C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 151

Very bad news on Jane's kitty Efanor…

He's dropped a little weight over the past couple of weeks, then yesterday afternoon refused a favorite  treat.

We took him to the vet.

Blood tests are very bad. You have to wonder how he looks so good. There's not much can be done except buy a little comfort and some good days. Jane is very upset—well, honestly we're both really upset, but he's Jane's special kitty, and this is why I'm making this entry right now, because Jane isn't doing real well, and shouldn't have to break thiis news to the world herself.

So kind thoughts will be appreciated. We've both been there many times before, but it never gets easier.

 

 

Lynn's got her next section up on Seeking North!!!!!!!!

yay!

The focus on day two is getting clearer.

There is a classic experiment in which a guy put on prism glasses that inverted the image, and he wore them daily. Eventually his brain reinterpreted the image and 'flipped it. When he took the glasses off, the world was inverted. It took time for his vision to normalize.

I'm experiencing something similar.  And I'm pushing reading without glasses to make my eyes adjust to this new situation. My eyes are fighting to improve the clarity of what I see, and I'm using the reading glasses (the OTC sort) to help out when I need to be absolutely certain what I'm doing, but the blurring and doubling (only on printed things)  is getting less and less—-eventually my eyes tire of the novel exercise and I have to use the reading glasses, but it is markedly clearer than yesterday—about the level of clarity you can get with glasses that are just ALMOST right, but blurring just a tad. The rest of the world is sparkling clear, even the stars just before dawn. Happy dance!

Give it a few more days, and I may be reading without glasses altogether! The moon in the sky is clear this morning. The number of times just in a few hours that I realize, before undertaking some task, "No, by golly, I don't need to go find my glasses!" is amazing.

On the garden front, I'm doing the taxes and Jane's out planting things. The weather is warming. The koi are swimming about wanting food now. So their year has officially begun. I think we've finally seen our last snow.

Can you say ecstatic? The lenses are working.

I've had them on half an hour, and the distance-vision sparkles again! I can read the instructional buttons on the microwave. Reading the computer is still iffy, but there's an adjustment curve on this, and you may just have to put up with my misspelling things for a week. I can basizally see, but it's not sharp yet. Eyes have a way of 'learning' how to focus under a situation, and this looks as if it's do-able. If it isn't, I may be able to get away with an over-the-counter pair for close focus.

The brand is Optix, and kudos to my optometrist, who could have sold me multiple pairs of glasses—has in past: but she was all excited to be able to offer me this instead of all of it. I like this woman—and say what you might about Walmart, the fact that she doesn't have to make her living and support her staff off sales of the supplies is a benefit to us all.

If you wear bifocals, or think you can't wear contacts because of your weird precription, there's new stuff out there; and if you haven't tried any lenses on since the days of plastic lenses, these are anazingly comfortable—even kind and moisturizing to the eyes: I think it's thimoserol. Brand  of lens matters: there's a flud they can use on some lenses that I"m allergic to and it stings and is irritating; but these are packed in  something safe. Stings just a very little, then settles to be nice. Optix is the best, SFAIC, and these are wonderful!

 

 

 

Headed to the optometrist today.

Figuring after the great play debacle, I'd better get something done. I think I'm going to get contacts for far-vision and reading glasses for up-close use with the same contacts. My astigmatism isn't much of an issue in far-vision, but really is close-up, so that's not too hard a correction to make.

Snowing again. 21st April, and it's coming down thick.

Last night we went to a high school play—St. George's was doing Fiddler on the Roof and our good friend Terry is wardrobe mistress (and creator) for most of the school's annual plays. She showed us her lairs at intermission, and we tiptoed about the attic above the backstage: she's the regular Phantom of St. George's. All the props, the costumes—she's a brilliant costumer: pity she's never gotten into the con circuit!—

But my eyes went on me: I've been swearing I need to get my prescription adjusted: it's been 2 years; and last night I began seeing the red lights separate from the white, and then increasing separate images, until at intermission I had to get out into the hall and put on my reading glasses and force my eyes into something like focus, because everything had gone blurry and my balance had gone iffy. Don't be alarmed. It's that a muscle defect doesn't let my eyes work together in a normal way: usually I'm ok and can cope very well with a monofit contact which helps coordinate focus; but I think what happened was that eyestrain started to 'unglue' the images, and one eye was 'helping' out by picking out what was different from the other, ie, the red component of the lights. I was getting what in real life would have been a 3 foot separation in the images on-stage, and one was the red lights. By the next subdivision I was starting to pick up the blue lights, which meant the brain was processing like crazy trying to pick out info and make it make sense. By the wedding scene I had far more actors than I liked, so we ended up going home after the wardrobe tour. Jane and I don't go out much—like not in months, she absolutely loves the theater, and here I screwed up her evening.

Well, I've lived with this problem lifelong: I recall the very first time it came to me that my world was odd: I was five, we were living in the house by the railroad track, and I was aware that things were 'stacking up'. I came running into the house saying, "Mama, the cars are stacked on top of each other," and she said that it was a car carrier. But when I said no, I knew what that was, she and I both went out onto the porch and I told her what I was seeing—which was the first time I grappled with the concept of seeing the universe in a different way.

