C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 185

Thank you.

You know who you are. Thank you for buying books, making donations, and supporting us in so many ways. We appreciate it very, very much. The software on Closed Circle doesn't let us say it individually, but thank you ever so much. Your messages of encouragement are deeply appreciated.

well, I'm caught in a war…and it's gotten nasty.

If you wonder what the deal is on the pricing of the new book on Amazon—it's this. Penguin, which distributes DAW, wants to set the price of its e-book offerings. Penguin apparently pulled its e-titles from Amazon. Now Amazon has retaliated by selling Penguin-distributed books, including mine, at below half price. I don't know how this will affect what I get paid, but this isn't going to help the already-shaky finance of the book industry, which is already unable to deal properly with new...

Deep secret—Jane has new books up: check out her site and Lynn's…

Lynn's had a week that should be in a disaster movie. Jane's had one computer glitch after another, not to mention the bathroom wall—which is also her bedroom wall—disaster. Go give these two some love! You won't find notice about the new books on CC just yet: Jane's still poking and prodding. But you'll find the details on her site.

OSGuy kidnapped our bridge arch boards…

…well, actually they'd been in his possession, and when he heard of plans for chiseling, he decided that wouldn't do, no. So he and OSG spent all yesterday afternoon figuring out a bandsaw which OSGuy had tracked down, calling in a massive lot of favors, and they sawed our bridge arches for us. There are 2 sets of arches, a short pair and a long pair, and they were so tired when they were done—we took them out for Thai food last night. He still wouldn't turn them over to us: he's going to...

Now the real work of writing starts…

Actual words.

The outline is as conflated as it's likely to get for now, or until more inspiration strikes.

It's time to start writing the story.

I'll make a 'safety' copy of the actual conflated outline, and put it away.

I'll start with chapter 1 and actually consume a copy of the outline as I go, so word count and page count will come and go as I lay down new words and erase bits of the conflated outline as I go. It's a curious process, but it's a lot better than facing pure white space.

Redo: the leak is still leaking…

It was, we're pretty sure, the grab bar.

The minute I used the shower this morning—there went the leak.

We rip out several more feet of tile, and spent our day looking for something we hadn't planned to deal with for another year: the Bathroom Color Scheme. We love our swimming pool blue wall paint with white trim. And I hate unmitigated white tile.

We went to Home Depot, which has a better selection of tile than Lowe's, and brought back several samples of Porcelain Tile That Can Be Ordered...

We found the leak in the bathroom…

I'd told Jane that side wall was bowing.

Turns out it wasn't the faucets or pipe, after we cut a 4′ x 2′ hole in Jane's closet to find out. It was the inbuilt metal soapdish, and we now have a 3′x1′ hole in the tile/wallboard above the tub rim. Sigh. The wallboard behind was soaked, the tiles were indeed bowing with the swelling of the saturated wallboard, we had mold, and it was a gruesome mess.

Now we have a garbage bag taped to the tilework until we can fix this.

And the faucets don't come a...

New keyboard on its way: at 1pm today!

I will be so relieved. This computer, vintage 2004, is a little slower (much!) than the new one, not to mention having some grievous issues with its pointer, which occasionally opens things you not only don't intend, but can't even figure out what Microsoft nuisance you accidentally touched and what it does…

This one decided to upgrade Firefox this morning and what should have been a 5 minute operation took an hour of computer time. Slog-slog-slog, and I couldn't interrupt it.

Oh, I will be...

This poor backup laptop…

I am remembering in detail the reasons I decided I had to get a new computer. It's amazingly iffy. It can't load some internet pages, for reasons I cannot parse, but since my new computer will be fixed soon, not worth chasing down…it works as a workhorse in an emergency, which is its job.
I am finding some links I want to put on the new computer: the Ancestry World Archives Project Keying Tool, the links to my file and slide comparison softwares: wonderful things, especially with a terabyte...

2 make life fun…

my keyboard died. under warrnty;fix onsite in 2 days. i can only use adaptive intrface onscreen kbd. real slow. back rsn.