Eagles Over the Kennebec

Dear Friends of Liad and all the ships in space:

July 4 rolls rapidly toward us and beside being an important celebration for Americans, this July 4 is the official release day for Salvage Right, which you may recall is Lee and Miller's 25th Liaden novel and 100th collaborative work – so two landmarks with this one!

Two landmarks in one book is certainly cause for celebration, and we want as many people as possible to get the news and join us in the happy dance of accomplishment.

If you’d like to help us get the word out, we’d love to have your help. You may say that there's nothing you can do, that you're only a reader, don't have any important contacts, or any connections.

And you would be wrong.

For example, many of you are well-known to your local librarians -- some of you are local librarians! -- so one thing you can do as July 4 approaches is to request your libraries to add Salvage Right. Libraries especially are nice -- doesn't cost you, libraries need community input, and better still, if there are other Liaden titles, well, no time like the present to fill the blank spots. If your library is unfamiliar with our work you can point to some online resources we’ll post at the bottom for extra support. Are you a member of a book group at your library or local bookstore? Salvage Right could be just the thing for your summer read. Do you belong to a science fiction club? Maybe you can give a short presentation on the Liaden Universe®.

Besides face-to-face in Real Life with bookstore, literary, and library folks, you can do online face-to-facing if you tend in that direction. Here’s how:

Make posts in any relevant Facebook group about genre fiction or books - share a cover image for Salvage Right, and a few short lines about why you like the Liaden Universe® and are looking forward to Salvage Right, or share what makes Liaden Universe® books among your favorite reads.  Mention the eye-catching 100th collaboration figure if you like, or the five related short story stuffed Liaden Universe® Constellations.

Do you have a favorite genre blog, podcast, or YouTuber? Suggest a post or session on the Liaden Universe® using Salvage Right as a center piece. Point out, if you like, that most Liaden Universe® novels and many of the short works are already available as audiobooks. If you have your own blog or podcast, consider Salvage Right or Liaden Universe® coverage of your own. When you read Salvage Right don’t forget to post an Amazon review; you may be able to copy that same review to your regular posts.

If you're active in their communities, don’t hesitate to suggest Liaden Universe® coverage to such places as Locus, Tor.com, or even Hugo award-oriented outlets. You’ll see below that we’ve had some coverage from such places in the past:

tor.com
Portland Press Herald
Locus

If you can help: word of mouth, word of print, or free-flowing electrons, we’d appreciate the support.

Many thanks to all of you, for your continuing support, and enthusiasm for our work!

. . .I hate it when the mailman gives us a miss. Even when the mail is just catalogs, at least we've gotten something.  Not finding any mail in the box leaves me wrong-footed on the day, somehow.

So, a rambling kind of post while the backbrain gets on the case.  I need, let's see. . .six? seven? scenes, a climax, a denouement, and a wrap up.  Is that so hard?  Oh, and a cast of characters.  If the backbrain isn't forking over, yet, on the Actual Writing Front, I can edit the working lexicon down to a reasonable list.  Thirty-five hundred words is probably a little long in the dramatis personae business.  Do you guys like your Players List in the front of the book or the back?

I'd like to thank everyone who has helped in the various fundraising efforts we're presently undertaking, whether by subscribing to our Patreon account, supporting Splinter Universe, or directly supporting us, through PayPal, and by check.  You guys are amazingly kind and we are humbled by your generosity.  . . .Please note that I speak here for myself and for Steve.  The cats aren't really on top of the whole Where Crunchies Come From thing; they leave that sort of thing to Staff.

Weather-wise, we're into our second day of rain, here in Central Maine, and the snow is, for all useful purposes, gone.  As far as my eye can see, there is mud, and last year's brown grasses, and bare, grey trees.  We look to have lost three buffer evergreens over the winter.  Some of the maples are pushing out buds; can't really tell about the birches, or the ash.  Well.  A few weeks will tell.  Meanwhile, the daffodils are making a valiant effort to rise tall and get the trumpets out.  I fear me this will be one of those seasons when they give their all, but fall short of a win.  Hopefully, they'll prove me wrong.

Given that the snow is now gone, we can see, among the dead grass, the Trash of Winter, which means that, if it ever stops raining, we'll be able to go outside and stamp around the property, picking up soda/beer cans, shreds of blue tarp, old paper bags, the occasional whiskey bottle, and who knows what else.  The process by which trash gets under ten feet of snow is a mystery to me. A friend suggests that it's put there by snowmen, who are pissed off by humans sticking carrots  in the middle of their faces.

Makes as much sense as anything else.

