, Duh! Elf Blood on MGC. I hadn’t realized last week’s wasn’t a random snippet.
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Mad genius club Sundays
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I am so with you on a lot of this. Unfortunately, I have people around me who are making a point of letting my children know that we’re eccentric *because* we’re poor. It doesn’t seem to bother the kiddo’s too much now but I worry about the future. With the addition of 2 new people (lots of drama involving deaths and fights, in that order) and no new income, I’m panicking and trying to get as much stuff finished as I can. Have I mentioned I have books up on Amazon? And struggling to get time at the computer and finishing things that it feels like I’ve been working on forever just makes it all harder.
Of course, stress lowers the immune system and my yoga mat has been gathering dust so I’m getting sick, too. However, I have the house to myself for a few hours and the living room is finally clean. Hmm… I’ll be back in a bit.
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Have you considered putting notes on the fridge in dry erase, of the things that need doing?
“Teach Sons to Do Laundry”
“Son one- cook Tuesdays; Son Two, cook Thursdays.” (This week, on Iron Chef, the secret ingredient is weekdays!)
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Did you see the sturgeon episode?
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Sadly, no…
Or maybe thank goodness, sturgeons are kinda scary.
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Its great. The Chairman (Japanese version) whips off cloth from a tank of live sturgeon. The had to wrestle it out of the tank.
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If Memory Serves Me Correctly: The Iron Chef for that challenge was Sakai — who *hates* working with live ingredients…. (There’s at least one instance where a live ingredient is revealed, and Sakai’s response is “THEY’RE ALIVE!?”_
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Is that the one where 90% of the dishes are cr*p?
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Doffs hat in admiration. I wanTed to make a sturgeon pun but didn’t dream of jewels like that killdozer of a line. In this microcosm you are a deity, Mssr Munn.
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But what if, when you’ve cooked them, they don’t taste good?
(Running . . . )
;-)
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Add more salt.
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Just saw this on Facebook.
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Giggle … yeah, once naively expected that. It was very odd, though – I got to be quite insouciant about rejection notices. I had always rather dreaded going and sending my manuscripts for publishers, thinking that I would be absolutely destroyed by rejection – but it turned out to be not that big a deal. I think that I have saved most of them in a folder somewhere. It would be a hoot to paper the bathroom wall with them …
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I did that with job application rejections when I was trying to find a job right out of college during the Carter Recession … then when I got a job, I burned them. It was satisfying :)
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yeah, I used to get 100 by March every year. It was no big.
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More writing, more writing, more writing, I tell myself. But it’s the doing of it that always seems to come up short. Perhaps that will change tomorrow as the kiddo goes to school again, including an elective early-morning seminary class. If I take her to that, that’s about an hour of time when I can get BICHOK (Butt In Chair Hands On Keyboard).
Meanwhile, if anyone does need help with epub formatting, I’m not bad. Don’t let me do a CSS style sheet, but I can do pretty much everything else in Sigil.
And with the podcasting background, I have to ask – has anyone thought about audiobooks?
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How do you do voice auditions? Do you put out requests for samples and proposed completion times?
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I usually do my own audio work. But there is always the Audible ACX program, IIRC. http://www.acx.com/ > >
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I CAN’T do my audio work. So I’m getting Dan to do the musketeers, once we assemble the Tardis. Tardis? you say. Look, the audio booth is about that size and the only place we have for it is the living room. It’s getting assembled and painted as a tardis, so it’s DECORATIVE.
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Try doing some brief short stories. I saw your VodkaPundit interview. You have a pleasant voice, your pitch is perfect for half-deaf guys like me (I can’t hear squeaky women), and your diction is very clear. You will sell some just because readers want to know what your voice sounds like.
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For short stories, yes. For novels it would grow tedious to listen to me.
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If your yard is anything like my friends’ Colorado lawns, I’m guessing that it’s mostly hardpan, yes? Difficult to dig, clay and decomposed granite, just basically unforgiving, and the weeds are the only thing that like it.
Here is my suggestion: Have the sons dig it out quite thoroughly. This is going to be a PITA project. Then—the big secret—set the loose dirt to one side, put a bunch of straw down (like a big thick carpet), and cover with the dirt. And then cover *that* with stuff like decomposed steer manure, which is about the cheapest non-homemade compost you can get. You can plant immediately; the straw decomposes underground while your plants grow. You may have dirt but not a lot of *soil* and that’s hard for plants to take.
