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By Lynn, on July 19th, 2010%
Today (well…yesterday, I’m running late…again) was Elaine’s birthday.
Continuing a tradition….I knit her a sock
Just one. Her feet are significantly smaller than mine, so I can’t test the fit by tugging the sock-in-progress over my own foot without stretching it out of shape. (I also have to resurrect my mathematical skills in order to downsize the sock pattern.)
So I make a single sock and send it off, usually with some inappropriate comment about house elves. If the sock fits, she lets me know and I knit up the other one.
Apparently the sock fits. I’ll have the other one to her before it’s cool enough for her to want to wear them.
By Lynn, on July 10th, 2010%
Well, it doesn’t much like the Woolly Fabulous inspiration, but I finished (really finished, as in turned into an almost useful object!) the “exploration” that Diane, Roberta, and I played with last week in Macon. The construction wasn’t nearly as intuitive as we’d hoped it would be, so bought one of advertised pins. I’m very impressed; I’m going to try again. I like the steampunk-y potential of embroidery with brass zippers
By Lynn, on June 25th, 2010%
So, I’ve been gone for over a month and I come back to show you this????
Well, yes…and don’t worry if you don’t understand German., I don’t either and I didn’t feel that I missed anything important. I especially appreciated the patriotic paint jobs on the vuvuzelas.
But what actually drew me out of no-blogging mode was this…
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2010/06/24/thursday-midday-links-5/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dearauthor+%28Dear+Author%3A+Romance+Novel+Reviews%2C+Industry+News%2C+and+Commentary%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
the second section, where Jane (a different Jane) gets to the bottom of some strange pricing I’d been noticing recently while stocking my Kindle. Seems our friendly, fun-loving publishers have come up with a two-for-one strategy: doing dirt to reader and authors simultaneously by side-stepping that pesky Out-Of-Print clause that would allow us (the authors) to reclaim our backlist for republication as affordable ebooks for you (the readers). Seems that instead of letting titles go peacefully OOP, they’re going to do the heavy lifting of selling you (the readers) a print-on-demand copy!
A plague, I swear, a plague on all their houses!
Oh…and there is a memo! Which means there may be something signable soon.
And…let’s see…. I finished digitizing The Wooden Sword for Closed Circle, but I’ve come a cropper on the cover. I tried some stack art and “photoshopping” a photo or two, all to no avail, so it’s going to be just plain text. But at least I should have another book on the virtual shelf.
I’ve been traveling, too – a 2,700 mile road trip from Leesburg to Monroe, LA, to Dallas, to Norman, OK, then back to Dallas, and returning home via Lafayette, LA and Pensacola, FL. Dallas 1 was A-Kon 21: 20,000+ anime’ fans and about 250 science-fiction fans. Esther Friesner was among the guests. We hadn’t seen each other in at least twenty-five years, so there was quite a bit of catching up to do. Peter Beagle was there, too, and, for all the years between us, our paths had never crossed, which made the post-con Sunday-night expedition to Kobe Steakhouse a night to remember. (It turns out that Peter’s joined forces with someone else I knew “back then” – Freff, who also answers to Connor Cochran these days.
Dallas 2 was Stitching Safari – an embroidery seminar where I began my versions of these two pieces Harebells (I’m doing mine in red and copper on green velvet) and Dragon in the Round.
It was a long trip, but renewing and mind-clearing in the way that only long-distance solo driving can be, at least for me.
By Lynn, on April 14th, 2010%
As expected, I took the Kindle to bed Monday night, all loaded up with intriguing samples, and quickly discovered that, as a reader, I really like being able to sample a couple thousand words before I purchase a book but, as an author, sampling is a major challenge.
As I see it, since I send my samples to Kaos from Firefox on my desktop, when I start reading, I don’t have a cover (and I don’t remember the cover graphic from Firefox) or cover blurbs to prime me for the experience. It’s unadulterated narrative text from the git-go, which is to say that Crime and Punishment starts off with no advantage over The Eye of Argon.. In a way it’s like those entrapments where a critically renown author sends his editor/agent a manuscript under a pseudonym and it gets spectacularly rejected: Kindle removes the emperor’s clothing and the text stands naked. (Because, I wouldn’t sample, say, CJ’s Deceiver; I’d simply purchase it.)
My first sample was Soulless,, by Gail Carriger – because there’s a great YouTube video on how the cover for Blameless, the third book in the series, was created—
(As one who is already contemplating a new cover for the Closed Circle edition of The Wooden Sword , I confess I’m completely intimidated.)