One of the results of having been stupidly ill for 'way too long back around the winter holidays, was that I lost 10 pounds.  Now that it's been a number of months since I regained my health, and I haven't regained the weight, I've gotten ambitious.  I like being. . .less close to 200 pounds, and would like to widen the distance by another 10 pounds, if possible.  I can't say I much care for the method by which I shed the first 10, though, and, as someone who was very thin for most of her adult life (insert Ironic Theme here), I don't actually know how to go about dieting.  I would go to the gym and exercise and walk in order to keep flexible and strong, but as far as I've ever been told exercise isn't really an effective way to lose weight.  For now, I'm just making a conscious effort to Eat Less Food (which is tough, because, having also been, ah. . .cash challenged. . .for most of my adult life, "wasting" food is a big no-no).  Now that Winter is Out and Mud is In, I'll be able to get walking again, which will be a relief all around, and I guess if all I do is not backslide those 10 pounds, then I'm that much to the good.

And now?  Time to get back to the backbrain.

See you on the flipside.

I've gotten a note from a long-time reader, who says that they "bought something" from Audible, expecting that they would get discs, which they could use in a CD/DVD player, and was disappointed to find that they had to listen at the desktop.

So the question for the assembled multitudes is:  Is there a way to copy the Audible book to (I assume) many discs?  And, if so, would you lay out the steps here so this reader can follow them?

Many Spanish Aunts.

This post intends to gather and answer questions asked in various corners of Teh Internets.  If I've missed a question, remind me below and I'll do my humble best.

First, thanks so much for your concern and your willingness to help and to sacrifice your own things for us.  Steve and I are touched.  No, really.  You guys are great.

But!  Please don't send us your copies of our books -- not even your "extra" copies.  There's no need.  Yes, the authors' copies that were stored in the basement are pretty much pulp, but let me explain what I meant when I said "authors' copies."

Authors typically get between 10 and 30 copies of their own books, shipped from the printer upon publication.  The number is formalized in the contract, and is part of the compensation due the author from the publisher.  These are the books that were in the basement, and they are used for Good Deeds, mostly. 

For instance, if someone writes to us (as has happened several times, now) looking for replacements for their books that were lost in a fire (or a flood, imagine), we replace the set from our authors' copies.  We do this gratis; losing favorite books is awful, and insurance companies, at least in my experience, aren't that generous with payouts.

From the stash in the basement also come the books we send to auctions, donate to raffles, and give away in contests.  Occasionally, when things are thin, we have sold some of those books in order to keep the cats in cat food -- which they tell us is also a Good Deed.

So, yes, a loss -- and the sight of dead books is something I find extremely distressing -- but a loss to the community, more than a loss to us personally.  Steve has a full run of every book we've ever written on his office bookshelves.  I have the same.  There's a third set in the living room.  We're good.

Handmade soap, on the other hand, I will gratefully receive, but!  I'm tough to buy for.  I don't like sweet smells -- no roses, or lily of the valley, or petunia.  I'm partial to lavender, citrus, vanilla, sage...  Since I live in Maine and the winters are drying, I also had soaps that were moisturizing.  Know that I've gotten gift soaps before that my nose disagreed with; those soaps go to the Waterville Homeless Shelter. 

Edited to add, thanks to djbp for the reminder:  Address to send soap:

Sharon Lee
PO Box 1586
Waterville Maine 04903-1586

Thank you so very much for asking.

Um. . .No, we don't have a mud floor in the basement.  It's a half-finished basement -- by which I mean that the side on the right-hand side of the stairs is paneled and carpeted, with built-in bookshelves and a woodstove; and the left-hand side of the stairs is naked concrete floor and sheetrock walls.  The cat's room is there; the oil tank lives there, and beyond that is a small woodroom.

However!  We currently have mud in the finished part of the basement, because the water in its coursing through the floors and the ceilings, picked up dust and. . .stuff, which it rained down onto the carpet, making it not only very, very wet, but slippery and dangerous underfoot.

. . .and I think that's all the questions.  If I've forgotten yours, please ask again.

Went to breakfast, the grocery store; stopped at the post office where several surprises awaited us, including a fine set of cat cookie cutters for Steve.

We visited various folks around town, remembered this time to get handmade fragrant soap at Barrels (and bagels! and apple butter!  and pumpkin butter!) and so to home, where bean soup and sweet potato fries were had for lunch, and some nigs and nub-ends of chores were completed.  There’s dishes to do, and the cat fountain to disassemble and clean, and then I believe. . .yes.  I do believe we’ll take a couple hours off.

Steve and I both have a new pair of slippers (ahhhh, new slippers), and a toy.  Each of us also has received a pair of power gloves from a kind friend.  Also, I was given in proxy for Kate a Google sweatshirt, to replace hers, ruined by ‘gaster blood.

*smiles*

I hope everybody is having a lovely day and will have a lovely weekend, whether simple day or holiday.

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