Technical Difficulties

So there has recently been some (more) ugliness in the online science fiction community with some (more) spouting of bigoted claptrap. I don't particularly want either to link to it or to talk about it, but I do want to link to three responses:

• N. K. Jemisin's explanation of the misappropration of the First Amendment in the Truesdale petition
  
• John Scalzi's exhortation to Join the Insect Army!
  
• Juliet E. McKenna on Why the SFWA Shoutback Matters

Ms. McKenna's post includes some comments on the invisibility of female writers of epic fantasy (which comments I can testify to the truthfulness of from personal experience), and in fist-shaking defiance of that invisibility I shall tell you that matociquala's The Steles of the Sky got a starred review from Kirkus Reviews: "Considering the trilogy as a whole, the overused term masterpiece justifiably applies."

And since Mary Robinette Kowal was the person with the bullseye painted on her in this go-round, I also wish to commend her to you as a writer, a puppeteer, a fearless (former) SFWA officer, and an excellent human being.

Also, this seems like a good moment to remind you that the Con or Bust auction is still ongoing (through February 23), and the plethora of awesome items is downright bedazzling. Should you be interested in my particular items, he bidding for Unnatural Creatures stands at $80 and the bidding for The Goblin Emperor stands at $200.

Con or Bust auctions are live!

I have two items in the auction (and believe me, there are pages and pages and pages of COMPLETELY AWESOME SHIT):

1. the absolute last copy of the Kyle Murchison Booth chapbook Unnatural Creatures

2. a copy of The Goblin Emperor, just as soon as my author copies come

Also, just in general, Con or Bust is an excellent endeavor. Even if you can't bid, please spread the word!

As the new year begins, my story "Blue Lace Agate" is live at Lightspeed. (Author interview here.) "Blue Lace Agate" is chronologically the first story about Mick and Jamie, the protagonists of "A Night in Electric Squidland" and "Impostors" (in Somewhere Beneath Those Waves), and I'm delighted that it has finally found a home.

ETA: Also, Mateusz Skutnik has a charming little New Year's game which I commend to your attention.

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Although I don't usually write year-in-review posts, after the year I've just had, I really do feel the need to sit down and take stock (4,691 irradiated haggis, check).

So.

( 2011 in bullet points )

As 2012 begins, I'm going to full-time as a database thrall, and we'll see what effect that has on my health and my writing.

Goals for 2012 (note to self: do not mistype as "gaols," please) include:

• finish The Goblin Emperor
  
• write An Apprentice to Elves [with matociquala]
  
• finish Thirdhop Scarp and write this backlog of Booth stories
  
• write a bunch of other short stories
  
• maybe start on this novel that is twining seductively around my ankles
  
• blog more
  
• BE HEALTHY

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Happy New Year! May 2012 be a better year for all of us than 2011!

For those of you who asked, the cost of mailing one copy of Unnatural Creatures to the UK is $5.44.

1. We had a thirty-six hour internet outage yesterday and today. SO not amused.

2. Also not amused by Wisconsin's governor. But yay for the 30,000 protesters!

3. Sean Wallace has posted the cover mock-up for the new edition of The Bone Key. I am in love with the cover art.

4. 169 copies of Unnatural Creatures have arrived! I have signed and numbered the entire print run, and this weekend will be all about making up orders and shipping them out.

5. Today, Milo and I cantered off the lunge line! This is huge, because the last time I tried cantering off the lunge line, back in May, I fell off the horse. It's taken my instructor and me this long to get me to the point where I was ready to try again, and OMG it felt completely different and SO MUCH BETTER. Completely psyched.

This is a list of all the words MS Word has mishyphenated in Unnatural Creatures. (And, yes, I double-checked all of them with the American Heritage Dictionary. Well, except "although," because really.)

• alt-hough
  
• anim-al
  
• catech-ism
  
• circ-ling
  
• Co-leridge
  
• des-cended
  
• domin-ies
  
• edit-or
  
• Esth-er
  
• extra-vagant
  
• ima-gined
  
• irrit-ation
  
• juni-or
  
• lib-rary
  
• natur-al
  
• philanthrop-ist
  
• posit-ively
  
• reas-onably
  
• re-cognized
  
• squeam-ishly
  

Booth would be appalled.

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Also, for reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture, the sale is extended another day.

People keep popping out of the woodwork, expressing varying flavors of chagrin that they missed the Unnatural Creatures sale. Now, the thing is, my original plan--which was to place the Lulu order right after the sale ended--has gone belly-up, because Lulu didn't ship the proof copy until February 3rd, and with the blood I sweated fighting to format the damn thing, I'm not ordering a hundred or more of them until I've seen what happens to it as it goes from .pdf to book.

