Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 323

Coupon for Maybe This Time!

There's a coupon in the newsletter that's going out tomorrow for something off on Maybe This Time (I think it's 10% but I'm not sure). The sign up for the newsletter is on the Mailing List page (which is filed under "Jenny Stuff"). I still have to double check the almond cookie recipe one more time, but the first batch was terrific. We're one day late on the newsletter, but we're doing good work . . .

Well, Argh

Barbara O'Neal and I were going to start posting our two-part interview tomorrow, once we finished up the last bit of the second part. Then I slept through our chat appointment. She'll probably never speak to me again, but if she does, we'll finish that up and it'll post later this week. But huge apologies to Barbara on that one.

And in other news, Maybe This Time comes out in trade paperback tomorrow and Wild Ride hits the shelves in mass market. Ghosts in trade, demons in mass, everybody in digital. Combine that with Fast Women and Faking It coming out in trade a couple of weeks ago, and there are a whole lot of new old Crusies out there. Which means it's time to finish The Book That Wouldn't Die. After I finish the Crusie newsletter that's supposed to go out tomorrow which is SUPPOSED to have the cookie recipe from Fast Women in it. Oh, and a coupon for the trade edition of Maybe This Time, which I also seem to have misplaced. Apologies to Mollie on that one.

So tonight I perfect the cookie recipe from FW, get a good picture of the Wild Ride collage so I can revamp the collage page, write Act Four of Lavender's Blue, and take the potato chip bag away from Milton who's on the bed with his head stuck in it. It's a full speed life and I'm trying to live it in the slow lane. Thank God for Diet Coke and chocolate. And you guys, of course.

Apparent Value: What's the Right Price for an E-Book?

One of the things that's come up in conversation a lot in the past week is the price point of e-books. So before I say anything else, there's a poll to the right that I'd like you to answer just off the top of your head right now:

What's the right price to pay for an e-book?

Go ahead. Answer that. I'll wait here.

Done?

Okay, that's kind of a trick question because you'd pay more for an author you love or a story you've been waiting for than you'd pay for a new author or an impulse buy. My cut-off point is usually around $9.99, but I'd pay full hardcover price for a new e-Pratchett or to get my favorite Allinghams that are falling into dust restored on my iPad. All books are not created equal. But if you're talking about trying new authors, or just looking for something new to read on the spur of the moment, I'm thinking that price point drops even lower, to $6.99, $7.99, mass market prices (which I'm still appalled by for mass market). The thing that makes me hit the "Buy" button after I've read the free sample is the need to read more, but the price point can make me decide I don't need to read more THAT much. The price point can't make me buy, but it can stop me from buying.

On the other hand, I'm deeply suspicious of $.99 books. Why are they so cheap? Do the authors not value the stories? Are they slashing prices in a desperate everything-must-go effort to get readers? Are they hobbyists, writers who just threw something up there to see if it sticks? I told Mollie it was like going to the store and seeing a new can of cola next to the Coke. If it's in a badly designed can and it's half the price, I'm not buying it because it's going to taste bad. If it's in a fabulously designed can and it's a dollar more, I might try it, just because it catches my eye and it seems valuable. The ugly can might hold much better cola, but the good design and the respectable price tag is still going to pull me to the other one. But the one I'm really most likely to buy? Coke. I like Diet Coke. I've consumed a lot of Diet Coke. Diet Coke does not let me down. In the same way, if there's a Pratchett in iBooks for $7.99, another fantasy book I've never heard of with an amateur cover for $.99, and another one I've never heard of with a stunning cover for $8.99, I'm going to read the sample of the $8.99 one because of its apparent value. But I bet you anything, I'll be buying the Pratchett.

