"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." - Thomas Carlyle
One of my favorite bloggers, Rachelle Gardner, published a post today--unusual for her, in fact, it being a weekend post--issuing a mea culpa for misspelling the short version of Saint Patrick's Day. Personally, I was glad to read it, because I didn't know it was supposed to be St. Paddy's Day, either. You know--Patrick -> Patty, Padrick -> Paddy. Silly me, though--and silly Rachelle--that's not how it is. Oops.
In her St. Pat--er, Paddy's--Day post earlier this week, she went even further and invited us to write a haiku honoring the event. Personally, I found this quite clever. Those of you who've read much of what I write will know that I cherish irony in all forms, and to me crafting verse in honor of an Irish holiday using an Asian meme is just frickin' awesome with a capital Ah.
According to her post, though, (you can find it here: http://www.rachellegardner.com/2012/03/its-st-paddys-day/) that was a mistake brought on by fatigue. If she had it to do over again, she'd've asked for limericks.
Ah, well. I still think the idea of haiku for St. Paddy's is Awesome.
Anyway, her chief defense was exhaustion. "Do you ever have those moments when...you have no business doing anything except getting horizontal and allowing yourself to sleep?" she asked. Um, yep. This whole month, so far, other than a couple of weekend days, has been like that. If you follow my blog, all three or four posts that I've managed to make recently anyway, you'll know that I've spent much of my time working on dissertation as well as prepping for accreditation visits, which are thankfully past now (the visits, not the dissertation). I slept in both yesterday and today, and I'm glad to say I'm approaching next week with a lot more energy than I had available last week.
I've accomplished some writing, too. I'm glad to say that I've completed the final revision of Ascension, which is Book 2 of Return of the Gods. Jessa has completed the cover art, but she left her tablet at school so I can't see it till tomorrow. If all goes well, I'll get it published for Kindle by next weekend and in paperback by the end of March. I'm so excited! My readers will, I think and hope and pray, absolutely love the story.
I also responded to some concerns regarding Cataclysm, which you'll probably notice isn't available for sale at the moment. It is, some readers opined, a little hard to get into because though it claims to be about a CATACLYSM!!! (c'mon, you know you wanna say it with a booming voice) it starts off in the dang kitchen. Cataclysm--meet kitchen and egg salad sammiches. Sammiches, meet--well, yeah.
Boring, I think, isn't the right word to use. But it doesn't have the in-your-face excitement of some of what I've read. Like, ferinstance, the first book in the Elf Queen series, which I can't wait to finish. But that said, this book just sort of fizzles to a start and then gets rolling.
Or it used to.
I've now written a page (on 8 1/2 x 11) or two and a half pages (on 6 x 9) worth of Cataclysm-worthy beginning prose and slipped that into the front. I had to change the opening line just a skosh to accommodate the addition, but otherwise the rest of the book is still the same. I like it. Heide likes it. I hope you'll like it, too.
While I was at it, I fixed the pagination issues with the first print edition. The Createspace template wants each chapter to begin on an odd-numbered page, which is certainly one approach to book printing. Unfortunately the page breaks in Word get funky when translated into PDF, and so in the first print edition (which will, I'm sure, some day be collector's items!) there were occasions of strange blank pages where there shouldn't have been. Oops.
By the way--Createspace charges me per page, whether there's text on it or not. Go figure.
Now there shouldn't be any blank pages. I did decide to stay with the each-chapter-starts-a-new-page idea, which is actually less common in paperbacks than I thought before I started paying attention, but I like it better. Thus, the book has gone from 322 pages to 311, which dropped the cost to me by a few pennies.
Oh, and I raised the price. Go figure. Not much, really; I got tired of saying "eleven ninety-nine" and "twelve dollars" as though they were synonymous, so I bumped the actual price up a penny to match what I was saying. Now it's twelve dollars. No, really. Twelve. Even.
That said, I'm not going to make those of you who've bought the e-book buy another copy just to get the initial text. What I plan to do is upload that additional prose into a PDF on my site, and also post it onto my blog this week. If you've already read the book, this is kinda like getting the bowl of oranges and various types of nuts after you've already opened all your presents on Christmas morning, I know, but hopefully it's a fun read and will help those who haven't read it yet enjoy the book more.
Till then--hope you had a great St. Paddy's Day!
-TOSK
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