Status Update • 8 May 2023

 

Sorry, I didn’t mean to let comms go dark and leave everyone stranded and wondering what I was up to for a week. 

We actually have been very busy behind the scenes here, between trying to wrap up SS#24 (at last!) and get it out the door, laying out a TOC and release plan for SS#25, lining up the publication schedule for the next batch of stories in The Pete Wood Challenge—actually, those were supposed to begin rolling out today, but something came up this weekend to preempt that so they’ll begin rolling out tomorrow—

Planning for our next open submissions window, but more about that next week.

In the meantime, while we’re waiting to find out whether The Hostage in Hiding won the Imadjinn Award, we’ve been doing a lot of work with rationalizing the pricing of Henry Vogel’s entire line of original novels and getting them out on different platforms, which was unglamorous work but something that desperately needed to be done. All his novels are now out there on more platforms than I can name, and we have One Link to Rule Them All. We have been told there are legions of readers out there who do not have Kindles or the Kindle Reader App and desperately want to find good e-books to read on Apple, Kobo, Nook, et al. If you’re one of those people, please, click this link and check out his catalog.

Seriously. I really hate it that we’re completely dependent on the whims of Amazon. C’mon, all you Kobo readers. Prove you exist!

Speaking of the whims of Amazon, now that I’ve had time to pay attention to it, I’m giving serious thought to winding up K & B Booksellers and shutting it down. The bookstore was always Karen’s domain, and as she often saw fit to remind me, I was the silent partner in K&B. Now that K is gone, though, the numbers have to do all the talking, and the numbers aren’t making sense. Once upon a time, we actually had a rather nice e-commerce storefront on Amazon and sold a lot of books. Now, we have this. Note in particular the Brand column on the left side of the page, which is proving to be a particularly noxious thing. Why, it almost seems as if Amazon is using its monopolistic power intentionally to drive indie booksellers out of business.

But we dare not say that out loud, do we?

Meanwhile, I’d like to remind you that whenever this site seems to go dormant for a while, you can always check my personal Facebook page to see if there’s anything going on below the surface. There have been some surprisingly animated conversations going on there this past week, and the comments on the coronation of King Charles III have been particularly interesting.

Personally, I don’t get this ‘royalty’ thing, but then my Germanic ancestors ended up in America after backing the losing side in 1848. My English ancestors were here before these colonies even became a country, and you can tell their sympathies by the fact that they chose to be Americans, not Canadians. Then again, most of my “English” ancestors were actually Scots, and you can ask a Scotsman what he really thinks of the British monarchy, but you’d best be prepared to duck.

Me, I see a royal and think, “Ooh, now wouldn’t that head look lovely on a pike?”

This probably has been a handicap for my writing career. Try as hard as I can, I can never get into the whole pseudo-Medieval high fantasy thing. I can begin to write such a story with the best of intentions, but sooner or later my characters hijack the narrative and I end up with dialog like this:

“Oi, Mac! Who’s that drunken idjit at the private table in the back?”

“Don’t you recognize ‘im? ‘e’s the True King, ‘e is.”

“Ooh, the True King, is ‘e? Rightful Heir to the Throne? Bearer of the Sword of Perpetual Misery? Great-Grandson of King Elfred the Stupid Warmonger?”

“at’s wot he says.”

“Sure ‘e’s not the great-grandson of Queen Gwynnifred’s favorite stable hand?”

“Dunno. From the looks of ‘is face I’d say ‘e’s more likely the great-grandson of ‘er favorite ‘orse.”

“Strewth, they do say ‘er Majesty truly loved ‘er ‘orses.”

“I thought that was Crown Princess Catarrh?”

“No, she truly loved ‘er chambermaids.”

“Ah. ‘splains why that royal line died out, it does.”

 ~brb