Granted most readers are probably more adventurous than I am, but I still think price point has a huge impact, especially since the only letters I've ever gotten on pricing from fans have been the ones complaining that e-books are priced too high. Some readers are upset because it costs almost nothing to put the books up on the net (in their argument) so the books should be much cheaper. In this they're missing a couple of key points–publishers have overhead no matter what format you buy, and you're not buying paper when you buy a book, you're buying story–but it doesn't matter because public perception of worth becomes reality. What should be a question of "How much is this story by Jennifer Crusie worth?" becomes, "Well, I'll pay $14.99 for Welcome to Temptation in trade paperback because that's worth it, but I won't pay that $9.99 for the same story in e-format because they're ripping me off." One's wine in a bottle and the other is wine in a box. Same wine, but the perception of the value of that wine is different.

All of which makes pricing difficult. Lower priced books sell better, but do they devalue the reader's perception of your work's worth? Higher-priced books don't harm the perception of value, but they can annoy readers who think you're gouging them to pay for your yacht. So the key is to find a price that most readers will think is fair that still holds the apparent value of the work at an appropriate level.

Which brings us back to you. Since the Argh Nation is made of some of the smartest readers I know, what do you think?

Readers, E and Otherwise

I lost my grip on the readers' conversation in the comments on the last post because I was fixated on the writers. And I'm still fixated on the writers: Barb and I are going to do a chat tonight and cross-post the transcript on our blogs so we can talk about digital publishing by writers in more depth, probably on Wednesday.

But for right now, I want to look at the reader comments.

RSmith said:

I love my ebook reader so much that I am one of those people who pay extra for the ebook when I know I can get the print book at Walmart cheaper. But I am not willing to pay money for a self published ebook unless it is an author I am familiar with. I have purchased some awful books from the big publishers, but I am more willing to trust a book from them than something completely unknown.

This is the flip side of gatekeeping. It's incredibly frustrating for writers to have go through print publishers in order to get their work to a paying readership, but the paying readership may trust the gatekeepers to filter out the bad stuff so they don't have to. It's a flawed system because bad stuff is published in print all the time and good stuff gets rejected, and even the idea of "bad stuff" and "good stuff" is subjective. So the next question for the writer interested in publishing her own work is, "How do I get the reader to trust me long enough to buy my book?" A track record in print publishing is a good start, but what if I'm a new author? Is the sample enough to overcome the distrust?

Micki said:

Maybe there will have to be trusted review sites that consolidate the self-e-pub reviews in one place — with reader comments. I know this system could be abused, but it could also mean a lot of publicity.

Do we want to put self-digital-publishing in a separate review box? One of the things that Barb talked about off-list was the disdain that a lot of people have for both self-publishing books (couldn't get a publisher, huh?) and e-books (oh, anybody can get published in those), so that when you combine them into self-e-publishing (a term she really doesn't like) you get the worst of all worlds. But it's pretty clear that author digital publishing (trying for a different term here) can be wildly successful, so much so that a lot of established writers are trying it. I can see putting e-books in a separate category the way hardcovers are reviewed in different venues than paperbacks, but even that feels old-school. Still, if there were a separate site for author-digital-publishing (aka self-published-e-books), would that make it more likely for you to find and buy books?

Julie said:

I don't own an e-reader, and most likely never will. I don't read very many things on line that I can read "in person" (blogs are their own category, to me, and yeah, I'm "special" -all over the damn place). If I have something on the screen that is more than two pages long, I'll print it (use only soy-based inks in recycled/refilled cartridges, on the backs of already recycled paper). I hope the printed books never go away, I'd be shit out of luck. As I am nearly now, with neighborhood video stores.

I'm completely sold on e-reading except for picture books or coffee table books, books that are more than just print on the page, but I'm keeping my print fiction, too (although the mass market editions are falling apart in my hands). I completely understand the "I want to hold a book in my hands" people. My question is, how annoyed are you hands-on-book people going to be if you want to read something that's only in e-format? Are you going to shrug, get mad at the author, or find a way to read it on a screen?

Flamingo Cherry said:

I'm a big fan of downloading the free samples; you usually get a couple of chapters for a novel to see if the writer is at all competent before you have to pay. There's always the chance that you'll get good writing but discover you just don't like the story halfway in, but that happens to me with print books, too, and I don't feel as bad about not finishing if I've only paid $3.

