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PSA: you know those pillows that have some kind of seed or grain or something in them, that you can heat up in the microwave and use as heating pads? They have a problem in that after a few years of sitting around, they can be invaded by colonies of tiny biscuit-beetle type bugs, which can use them to become fruitful and multiply. I don't want to go into details, but if you have any of these pillows sitting around in a drawer or a closet, you may want to take a close look at them.
For people like me, who only discovered this accidentally last night, NickW is running new episodes of Avatar: the Last Airbender every night this week, leading up to a longer climactic episode this Saturday.
The next con I'm going to is ArmadilloCon 30 in Austin, Texas, on August 15-17. I'm going to be one of the teachers at the writer's workshop on Friday the 15th.
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jimhines has a good post here about the situation with Helix and William Sanders.
The livelongnmarry auction to benefit marriage equality ends 12:01 am, Pacific time, July 15, tomorrow. There's still time to bid, and tons of cool stuff to bid on:
My offer post is here. It's for five autographed books, including hardcover copies of The Wizard Hunters, The Ships of Air, and The Gate of Gods, plus two others from my list (The Element of Fire, Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary, Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement, The Death of the Necromancer, Wheel of the Infinite, City of Bones), your choice. If the bidding goes to $125, I'll add a sixth book, your choice from my list.
Rules for how to bid, and how to make your donation when you win, are here.
I've been meaning to post about The Lone Star Stories Reader, which is available for preorder at that link. It's a print anthology with a selection of SF/F stories from the Lone Star Stories website, edited by ericmarin.
Here's the table of contents:
Introduction by Sherwood Smith "Wolf Night" by Martha Wells "Seasonal Work" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman "'Janet, Meet Bob'" by Gavin J. Grant "The Great Conviction of Tia Inez" by M. Thomas "Angels of a Desert Heaven" by Marguerite Reed "The Disemboweler" by Ekaterina Sedia "A Night in Electric Squidland" by Sarah Monette "Thread: A Triptych" by Catherynne M. Valente "The Frozen One" by Tim Pratt "Dragon Hunt" by Sarah Prineas "Manuscript Found Written in the Paw Prints of a Stoat" by Samantha Henderson "Giant" by Stephanie Burgis "When the Rain Comes" by Josh Rountree "The Hangman Isn't Hanging" by Jay Lake "The Oracle Opens One Eye" by Patricia Russo
There are still lots of items for auction at the The Michael Shanks Online 4th Annual Auction, benefiting the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, here and here and here. Lots of autographed photos from SG-1 and SGA, plus various other SF/F TV shows, and signed scripts, comics, playbills, etc.
Now I'm reading a mystery by Rhys Bowen, called Her Royal Spyness, which is very good so far. It's set in about 1932, about a young woman who is 34th in line for the British throne, broke, and trying not to be married off.
Black Gate #12 should be shipping now. My story in it is "Houses of the Dead." It's another prequel story to the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, about Giliead and Ilias.
naominovik's Victory of Eagles is out today, which I'm going out to buy later.
Stargate: Atlantis season 4 DVDs are out today, which I can't go buy because I preordered them, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I have to wait for them to get here in the mail. Season 5 starts airing this Friday, so that's something else to look forward to.
Last week or so I rearranged the bibliography page on my web site, adding a list of publications by date as well as by category.
The livelongnmarry auction is still going on. Someone added up the high bids so far on July 4 and they came to over $18,000. That's a serious donation already, and the auction goes to July 15. My offer post for my autographed books is here. It's at $100.00 now, and I figure that if it goes over $125, I'll add a sixth book.
Well, I lucked out in that the Mac outlet in town actually had new MacBooks in stock. It's a small town, and there's not normally a huge selection, but the university is having freshman orientation this week, so they had ordered a lot of extras. (And they were selling like crazy. They sold two other MacBooks while we were there, so we were probably lucky we got one.) And we got the educational discount, a free printer, and a rebate for an iPod. The iBook was on its last leg but morfin got it to hold out long enough to do the tranfer to the MacBook. The new screen is nice but the text looks different. My worldview has changed! I'll get used to it.
We're just going to stay around here for the 4th. All the stuff I'm looking forward to, the new Hellboy movie, the new season of Stargate: Atlantis, Victory of Eagles the new Temeraire book by naominovik, the new issue of Black Gate, all comes out next week. So there's not going to be much to do this weekend.
Wow, this day was going well, right up until my iBook began to exhibit signs that death was approaching. Not the temporary "my battery fell out" death, but the permanent "hey, it was nice working with you" death. At least it warned me. This was not an expense I needed right now, gah. Anyway, I'm going to save the time it has left until I can get the contents transferred to a new machine, and first I have to find a new machine, so I'll have limited email and online contact until I get that straightened out. Hopefully it'll be in the next day or so.
The livelongnmarry auction seems to be going well, yay! There's so much stuff posted now, it's incredible. It helps to check the "offered" and "seller" tags in the sidebar of the community, that can give you a quicker overview of what's available besides fanfic, art, etc. Like: baked goods, tea, books, typesetting, jewelry, pottery, soap, graphic design. (Misc Items has an amazing variety available.)
My offer post for the autographed books is here. Remember to check the profile post for the rules before you bid, and the auction goes to July 15.
DearAuthor has an editorial on Heeding the Warning Signals in ePublishing: In light of the recent occurrences at NCP in which the publisher took a partial from an author and inserted it into an anthology without her permission and allowed others to finish the story for her, again without her permission, I wondered what impact that had on readers.