Anyway, without giving too much away, the prose didn’t quite sparkle, at least not in comparison with the last pseudo-Victorian I’d read (and thoroughly enjoyed), Deanna Raybourn’s Silent in the Grave, moreover the sample came to an abrupt end in the middle of a scene. I was under the opinion (that’s you, Elaine) that samples were usually the first chapter, but in this case, I suspect the sample was simply a fixed number of words, set by the publisher rather than the author (I can’t imagine that Carriger would have sliced her story 3/4’s of the way through chapter one). The net result was that I very nearly didn’t purchase the book; I wouldn’t have purchased it if it weren’t for the YouTube video.
The sample would have killed the sale.
Now, this is great for me as a reader, saving me money and all, but, WOW, does it clue me in to the importance of the samples for Closed Circle! (Kaos has now completely justified itself as a business expense.) The samples have to do the job of the cover, the blurbs, and the hook…and they have to do it in plain text. In the beginning, Gordie told me to put a hook at the top of chapter one and have all the thematic elements in place by the end of chapter three. The Kindle sample is more than the top of the first chapter, much less than three chapters. Should I enlarge the Closed Circle samples, given that the books are already written? Should I amend my structural strategies? Should the samples include more than verbatim text from the novel? If anyone has any thoughts/suggestions/opinions, I’d love to collect them.
Other than that, the first night reading experience was just fine.
But discovering the perils of samples wasn’t my only Kindle adventure…
I took Kaos to the monthly meeting of my Embroiderers’ Guild of America chapter last night and it should come as no surprise that it drew the sort of attention usually given to pictures of cute puppies and brand-new grandchildren. The font-enlargement feature was particularly appreciated. The ladies held it reverently, because as embroiderers’ they know better than to fondle objects of desire. (They wanted to know how it got its books and the best answer I came up with was to say it was a cell phone that could only call Amazon’s number). I saw want in their eyes.
After the meeting, I visited with a close EGA friend who’s moving to Georgia at the end of the month. She’s an IBM retiree and was thoroughly geeked. She’s probably ordered her K2i by now, although she knows that she really needs two devices, one for her and one for her mother….the only question being whether they can make do with one K2i until the K3 arrives, whenever it arrives.
So, I have successfully spread the contagion.
I got a lovely sleeve for Kaos, but, honestly, I don’t know why no one’s made a sleeve based on this
By Lynn, on February 8th, 2010%
I pretty much took the weekend off.
I cleaned, which I really needed to do; got caught up on some mundane, domestic paperwork; and made a bug…
I’ll get back to work tomorrow…
By Lynn, on January 13th, 2010%
There are over 1500 lakes here in Lake County, FL. A lot of them are plugged up sinkholes (which sometimes come unplugged, transforming lakefront property into a meadow fit only for goats). Some of them are little more than seasonal retention ponds. No matter what kind of lake, though, they have at least on thing in common: no roads cross them.
Net result: if you want to get from here to there, you don’t have a lot of choices. If you think that little road is going to be short cut, think again, ‘cause most likely it’s going to wind up on a lake shore.
So, there are relatively few main roads in our 950 sq. mile county and if you’re going to start a business, you’re probably going to start it within a couple hundred feet of one of them.
Since I got here in 1997, I’ve seen a lot of ground broken for new stuff; more, honestly, than I would have liked. But since 2006, mostly what I’ve seen is buildings left half-finished and businesses disappearing pretty much overnight. And since last year, the view from US 441 or US 27 has gotten downright frightening.
Seems like every time I go somewhere, something else has shut down and nothing is coming in to take its place. True, a lot of this is our own fault—Florida has never been known to have 20/20 foresight—but that doesn’t make the pain any less real.
There’s not a lot that one person can do. I did change banks, from a major regional bank that wasn’t doing too well on its “stress tests” to a two-branch outfit that promises to keep its assets invested locally (putting my money where my mouth is, in a fairly literal way) but that was about it until friends who own a yarn store up in Gainesville (Hanks Yarn and Fiber – the only place to find Haldesoap and Haldespun yarn – that’s “Halde” as in Haldeman, those Haldemans) clued me into the 3/50 Project.
The 3/50 Project has its own website where they describe their philosophy and goals better than I can. Suffice to say, the main idea is: Each month, every month, take fifty dollars and spread it around to three local, independent businesses. I’ll have lunch with friends at Ramshackles rather than Burger King or the Olive Garden, pick up my leafy greens at Dr. Johns Produce, buy my embroidery threads at the local store even though it’s cheaper to buy them from an online distributor.
It doesn’t take long to rack up $50 and it can be a bit depressing to realize that there are a lot of things I can’t buy from a local independent, starting with new (as opposed to used) books. I still believe that Lake County is one of those places that never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but it’s home and I’d spend that fifty dollars anyway
And, who knows, maybe it makes a difference
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What I'm working on these days
Exiled on Main St.
Short Story
Status: Active
Word count: 5500
as of: 7-12-2010
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Look Who’s Talking…