I do the same thing: I pretty much only hit the "Buy" button if I really want to turn the next page. I think it's one of the big pluses of e-reading; a good healthy sample before you buy and then the opportunity to buy and get the rest of the book immediately. So the sample is going to be a big decider in whether you click "Buy" or not, but how do you get people to the sample?There has to be a way to use those sample chapters as hooks for the e-reader beyond "I clicked on the book and got a sample." I could see a site that was all first paragraphs or even just first lines. You scan the list, you see something that grabs you, you click on that and get taken to the book page and the free sample.

Flamingo Cherry also said:

In some ways, I actually find it's becoming easier to "investigate" the quality of a book from an "unknown" author through the e-book world, because there is so much information right there in one place, and once you get comfortable with the format of Amazon/Kindle's or B&N's or iBookstore's market place, it's pretty easy to navigate.

I'm finding this, too, but one of the drawbacks of the iBookstore is that not everything I want is in iBook format. I have the Kindle app on my iPad but I'm stubbornly resisting using it because I like the convenience of dealing only with iBooks. Is anybody else having problems reading across the platforms–Kindle, Nook, iBooks, etc.?

Jackie said:

"I am a new ereader – I got an iPad for xmas. I hust made the discovery (personal dicovery – it was probably obvieous to others long since) That I could buy the flashy new books of my favorites in ebooks rather than hard cover – a format I rarely buy except for truly beautiful books (i.e. the art of book binding, printing) and then still get the MM paperback when it came out for my purse or the tub or the bus. This is much better. I may be able to find anything in my room past the books…."

I have to admit I was surprised when SMP put out the e-book at the same time as the hardcover. It seemed to me that would undercut hardcover sales, and half the sale were in e-book, not HC. But looking back, I don't think it did undercut it. I think the people who like hardcovers bought it in hardcover and the people who like their e-readers bought it that way, and people who didn't want to wait for the paperback picked the one of the two that was most appealing to them. It gives people options, and I like that.

AgTigress wrote:

I can envisage being quite willing to do my regular re-reading of Heyer, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers etc. on an electronic screen, but even if they brought out an e-reader with a 12″ x 8″ format, superb colour resolution, and sophisticated tricks to enable one to look at text, footnote and bibliographic reference simultaneously, while writing a quick annotation in the margin and searching in the index (all of which are undoubtedly possible), books are still going to last much longer because they are not dependent of changing technologies. I regularly use books that were published long before I was born. As someone commented above, the computer technology we were using even 20 years ago is now obsolete.

This is something we haven't talked about much but it's a really good point. We're in Betamax territory right now and things are going to change radically. When I think of all the stuff I lost because I saved it on floppy disk, I begin to worry about my library. I'm sure publishers will update the books to match the new technology, but does that mean I'll have to download all those books again? Even if it's for free (and it better be if I've paid for it once), that's a real PITA. Meanwhile, as Ag says, the book's pretty much reached it's perfect state on paper and isn't likely to change much. And I have noticed that the books I'm duplicating on my iPad for convenience's sake I'm not discarding from my shelves. It's the old belt-and-suspenders plan: both e and paper formats so no matter what happens, I'll always have Heyer and Pratchett.

I'm really interested in all of this because at the end of the day, readers are going to decide what happens in publishing. They always do. So while writers are guessing and experimenting, readers are the ones making the final call here.

So, Self-E-Publishing. What's Up with That?