This is what I did with my raised beds in Sacramento clay soil and it was one summer to really nice garden soil*. Almost too nice, though I think the bermudagrass would try to take over even if it weren’t nice, because that’s what bermudagrass does. (And a previous homeowner planted mint, and I’ve been cursing at her a lot, so please try something less obnoxious if you can.)
*I was being a board operator for the local radio gardening show and heard a guest mention “straw bale gardening” in passing. It turns out I got a bunch of the details wrong but my ill-informed attempt turned out much better than when I did the actual straw bale garden this year, even after a couple of years of no new compost. So I recommend it as a soil builder.
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We did that at prior house: framed the beds at 6 by 16 with landscape timbers spiked together three deep (about 10 inches) after using a rental rototiller & shovel to excavate (NC clay.) Went to a local stable and bought enough composted horse manure (they mixed with cedar sawdust) to fill the bottom of the beds to … I dunno, 6 – 8 inches … then worked the excavated soil back in, mixed with gypsum, perlite, vermiculite and commercial top soil to create something that would breathe.
Think of it as an embedded clay flower pot. Thanks to the horse manure we had a healthy crop of earthworms before very long.
Make sure you get a soil test done and make appropriate adjustments.
You can nail uprights to the framing timbers to create supports for tomato, bean and other viney crops.
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Can’t have vegetable crop. College neighborhood. Our pumpkins got stolen and munched (though that was probably squirrels, but I wouldn’t bet.)
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We have almost nothing to dig out. You go an inch and a half and you hit pebbles and roots. Hence “raised beds.” Might try it on the raised beds. People give away steer (and goat) manure here.
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Please check that it’s been composted– you shouldn’t be able to smell that it’s poop, although it should have some sort of a scent.
It’s not just a matter of the stink of poo, it’s that uncomposted stuff spreads weeds very well. (Mom’s on the weed board– the stuff she has to worry about!)
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My father went to the local sewage plant one year for some ‘fertilizer’ for the front yard.
Did you know tomato seeds seem to pass through your gut undigested? And will also pass through the processes they used at the time to turn it into a nice, non-smelly sludge, high in nitrogen.
The grass loved it. So did the tomato plants we spent the summer weeding out of the yard.
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Oh, my, that’s awesome!
Our neighbors work in the Treatment facility, so he brought home a lot of it for the garden. Their pea plants were taller than me (alright, not THAT impressive) and had stalks as thick as my thumb!
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Re. earlier sub-thread. 3900 words, 1.5 miles. Started completely new story that seems to want to be a semi-paranormal, hobbiest-oriented (beading and gardening) romance with a very strong Human Wave theme. The hero writes Human Wave fiction for young adults. Any bets on what other genres decide to get involved? :)
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I got two new books into the Kindle system this weekend, and just finished the CreateSpace head bashing (my personal method) for the stand alone YA Fantasy an hour ago. Exercise? Not going to happen until the weather turns.
Stop looking pointedly at the indoor equipment. It’s the principle of the thing. If you don’t boycott this sort of weather, it’ll just keep happening.
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No exercise except scrubbing kitchen floor (not enough) because I was buried in work. Got some editing done, and a few covers. First day with kids back at college, so there were unexpected “can you pick me up” calls and… well, just that sort of day.
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Yesterday, three miles, an hour of yoga, and two pomodoros (but with a rooster) of editing. Today, two pomodoros of editing, and walking to and from my car.
I will totally read that book,btw. Is the hero writing science fiction? I am of the opinion that human wave transcends genres, so I’m voting for science fiction. (If you are seeking votes, that is).
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It has a sci-fi element in it, but not as much as my usual work. At the moment, that is. I suspect the story is going to go wherever it darn well pleases and I’m just along for the ride. :)
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I have an entirely different approach to the excercise – take out a rifle and shoot something. It hasn’t done anything for the writing, but has expanded the waistline… oh. Another fail, I guess. The current book/s and load of extra prep, and covers and editing and Createspace and fighting my way through Amazon’s tax withholding circus just seem too much right now. Battle fatigue, mark MXX.
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