Day is done

[rolanni]

Seems awful early for day to be done, actually, but my brain is kinda marshmallowly feeling, so I think I’d better give it a rest.  It’s not like it didn’t do a little bit of work, today.

So!  Having goofed off early, I’ll goof off late, too, and go curl up on the couch with a book.  For some reason that the backbrain isn’t sharing with me, I need to reread “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  I mean, fair enough, it’s probably been more than twenty years, but why now?

In other news, there’s a new chapter up at Carousel Tides, that being Chapter the Fifth.  As always, the link goes to the first page on the website rather than directly to the chapter, in order to avoid inadvertent spoilage.

Speaking of Carousel Tides. . .  While I was in Belfast today, I stopped by the Mr. Paperback in Reny’s Plaza and dropped off a dozen or so sampler chapbooks.  There were two people behind the counter when I came in — a man and a woman.  The man asked if he could help me, so I introduced myself, explained I was a local writer, and that I had a book coming out from Baen in November that was a Maine fantasy.  Would he be kind enough to give these samples to customers known to read Urban Fantasy and/or Maine fiction?

He took the chapbooks, making noncommittal noises, flipped one over to read the back, and suddenly said, “You’ve written other books.”

I agreed that I had written many books with my husband and that we had signed in the store some years back, with three or four other local authors, in celebration of Nebula Weekend.

“I’ll be delighted to distribute these for you.  Thank you so much,” he said.

“Thank you so much,” I replied and moved off to go, yanno, look at the books.

As I’m leaving the area, I hear the woman say, “Why are you doing this? Who is she?”  And the guy said,  “Her and her husband wrote a science fiction series.  I read them, a long time ago.  In fact, I think we have some of their stuff back in the section.  It’s OK.”

I happened past the SF/F section via the stuffies and am able to verify that, yep, there was some of our stuff in the section.

So, that was OK.

I have written today.  I’m pretty sure the word meter won’t work over here, so I’ll just report the following progress on Ghost Ship:

61,740 words/100,000 OR 61.74% complete

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

Re: Bite Them!

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

No, no. He was good. Really.

As mizkit says above, bookstores are being inundated with aggressive self-published authors who believe that bookstores exist to grant them privilege. A couple years ago the question managers starting asking when an author went in to pitch a book or set up a signing was, "And what was the name of your publisher's distributor?"

Now, bookstores -- and bookstore employees -- just sorta cringe when someone comes up to the desk and starts a sentence with "I'm a (local) author and. . ."

On top of that, there are many more "traditionally published" authors who are trying to promote their work at grass root, and no one can remember the names of all the writers in the world.

It's a shame that what used to be an opportunity for a pleasant chat between two people whose passion is books -- most writers love books, that's how we got into this gig -- is now tense and fraught, but that's the business, nowadays.