suricattus

It looks like there’s a publisher who may be interested in the Crosspointe books. If so, we’re looking at seeing an end to the series! Wahoo!

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

What the world needs now -- not love, sweet love, but more Calvinball.

The first volume of Shadow Unit is now available as a proper paper book with a gorgeous Kyle Cassidy cover.

It will be available through Amazon within a week, and will slowly filter its way through the rest of the online distribution system.

This volume contains the first half of Season 1. Volume 2 should be available in about a month, with other volumes to follow.

And of course, Shadow Unit in its entirety is available for free online, and as a modestly priced ebook through the usual sources.

The story began in 2007, and will end in 2013. It's not too late to discover one of the coolest collaborative serials in the genre internets!

Over the last few days, I've learned a valuable lesson about whiteness. As in "what shade of white is this damn trim?" and "who the ever-living hell knew there were this many KINDS of white?"

See, for some reason the window frame/sill in my office is left partly unpainted. No idea why. Didn't notice it on the house's walkthroughs, but once I'd seen it, I couldn't un-see it - and anyway, there were a number of places in the molding and trim that really needed a good once-over. Most of the problem areas occurred in the wake of some distant electrical updates, and the more recent smear mistakes some clumsy moron amateur* made while painting over an Unfortunate Yellow room with a Pretty And Sensible Lavender/Gray.

Since our home is an older house, and the previous owners were all about doing "period appropriate" stuff, I went to Lowes and found an "antique white" that was allegedly certified in some ridiculous fashion as being historically valid (no doubt some kind of marketing scam, I know) ... and it looked about right. I mean, it's white, right?

Ha.

Got the paint home and it was, in fact, not nearly the right white. So I fussed and fumed, and wandered up to the attic to stash my now-useless quart of not-the-right-white paint, and I discovered a row of old paint cans. Hooray! These must be the colors used in my house! Thank you, previous sellers!

Of course, all these paint cans were dry as a bone, but that was okay. They had the formulas on the top - and when I found what MUST be the right white for pity's sake, I copied down all the info on the top label. Yes, all of it - all the little numbers that made no sense whatsoever to me, but clearly indicated a color formula to a better-educated eye than mine.

Then I went to Ace, because it's much closer than Lowes. I asked the nice (actually, rather amusingly cranky) lady at the paint counter if she could help me.

She said, "Nope. That's a proprietary brand and formula for Home Depot. You'll have to take it to them - unless you can get us a paint chip about the size of a quarter, in which case we can color-match it, but we might not be able to match the texture, depending."

So I went out to Home Depot, figuring this would be a slam dunk. I had the paint's brand. I had its weird number formula-thingy details. I had a debit card and a willingness to fork it over.

Ha again.

When I got there, the paint woman was being badgered by an older lady who couldn't be compelled to understand that she could not merely describe a color she totally saw this one time and expect the paint woman to pull it out of her ass. This conversation went on for probably fifteen minutes, during which I did verily salute the paint woman for her continued patience, because if it'd been me, I'd have grabbed a rifle and climbed a tower.

But finally the old lady wandered off in a dissatisfied fashion, having learned nothing except that the paint woman wasn't a wizard, and behold: It was my turn. Smugly, I thought that I would be an easy customer. A pleasant chaser to a difficult situation.

Eh.

The paint woman agreed that I had copied all the appropriate information required for her to recreate the paint in question, except that (a). they no longer made that precise type of paint with its attendant qualities, and (b). the paint can from which I'd copied this intel had apparently been whipped up during the last ice age - for it was so dreadfully old that the entire system was now on a different set of formulas.

But thank God for paint woman, who (it turned out) actually was kind of a wizard. She jiggered the formulas around, found me a comparable paint, and then sought about shaking me up a can of The Correct White.

At which point the machine locked up, and had to be rebooted/restored/reprogrammed with help from some specialist from some other end of the store.

Long story short, it took over an hour for me to get my gallon of paint - which I now cherish with an unreasonable fondness, because get this: It's The Correct White.

Or if it isn't, bugger all if I can tell the difference.

Since I was on now a roll ... back up into the attic I went, hoping to find matches to the rest of the spots in the house which required touching up - namely, the kitchen and The Nice Bathroom.** Nope. Just dried up gallons of Unfortunate Yellow and a rusted-out pail of whatever someone had used in the living area.

But encouraged by my hard-won success with the Correct White, I went back to Ace (they're close, remember?) with a peeled strip of bathroom paint.

(Why was the bathroom paint peeling? Suffice it to say there was an incident involving a clumsy moron amateur,*** a mirror, some double-sided sticky tape, a cast iron tub on which one should not balance whilst wearing socks nor at any other time, and the house's previous owners who apparently didn't prime before using glossy latex in a bathroom. Ahem.)

The adorably cranky paint woman at the Ace counter performed some magic, and gave me a quart of paint. Ladies and gentlemen and the otherwise affiliated: IT WAS PERFECT. I did a little dance, right there in the bathroom. (But not on the edge of the cast iron tub. In socks. Fool me once, etc. etc. etc.)

