Eagles Over the Kennebec

Because, in the dialect of my youth, "ketchup" is pronounced "catch up."  Or possibly the other way around.

Before I get started with the catching up of bidness, I have some, eh, Breaking News. We have been talking to Baen re narrators for the Audible edition of Trader's Leap. We don't have a date -- hell, we don't even actually have a narrator -- but the fact that we're having this discussion would seem to indicate that the audiobook is moving forward.

We now return you to your irregularly scheduled blog.

I have slightly too much on my plate at the moment, which is my excuse for the irregular updates here.

So, what is on your plate, I hear you ask.  Well, I will tell you.

Deep edit of a story that wouldn't leave Steve alone, working title "The Port Chavvy Comet."  I hope to have that done by the end of this weekend, so it can start making its way to chapbookhood.

Also!  I am the Front Office here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory, which means, I do the accounting, and interface with the accountant re taxes.  Even if the story isn't done by tomorrow night, it will on Monday take second place to Getting the Tax Stuff Ready for the Accountant.

I'm taking a pain management course, which has quite a bit of homework attached to it.  Turns out that it's true what they say, If ya wanna manage pain and stuff, you gotta sing loud.  And do the homework.

I'm still learning the new way of eating mandated by the Cancer Survivalist Program.  Which means I'm doing a lot more Actual Cooking, which is swell, because the new diet is, on the whole, very tasty, but that's time I used to spend on other things, like, yanno, blogging.

Speaking of post-cancer living, that also comes with homework.  Who knew?  There's walking and other exercise to be done, and while I have a walking and exercise schedule previous to my mastectomy, if I got into a writing crunch, I ignored  it.  Not an option anymore, along with the previous I'll Sleep When I'm Dead lifestyle.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that a brush with mortality provides both a new lens and an...opportunity to re-organize.  Given that, I'm still re-organizing.

Those who are tired of the whole cancer discussion, can skip the next bit.

It turns out that coming back from cancer therapy is kind of like unboxing a matryoshka -- or, more accurately, like putting one together.

Post-op, you feel lousy; then over a period of weeks, you feel less lousy; then you feel like maybe you could actually walk fifteen minutes a day, in five-minute shifts, around the upstairs of the hours. Gradually you get that 15 minutes into one Monster Shift, until one day you feel a lot better, well enough to go downstairs and walk for fifteen -- or twenty! -- minutes altogether. A little after that, you're find that you're bored, so you start swatting a Wiffle ball at the wall with your pickleball bat; and suddenly you're walking 25/30 minutes at a go, and upping the pace, and one day you realize that you're gonna have to increase the time to 35/40, and! that you've out-strengthed the size of your Wall Ball court.

So, my new project, with Steve's help, is to set up a Tai Chi space in the wall ball court downstairs. We have a couple of screens that are good enough for video, we have Frank the old Windows 7 computer, we have a Windows compatible DVD player, and! we have Tai Chi DVDs. There's no need for Frank to access the internet, which I understand is a very dangerous place for a machine of his age and persuasion, but he can interface between the DVD player and the screen, and I? can dance daibri'at.

So, yeah, that's another new project on the plate.

I hope to get back to more regular blogging here, as the rest of my new schedule takes shape around me.  In the meantime, thank you for your care and your patience.  I love you all.

. . .bearing in mind, as always, that, in my accent, "ketchup" rhymes with "catch-up".

So, let's see. . .

I finished the story I was working on, in first draft; it's resting at the moment, titleless, and with a page of notes.  I'll get back to it, oh, early or mid-October; plenty of time for a mid-November hand-in.  I'm anticipating that the finished story will be about 10,000 words.  Including, yanno, the title.

On the mundane side of life, Steve came home from Maryland; I celebrated my 65th birthday quietly, and managed to miss yoga two weeks in a row because Reasons.  I shall endeavor to do better this week.

Fifth of Five is moving along. . .slowly.  Clean-up books are hard.

I've gotten in a couple more fountain pens -- demonstrator pens, so called, which take ink in right from the bottle via a piston mechanism -- and some fun colored ink:  Noodler's Borealis Black; Noodler's Wampum Purple; Diamine Ancient Copper; Diamine Sherwood Green.  The company I bought the demonstrators from, included a bonus eyedropper pen -- no piston, you fill the barrel via an eyedropper.

One of my new pens has a bold nib, which I'm tentatively preferring over what has been my go-to, the medium-nib Pilot Metropolitan.  The ink flow seems smoother -- granted, this may be the difference in the inks; the Metropolitan uses a cartridge.

While I was ordering things in, I also committed a new coloring book:  The Art of Cursive, which looks like a lot of fun.

Let's see. . .my new glasses arrived, so, yay! new glasses!

On Thursday, Steve and I drove three hours one way to the Burlington Mall in -- surprise! -- Burlington, Massachusetts, there to sign books at the BN (which is technically across from the Mall), and also to test drive a pair of Bose Hearphones.  Frequent auditors of this journal will recall that I'm starting to lose my hearing, as one apparently does, especially if one spent a Large-ish Chunk of one's life, earphones in, typing copy from a Dictaphone.  Anyway. . .hearing aids not required at this point, says the last person who evaluated my hearing, right before the insurance companies decided they weren't in the ear bidness.  However! More than a few studies now have indicated that people who have uncorrected hearing loss are more likely to develop dementia; and! that for the best results from hearing aids, one ought to start using an assist before the loss is so significant as to be disabling.

Thus, the Hearphones, which Bose is very careful to say are not hearing aids; they merely assist in direction hearing, and in blocking out background noise.