Recently there's been a lot of hoo-ra about self-publishing in e-book form because some people (Amanda Hocking) have been successful at it and some successful people (Barry Eisler) are trying it. There's even a contingent shrieking that traditional publishing is dead and that unpublished writers should stop going through the hell of submitting to "the Big Six" and just do it themselves, thus getting all the money. ("Big Six" is almost always said with a sneer, along with that other Fox-News-worthy term, "legacy publishing.") That smelled distinctly of fish to me, so I've been reading a lot of blog posts and articles, trying to come to a conclusion and what I've decided is this: I think e-publishing is going to be a huge part of publishing in the future, but it's not going to be all of publishing (anybody who banks on the Big Six going belly-up while writers become their own publishing houses is deficient in his or her understanding of the marketplace) so the decision to try self-e-publishing is like everything else in the world: it depends on the situation. To be more specific:



1. Anybody gloating about the fall of "Big Publishing," talking trash about "the Big Six", or sneering about "legacy publishing" is too emotionally involved in the discussion to be seeing the situation clearly. These are angry people who are not thinking things through because they're angry. Anger about publishing is not new–we've all thrown foaming fits in the privacy of our own homes–but it's usually about a specific publisher who has done a specific thing. Demonizing the entire traditional publishing industry while evangelizing for e-publishing because "you'll make more money that way" is not only short-sighted, it's kneecapping yourself. The smartest people I've read on this are Nathan Bransford and Amanda Hocking. They are clear-eyed and far-sighted and they have the numbers to back up what they're saying which is pretty much that there are two roads to publishing at the moment and each has its own rewards.

2. Most of the people who are trumpeting their success as self-publishers started in traditional publishing which means that their experiences are not going to be applicable to most other writers. Their names are established. Most of the hard work of publishing has been done for them. They can put "New York Times Bestselling" author on their covers; they have review quotes and blurbs from other well-known writers ready to go. For them to say, "Hey, you newbie unpublished writer, this is working for me, so this is the way to go for you" borders on cruelty. And even beyond that, I think they're short-sighted in their evaluation of what traditional publishing does for them, even at their levels of success. Unless they really like designing bookcovers, arranging their own PR, and doing their own marketing, they're coasting on the legacy bequeathed them by their legacy publishers while they're gloating about leaving them. That's a little like a divorced spouse bragging about how well he or she is doing while living on alimony.

But even so, they're making a lot more money, right? Maybe, but depending on their situations they may be losing a lot more in intangibles than they're gaining in short-term cash. I'm moderately successful so their plan should fit me perfectly, and yet I wouldn't dream of publishing my new fiction myself. SMP's marketing and PR, their distribution, their sheer ability to sell books trumps anything I could do, especially in a market where the projected percentage of e-books at the end of 2011 is still only 35%. (That's a huge leap from last year, and that percentage can only grow, but that means that even if the projected growth figures are correct, you're still ignoring 65% of possible sales.) SMP still excels at the one thing I'd have to work full time to do half as well as they do: Tell people my book is out there. But okay, let's say I could market my own book riding on the coattails of everything my publisher has already established for me. SMP still holds one trump card: Jennifer Enderlin. I don't want to write a book without Jen. She makes me a better writer. Yes, I can hire an outside editor (nobody can edit her own work well), but who knows if she'll be as good as Jen (she won't be) and there goes more of that "pure profit" everybody keeps talking about because a good editor who takes the time my manuscript needs is not going to cost me a couple of hundred bucks. So even if there was a profit there, I'd still go with SMP because what Jen does for my books is worth more than extra money. I understand that all writers can't work with Jen at SMP, but there are a lot of good, smart editors out there working for good, smart publishers, and I think that's still that's the best way to go for most traditional books.

3. Self-e-publishing works, but only if you know what you're getting into. Let's say you're a multi-published author with a big backlist that you've regained the rights to. Should you self-publish your backlist? It depends. Is there a publisher who's willing to give you a great deal with guarantees to promote the hell out of it? Then I'd go with that. If not, then you don't have a lot to lose by self-publishing and you have a lot to gain if you do it right. But doing it right means getting somebody who knows what they're doing to do your covers (since your old cover art is owned by the publisher, not you), pricing your books decently so you don't devalue your brand, and spending enough time and money to market the books so people know they're there. If you're still published by a traditional publisher, you're in luck because they'll promote your latest book and when readers go to see what else you've written that's available in e-format, they'll see your self-pubbed stuff.

