Keeping busy until Secret Lives comes out

I only allow myself to buy books and DVDs during even-numbered months.
On August 1, therefore—and before 8 a.m.—I opened the catalog whose pages
I’d been folding down for several days and logged on to its website. Click,
click, click. What did I order? The first thing I’d seen on the cover:
a book titled
Shakespeare’s Genealogies. It’s all the family trees of all the characters
in all forty-two plays. Wow! You really need that kind of resource when
you’re watching the history plays. I’ve got a bookmark in my Riverside
Shakespeare on the page with the family tree of Edward III, many of whose
descendants were fighting (on both sides of the Wars of the Roses) to gain
the English throne. The Wars of the Roses are really confusing. History
is complex. Even Shakespeare’s version of history is complex, and he was
writing a Tudor-approved version of history.

So I ordered the Shakespeare genealogies book, and then I ordered books
for my son and daughter-in-law for Christmas, but I won’t name them here
because my kids read this blog. Then I picked up another catalog and …
oh, goody!—
The History of the Pun. Anyone who’s read anything I’ve written,
especially
Finding New Goddesses, knows how much I like puns. Why shouldn’t
there be a serious study of wordplay? Click, click, click.




Then to Amazon and my shopping cart. First, I ordered a 1966 D’Oyly Carte
production of
The Mikado because I wanted to see the operetta in the Japanese costumes
and acting style that Gilbert and Sullivan themselves might have seen in
1885 when they wrote it. I’ve seen lots of
Mikados, of course, including one production that used the costumes
and sets that were used in
Topsy-Turvy, but my favorite is the English National Opera production
of 1987 starring Eric Idle (yes, the Monty Python Eric Idle) as Ko-Ko,
the cheap tailor turned into Lord High Executioner. This production isn’t
faux-Japanese; it’s 1930s English society with BBC enunciation. Nanki-Poo
sounds a lot like Jack Buchanan.




I also ordered Terry Pratchett’s newest Discworld novel,
I Shall Wear Midnight, and
The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel. The novelist in
Secret Lives who is
not me asks Madame Blavatsky, the talking calico cat, if she knew
archy and mehitabel and—




OH. YEAH.
SECRET LIVES. What I wanted was to be able to hold the book in my
hands on my birthday last month. That didn’t happen. Then I thought it
would be a book by mid-August. Well, Mercury is retrograde … so I’m working
(really hard) on going with the flow. I used to know a metaphysical teacher
who had her own little offset press that broke down every time Mercury
went retrograde. Mercury rules communications (among other things), so
writers need to be pretty careful during retrograde periods. Well, maybe
everyone does. Don’t get upset with stuff. Don’t insult people. Don’t start
fights. Be careful what you sign. Be nice to your computer.




I am therefore soldiering on. Last week, I put in two days reading the
semihemidemipenultimate pdf of the 650+ pages of the text. Tuesday—10 a.m.
to 10 p.m. Wednesday—noon until 8 p.m. Sherry had made all the changes
from the previous proofread, so I had fewer for her this time. As my authors
know (possibly all too well), I’m a Major Fussbudget, so I had more picky
changes (commas, niceties of phrasing) this time. When she made those changes
and sent me the next pdf of the text, I didn’t read the whole book again.
I just checked the changes. And sent her three more corrections.




She told me it was time to go to CreateSpace and set up my account. I
went to their website. Have I mentioned that websites make me crazy? What
is supposed to be “intuitive” on websites—including Facebook—for most people
isn’t for me. I just sit there. “Huh? What am I supposed to do now?” When
I phoned CreateSpace and the nice man asked about some little detail, I
couldn’t even answer him. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So I phoned
Sherry. “I’m on the website and have no idea what to do.” She’s had a lot
of experience with CreateSpace. She calmly walked me through it, I sent
them a credit card payment, and
Secret Lives got its very own ISBN number (which numerologically
adds up to 7, the number of the scholar). I think the process I’ve just
been through is kinda like Janie’s menarche ritual and Marie’s croning—a
rite of passage into a new stage of life. Next Sherry and I talked about
the copyright page. We added credits for her and my daughter-in-law for
their good work on the book. Then I added urls. First, for the free rea—FREE
READER’S GUIDE (I decided uppercase will get people’s attention), which
will be on this website pretty soon. Second, for my
Facebook
Secret Lives page. Third, for this blog. I also updated my Facebook
page again.




And now I’m also pedaling as fast as I can to catch up with my editing.
What am I working on? A nice metaphysical book by an Austrian author who
currently lives in Italy and is trying to come back to Los Angeles. A Ph.D.
thesis by a graduate student at Lancaster University in England. This is
my fifth Ph.D. thesis from Lancaster in a row. The candidates just pass
me along. It’s lovely. BTW, Wallace and Gromit live in Lancaster, but I
don’t think they’ve been to the university. A long novel about world issues
encountered by the philosophical protagonist and his family as they build
a new business. A science fiction novel that I think is heading toward
being about the Sumerian gods. A witty book of astrology on the Lady Asteroids
(plus Chiron). A novel about a man who frees himself from the corporate
life and learns about cosmic mysteries. A history of Bolivia. A book about
fitness for which the authors coined the word “intensercise.” (It means
intense exercise.) Good for them! I love variety. I seem to have a lot
of it. My authors are all smart and interesting people.