I did a test drive at the store with the trainer.  He asked me what I would be using them for, and we briefly discussed the fact that writers spend a lot of their time in bars, and I can no longer hear my tablemates in that setting.  So we did that scenario first -- he pulled up a recording of a 250-people restaurant, and had me adjust the gain on the Hearphones, until I could hear him speaking directly to me.  I could still hear the background noise, if I concentrated, but it was a whole lot easier just to listen to him.

One of the weird things is that you also hear yourself, sorta like using a microphone. . . which, actually, I guess you are.

The trainer then asked if there was anything else, and I said, yes -- movies, television.  I can't hear dialog any more.

So, he pulled up a clip of The Theory of Everything, where Eddie Redmayne is explaining Life, the Universe, and Everything to the nice young lady, and I heard every word, clean and clear.

When the clip ended, the trainer asked how that had worked for me, and my answer was, "I watched Fantastic Beasts and I did not understand one word that man said during the whole movie!  This -- I got everything."

So, I brought the Hearphones home.  They are not cheap, and they are getting a rigorous field testing, because they can be taken back to a Bose with no penalty within 30 days.  And the Extra Good News Is? We don't have to drive 6 hours round trip to take them back, if that proves necessary.  They can be returned to the Bose store in Kittery (which doesn't sell the item, sigh), a mere hour-and-a-half down the road.

Today's test was to be Fantastic Beasts, but, when I put on the Hearphones, I was told that the charge was dangerously low; which is a little scary because I charged them yesterday. It's certainly possible that I forgot to turn them off after my tutorial session yesterday, but a device with a two hour charge isn't going to be as useful as it might be.

In any case, after the Hearphones are charged -- Fantastic Beasts.  If we pass Mr. Redmayne, then Steve and I will take ourselves out to a noisy bar, and I'll see if I can hear him through the din.

. . .I think that about catches us up -- Oh.  No.  I am remiss in reporting that I purchased a blue Totoro at the BN.  Yes, I am weak.

Everybody have a good weekend.

Today it's your turn, Skowhegan!  We're off for the long-delayed eye exams, and to run various errands, probably including new glasses (sigh).

For those wondering What On Earth the Woman is Doing, I offer the following notes on progress:

1.  Reviewed and signed contracts for seven novels and one novella.  Steve put them all in the mail yesterday evening.

2.  Threw away 2300-ish words on the commissioned short story and started again, this time with an outline and a break-out of POV for each scene.  The new iteration stands at 839 words, and feels much better.

3.  Regarding yesterday's report of piracy, someone asked how books get pirated.  Short answer is that someone buys a legitimate copy and decides that it is their right, and their duty, to make it available to as many people as possible, for free.  Before ebooks were as common as they are now, some people spent what I can only imagine was days, scanning books and uploading them to pirate sites.  I'd say you have to admire that kind of dedication, but, honestly?  I don't.

As to why they do it...some justify their behavior by saying that they can't find the books through legal channels (obviously untrue in the case of Necessity's Child).  Others will say that they're working to throw off the tyranny of copyright/the big publishers/millionaire authors; that they are in fact, vanguards of The Revolution.

In the end, it really doesn't matter why they do it; they're still stealing.  Not only that, they know they're stealing and they know it's wrong, which is why they make with the justifications.

4.  As reported elsewhere, I am currently somewhat short of spoons (see Spoon Theory).   This means that I may be scarce on The Intertubes; I promise to check in when I can.

...I think that catches everything up.

Everybody play nice.

1. Remember that “Intelligent Design” will be retired from the Baen front page on Monday, August 15, to make way for a brand! new! story! Once it is retired, “Intelligent Design” will be added to the free eBook compilation of front page stories, which can be downloaded here.

2. “Kin Ties” will be available for free reading at Splinter Universe on August 12 (that’s Friday!). To help people who may not have read its elder brother, “Changeling,” we (that’s Steve and Sharon, acting as Pinbeam Books) are offering a more-or-less half-off coupon for the eBook. This coupon is Smashwords-specific. All you need do is go here, choose your preferred format and use coupon code KB93Q (not case sensitive) at checkout. The coupon will expire on August 12 (yep, that’s still Friday).

3. A friendly bookseller lets us know that Ghost Ship has hit the Bookscan Bestselling SF List for the week of August 1. Which isn’t too bad for a book with a pub date of August 2.

4. Speaking of Ghost Ship — there’s a nice review at SFRevu

5. Also! The editors at Amazon.com (why does a bookstore have editors? No, on second thought, I don’t want to know) have chosen Ghost Ship for inclusion in their Fall Reading Preview

6. Even cooler, Uncle Hugo’s has posted its bestsellers for July, with Ghost Ship at the top of the list — but that’s not the cool part. The cool part is that of the 12 bestselling trade editions for July, Lee and Miller books hold 11 spots, cheated — cheated, I say! — of a full house by the presence of Warrior Sheep #1. (Note to self: Get a copy of Warrior Sheep #1)

7. Proving that mere planetary divides such as oceans and hemispheres mean nothing to those who call deep space home, Ghost Ship appears on the besteller list at Galaxy Bookstore in Sydney, Australia.

8. We (that’s Steve and Sharon) are going to be traveling for a few days, with a WorldCon at the end of it. This means our access to Things Internetly will be limited, first by the conditions of the train and then because we’ll be enjoying the con. So! If you should see Ghost Ship or any other Lee and Miller book or story on a bestseller list, or see a review (Amazon reviews not counting), sing out, do!

. . .To the best of my knowledge at the moment, that’s all the news that’s fit to print. Now, I’m for the couch and the workshop papers, which I will finish today.