5 things: the winterness of you

[truepenny]

1. Happy birthday (yesterday) to coffeeem and to matociquala's Giant Ridiculous Dog!

2. My second Ellery Queen post is up at tor-dot-com, here.

3. Yesterday, heresluck and I braved the winterness of Wisconsin to go bookstore trolling. I picked up cmpriest's Boneshaker and Dreadnought to give as xmas gifts (having given h.l. our extra copy of Boneshaker--I am flinging the steampunk zombies far and wide this holiday season), and had excellent book-fu on my own account:

• Cohen, Patricia Cline. The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York (I'm hoping this will be more the book I wanted The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers to be).
  
• Godbeer, Richard. The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England.
  
• Kater, Michael H. Hitler Youth.
  
• Sigmund, Anna Maria. Women of the Third Reich (not quite as exciting as if I'd found Jill Stephenson's Women in Nazi Germany, but still).

4. There's even more winter over in Minnesota.

5. When I was buying Boneshaker and Dreadnought, the owner of A Room of One's Own did a double-take at my check and said, "Are you Sarah Monette the science fiction writer?" And when I agreed that I was, she said, "Are they going to put your books out again? Because I get a lot of people asking about them." And I told her about the rights and my plan to find a small press, and she mentioned the TOTALLY INSANE prices The Virtu is going for on eBay, and so on.

I've had conversations like that with booksellers before, but they've always been in-genre (Dreamhaven, Larry Smith, etc.). So having the conversation again with someone who sells all kinds of books feels like, in the middle of a lot of discouragement about my career, a kind of encouraging milestone.

Comments

[cmpriest.livejournal.com]

Yay! And thank you!

And weirdly, I had a dream last night, and you were in it. Me and you and Mary Robinette were taking a road trip ... and having Mary-style luck the whole way. When I finally woke up, we were stranded at some bed-and-breakfast-slash-car-dealership trying to buy a new vehicle to get home.

The whole thing was wacky .... :)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Even with Mary Robinette's weirdness magnet in effect, I would happily road trip with the two of you. :)

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Sigmund, Anna Maria. Women of the Third Reich

I don't know if you've already read it, but "Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany" by Marion A. Kaplan is very good, and focuses mostly on women, drawing on diaries and letters and so forth. It's almost unbearably painful, though.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine (coincidentally, who also really liked the Booth collection I foisted upon her) read the Murder of Helen Jewett for class and liked it enough that it's been on my to-read list for a while now.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Good to know!

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

Enjoying the Ellery Queen posts. My mother-in-law was a big fan of those books, and it's interesting to see some of the underpinnings.

And, yes, around here (Ann Arbor), Sarah Monette is someone people ask for at the bookstores. :-) I still don't get the way publishing works these days -- you would think that reader demand would actually mean something. Grrr.

[elmocho.livejournal.com]

...and she mentioned the TOTALLY INSANE prices The Virtu is going for on eBay, and so on.

That happened to a friend in a local, defunct Irish pub band. Sellers on Amazon had their CD for quite a lot of money. He said he still had boxes of them, and I joked he could still undercut their price and turn a profit.

[finnyb.livejournal.com]

Irish pub band? Oooh...*is interested, defunct or not*

[elmocho.livejournal.com]

The Clare Voyants:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZG5azjlyRY


The lead singer--Shay Veno-- and the fiddler --Jane Hilton-- still play duets. The bodhran player--Paul Knight-- has a solo gig at a Mesa coffee shop, mostly guitar and vocals. I'm not sure what Billy Brett, the mandolin player, is up to. Jane is also a DJ on the Phoenix classical station, KBAQ, and was second-chair violin for the Symphony of the West Valley before budget cuts.

I think Shay and Jane also play in a bluegrass band, but I haven't seen them.

[finnyb.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you!

[teriegarrison.livejournal.com]

I paid US$37, including expedited shipping, for a library-bound copy of The Virtu. And I considered myself lucky I got it so cheap.

Then a year later, I found it in the Dealers Room at Eastercon for £4. Bought it again and gave one copy to a friend. Sorry you didn't get any royalties, though. :-( I would've bought the e-book so that you WOULD'VE got royalties, but it wasn't for sale outside the US.

[girlpunksamurai.livejournal.com]

I'm glad your conversation with the bookseller helped boost your moral as a writer.

Like a lot of really good singers who never hit it big like Britney Spears, or Usher did, mainstream is underrating and underestimating you. Don't step out of the wring or the fight, because us, your fans, would miss your presence in the book world.

[finnyb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reminding me that I need to pick up Boneshaker and Dreadnaught, myself, if I can find the hardcovers. (Paperbacks get worn out too quickly in this house, with the amount we all read and re-read, and I've yet to get an e-reader, if they're even available for such.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I believe they're only out in trade paperback. FWIW.

[finnyb.livejournal.com]

Okay. Thanks. Means I'll need multiple copies. Not that that's a surprise for me.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

I *love* A Room of One's Own. I hate that the name and "feminist" designation means that I have to thwap most local SF geeks to go there, for they have pretty much The Best SF section that can be found downtown. Unfortunately (and understandably, given the local market for such), their crafts section blows.

If they don't have the right kind of geek fun, Netherworld will. And Netherworld is a really nice place to walk into. Gaming shop where I don't get looked at funny! Yay!

[kate_nepveu]

Hey--new Submachine!

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/12/submachine_7_the_core.php

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Cool!

ebook software

[carlinjona.livejournal.com]

Sarah, you might be interested in the Destop Author software available here - http://www.desktopauthor.com/
I did a tutorial on it last year and it's brilliant. It creates beautiful ebooks that can be read on any PC, thus avoiding the pitfalls of which format can be read by which reader. You can sell the ebooks either from your own website or from the parent company's - http://ebook.com/
A lot of major publishers use the software and it's fantastic for self publishers too.
cheers,
Suz.