Kickstarter — one week left!
We’re in the final week of eSpec Books’ Kickstarter for seven new titles by seven authors, including my collection Aleyara’s Decent and Other Stories:
As I write this, we’ve surpassed the 100-backers milestone and the bonuses that unlocked, and we’re less than $400 away from unlocking our next stretch goal, at which point all backers pledging $7 or more will receive a digital copy of my Troubleshooter vignette “They Also Serve” and a digital copy of Keith R.A. DeCandido’s novel Guilt in Innocence! Even so, that will bring us less than halfway through the list of stretch goals, including both reprints and original stories, and hardcover editions of a couple of the books if we hit our maximum target. In my past experience, Kickstarter campaigns slow down in the middle but can pick up speed considerably in the final week, so I’m still hopeful that we’ll make some major gains before the campaign ends. Keep in mind that the more funding we get, the more the writers will get paid, aside from all the goodies the contributors get.
As a taste of what we have to offer, the eSpec Books Author Reading Series has posted a video of Keith R.A. DeCandido reading an excerpt from his new book The Adventures of Bram Gold: Feat of Clay. I’ve also recorded a video for the series, reading the opening scene of my collection’s title story “Aleyara’s Descent,” which I had enormous fun doing, and which I recorded on my new webcam that actually has decent resolution. Hopefully you’ll get to see that one soon.
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In the continuing saga of my robot vacuum cleaner and its difficulty getting back onto my living room carpet once it’s gone into the hallway, I decided this week to try blocking the vacuum with a large poster tube I have that’s just about exactly as wide as the hallway threshold, using my shoes to wedge it from behind so the vacuum doesn’t push it out (which also gets my shoes out of its way for vacuuming). It worked pretty well, but after 20-odd minutes when I decided to take the tube away and let the vacuum move into the rest of the apartment, wouldn’t you know it, it couldn’t find its way out of the living room! I eventually had to nudge it in the right direction with my feet.
I could’ve just taken manual control with the phone app or remote, but I guess I wanted to leave it in auto mode so the app could time how long it lasted. It seemed like the battery was draining faster than it did at first, but it ended up running for a whole hour, which is a little less than before but still pretty close. I wonder if maybe letting it run all the way down below 10 percent is bad for battery life. I gather that with modern batteries, it’s generally best not to let them fall below 20 percent.
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Meanwhile, I seem to be adjusting to my new glasses, though it took a few days to get the hang of how best to position them and for my eyes to adjust to their focus. I’m still thinking of driving up to that place that can repair my old sunglasses, but I won’t be doing so this week, since Cincinnati is having a heat wave with temperatures in the 90s all week. Which is a good incentive to stay inside and refocus on the story I’m writing.