So—old problem. And I have to admit I need a prescription for far vision: that hits me in the vanity—I've always had very good far vision. And one for near vision. Because I have a torque, or shift, between the progression of numbers for my far focus and my near, it means that even gradated bifocals won't work, because it's physically impossible to grind glass to do what I need. I have to have a separate prescription for each special distance at which I need to operate. Which means it's a good thing I'm not male: someday I'll run out of pockets to carry the glasses. Right now I wear one pair and will have to keep the others in my purse…I refuse to drape both on the necklace clip I use: vanity, vanity. One pair is bad enough.

Well, but I have generally good vision, just this 'separating images' problem, and am blind as a bat close up, so reading glasses are a must. So it's off to the optometrist for me. I've tried several in town, and honestly, the one who serves the local Walmart is a real gem.

 

 

 

Want to know how errors get into books?

Here's a sample. I sent Intruder off to my agent in the form he asked for on January 2-?, this year. Last night I got a strange e-mail relayed to me by my publisher/editor from the cover artist asking where the book was and complaining it was going to run him against the wall because he didn't have it. My publisher asked if I'd ever turned it in because she couldn't find it in files nor find any e-mail about it. And I know I haven't been paid yet. Which is not uncommon. I turn it in, and get paid when somebody gets around to reading it—or it goes into production, whichever comes first.

Well, it seems my agent didn't ever send the book to the publisher. So I transmitted it myself last night on the spot.

This means the publisher won't get a real chance to read it, because it will simultaneously go to the artist, and probably simultaneously go to the copyeditor, and everybody is going to be in a frantic rush, because this book seems to be in production already, meaning it's slotted for September and the wheels are turning despite the fact they had no book and the artist had no book and cover design has no art, book design has no text, and there was NOTHING in that folder but a name for the book. The editor/publisher was deep in the throes of another book in the heat of production with its own crises, and hadn't realized that there was a thundering silence surrounding a book she had every reason to believe was in the folder and coming along as per normal. The copy editor doesn't have the editor's notes and probably never will have—it'll make schedule, because books don't fail schedule without major stuff—but! Small wonder I hadn't been paid yet.

And by the time it does come out, I'm sure there'll be some errors you get straight from my keyboard, because staffs aren't as large as they used to be, and instead of paper standing in stacks on shelves where you can SEE there's a spot with no paper stack on it, it's all transmission of files.

Welcome to the totally paperless way of doing things.

I'll try to be hyper-careful checking galleys on this one, but things get by me for the same reason I made the mistake in the first place.

Well, worse things have happened. Far worse. The time much of the whole production run got stuck in a snowbank. The time the cover got the wrong ink mix. The time they didn't glue the cover on. The time a copyeditor corrected all of Jones' 'ain'ts' to 'isn't's and it went to press that way on my first hardbound. The time a piece of paper stuck on  the printing plate so neatly square that half a critical page was missing for most of the run, in a place that looked like a 'finish' to a scene.

We've survived them. But there are times being an editor OR a writer means an extra large bottle of Excedrin.

 

It's snowing. On 18 Apr.

I can't believe it.

We skated today: I blew my knee carrying rock up steps with no knee brace, and have been off the ice for a week. Today I wrapped up really well and went out, but I can't wear the shoes I did the damage in, and now the ones I picked as a substitute have worn bloody patches on my feet. I just can't win.

The koi are swimming around wondering if the white stuff is edible: they're usually fast asleep when this happens.

 

We're making some price changes due to shipping…

We've been relying on people overseas doing contributions on the honor system to cover extra postage, but, whoa, all of a sudden we got hit by people doing purchases from overseas with no postage. Well, I don't blame them, and we will honor the offering, (it's costing us more to ship than we'll make on the transaction) but—we have to manage this fast, since we started to do dead tree books now and again. So we have to put a postage charge on.

IF you want to buy multiple dead tree books, for one thing, do it now, because we don't have many of them, and for another thing—if you're getting multiple purchases, we can sometimes cut you a deal on shipping, by working it out by hand how to cram it into one box. In any situation, wherever you live if what you're ordering is small, or flat, and you can contact us in advance of purchase, we can see if we can cram whatever it is into one of those larger flat-rate boxes and save you a bit of change. One 45.00 box is better than four 13.95 boxes to the opposite side of the planet. And we're very willing to work with you. Just don't buy it until you write to us because our software is very limited, and we can work with you easily BEFORE a purchase and tell you how to finesse it.

Bookplate sales are modest but ongoing: if I make a mistake or they don't arrive in good condition don't hesitate to tell me. It's one thing to tell the software what to ask you: it's another to read the input in the right way.

And note: bookplates ship  in an ordinary first class envelope, and there's no extra postage for overseas: I can at least give my overseas readers that much of a break!

The bookplates button is now live.

By 'personalizations, we mean tell us who to sign it to. You can order as many as you like. You can order them for your friends and relations. They are stiff (as peel-and-stick labels are) and might do well stuck to the inside cover so they don't obscure part of the page, or they can be stuck to the 'presentation' page, which is a blank page in the front of some hardbound books.

Note that I have 40 of this design, which I do quite like. They're produced by Laurel Ink of Seattle, and you can get them on Amazon. If I should happily run them out of copies, I'll have to change designs, but I want you guys to have first crack at these before I mention them on Facebook. Go to Dead Tree Books in our Books menu, and you'll see the button.

I have agonized over this a bit: I don't charge for signatures in books, which is a tradition of our field, and will always personalize for no extra charge any dead tree book you buy from us, (or elsewhere) but I have to charge something fair for the plates, the mailing, the handling, etc, and all else that goes into making those available.