A second good reason to self-e-publish is alternative publishing. If you have a book that has such a small, focused audience that traditional publishing can't afford to take it, or a novel whose subject matter/protagonists/setting/all of the above are deemed unpublishable by traditional means, or if you're doing something that's so far off your usual brand that print publishing the title might hurt your career, then self-e-publishing may be a good option. In other words, if print publishing is not possible for this work, and the reason is not that it's a lousy book that's going to destroy your career, then self-e-publishing may be the way to go.

I say "may be" because I believe strongly that the way you are published establishes your professional reputation. If you're published in e-format with a beautiful cover, great production values, and solid marketing that reinforces your brand, that's better than being published in a lousy mass market paperback format with a cover that's all wrong and a binding that falls apart. But it's not easy to do quality publishing and most of the self-published e-books I've seen are not something I'd want my name on.

I've talked before about the idea Mollie had to put all the first chapters of all my novels in e-book form with introductions explaining how I came to write them. Nobody would want to publish that; for one thing it's basically a promo catalog and for another it's going to be about 150,000 words which is too large to be feasible in print. But as a free e-book, the fact that it's promotional doesn't matter (it's FREE!) and the fact that it's a doorstop doesn't count in a place where all the doors are made of ether. That's a perfect self-e-publishing project for me. But this is not something I would ever do by myself. I'm a fiend about cover art but I don't kid myself that I can design it by myself. I've been working on marketing and PR for twenty years but there's no way I have the skills or knowledge to plan a marketing program on my own. So this free catalog we're putting out will have a professionally designed cover and a marketing plan designed by an internet marketing consulting firm Simple Progress. (Not trying to sell you anything there; they take clients by referral only). Without that professional support, I wouldn't put anything out there with my name on it even if it is promotional and free. That's my identity out there, I can't afford to do anything that looks cheesy or amateurish.

If you want to read more on e-publishing, the smartest people I've found have been Bransford, who is always smart on publishing, and Hocking, who is very clear-sighted, knows exactly what she's doing, and doesn't attach anything personal to the transaction. These are people who see self-e-publishing for what it is, a business that provides a service that may or may not be appropriate for an author. They know that, like everything else in the world, your e-publishing decision comes down to your situation and your personality: who you are, what you need, and how you are best suited to get it.

Now, what do you guys think?

Lyle: Still Peeing on Death

Some of you have asked how Lyle's doing. He's still dying, he just doesn't seem to have realized it yet. Thanks to a truly great vet and a truly great Yahoo Group, he's put on weight, his numbers are getting better, his energy is way up, and he's spoiled rotten and loving it.

Here's Lyle's headshot; doesn't he look fabulous?

And he doesn't just look fabulous, he has an equally spectacular life.

We sleep late here, so round noon, Lyle wakes up for lunch. The rest of the dogs get dry Iams dog food; Lyle gets homemade dinners (they look like sludge, but they have hamburger and pumpkin in them and he snarfs it right down). Then he goes outside and runs around, digging holes, and peeing on things, and generally being a dog.

After that, he crawls up on the bed next to my laptop (still haven't dug out the LaZBoy) and goes to sleep on the pillows. Because it's naptime. Then everybody goes out again; run, chase, dig, pee. It's a simple life, although Lyle does have to occasionally jump on a chair to escape Mona, who drags him around by his ear.

For awhile, we were going to the vet every three days to get epogen shots for his anemia, but Alastair is giving those at home now. One of my favorite things about this vet practice is that they put the dog's mug shot on the paperwork. Lyle looks like he was picked up for trying to rob a liquor store stoned:

We did get some news on the diagnosis: Lyle, it turns out, has Polycystic Kidney Disease, a genetic problem in which cysts gradually take over and destroy the kidneys. There is no cure, and Lyle's ultrasound shows he doesn't have much blood flow there any more so his prognosis is, well, dire. The vet has been fabulous, and she's delighted that Lyle is still around and acting healthy. In fact, the whole practice is getting pretty fond of Lyle who appears to be pretty happy about them, too; here he is at the vet's yesterday (although the happiness could also come from sitting on Lani's lap):

Then it's home for another nap with the pack–being a dog is exhausting–and at eight, he gets cuddled by his two favorite people, Lani and Alastair, when they stick a needle in him and pump saline under his skin. He's not crazy about the needle, but it must make him feel better because at about 7:45 he goes up to the door to the kitchen and waits there until it's time.

