Martha Wells's Blog, page 225

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to whoever sent me the t...

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to whoever sent me the two B&N gift cards. There was no name on the envelope anywhere, so if they weren't intended to be anonymous, please send me an email. I just got them today, since what with the exploding toilet problem, we didn't think to open yesterday's mail until this morning. Anyway, thank you very much! And I intend to stimulate the book-buying economy vigorously with them.

The good news is it's been raining off and on for a few d...

The good news is it's been raining off and on for a few days, so the drought is finally over. (Now for flood season!) The bad news is that our outside pipe apparently really needs Rotorooter. Running water upstairs -- showers, toilets, etc -- cause the downstairs toilet to spontaneously back up. Yeah, it's not fun.

I'm hoping this isn't really expensive. (We considered faking a haunting to get Jason and Grant from Ghost Hunters down here. We could borrow a small child with acting skills t...

puddleshark asked: Question: I love the Ile-Rien books, b...

puddleshark asked: Question: I love the Ile-Rien books, but I came across them quite by chance - they never appeared in bookshops and were never promoted in the United Kingdom. What happens when books go out of print? Can the author regain the rights to sell them to another publisher?

Thank you! And basically, yes. Unless they're work for hire (like media tie-ins where the rights to the world/characters/etc are actually owned by someone else and only temporarily licensed to the publisher), i...

Another great informational post from tacithydra: Freival...

Another great informational post from tacithydra: Freivald's Flash Fiction Online is a Queer Unfriendly Market. They refused an ad for Crossed Genres Magazine LGBTQ issue.

BTW, the lovely art for the ad is by Paul Davey: Mattahan and he's got some new art up on his deviantart site, including some Dossouye portraits (from Charles Saunders' fantasy novel Dossouye).


On the personal front, things are not good. As far as we know, Troyce is still scheduled to be laid off at the end of this month. ...

scott_lynch on Touched by a Crazy Person: I like how you ...

scott_lynch on Touched by a Crazy Person: I like how you capitalized AUTHOR, like it's glaringly obvious that everyone who ever sells a book receives a deed to a Scrooge McDuck money bin in the mail the next day.

The craziest email I got was more weird than annoying. Someone wrote me telling me that he knew I was really a pseudonym for Barbara Hambly, and that I should just admit it and stop pretending. At first I thought he didn't mean it seriously, that it was a joking compliment. So I re...

tacithydra has a post on the battle for marriage equality...

tacithydra has a post on the battle for marriage equality in Maine: The anti-marriage campaigners hired the same public relations firm that helped to pass Proposition 8 in California to help them run the referendum effort. They also started lying to get signatures:

Gerard Caron walked into the Auburn Post Office and was met by a woman with a pair of clipboards. "This petition is against gay marriage and this other petition is to support gay marriage," she said, according to Caron. The...

I think I'm starting to feel the effects of all the stres...

I think I'm starting to feel the effects of all the stress. I've had stomach issues, and up until yesterday had a stiff shoulder that made it really painful to move my neck. Ouch. Also, our internet connection has been intermittent at best. That's always fun.

We did get to have lunch with friends today -- one friend is going in for cancer surgery very soon and is about to leave town for it, so it was good to get to see her.

Finished reading The City & the City by China Mieville and couldn't...

Save the Dragons Dave Freer is posting a new novel onlin...

Save the Dragons Dave Freer is posting a new novel online to raise part of the money needed to get his family pets (four dogs and cats, mostly rescues) through quarantine when his family moves to Australia. You can help stopping by, checking out the novel, donating if you can, and spreading the word.

The Google Book Search Opt in or Opt out Deadline is Today so authors can decide if they want to be screwed by Google now or screwed by Google later.

From Web Urbanist: 7 Most Remote Abandoned...

I missed Outer Alliance Pride Day, but here's a link to i...

I missed Outer Alliance Pride Day, but here's a link to it anyway. The Outer Alliance is a group of SF/F writers who have come together as allies for the advocacy of LGBT issues in literature. Made up of individuals of all walks of life, our goal is to educate, support, and celebrate LGBT contributions in the science-fiction and fantasy genres.


In less exciting news, we've been using a clothesline to do most of our clothes-drying since about mid-July, cutting the electric dryer time from 30-40 m

Book Recs

I wanted to say thanks again for all the birthday wishes, and the V-gifts from heidi2524, eldritchhobbit, and texanfan, and the lovely anonymous that gave me a year's paid LJ time. I can certainly use that!

It was kind of a depressing day, after finding out the lay-off is a certain thing. I mostly just wrote and did laundry. The good thing is there's been a cold front come through, dropping the temperature from around 102 to 92-95. That's a huge difference. And it's dropping below 80 at nigh