C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 152

Now offering signed bookplates

This was suggested by a conversation with an overseas reader: mailing whole books about to get signatures or trying to get signed books by one means or another can be a hassle and very, very expensive, besides risky to your books. If you'd like a nice little signed bookplate for one of  your collection, Jane and I have worked out a means: I have some nice 2×3″ commercial bookplates, and I'm offering them on Closed Circle, signed or signed/personalized, @ 2.00 each, which means I pay postage, fill out the envelope, and mail them to you. I haven't quite got the button functional yet, but it'll be in our new Dead Tree Books section, where we're selling off some extra copies of this and that. The collector-purists will want things the old way, but this will at least give you an option. The picture on the tastefully beige bookplate is a koi, which I thought just personified Us. The number I have is 40, but if it proves popular, I can certainly get more bookplates.

 

 

e-book sales top paperbacks.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/15/techn...

 

The world she is a-changing.

Don't forget Jane's Uplink on Amazon Kindle: if you can give a review…

…that would be really nice, and thank you, those who have!

Renji nearly buys the farm….

To anyone silly enough to believe that critters below 'mammal' do not have individual traits and personality…I offer you…a fish. Renji.

When they were only minnows, and all 12 fit under one rock in the pond, they were different. One orange/white one (kohaku) was often missing from the pack.

As a fingerling—who was the first to find that food collects in the skimmer basket if it escapes? At feeding time, the lot would be chasing food on the surface. Renji would be in the skimmer basket stuffing himself on what they missed.

When the crew wakes from their first winter—who's the first out? Renji.

When there's anything new in the pond, the others hide or at least hang back. Who's the first to investigate it? Renji.

We named him after the Bleach character who's almost the hero—the guy who's often the first to discover trouble.

So yesterday, Jane yells from her window that there's an emergency at the pond. I look and there's a fish stuck on the 6 foot diameter floating sunscreen that keeps them safe from winter predators. It's come a windstorm, the thing has been floating this way and that, and there's a fish lying on it.

I run out, and of course, it's Renji: apparently he got on the lee side of the drifting screen, and rather than going under the oncoming screen, in shallow water, decided to jump it.

Oops. There he is, and we don't know how long he's been there, but he's breathing: the fabric surface is mesh, and he's in a puddle, lying on his side. I can't find the damn pond net. I get the rim of the screen and tip it up as Jane helps me remove it. Renji slides down it and back into the water, for, I hope, a long rest and quick recovery.

Of all quirky ways to get stuck, that's one we never figured, and thank goodness we were home when he did it.

Screwball fish!

 

 

about endangered languages

I rarely do this, but this is a cause dear to my heart. And Bren would approve.

This is for real—an attempt to save languages around this planet from extinction. In historical memory, for various cultures, the sun has gone down on various languages forever, starting with the last two Etruscan speakers, in about 80 BC; 1676, the last born Cornish speaker, in Britain; and in this last century, many, many of the world's languages went extinct, with the history, the world view, the legends, the traditions and culture that are embedded in a language.

Sometimes the elders get the notion to withhold the language from the young, to make them live in the Outside World, that somehow they're both protecting the old knowledge and trying to help the young survive. The ELF tries to get the cooperation of the elders to sanction the transmission and teaching, with an assurance of respect for the traditions. The site is: The Endangered Language Fund.

Nice visit with Jane's cousins…

We went out to Anthony's, which has a panoramic view of Spokane Falls, right in the heart of town: a white water river with a short but turbulent falls, and a walkway across the water—we didn't take it this evening, but the water hitting the rock to which the bridge is attached makes the bridge 'sing' and quiver underfoot in waves as it comes down. And when it's like this, you get soaked in mist, which boils up constantly.

Dinner was good, company was excellent: I got ambushed by the clam chowder, which apparently uses onions, but being at home and in reach of serious meds, I got rid of the effects after a few hours. [My feet swelled so I felt like my skin would burst, and then that abated. I'll have aches and pains today and for a few days after, but I'll live. It's such an annoying allergy—the allergy docs won't even call it an allergy: it's a 'food sensitivity.' —Well, I'd rather have a stuffy nose than my feet hurting when I walk!

But it turns out they've done a lot of genealogy and I was able to use my computer to find a little bit on a missing ancestor, which was fun for me and gratifying for them. I love doing that sort of thing.

OSG came and helped us move rock…we are now so tired we can scarcely walk…

…and in the middle of it all, with the house an absolute pit, —we get a phonecall that company is coming. Just driving through. Wah. Neither of us has any energy left. We did clean up the house. But that took the last erg of anything we had left. OTOH, it's looking good out there. We fired up the pond. I vacuumed it to get the worst sludge off the bottom, and Jane and OSG and I flipped the switch—we are now officially running and all the fish are fat and healthy, beginning to nose things about in the way they do when their appetites are waking up.

Loaded sixteen tons and what'd' we get?

Some pretty river rock. Actually, it's five tons, and one ton of gravel, and the truck that delivered it was worth the price of admission. It's a double dumptruck, and it pulled up across the street, unhitched the second bin, then backed up and dumped the heavy skull-sized rocks. THEN it went back across the street, hooked into the second trailer, and the second bin ran on rails up INTO the first dumptruck, and locked in place. The truck backs up again, this time depositing the contents of the second bin [large gravel river rock] on our lawn edge; and then goes and hooks to the carrier again, sending the empty bin #2 back on its rails, and hitching both trailers together.

And Jane has pix when she gets organized. Right now we've got a couple of trugs [you know, those baskets they use in Egypt at excavation sites] that are handling the rock very nicely, and we just put rock in, lug it up to the dry stream water feature, and dump.

Would you believe it snowed last night? About an inch—and here we are with trees budding!

And if Betrayer weren't enough, Jane's just put Uplink live on Amazon Kindle Store…

Again, your support there is much, much appreciated. We can't express how important it is—and you're doing it!

This is Betrayer's official release date: it should ship now, if it hasn't before.

Thank you all. I wish I could do something about the e-book availability, but Penguin insists on the rights—but won't put the e-book out simultaneously. Sigh. Please support me anyway. It's not DAW's fault. They're a passenger on that situation, not directing it.