When I open the door he runs into the kitchen and goes wild when he sees Lani sit down in the subq chair and leaps on her lap and curls up on the towel (which is there because Lyle is a peeing machine). Then Cheesus (as he calls Alastair) slides the needle in, and they talk to him softly for about ten minutes while 200 mls of NaCl create a bison bump over his shoulder blades (which is why Lyle is a peeing machine).

Then Alastair feeds him whatever he didn't eat of his lunch and tops it off with a pill wrapped in cheese (Cheesus saves). And then I'm the buzzkill who comes in with syringes of aluminum hydroxide and Reglan and squirts medicine into his mouth (no needles). Lyle ADORES Lani and Cheesus. And he should because they're saving his terminal little butt.

And then we go back downstairs and Lyle jumps on the bed and flaunts his special status by climbing high into the pillows in front of the other four dogs and goes to sleep again. (Milton was on the floor when this picture was taken.)

That's an abbreviated description of Lyle's day–there are more trips outside than that–but basically, aside from the dying part, Lyle is living large and feeling good. Huge thanks to the wonderful Dr. Raab at the All Creatures Animal Clinic, to the K9KidneyDiet group on Yahoo, and to Lani and Cheesus, with whom anything is possible.

667: When Harry Met Sally, the Sequel

It's just too big a risk to take, that 666 thing.

Here, watch a movie instead:

When Harry Met Sally 2 with Billy Crystal & Helen Mirren from Billy Crystal

Or go to Funny Or Die and watch it in a larger frame. It's worth it.

OMG Shoes!

We sprained the blog on the deal-breaker post, so I dug into my drafts and found this one. Shoes! Or you can still talk about dealbreakers. Or whatever you want. Knock yourselves out. Here's the post:

I look at these shoes and my heart skips a beat. Robert Tabor is a freaking foot GENIUS. I mean, look at this:

Or this:

Or THIS:

They're not meant to be worn, but I would, I would. Sigh.

I'll just have to be content with my bunny heels until Mona eats them.

I'd really love to wear Streetzie's magnificent bunny slippers at RWA National, but I wouldn't get ten feet in three inch heels:

I'm thinking maybe I'll give up decorating luggage and turn to shoes. I have several that have been chewed but are still wearable. All I'd have to is put a bunny head over the chewed part. Or some spaghetti. Hmmmm . . .

[Found via The Berry which also had a great post on Crazy Shoes; lots more Tabor shoes at RobertTabor.com]

Deal-Breakers: A Story of Disappointment

While I was sick, I sampled some books by new authors who had been recommended to me. I love the iPad for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that I can hit "sample" in the bookstore and read the first pages. If I finish those and really don't care, I stop there. If I have to know what happens next, I hit "buy." (It's a good training tool for writers, too: don't spend your intro establishing things because it's action and anticipation that make people read on. My old creative writing mentor had a good exercise for that: "Suppose people could only buy your stories one sentence at a time. If the read the first sentence, would they want to buy the next one?") Most of the books, I did not hit "buy." But then I hit one that had a wonderful voice, clearly a smart, funny writer, and I hit that button. I did it even though it began with a prologue which for me is almost always a deal-breaker. I just wanted more of that great voice.

So now you're probably asking, "Who is it?" but I'm not going to tell you because she blew it and I don't trash other writers. Her voice was incredibly lively and involving all the way through, her characterizations were wonderful, her sense of family and community strong, plus she's funny as hell: I laughed out loud several times. But when I closed the book, I was annoyed. Why?

