In Which There are Surprises

[rolanni]

The first surprise is that the German editions of the first three Liaden Universe® books are up for preorder at Amazon.de. Reserve your copy now of Der Agent und die Söldnerin, Eine Frage der Ehre, and Gestrandet auf Vandar. Nice art. Interesting spaceships. I note that Shan does not appear as a sabertooth tiger with a fondness for high-tech explosive devices. This is a Good Thing.

The second surprise is that I now have a MySpace page. I know, I know, a bunch of y'all have been insisting for Some Time that I get my act over to MySpace, but, yanno, Life, and also a chapter a week without fail for manymany weeks. We have the fact that my brain went boom! in the middle of the chapter scheduled to be written this weekend to thank for my getting on the stick with this.

Another book surprise -- the Ace edition of Crystal Soldier is out!

And for the final (Ghod willing) surprise on the weekend: Kit Jimenez accidentally "took" her house back into inventory, whereupon she needed to quicksnatcheverythingelseback! too, to prevent them from raining down upon the blameless landscape. Sigh.

On the bright side, I have an AWESOME dress to wear to the Talis Portal on Info Island next Sunday, March 11, at noon, Second Life time. kinzel and I (it says here) will be discussing the whys behind our first, second, and third forays into electronic media, and how demand has changed since we started publishing BPLAN Virtuals Disk-Top ebooks in the late 1980s. Be there or be somewhere else.

Edited To Add: While my muse is off sunning herself in some pleasant clime, ogling the cabana boys and sipping rum through a straw, I updated the Coming Attractions page.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I've committed MySpace as well: http://www.myspace.com/specfic. I have friended you.

I like your slide show--I only have the four covers, so I went for a slower version.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

've committed MySpace as well: http://www.myspace.com/specfic. I have friended you.

...and there you are. I've returned the favor. I think.

I like your slide show

Thank you. I confess that I didn't think it was going to be quite so zippy.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

You can slow down the pace if you want. The default is Medium speed, but you can slow it down.

[saruby.livejournal.com]

So, how do I order books at Amazon.de? Everytime I have tried to order from one of the other country sites, I get told that I can't, because I have already ordered from the U.S. site. Stupid, if you ask me. I use Visa, which has a varying exchange rate. I mean, I can use my Visa card in Europe, why can't I buy things from Europe? Of course, I haven't read any German for years and years, but this should be a good opportunity, since I already know the story.

I always wondered what would happen if you moved a skybox, without moving the furniture inside. It's a great visual.

[saruby.livejournal.com]

Ok, I spoke too soon. Whatever problem I had the last time, seems to have been corrected. However, given the cost of shipping, I think I may wait until I can get them all at the same time. Just under $30 US seems a lot for 1 book and the shipping shouldn't go up that much for 3.

[magda-vogelsang.livejournal.com]

My rusty German translates those as "The Agent and the (female) Soldier", "A Question of Honor" and "Stranded on Vandar". (Okay, at least two of them were pretty obvious.) Not bad as foreign titles go.

Glad to hear that Shan is not a sabertooth tiger (this time). Oddest book cover I've seen recently was the Czech cover for Ill Wind by Rachel Caine (http://rachelcaine.livejournal.com/64777.html). The main character appeared to have inexplicably acquired 2 large pairs of octopus tentacles, as well as a hobble dress and impressive cleavage.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

"The Agent and the (female) Soldier"

A Question of Honor is close enough to Conflict of Honors and I guess I can see that Carpe Diem might not translate well out of the Latin. But what is it with Agent of Change that dictates it become, The Agent and the Soldier?

I've always thought Agent of Change worked well as a title, leaving, as it does, the discovery of who, exactly, is the Agent of the title an exercise for the reader. But that's just me...

[magda-vogelsang.livejournal.com]

Maybe the word for Agent in German doesn't have the same double meaning of both a spy and a force that causes a change? I do like the double meaning of the title in English, but it might be lost in translation. Dunno.

Sabertooth... tiger...?

[elbales]

O_o

[elbales]

Hmm. I was just following the link from your MySpace page to the Liaden page at korval.com and was informed that the requested URL (http://korval.com/liad.html) could not be found. Do you need "www" in front of your domain name there?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Do you need "www" in front of your domain name there?

Man, yesterday was the Day of No Brain. Thanks for the catch.

Re: Sabertooth... tiger...?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Polish cover for Conflict used recycled art, and the art showed a black woman, a sentient sabertooth tiger rigged out in ammo belts and clutching a rifle-ish thingy, among other things. We figured the woman was obviously Priscilla, which left the sabertooth tiger for Shan.

Re: Sabertooth... tiger...?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the tiger was a resident of the pet zoo? One might expect the pet librarian to issue arms to the residents when the inspectors were there?

Or perhaps it was one of the inspectors? Or an ambassador?

Trees, and tigers, and turtles - oh, my!

[gryphonlsb.livejournal.com]

Hey
I have looked but found no info. Is there any plans for more Liad Audio? Im listening to Local Custom for the third time and was hoping to add more to my library soon
;)

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. We haven't heard about any plans for more audiobooks. I will note that the audiobook company relocated its offices eight/ten/twelve months back, after the unfortunate death of one of the three partners. I expect that they're just finding their feet again...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

While it does not match the standards of a human-read audio yet, the text-to-speech readers are pretty good. And you can now get all the Liaden books at http://www.webscription.net/ in formats that can easily be fed to a reader.

Hum. If you are blind, are you aware of the Baen readassist program at http://www.readassist.org/read/service/webscform.php ? They offer the regular Baen webscription books for free to disabled readers (blind, paralyzed, dyslexic, amputees). Might be helpful?

Mike