The root of all your problems is that you don't look like me

[rolanni]

Well, let's see. . .

Several questions from the depths of the Roll Call, so! Answers.

*Book tours happen at the whim and/or planning of the publisher.  If we have helpers on the ground, Steve and I will occasionally do a book tour, or visit a bookstore local to the vicinity of an SF convention or WorldCon.  We were in Colorado some years back -- 2006, I think -- as GoHs at CoSine; and in Denver Itself for the WorldCon in 2008.  We did not do a bookstore tour at either of those cons; the local bookstores being largely uninterested in having second-string scifi writers come to their stores.  We are Further Constrained by the fact that we don't fly, which limits the venues to which the publisher can economically send us.  Which is to say:  Unless we're in Denver for Another Reason, and one or two or three of the local stores are willing to host a signing, our book tours, at least, will probably not reach Denver.

*I'm not certain I understand either the need or the desirability for a Collected Liaden Works for Kindle.  That being said...to the best of my knowledge, Baen is selling two bundles of novels -- Korval's Legacy and Phase Change, but I think that only gets you ten or twelve.  Surely, if one has a Kindle, there's a way to make a category, say, LIADEN, and stick all your Liaden books under that category?  Just a thought.

*The reason we have not Mentioned the Rest of the Geography, Fauna, and Population (if any) of Planet Surebleak is because!  all the stories thus far have happened in the Port and the City, and neither Steve nor I feel like writing a Forbes Guide to the Surebleak Outback.

#

As reported elsewhere, you may now pre-order the Audible version of Alliance of Equals.  Here's the link.

Yes, we are aware that Audible has the book listed as AN Alliance of Equals; we have written to them on the topic.

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It's a warm and pleasant day  here at the Confusion Factory.  I have vacuumed, and done a blankie run, the latter no doubt being the reason why I have three Large Cats asleep on my desk, all within the reach of my hand.  The coffeepot is hissing through its cleaning cycle; and I need to sort laundry.  After lunch, I will make a Sincere Effort to actually add words to the working manuscript.

I hope everyone is having a fine and relaxing day.

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Today's blog title is brought to you by Julie Brown, "Brand New Girl."  Here's your link.

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

One timeline question on Wise Child - did this involve Tolly's current escape that ended him on Surebleak or did it come earlier?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

It happened before Tolly's arrival on Surebleak, and more than that I won't commit too, because, if I then need this episode in future, I don't want the people who love timelines to tell me that It Can't Have Happened.

We do as much Not Pinning Down of Dates as we possibly can, for this very reason.

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Understood. It was just that given the Uncle's proclivity for rebirth, which might also be something that the Institute could do, it could have happened generations ago ;)

[gerald heaton (from livejournal.com)]

Under Kindle For PC, there is a tab called "collections". ALSO on the Kindle android app. (just looked)

You name the "collection" what you want and add books as necessary

On the Nook tablets, it is called "shelves" (duh)
Same procedure, name the shelf and add books as needed.

Don't know how to do chronological order, but several of my shelves are in that order, NO MATTER WHEN I BOUGHT THEM.
Just a guess, it does a magic internal sort by publishing date.

Calibre

[charlie russel (from livejournal.com)]

If you use Calibre to organize your eBooks (and if you have more than a few dozen, you should!), then you can have it easily add "Liaden Universe nn - title" to the book when it you use it to transfer (sideload) the book to your device. Makes it easy to keep track of the order on your device, and you control that order number so you can set them to the order you want to read, or their internal chronological order or publishing order, or any other system you want.

Calibre is free, and the author updates it nearly weekly. It is invaluable for managing your ebook collection. I won't insert a link here, to avoid the aggressive spam filters that are in place, but a google on calibre-ebook should get you what you need.

[gerald heaton (from livejournal.com)]

Just for giggles and grins.

Alliance of Equals hardback to be issued in July, 2016

AoE e-book to be issued in January, 1970 according to the publishing schedule. when you click through the authors catalog page link.

OOPS.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Oops, indeed.

Which site are we talking about? If it's one of ours, we can fix it. If it's on Baen, or Audible, or something, we can at least *ask* to have it fixed.

[gerald heaton (from livejournal.com)]

Sorry

It's on the Baen web site.

When you click on the "Authors" "catalog" then under either Sharon Lee, or Steve Miller, it pops up that way.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

I see. As long as the DOI number's right, everything ought to be OK in terms of record-keeping. But -- yeah. I was still five months from graduating high school in January 1970.

I'll drop a note and see if we can't get it adjusted.

Thanks.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

If you let baensupport@principledtechnologies.com know about it, they will probably fix it asap. They really are very responsive.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Oh, I just realized. That's the baseline date in UNIX, and quite a few free systems. I'll bet someone left the field empty (0) and the system helpfully converted that to Jan. 1970! Computers are ur friends, even when they do interesting things!

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Oohh, Steve looks like he has a giant cat-beard!

[hairmonger.livejournal.com]

"neither Steve nor I feel like writing a Forbes Guide to the Surebleak Outback." I quite understand that feeling, but shouldn't Miri be trying to write one in her Spare Time? And making notes for it in the middle of other things. Because surely there's all sorts of interesting trouble to be found there by greenhorns.

Mary Anne in Kentucky

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Miri's a city girl. And when she was growing up on Surebleak, the tollbooths were still operational. Outside the city probably wasn't anything she ever thought about, as she was too busy trying to stay alive .

Story-time-now, I can't see her mounting An Expedition to explore the outback, either; she's still got most of her business in the city and on the port. Quite probably, there's a team or two of Surebleak Scouts on the case, but we haven't told their stories yet, either.

In general, we only mention stuff that furthers the story (or will further a story down the road). Excursionary chapters about the landscape really isn't something we've much done.

[hairmonger.livejournal.com]

The Scouts! Of course it would be them. Miri is a very busy woman. I wasn't imagining her exploring herself (either in the past or the future) but she knows people. Who know people.
I tend to envision the surroundings of what I read in far greater detail than is necessary (for instance, I have a clear picture of the landscape around Solcintra) but I have only now noticed that my imagination has not ventured outside of the city on Surebleak. I know it's cold; that's probably enough to put me off.
Should you all ever present me with an excursionary chapter about landscape I will be very tense, waiting for something dangerous to spring out.

Mary Anne in Kentucky