1. That damn prologue, like all prologues, was unnecessary. Prologues are lazy writing, the writer telling the reader stuff she needs to know before the story begins when all the reader wants is the story. Everything she said in that prologue she released later in the course of the real story. So she wasted my time and a lot of trees because she didn't have faith in her story-telling abilities (which turns out to be justified, just not in that particular area).

2. The start of the romance was incredibly contrived, so contrived that the first person narrator had to keep explaining why it had happened. If you feel the need to explain the motivation for something in your story, chances are explaining it isn't going to fix the problem.

3. The main plot was a string of pearls, particularly the romance in which nothing happens except the heroine looks at the hero and thinks he's hot over and over and over again and finally something happens and the heroine makes her move and then BAM they're in love. A good story needs some arc and escalation and a good romance does, too. Her writing was so strong I kept reading anyway, but the same old same old over and over again got exasperating. If her characters hadn't been so funny and her very good subplots hadn't escalated the way her main plot didn't, I'd have quit reading.

4. She had an epilogue where the heroine gives birth. If she'd started with that, I'd have thrown the book against the internet wall and never hit the "Buy" button.

I'll keep reading samples from this author because she's a really good writer with a terrific voice who can write the hell out of comedy using characters that feel very real. That's good stuff. But the bad plotting is a deal-breaker for me.

So what's the deal-breaker for you? When everything else in a novel is great, what's the thing that will make you walk away from a book and never look back?

This Still Isn't a Blog Post

Look, I've been sick. I did something to my back (okay, not "something," I was typing in bed in a weird position and my back started to scream), so I took an Advil and got grossly sick (nausea, asthma, head cold, and back pain all at once–did you ever try to throw up while blowing your nose and gasping for breath?), and then the next day, while I was still coming back from being sick, the back pain got worse, so I thought, "No more ibuprofen," and took an Excedrin and the same damn thing happened. Meanwhile, I still haven't gotten the questions up for The Circular Staircase Gothic Bookclub which should be interesting because the heroine is a snotty, elitist racist (I may never do historical surveys again), we did Weekend at Bernie's last night for PopD and that turned out to have no story structure whatsoever which is just annoying (learn to plot, people), and I'm obsessively researching kidney diets for Lyle who is still, inevitably, dying, but hasn't seemed to realize it yet since he's still leaping about like a mountain goat and trying to hump his sister (Lyle has a little Ancient Egyptian in him, it seems). Plus there's the marketing stuff and, oh yeah, I HAVE A BOOK THAT'S NINE MONTHS OVERDUE. And about ten boxes of stuff to mail out. And . . .

I know, you're busy, too. And I don't even have to leave the house to work so how bad can it be? Plus Lani and Alastair keep offering to wait on me hand and foot (I'm the crawl-into-a-cave-and-leave-me-to-die-when-I'm-sick kind of person) and have been running errands for me like mad. Really, I'm the luckiest woman in the world and I know it.

But I've been sick. I'm much better now. Except my back still hurts, possibly because I'm typing in bed again. Will fix that shortly. And Lani brought me pain-killing tea (I was hoping for morphine, but she can't do it all) so I'll try that. But then I have to work on the book, I cannot write a blog post. Although I did want to mention before I forget that Mollie had this scathingly brilliant idea which we are still working out about putting the first chapters of all of my books (including Liz) into a free e-book, and then I thought I could write intros to each one that would make the whole thing sort of a career bio since people ask that stuff all the time. But mostly first chapters. So we'll probably put that out around September.

And that's why I can't write a blog post for awhile. I'm going to go clear off the LaZBoy, drink morphine tea (I can only hope) and try to get Liz out of the mess she's in. She just got arrested by the guy she's been having one night stands with. I think it's going to have a chilling effect on the relationship. Liz is like that. So in the meantime, you just all just talk amongst yourselves. Not that you wouldn't anyway but I like to be supportive. And then I'll be back later in the week with a post that's deeply sensitive and thoughtful. Or pictures of Lyle humping his sister. I'll think of something.

Argh.