Barbara Hambly's Blog, page 11

The Story So Far: I've uploaded most of the Further A...

The Story So Far: I've uploaded most of the Further Adventures to Smashwords (I hope to get the John & Jenny stories, and the last couple of Holmes and Ben January tales, up by the end of the week). I've loaded all the Antryg novelettes (5), all three Sun Wolf tales, and the Darwath story "Pretty Polly" onto Kindle. The rest should be up by the end of the week. It's a tedious and painstaking process and I bless and thank my friends Archangel Beth and Eric Baldwin for all their help with this (and special thanks to L.K. Campbell for doing the formatting!).

I am under the weather again, and trying to get enough sleep and rest and also trying to finish the next Ben January novel before deadline - much delayed from being sick all winter and most of the spring.

Yay! Just got a box of copies of "Darkness On His Bo...

Yay! Just got a box of copies of "Darkness On His Bones," Ashers & Ysidro # 6 - in which I give backstory on Ysidro, and start World War One. (And boy, that was gruelling research!)

If I've got copies, that means it'll be out soon, if it's not out already.

And, I've got the first four "Further Adventures" in "correct" form in to Smashwords - with another six going up soon (also, presumably, in "correct" formatting) - this weekend I hope to get the same tales up onto Kindle Direct.

So things are progressing. I will keep everyone posted.

Still further adventures...

Well, curses. All 8 (so far) of the Further Adventures got kicked off Smashwords for "incorrect formatting." I carefully followed the instructions for proper formatting and they were still deemed "incorrect." I am now pursuing options to get correct formatting, and will get everything up as soon as I'm able to do so.

Thanks for your patience!

Just put "Firemaggot" (the first of the Antryg ...

Just put "Firemaggot" (the first of the Antryg novelettes) onto Smashwords, and evidently it worked just fine. Because it's an older story, the price is slightly less ($3.99), newer stories will continue to go for $4.99. I'm still formatting the stories, but hope to load 8 more today (all the rest of the Antrygs, all 3 Sun Wolf/Starhawk stories, and "Sunrise on Running Water," the vampire-on-the-Titanic tale). STAY TUNED!

The covers, by the way, are fairly generic, and color-coded to series. In future I may do fancier covers.

New Stories About Old Friends: for those who don't kn...

New Stories About Old Friends: for those who don't know, I continue to write short stories about the characters of my old Del Rey fantasy serieses. These are being moved to Smashwords (Smashwords.com) and, within a few weeks (I hope) also to Kindle Direct.

I will let everyone know the moment they go live on Smashwords - which doesn't require either me, or the reader, to have a PayPal Account in order to buy them. Prices will remain about the same, though I may lower the price on some of the older stories. Smashwords supports all the major platforms (epub, kobo, mobi, pdf, etc).

THANK YOU all for your patience and support! It'll take me a week or so to get this taken care of. The "Further Adventures" corner of my personal website has been taken down. Watch this space (or that space) for further announcements!

Okay! The PayPal Account is closed, the "Further Adv...

Okay! The PayPal Account is closed, the "Further Adventures" stories will be moved from my personal website to Smashwords, starting (I hope) within the next few days. It's taking a bit longer for Kindle Direct, but I hope to get them up there in a week or so.

MANY THANKS for your patience!

I will keep everyone posted when the first stories start to go live on Smashwords!

FURTHER ADVENTURES - I will start the process of cancelli...

FURTHER ADVENTURES - I will start the process of cancelling my PayPal Account tomorrow, Thursday, June 25. I don't know how long it'll take, so the website sales should be ending, possibly as early as tomorrow.

Next week, I hope to be uploading stories to Smashwords. With any luck, to Amazon Direct within another week or two.

Wish me luck! See you when we all get there!

A long and very tiring session yesterday with Archangelbe...

A long and very tiring session yesterday with Archangelbeth, learning to format Further Adventures tales for Smashwords. I'm nervous and anxious about this whole process, but I'm getting amazing help, for which I'm deeply grateful. Many thanks, Beth! Many thanks to my friend Eric Baldwin, for making covers that clearly define each series, and clearly state that this is a novelette or a short story. (22 covers all at once is a LOT of covers...)

CHANGE TO FURTHER ADVENTURES!

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF FURTHER ADVENTURES

           For a variety of reasons, beginning the first week in July, the Further Adventures tales – short stories and novelettes about the characters of my Del Rey fantasy series of the ‘80s and ‘90s – will be moving.

           They will be for sale certainly on Smashwords (www.smashwords.com), and very probably on Amazon Kindle Direct as well. The stories will continue to be sold individually (I have always hated to have to buy something I didn’t particularly want in order to get something I did want); the oldest stories will probably be discounted.

           I will continue to write new Further Adventures, and they will appear on Smashwords and (I hope) Amazon Kindle Direct, rather than on the website.

           Deb will continue as my Sitemistress on my personal website (barbarahambly.com); the site will no longer be selling my stories. I will keep everybody apprised of new stories (and all other new developments) on the website, on my Facebook page, and on Live Journal. (The re-tweets on Twitter just drove me crazy).

           The Further Adventures section of the website will disappear next week. It may take me a week or more to get everything set up on Smashwords and Amazon, but keep checking Facebook and the website, and I’ll let everyone know the moment things are up and running. I hope this will broaden my market, and give readers an option to buy other than through PayPal.

           Many, MANY thanks for your loyalty and support during the six years (Good Lord!) of the existence of this little corner of my website. I look forward to writing many more new tales about old friends in the years to come.

                                                                                                                       Thank you all,

                                                                                                                       Barb

Did the Mother's Day thing. Our quiet family gatherin...

Did the Mother's Day thing. Our quiet family gathering was enlivened by the arrival of a young gopher-snake (about 2 ft long), driven from his usual habitat by major construction two blocks to the south, who wandered into the kitchen, startling the daylights out of poor Mom. The equally-alarmed snake took refuge under the stove (the oven, fortunately, hasn't worked in decades), and I said if we all got out of the kitchen and had our cake and coffee in the dining-room, he would probably come out the minute he thought the coast was clear. About twenty minutes later my brother spotted him emerging from beneath the stove. My brother followed him at an un-threatening distance while I sneaked around and opened the back door; the snake headed for the light as fast as he could slither and whipped out, and of course the minute he was on dirt he was off like a rocket. I'm guessing he got in under the front screen-door: I suggested to Mom that for the rest of the summer, whenever the main door is open she put rolled-up towels along the crack at the bottom of the screen, to prevent repeat visits. I'm guessing serpents aren't the only livestock refugeeing from the construction near-by.

Laundry and grading papers this evening, and reading notes for tomorrow's lecture: Dark Ages + early monastacism + Byzantium + Islam, winding up with Charles Martel, the Battle of Tours, and the Stirrup Theory of History (it's a compressed class - 15 weeks of information jammed into 8 weeks of 3-hour lectures - so we're moving pretty damn fast.). (The general effect is like the opening credits of The Big Bang Theory).

It's been a difficult semester, starting with bronchitis just after the New Year which didn't go away until after Easter. At one point I was teaching classes with walking pneumonia, and I'm months behind on my work. And finishing with sadness: a very dear friend is in the closing stages of a very aggressive cancer.

Class tomorrow is 8 a.m. - a long-ish drive to the college.