I had a lot of fun at ApolloCon this past weekend. We hung out a lot, talked to a lot of people, had a lot of good food. (Eating out is a big part of conventions for me, as you may have guessed, but this time I'll try to talk about something else.) The panels went well, and there was a lot of interesting discussion on the steampunk panel. I think we need a new genre for the retro look of things like BioShock and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: decopunk.
On Sunday I went to some readings, including jess_ka's Deep Terrain, which is an alternate Earth fantasy that sounds really interesting. Also heard Shanna Swendson read a bit from her new books. She told a story about being at a con where they gave her a late night "adults only" reading slot, where someone even checked ID at the door. Since she writes funny contemporary fantasies that are not adult-rated, this was a little odd. The guy who showed up in swim trunks and a towel was very odd.
After that I read most of the first chapter of The Cloud Roads, and people seemed to like it, which is always a relief. And Patrice Sarath read some from In Gordath Wood, her first fantasy novel, which was really good.
While we were there, we ate at two Pappas restaurants, since they were convenient to the convention: Pappasitos and Pappas Seafood House, both of which were extremely good. The Pappas family owns a chain of restaurants all through this area, including Pappadeaux (cajun) and Pappas Barbecue. Their son was an architecture major at A&M, and designed all their restaurants, so many of them have very cool and unique interiors. Since it's a Greek family, for a long time people have been wondering when they were going to do a Greek restaurant, and apparently they are actually opening one in the next year or so. morfin joked that the name should be Pappasfinally.
8:07AM - Livelongnmarry Auction Starts tomorrow July 1
Here's a reminder that the livelongnmarry fandom-sponsored auction to benefit marriage equality starts tomorrow, July 1. Bidding begins on July 1, 12:01 AM one minute after midnight Pacific Time, 2008, and closes on July 15, 12:01 AM one minute after midnight Pacific Time, 2008. Please do not bid until bidding opens.
My offer post is here. It's for five autographed books, including hardcover copies of The Wizard Hunters, The Ships of Air, and The Gate of Gods, plus two others from my list (The Element of Fire, Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary, Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement, The Death of the Necromancer, Wheel of the Infinite, City of Bones), your choice. The minimum bid is $10.00. Rules for how to bid, and how to make your donation when you win, are here.
The other autographed books up for auction are here, including books by Peg Kerr, Pamela Dean, and Steve Berman. There are tons and tons of other items up for auction, including offers to write fanfic, original stories, handmade custom jewelry, knitted clothing, baked goods, original art, fan art, and story critique services.
So remember, July 1, 12:01 AM one minute after midnight Pacific Time, and even if you can't afford to bid, you can help by spreading the word.
Getting ready to leave for ApolloCon in the next hour and a half or so. I had a dream last night that bevhale and I were loading things into her car to take to a convention. No, not exactly a wild flight of fancy.
The next con I'll be doing is ArmadilloCon 30, August 15-17, in Austin, TX. And I think that's the last one for this year. I wanted to keep the travel to a minimum this year, but I'll probably be doing a few more next year, I hope.
OFFER: Five Autographed books. Will include autographed hardcover copies of my fantasy trilogy The Wizard Hunters, The Ships of Air, and The Gate of Gods. Plus two other autographed books, your choice of either The Element of Fire (reprint trade paper) or City of Bones (reprint trade paper), Wheel of the Infinite (hardcover), The Death of the Necromancer (hardcover), Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary or Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement (paperbacks). And I'll personalize the autograph with your name if you request it.
CONTACT: My email is msw @ charisat . com, or you can contact me through my website at www.marthawells.com.
DELIVERY: As soon as the auction closes, and you provide your shipping address.
livelongnmarrya fandom fundraising auction for marriage equality. It went live today, and you may sign up now. Bidding opens July 1, and closes July 15.
Live Long and Marry will raise funds to fight the discriminatory anti-marriage bill which will be on the California, USA ballot in November. Right now same sex couples can legally marry in California. If this bill passes, it will legally destroy those marriages without the consent of the married couples.
It's giving money to a good cause while shopping! The profile page has all the info and instructions.
At my aerobics class today, the excerise band I was using broke, hit me in the face, knocked my glasses off and left a six-inch vertical hickey on my neck. Go team me. I think I'll give up for the day.
DearAuthor.com has an article on the problematic nature of "street teams" that has some good information about promotions and what to do and not do to avoid making the bookstores crazy:
Many readers do not know this but the placement of books in a store is by design and not random. Larger booksellers work with publishers to highlight certain books that will benefit both corporate entities through increased sales. Books at front of store or in new mass market table or in the featured section in Barnes and Noble are all paid for with what is called “co-op” dollars. For each book that has a placement outside the shelving area of their respective genres, the publisher pays a fee to the bookseller.
It’s one thing for a reader to decide to reshelve and it is still another to have an author actively encourage the reshelving. This concept will eventually have negative consequences for the author. First, a publisher who audits a store and finds out that the paid placement is not being honored could ask for the co-op dollars back. Second, a bookseller’s time spent in reshelving books that are misshelved can actually detract from the time it could be spending handselling. Third, bookseller may become disgruntled with the fact that a certain author’s book might be repeatedly misshelved and can take it upon themselves to strip and return a title even if it is not on the returns list. Fourth, the reader who is caught doing this might be angered to know that it is not appropriate even though the word “stealth” is used in the instructions.
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