Shameless Self-Promotion:  Remember! In Just! Five! Days! the audio edition of Sea Wrack and Changewind (ALL of the Archers Beach stories), by Sharon Lee, narrated by Alex Picard, will be available from Tantor Media. Here's the link.

Thursday. Dim and warmer. By which I mean it was 5F/-15C when I woke up. Supposed to hit the dizzying high temp of 24F/-4C before quittin' time.

Breakfast was ham and mustard on an English muffin, with grapes. Second cup of tea helped me write a letter. Lunch will be...damn, I knew the answer to that question -- oh! Yam stirfry. Good day for it, looks like.

As reported elsewhere, I have an appointment to get my hairs cut this morning. Since I'm letting the tax packet rest, I intend to get with "Core Values" and finish the last scene. After that, maybe some straightening up of the living room, which still has laptops and notebooks scattered 'round. So, not a big day, goal-wise.

What are your goals, today?

Audio Book News
Fair Trade, by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, the 24th novel set in their original Liaden Universe®, published as hardcover and ebook by Baen in May 2022, is now available from Audible, Eileen Stevens narrating.
Here’s your link

Convention News
BOSKONE
Boskone 60, February 17-19, 2023.  Registration is now open
Guests of Honor: Nalo Hopkinson, Victo Ngai, Tui T. Sutherland, Dave Clement.
Lee and Miller have been accepted as panelists, and will be attending.
Here's your link

HELIOSPHERE
The website has been updated and registration is now open for HelioSpehere 2023. Liaden Universe® authors Sharon Lee and Steve Miller and frequent Liaden cover artist David Mattingly are Guests of Honor; April 28 – 30, 2023 Holiday Inn Piscataway, NJ.
Here's your link

Happy holidays to all who celebrate.  Looking forward to seeing you in person in 2023!

In keeping with my promise to let y'all know when there was motion on the audiobook edition of Fair Trade, I am happy to announce that!

Audible has assigned a reader.  Steve and I will be talking with her at the end of next week.

Still working on "The Last Train to Clarkesville."  Was hoping to finish today, which -- eh.  Maybe?  But probably not.

Firefly has been very busy with the cat toys.  While Sprite and Belle are content to sit among the toys (and Trooper mostly ignores them, unless they are actively in play), Firefly carries them around, and makes little groupings.  Just inside the tech room door, there's a deliberate cluster of two chipmunks, one fish, one rat, and, at a little distance, a fluffy ball.  It looks like a team meeting, or maybe a tea party.  Maybe I should get her a tea service?

She also very busily carries toys downstairs, and then brings them back up.  Possibly, she's showing them where the litter boxes are, so that there are no Accidents.  Nobody want any Accidents, amirite?

For those keeping track of Salvage Right's progress through the Maze of Publishing, Madame the Editor reports that she has read the manuscript, and that it was "great fun."  Next up is cover art, and copy editing, and galleys, all in their own good time.

We are apparently still looking at a June 2023 publication date.

For those who have been Patiently Waiting for the Fair Trade audiobook -- I must continue to disappoint you with news of no news.

Steve is now in the Authorial Hot Seat, and working away on Trade Lanes, due for a September 2022 turn-in.

And that?  Is the Tuesday report.

Now hear this! TRADER'S LEAP is now available from Audible. We know that there are a lot of people waiting for this edition; your patience is finally rewarded.

Here's your link.

Today is the day!  The day that Accepting the Lance, the 22nd novel in the Liaden Universe® created by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller is officially released*!

We here at the Confusion Factory are of course very excited, and grateful that Baen was able to get the book -- submitted in January -- out this year.

We do know that there are a number of you who purchased the eARC, and therefore are finding the Book Day festivities a little flat.  If you wish, you may celebrate by leaving a review for LANCE on the venue of your choice.

The authors are celebrating each in our own way.  First, by announcing Book Day as far and as wide as we may.  Secondly, Steve is celebrating by working on the next book detailing the adventures of Jethri Gobelyn, which is due on Madame's desk in May 2020.  And, thirdly, I am celebrating by editing Trader's Leap, scheduled for publication in November/December 2020.

The chickadees, titmice, nuthatchen, goldfinches, sparrows, and cardinals are celebrating by mobbing the bird feeders, because it's snowing up a Real Storm here in Central Maine.

In other news, I am due at the surgeon's office tomorrow at 2 pm, by which time the snow will have stopped and the driveway cleared.  This visit will determine if my time in the Command Chair is about to end or if it will be another four weeks until I see my shadow.

Fingers crossed.

___________
*Yes, there is supposed to be an Audible edition.  No, I don't know why it's not available.  No, I don't know when it will be available.  Authors are always the last to know these things.  Naturally, I deplore my ignorance, and the distress of those who had hoped to listen to the book today, but, really, the non-appearance of the Audible edition is not my fault.

Audible lets us know that!

There's a free excerpt available of the audiobook edition of Alliance of Equals.  Here's your link.  Enjoy -- and tell your friends!

I had planned to go to the ocean today, but that wasn't possible, because Reasons.  Steve and I did go cat-shopping (as opposed to shopping for cats), because one of the sisal-bound (you notice I say "one of") scratchers has gone to that great sisal forest in the sky. So, naturally we need to replace it.

We knew what we wanted, we had found what we wanted on the web last night, but -- we wanted to take a look at it before committing.  According to the web, the item was available at PetSmart, so off to Augusta we went, to discover that --

You see where this is going, right?

Right.  Plenty of devices made for the grooming of cat claws, but of the perfect scratcher there was no sign.

Since we were in Augusta, where there are two pet supply emporiums, we went down to the other one, but -- no luck.

So, after stopping for lunch, we came home and ordered the dern thing off of the internet, anyway.

Neogenesis. . .stands at about 85,000ish words.  Maybe.  You know what I'm going to wind up doing, and so do I, and I might as well just make my bow, and Do It, instead of wasting energy trying to do it the other, more comfortable, way.  But -- old habits.  Anyway.  Back to writing scenes with an eye toward building bridges after I've written enough to know where everybody is, and when.

Next book -- one character who sits in a room and pets his cat for 100,000 words.

Oh, no. . .wait.

About today's blog title:  AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" has long occupied a Special Place in my Heart, which pretty much proves that I am Not a Nice Person.  And the rendition that I know best includes, at the end of the third stanza, where our narrator is listing the services offered, he says:

Concrete shoes, cyanide, TNT
Done dirt cheap
Neckties, contracts, high mountains!
Done dirt cheap

Google Lyrics renders "high mountains" as "high voltage," which just isn't the same.  And what does Google know, anyway?

So, I have used that line as I know it, for the blog title. And now?  I'm going to send you to Joan Jett's cover, which she ends at the bottom of the third stanza.  Here's your link.

#

"Indeed not!" Bechimo sounded scandalized. "It is the captain's place to order for ship and crew."