And then I turned right around and went hunting for a place from which to swipe a paint chip in the kitchen, which is a pleasant shade of green - yet featured an unpleasant, unpainted set of plastered-over bits left over from some electrical work. Eventually, back behind the washing machine (laundry nook = same color) I found some painted-over tape buckling up. EXCELLENT.

I snipped the tape, ran to Ace, and was home again in twenty minutes with a quart of Precisely The Right Green. Or, again - if it isn't Precisely The Right Green it's The Green Which Is So Freaking Close That Cherie Isn't Running Back To Ace Anytime Soon Because She Sure As Shit Can't Tell The Difference.

And anyway, that's what I've been up to. Driving all over town trying to Do It Right, and eventually getting it About 99% Right Which Is Probably The Best I'm Going To Do And I'm Okay With That.

If you're curious about how the office turned out, well, that probably means you don't follow me on my Twitter feed - where I've posted about it already. But that's okay. Here's what the room looked like in progress, half lavender/gray and half Unfortunate Yellow.

And here's what it looks like now - two views: one, and two. (Yes, I have a daybed in there. I have back problems, and prefer to work with my legs/feet propped up - and with a lot of lumbar support. So I improvised.)

Anyway. That's all there is to tell about my painting adventures (for now), except that I am very lucky the previous owners used the same semi-glossy white on just about everything they wanted white. So there's that. And now I have the correct and modern formula, so if I run out, I can ask the nice Home Depot paint woman to wizard me up some more.

And now I'm going to see about making myself some supper. In my kitchen that still smells very, very faintly of paint.

---

* Me.
** As opposed to the other one. See previous post.
*** Me again.

I have just gotten four* advanced reader’s copies for BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER to give away. They’re softcover, uncorrected proofs, and actually if the book itself looked like this I would be quite delighted, but it’s going to be even more gorgeous and splendid, so don’t forget to pre-order your copy. :)

But at $40, it’s also going to be expensive. So here’s how this give-away is going to go:

Everybody reading this post, at whatever site you’re coming from (Facebook, Goodreads, Livejournal, mizkit.com, cemurphy.net, G+, Twitter) can put in their name once for a random draw. I’ll give two of the books away that way.

The other two I want to give to people who can genuinely not afford the $40 price tag on the book. Obviously this is on the honor system, but generally I find my readers to be extremely good people, so I’m going to trust you on this. Leave a comment or, if you prefer to keep the request private, send an email to cemurphyauthor@gmail.com, saying you’d like to be in for the Budget Giveaway. You don’t have to offer up details; it’s not going to be a Saddest Story Wins scenario, but rather another random draw from the second pool of names.

All I request–and this is of all four winners–is that you write a review of the book and either post it on your own blog & give me a link for it, or provide it to me so I can post it for you. I’ve never had a short story collection before, so I’d like to see it get some traction, and this is how you guys can help give it some.

So. That’s how this works. The contest ends sometime Monday, May 21st, so comment before then. Ready set go!

*technically five but I’M KEEPING ONE because i almost never ever ever get ARCs! also so i can do proofs on it. :)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

And we're talking the actual cost of pregnancy and motherhood, as well as the fact that sometimes motherhood requires that one leave a job that doesn't give sufficient time off. It doesn't go into the new baby cost in time, energy, sleep, cleanliness, or sanity.

Too Often, a New Baby Brings Big Debt

This is U.S.-centric, and mirrors my experience with maternity leave and the experiences of many people I know who have had risky pregnancies - or even just an average pregnancy and a normal baby. This article does not, however, talk about the experience of adoption, whether said adoption involves an FMLA leave or not.

This entry has been cross-posted to Dreamwidth ( comments). Comments are welcome on either post.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/uk-children-under-10-read-ebooks-on-laptops_b51531

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/?p=51531

More children under the age of ten in the UK are reading eBooks on laptops, according to a new report from Bowker Market Research. However, more kids aged eleven to fifteen are reading eBooks on Kindles.

We’ve embedded a Bowker chart above–the research (completed in March 2012) asked readers in the UK about their use of digital content.

Check it out: “The latest results from Understanding the Digital Consumer show that among adult readers of e-books there has been a huge increase in the use of the Kindle device, with 40 percent of e-readers using it most often.  The Kindle has surpassed both desktops and laptops (collectively used most often by 45 percent as measured in February 2011) and other e-readers (used most often by 6% in February 2011).” continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/zombie-based-learning-on-kickstarter_b51610

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/?p=51610

David Hunter has raised more than $6,800 for his zombie-based learning project, “Geography Taught in Zombie Apocalypse.” Above, we’ve embedded a video about the Kickstarter project–what do you think?

Here’s more about the project: “I love geography, and I love zombies. I believe that students can learn important educational concepts through the lens of their interests. I’ve chosen to combine geography and zombies because I don’t think it is a natural connection. By building this project, we can show that learning can be done through far out scenarios, or even just based on what students are interested in. I also believe that the Zombie genre has the potential to engage often disengaged students, providing an alternative to boring textbook reading.”