Therefore, there's no reason I can't extend the sale except my own inherent dislike of breaking rules, and after all, the more people who buy Unnatural Creatures, the more money I can donate to the Companion Animal Fund.

ETA: FEBRUARY 8, 2011: the sale is over. Thank you all!

This is the post for Unnatural Creatures subscriptions. The chapbook price is $20; the print run will be the number of copies bought by midnight CST, February 3.

[sale over; button removed]

If you want to buy both Unnatural Creatures and something from the main sale post, you can pay using the donate button over there. But please comment and let me know, so that I have a hope in hell of doing the math correctly.

11 people made compound purchases (one buying two copies of UC).

THIS IS NOT THE SALE POST. YOU CANNOT BUY THINGS FROM HERE.

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So here's the thing. Due to the RLS being a complete monster for the past week, I haven't been getting to sleep before about four in the morning--and therefore, haven't been able to drag myself out of bed before noon. Or one. (I hate this, btw, but that's not the point here.) Also, Wednesday, I have a dressage lesson at three, and I know for a fact that if I'm setting up sale posts to go live at two, I will be late. Which is bad.

So I'm making a change. The Ben Jonson Memorial Fundraiser will start at midnight CST, February 2nd, and run 'til midnight CST, February 3rd. This is much more realistic vis-à-vis my actual life right now.

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How we're gonna work it:

Except for the production costs of Unnatural Creatures, all the money goes to the Companion Animal Fund.

I will pay shipping costs, and I will ship anywhere in the world. Depending on what the total ends up being, that may mean a lot of things get shipped Media Mail.

After the sale, I will set up a post with screened comments so that if you want things personalized (e.g., To Gawain, with best wishes, Sarah Monette), you can tell me what name or names. If you don't want an inscription, that's cool, too. I'll also ask that everyone who bought something comment, so that I don't make any mistakes in the shipping.

There will be three sale posts, one for the Doctrine of Labyrinths auction, one for the Unnatural Creatures subscription, and one for all the items that I'm simply selling.

1. The auction will run from midnight to midnight. Starting bid is $100.

2. Unnatural Creatures will be on sale from midnight to midnight. You can buy as many copies as you like. I won't place the order with Lulu until after the sale ends (and possibly a little after that, depending on when hominysnark gets the cover finished), so there's no need to worry about running out. I will order as many copies as have been paid for at the end of the sale. Please be advised that, since I will have to sign all of them once Lulu has shipped them to me, it may take me a while to get them shipped out to y'all.

3. Everything else. How this part of the sale is going to work goes like this: (1) You make a comment to the post indicating that you want to buy an item. (2) I reply to the comment, letting you know that the item is yours. (3) Then you PayPal me. I don't want anybody paying me when they are, for instance, the sixth person to comment for the five Companion to Wolves hardbacks. Also, if you are having cash-flow issues (as I know at least one interested party is), you may stake your claim during the sale and pay me later. I will not ship anything until the money has transferred, and I won't hold items indefinitely, but you can have a couple days' grace if you need it.


Also, if you don't want to buy anything (or can't afford to buy the thing you want), but would like to make a donation in Ben's memory (for whatever amount--if you can only spare a dollar but want to contribute, that is perfectly okay with me), I will figure out how to set up a PayPal button on the catch-all post so that that can be easy.

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If there's anything I've forgotten to address, or anything that's unclear, or heck, just anything you want to ask about, please comment.

What I have learned from fighting with Lulu, MS Word, OpenOffice, and Adobe:

1. Lulu would really prefer that you use (and pay for) their formatting service.

2. You have to choose a page size from Lulu that you can convince your word processor to agree on. 6"x9" may be lovely, but Word has no idea what you're talking about. Go with A5 instead.

3. Although you can technically use any font you like for the interior of your book, the fonts Lulu offers for covers are quite limited, and some of them are very very ugly. Garamond is your best bet for harmony.

4. I hate Adobe.

5. Making a .pdf is not as easy as you think, because Lulu requires you to embed the fonts. Which you cannot do from Word. You can from OpenOffice, but in going from Word to OpenOffice, you must be careful. This is the thing I learned tonight with much raging in the streets: OpenOffice will quietly bork your .rtf formatting that you have slaved over like a dog, and you will not be able to unbork it, no matter how much you swear. On the other hand, the same formatting in .doc, it's nice as pie about.

So, get everything right in Word: page size, tabs, page numbers, fonts, hyphenation, justification. Then save as a .doc, and move over to OpenOffice to export as a .pdf, remembering to tick the PDF/A-1a ticky box. (Iä! Iä!)

6. And ... oh crap. If you have to change your page size after you've turned on the automatic hyphenation, you'd better go back and double-check it. Because, O Word, library is not hyphenated after the b.

If you'll excuse me, I have to go beat my head against this wall some more.