Paksworld

The new 30th anniversary edition of Sheepfarmer’s Daughter is now out and about.   Hard to believe it’s been that long (though some days I feel more than 30 years older, but that’s another issue.  You will laugh–the other night I was awake and picked up a copy of it just to glance at…and two hours later I was hooked by my own book *even though* I knew what was coming.   Thanks to all of you–and all my other readers–who kept it in print and made celebration of its 30th birthday possible.

The year of fixing things is proceeding, with a consult on eye surgery coming up the first week of September, and renewed work on “What to do about the fact we aren’t getting younger and our wills have aged out and the guardianship on our son needs adjustment…”   Then I need a consult on the concussion aftermath, because we’re over six months and some things have bounced back to normal-for-me-before-this-concussion and some haven’t.   Reading speed picked up markedly in July and is now below what it was in my 20s  but way above where it was after the concussion.   (Honestly, nobody *needs* do read Dick Francis mysteries and other fiction of that length in an hour and a half.)   I can gulp an entire new book in one sitting again….no problem at all with holding concentration.  I’m also reading solid nonfiction as I had been doing (science and medical journals.)  But there are some things still not “there” yet, including balance.   OTOH, the teeth–wow, I did not realize how much they’d been hurting until (past the rather solid and definite pain of serious dental surgery over many weeks)  until after the final stuff healed…they didn’t.   At any rate progress has been made, and more will be made.

On the writing side, the very dry well is now wet at the bottom and Sunday, chatting on the phone with a writing friend, suddenly a plot fragment showed up in my head.  Not connected to anything I’d been doing, but in response to a joke my friend made.  And so…I think the writing of fiction may come back if I don’t strain it while it’s so small and fragile.  The fun of writing (nonfiction, about horses or knitting) is definitely coming back.  So there’s life in the old girl yet, and I’m looking forward to next steps.

If you’re desperate for a whole, not falling apart, Deed of Paksenarrion, my agent informs me that the UK edition is available via this link:

https://www.bookdepository.com/The-Deed-Of-Paksenarrion-Elizabeth-Moon/9781841498546?ref=grid-view&qid=1512606716611&sr=1-1

I did not know that.  But now that I’m informed, I hope it relieves any angst that comes from waiting to find out what covers Baen’s going to put on the 30th anniversary issues.   We’re getting wintry mix precip this evening.  I did not brave the highways and bridges to go to and from choir and am about to turn this off and go stretch out in bed with a mug of hot chocolate with *two* marshmallows in it.  I hope your evening is going as well.  (And yes, I am thinking about the victims of the huge California fires.)

Editor has accepted the manuscript of INTO THE FIRE (after the second rewrite) and it’s now in production.  Once the copy edits have come and gone, I’m off the contractual hook, so to speak, with the time to arrange for the medical and dental procedures I need.   Whew!   Because an eye with a cataract in it does not get better on its own, nor does a dental situation.

DragonCon was fun but challenging, as the throat injury was still causing discomfort and some loss of voice strength, and the knee injury didn’t allow the kind of fast, steady walking that going from hotel to hotel makes much easier.  OTOH, I made it, so there.

Renovation on the house next door that we bought to rent has gone well, and it’s now time for the flooring crew to put in the new floors.  Then installation of appliances, final plumber visits and electrical visits, and it’ll be about ready to go.  In the meantime I need to have a talk with our lawyer about “being a landlord of residential property.”  The basics; I’ve never done this before.

Yesterday I finished the second rewrite requested by Editor.  Summer has been full of long, long days at the computer and short-short nights of too little sleep.  (In between the two rewrites was something else that came up and required the same crunch approach.)

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As those of you with tattered old mass-market paperbacks with the woman on the black horse on the cover know,   Sheepfarmer’s Daughter came out in 1988, as did Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold came out in 1989.   To celebrate 30 years in print, Baen Books is going to put out an Annversary Edition of them next year, and asked if I would write an introduction to each volume.  Of course I said yes, and I’ve roughed out the first one and sent it on to Toni Weisskopf at Baen.

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First, for those wishing for a print form of DEEDS OF HONOR.   A POD version will appear.  I don’t know when yet, or have the details, but sales were good enough in the first couple of weeks of the e-book to trigger the “How would you feel about a POD version?” question from the powers that be.  And I said “Sure, fine, let’s do it.”    More when I know more.

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I have my tentative schedule for DragonCon posted on Live Journal  (if I can quit typing LiverJournal!  Darn the new glasses.)  It’s tentative, and I’ve asked for a reading slot and a signing slot as well…if I get them, those will show up in my final schedule.   I have just been told that Ebola patients are being shipped to the CDC in Atlanta.  One hopes not on commercial airlines coming into Hart International, because that place is sufficiently full of incoming con crud already.

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January is the month in which I have to turn in the annual report on our wildlife management program.   Some years I get it almost done in December.  This year I didn’t,  so I’m working on it now.  Also on another official report.   Husband does the last quarterly tax stuff, but I’m supposed to gather paperwork (whimper) and hand it to him.  Hence, bustling through. Read the rest of this entry »

Shattered Shields edited by Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt will be released November 4, 2014 to bookstores everywhere by Baen in trade paperback. Read the rest of this entry »

I may have mentioned in some comment or other that I had an Incident With Bicycle and Pickup last weekend.   I am lucky to be a) alive and b) whole and–barring a somewhat unhappy neck and some fairly impressive bruises–recovered.   The incident was my fault;  though I knew that was an almost-blind turn into a very narrow lane, and that large pickups lived on the connecting street, I failed to adhere to the ABCs of safety: ALWAYS  Be Careful, not “Nearly Always Be Careful…”  Read the rest of this entry »