The money will be used to pay for production costs and hire illustrators as well as other experts. For educators, you can follow this link to view a video where Hunter explains the details of a zombie-based learning curriculum.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/literary-groups-defend-fifty-shades-of-grey_b51681

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/?p=51681

Comparing Fifty Shades of Grey to Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Fear of Flying, prominent literary groups criticized the Brevard County Public Library system for refusing to carry E. L. James‘ racy novel.

The National Coalition Against Censorship circulated the letter, getting signatures from the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Association of American Publishers, PEN American Center, American Society of Journalists and Authors and The Independent Book Publishers Association. Follow this PDF link to read the letter. Here’s an excerpt:

The idea that “erotica” should be categorically excluded from public libraries has no merit. Sexuality, an integral part of the human experience, has always been part of creative expression. As the late Justice Brennan observed, “Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.” Indeed, a library’s collection would be incomplete without the, by now classic Memoirs of A Woman of Pleasure (“Fanny Hill”), Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer or even Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying. There is no rational basis to provide access to erotic novels like these, and at the same time exclude contemporary fiction with similar content.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/michael-dirda-answers-questions-on-reddit_b51662

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/?p=51662

What is the worst book you’ve ever read?

Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic and author Michael Dirda held an epic “Ask Me Anything” interview at Reddit, fielding questions online from readers about self-publishing, Amazon and the worst books he ever reviewed.

At one point, he talked about the worst book he’d ever read. Check it out: “Judith Krantz‘s Dazzle. Even the sex in the book was boilerplate, a totally meretricious work. John Sutherland–a distinguished English authority on the novel and the best seller–once included Dazzle in his list of the 25 worst novels of the century.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/is-the-zodiac-killer-still-alive-new-book-says-so_b51574

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/?p=51574

The Zodiac killer, a serial killer who claimed in letters to newspapers to have murdered dozens of people back in the 1970s, has been the subject of a number of books and films.

The latest is a book called The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up written by a former California Highway Patrol officer named Lyndon Lafferty.

According to the book’s website, the team of investigators working on the case discovered the killer back in 1971.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

My life has been so crazed the past two months, I am woefully behind on mentioning great new releases at Book View Cafe. So I thought I would mention them grouped according to what your tastes in fantasy and science fiction reading might be. This post is about two fine historical fantasists, Judith Tarr and Irene Radford. With these series, you will get great characterization and multiple points of history, intersected with and woven with magic. You'll also see characters dealing with the mental maps of the world that the religions they have grown up with have given them -- living those maps, questioning those maps, changing those maps as their understanding of the world and of Spirit evolves.

( Not one, but two outstanding writers and books! )

This article is not brand, spanking new, but it's new to me. Note that the majority of these sites are not evil, exactly -- they are careless at best and at worst contain code that could open your machine up to exploitation -- or cause you to have hidden "backlinks" on your web site. The majority of the "safe" themes were old, and in need of major upgrading through apps or other changes.

And these were the top ten hits on Google the day the programmer grabbed and did her research piece. So -- in this case, "Free" can get you into a lot of trouble.

I won't be looking for WordPress Themes from these people.

One of Leadbelly's most popular songs was "Midnight Special." It was covered most famously by Creedence Clearwater Revival, though my personal favorite cover is by Pete Seeger & Arlo Guthrie from 1993 (though they'd done this type of vocal tradeoff version of the song back in the 1970s).

This is the original......

Here's what I'm scheduled to be doing at Balticon 46, which will be held Memorial Day weekend in Hunt Valley, Maryland at the ever-popular Hunt Valley Marriott. I haven't seen an autographing schedule yet, so that might get added. Doesn't appear to be any readings beyond specific event ones and ones related to the Compton Crook Award winners, so if you want to hear me read, you'll have to come to the launch party Sunday at 7.

Saturday
8-9pm: Dark Quest Books Presents, with Neal Levin, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, C.J. Henderson, Jeff Lyman, Mike McPhail (Chase)
11pm-12am: Animals in SF/Fantasy, with Stephanie M. Burke, James R. Knapp, Richard Allen Leider, and T.C. McCarthy (Salon A)

Sunday
7-9pm: The Eternal Launch Party, launch of Goblin Precinct, as well as Danielle Ackley-McPhail's Eternal Cycle trilog, KT Pinto's Sto's House novel Mutants on the Rocks, Patrick Thomas & John L. French's Mystic Investigations novel From the Shadows, Elektra Hammond's anthology Galactic Creatures, and Christine Norris's The Sword of Danu (Garden Room)
9-10pm: Stargazers Live Audio Drama, with Doc Coleman, Tim Dodge, Valerie Griswold-Ford, P.G. Holyfield, Starla Huchton, Paulette Jaxton, and Scott Roche (Derby)

Monday
12-1pm: Editing Anthologies, with Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Mike McPhail, Elektra Hammond, and Darrell Schweitzer (Belmont)

I'm not scheduled for anything Friday yet, though I'll be around -- I'll probably be putting in time at the Dark Quest table in the dealer's room throughout the weekend.