Monthly Archives: August 2007

A Lovely Way to Begin the Week

I have just discovered that all three of my books have gone into second printings at some point or another.

I knew that the Wicca book had a second printing six months after it was published. I expected the spellcraft book to reprint at some point because it sells well, but I had no idea when it might because it had the largest print run of the three. The green witch book had the smallest print run as it was a more specialized title, and to be honest I wasn’t expecting it to reprint for a while.

Well, today I got the total sales-to-date figures for all three of them, and as sales of the spellcraft and green witch books outnumber the size of the original print runs, they must perforce have reprinted. In fact, all of them seem to have sold an average of one and a half times their original print run so far. That’s within two years for the spellcraft and Wicca books, and within one year for the green witch book.

I have a backlist that sells, and sells steadily! I am doing the bookgeek dance of joy!

Twenty-Six Months: Addendum

I was just looking at some pictures of our weekend in Oakville, and I forgot to record that Liam discovered salmon sashimi.

Yeah. The kid who generally isn’t interested in meat or fish eats raw salmon like it’s going out of style. Also, he will eat chicken bites that have been marinated in sake and garlic. Go figure.

Made Of Awesome

Three sheets edited today, one more than my average on this project. I am mighty mighty, especially since there was a toddler careening around and plastering himself against the French door to my office, pressing his face against the glass and squealing “MaMAAAAAA!” at irregular intervals. One of the interruptions was to give me a daisy he’d pulled out of our garden, complete with huge smile on his face, before dashing back outside with his father.

So yes, I am made of awesome. I think my back isn’t talking to me, though. On the other hand, I am sinking back into the swing of this script instead of fighting against it; it’s a momentum thing. While this is good in one respect, in another I fear I am losing brain cells.

Keeping me company music-wise today were The Cowboy Junkies (Miles From Our Home), James Ehnes (Bach’s Solo Sonatas & Partitas for violin), and Jaqueline du Pre (the Dvorak cello concerto). I picked up Tori Amos’ American Doll Posse when it was released this spring and it didn’t grab me. But I had it running in the background while I worked after dinner, and I’m warming up to it. It will never approach my love of The Beekeeper or Little Earthquakes or Under the Pink, but it may end up hovering somewhere around my feeling for To Venus and Back.

Help Me…

… Shelfari is consuming me alive.

Last night was a bad, bad time to follow a link sent to me, to a wonderfully engrossing site that networks people via the books on their shelves and helps you look at what other people like to read in order to help you find new stuff. It wouldn’t be so bad if the Flash bits didn’t take so long to load, and if there was a straightforward way to search for one’s edition while adding one’s titles to one’s list. (At least, I think they’re Flash; it may be a simple Java application. Whatever. It takes too long.)

Or maybe it’s just that I have too many books. Or that I’m work-avoiding.

Break’s over.

Break To Gabble

Argh! Not only is this slow because I have to compare three documents, eliminate some minor differences and maintain others, but I have to dance around all these damned newly added tags and code. It slows me down dreadfully. Did I mention that I’ve been through this script or variations of it four times already, and it now bores me? Boredom makes focusing very difficult.

I’d plead for release via death, except that would preclude getting paid for finishing the work.

I will finish this first sheet tonight. I will.

I’m only halfway through.

*headdesk*

Break’s over.

(Why do I have no Walnut Whips left? Why?)

LATER, 10:49 PM: DONE! Well, the first sheet of thirteen, anyway. Now, to bed with a cup of warm milk because I”ll be damned if I’m going to wake up at 4:30 AM like I did today. Also, I have a book to finish.

Wednesday

Thank you all for your good wishes. The boy was reunited with BunBun this morning and gave him a fervent cuddle. “Liam hugging BunBun now,” he said, wrapping his arms so far around the bunny that it was gripped in the crooks of his elbows in front of him, and rocking it back and forth in a mildly violent fashion.

Meallanmouse and I met for lunch today (pasta chips at L’Etranger, how I have missed you), and while I was out I picked up a new notebook as well as doing a quick stop at Archambault to look at double bass method books (Eva’s a fretless bass, okay? Regular electric bass books keep telling me to put fingers on my non-existent frets, and double basses just happen to have the same tuning and thus fingering as an electric bass). I stopped at Indigo to get a book as well, but ended up leaving it behind after carrying it around for a while. (Gratuitous and self-serving stock check: they had one copy of my second book on their shelves, and two of my third.) When I got home there was mailbox joy in the form of the first cheque for the urgent work I did in July, which means Hydro and Bell can be paid. Also in the mailbox was my first issue of the Strings magazine to which I subscribed as a birthday gift to myself. (Of course, that was before I bought Eva as a birthday gift, so I ended up with two from me to me.)

I’d forgotten how public transport allows me to read a lot. I began Stephanie Cowell’s The Players last night, and as of now I’m something like two hundred pages in, with only fifty more to go. I’ll be finished tonight. And finish it I will, most likely in a warm bath, because I will need the break after an afternoon of reducing this script. This is the fifth time I’ve gone over a version of this story (three different versions are required for the project, let’s call them X,Y, and Z: I went over X twice, and this is the second [and significantly longer] edition of Z), and I’m already cross-eyed. And now we have the added twist of working within very specific coding tags, so I have to be extra careful of what I delete and add.

Very pleasant weather we are having. We have only had the air conditioner on for all of five days this summer so far. In fact, HRH took it out just before we left for our long weekend away, and it won’t be replaced unless absolutely necessary. I approve.

Absent Friends

Of all the days to have forgotten BunBun at daycare…

The boy is very out of sorts today (not surprising; we did two six-hour drives in four days and had lots of fun with Nana and Granddad and cats and cousins in between). After a couple of half-hearted nibbles of rice and carrots at dinner, he cried for no apparent reason as we changed him for bed (we suspect because HRH sat him on his lap to slip his pyjama shirt on — usually this is fine, just not tonight for some reason). He sort of settled down during the stories, but insisted on holding every regular toy I brought in to put in his crib (his arms got quite full) and sang snippets of the Cars soundtrack while HRH read. And then he had a little heartbreaking crisis when BunBun was not awaiting him in his crib after his stories. He didn’t have a tantrum — he whimpered BunBun’s name a bit, sat up and looked around, and said, “BunBun? BunBun in?” When I told him that BunBun had stayed to play with his caregiver, there were some big fat tears that rolled down his cheeks, a sob or two, and he lay down and pushed the little white rabbit he calls Peter away when HRH tried to give it to him. “No, no Peter,” he said, lying down and turning his head away, lower lip trembling. “Oh, BunBun, BunBun, BunBun in,” we heard him mumbling as we blew him kisses and closed the door.

He fell asleep in five minutes anyhow. But a bad day to have left BunBun behind.

Also: this morning I found that the tiny chip in his left lateral incisor at some point got chipped again, and is now a huge chip. Argh.