Yes, we have no vampires
Sample conversation:
Me: I’m a really tough stick.
Phlebotomist: You have a good vein right here.
Me: It will roll. Guaranteed.
Phlebotomist: No, I’ve got it.
Me: Ow.
Me: Ow.
Me: Ow!
Phlebotomist: Uh, it rolled. Let me see your other arm.
Me: *cries*
This is why I don’t enjoy reading vampire fiction and won’t write it either.
Which isn’t such a bad thing; I have to make up something new.
I break 100!
Yesterday I broke 100 recorded hits on my blog for the first time. Unfortunately, they were all looking for FaceBook.
Yes, we have no zombies
As many visitors know, I don’t write zombie erotica. What you may not know is that since I mentioned it once, an astonishing number of hits every day are from people looking for zombie porn, who then go away disappointed.
I have some news that zombie erotica fans will love. Here’s a book just for you.
Unusual Relationship Issues
You read or hear about it all the time. One half of a couple feels that their sexual needs are not being met. One way to deal with this issue is for the unsatisfied person to find another person to get, er, satisfied with. Sometimes open relationships are involved, but often people skip that part and just cheat on each other, with resulting drama.
All of my needs in that department are met, thank you very much. But I have another source of dissatisfaction. I’d like to go to parties in my area once in a while, and my spouse finds socializing to be the source of much anxiety.
I’m putting out feelers for someone who would like to be a party escort. Actually, I thought of posting something along these lines to CraigsList just to see what happens, but I’m not sure I could handle the hilarity.
Looking for one person living in the greater Boston area who wants to enjoy the occasional pool party or group outing with me. Gender is irrelevant. Applicants must have car and must not smoke. In return I will make sure you have a good time, and will reciprocate with baked or knitted goods and a split of gas money.
And if anything particularly funny results from this quest, I’ll be sure to blog it without names or identifying information. If nothing funny happens, I’ll try posting to CraigsList just for the LOLZ.
Sex in the news
There’s sex in the news all the time, but this is a bit more newsworthy than most. The Boston Globe has an article on polyamory. I think I know most of the people interviewed in it.
Now That’s Publicity
Recently I was puzzled upon reading an author’s rant about publicity in the era of social networking. She was unhappy because her publisher expects her to maintain a web site but doesn’t pay her to do so. Isn’t publicity the publisher’s job? Well, she might have had a point, but then I read this article about author Joe McGinness, who attempted to bid over $60,000 for a dinner with Sarah Palin before being disqualified on the grounds that she doesn’t like him. Joe McGinness has written books on Nixon and the Alaskan oil trade, and is working on one on Palin. From now on web sites so that fans can look up an author’s other works are totally passé. I’m going to expect my authors to shell out thousands of dollars on dinners with (in)famous people or I won’t take them seriously.
So how’s it selling? (or: superpowers for Lauren)
Publishers can’t easily tell you how many copies your book has sold.
I know this now. But I didn’t always know it. I once asked a publisher the same question. Therefore I refuse to think of it as a stupid question, because I don’t ask stupid questions, right? Uhm. Anyway.
If it were a paper book, it would take a year to tell you how many copies sold. This is because publishers allow bookstores to return unsold copies of books in case the bookstore decides to spend the money on something they think will sell better, like copies of a new book purporting to examine the evidence that Elvis is alive.
Even ebooks aren’t that easy to track. You think it would be, since it’s all on computer. But coming up with a number would mean someone who has real work to do would have to sit down and tabulate the results from every distributor involved. Since the answer is probably less than one hundred and might even be less than ten, it’s not really worth the effort. Even people like me who arguably don’t have much real work to do would have to bother someone who does in order to get figures to add up.
I blame Amazon. They don’t tell you their sales numbers, but they do have this really strange sales rank thing. People have tried to explain what their sales rank thing might mean (no one knows, possibly not even Amazon). I think they make it up. However, it does give authors something they can click on over and over, and tempts them to do silly things like have their friends buy copies of the ebook from Amazon all on the same day in an attempt to boost the magic number, even if the actual money made from this tactic is less than if everyone bought the book straight from the publisher for a higher royalty percentage.
I try to be gentle with people who ask for sales information even if I can’t give it.
This brings me to a letter of last night where an author asked me for sales information on not one but two books not published by Circlet.
It might be conceivable that I could know sales numbers from a book published by Circlet, even if I don’t. But I’m not sure why she expected that I might know sales numbers from a book not even by the same publisher. Is it possible she doesn’t know who is publishing her books? I mean, she must have signed a contract at some point. Presumably she read the contract.
In fact, it’s way too silly of her not to know who publishes her books that I will stick with an alternate explanation. I have as of yet undiscovered superpowers to know sales figures from books from other publishers, and she was trying to do me a big favor by making me discover this ability. That must be it.
What a lame superpower.
I have a happy bod.
I just shelled out a bunch of money for an pre-owned Aeron chair and it landed on my doorstep Saturday. I’ve sat in Aerons before. After a little time in one, you may start to feel that having to sit in any other desk chair is in fact a form of abuse.
This purchase was, ironically, made possible by my recent car wreck. I got the payout for the totalled car, and decided to go with ZipCar for now. I’ll admit that I’m completely neurotic about not having a car, which is very stupid considering how I haven’t driven a car for over a year due to migraines. I got tired of driving somewhere and being unable to drive back when the blurry vision and auditory hallucinations kicked in. However, I do have a spouse who drives. If we’re lucky we won’t have too many arguments due to the additional hassle of having to pick up the ZipCar.
Other purchases have included some fairly nice yarn for warmer sweaters since I’ve been so darned cold since I lost so much weight. I’m probably going to cave and buy some alpaca, even though whatever I buy will need to be hand washed (current plans do not include replacing our ancient washer/dryer with something that approximates handwashing). I picked up a little something for myself at Toys in Babeland, but you don’t get to know what. Under serious consideration is a fairly simple 8-plait bullwhip to start learning new ways to make loud bang noises in the park, though first I have to learn to get a forward crack out of the signal whip without removing my ear. And then there’s replacing the house’s water main. It’s an expensive job, but will be split with downstairs (cause it’s a condo, natch). It would be nice not to get stucked freezing and covered with soap every time someone flushes the toilet.
Happy Night of the Living UHauls!
What to read?
Lately I’ve been reading Raymond Chandler. His work is exciting and well-written, with prose that is often more fun than the meaning, like a present where you can entertain yourself for half an hour with the ribbon and the wrapping paper before you even get to the contents. He’s been an inspiration for many scifi/fantasy authors, and (important for a person with little money and less shelf space) you can find lots of it in the library.
A lot of stuff I’m ’supposed’ to like has been disappointing, especially erotica. In some cases I end up feeling like I’m a better writer than 99% of the folks writing erotica. It’s nice to go swim in a pool that’s big enough that my fiction is nothing but a modestly interesting backwater and whereever I swim I have plenty to learn.
However, it’s only a matter of time before I run out of Chandler.
So where should I go swim next?
