In which I am healthy/ In which am somewhat of a geek

On September 4, 2015September 4, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek11 Comments

Got to leave work early today because of a doctor’s appointment; I’m proud to announce that my liver appears to no longer be eating itself. Everything that should be down is down (in particular, I’ve dropped 12 pounds since early August) and… well, actually, nothing was supposed to be higher than it was a month ago. Blood pressure, liver enzymes, weight, errythang. All down. I actually got a hug. Most doctors don’t hug, but mine does.

Then I went looking for Star Wars: The Force Awakens toys, which I sorta knew was gonna be a fool’s errand so I wasn’t super annoyed when it predictably went nowhere. I have decided that I will allow myself to buy Captain Phasma, Kylo Ren, Rey, and Finn, in the traditional 3.75″ barely-articulable version, but that will be it. Possibly a stormtrooper, because for some reason I really dig the alterations to the armor that they’ve made. That will be it, though. I found zero of those figures at Target, and then came home and fiddled around online trying to buy them and had a startlingly poor time at that too. I’ll give it a couple of weeks and see what happens. I’m pretty sure I don’t need them right now.

Somewhat more worrying is that Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars book is out, and while it’s currently Amazon’s #1 book (!!! Go Chuck!) it’s getting shockingly poor reviews. I have not liked a single one of the books released in the new continuity, and they’ve been getting worse— Kevin Hearne’s Luke Skywalker book was unreadable, and I really like Kevin Hearne. If Chuck effin’ Wendig can’t write a Star Wars book that I like, it may be time to pack it in. That said, some of the reviews have a whiff of Internet Asshole about them. I’ll probably end up buying it, but if this one doesn’t work I’ll have to be done. I have dozens of Star Wars books I can reread if the urge strikes, after all. It’s just that none of them count anymore.

In which I have a shitty kid

On September 3, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting9 Comments

Shut up, that’s a pun.

No, really. My kid got suspended from preschool for two days today because he’s continuing to shit himself. The following expresses both my reaction to and willingness to deal with this situation at this time.

The end.

August #saleswanking (Holy crap does that suck edition)

On September 2, 2015September 2, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing2 Comments

So, how exactly do you spell the sound you make when you noisily and deliberately clear your throat and then spit an enormous loogie onto the ground? Because I’m in serious need of some onomatopoeia here. May as well rip off the Band-Aid; worst month since March, and by some metrics the worst month of the year– in fact, August was so shitty of a month for book sales that it has actually and literally managed to make previous months worse than they were before.

That’s impressive.

One tiny silver lining: Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 had a solid month on Smashwords— not a good month, but not one I can really complain about. All of my books are on Smashwords (and, with that, iBooks and Barnes and Noble and Kobo and all the rest) and combined they sold bupkis through all of those vendors, making me wonder if anyone but me actually ever buys books from the iBookstore. Total Amazon sales? Six. Three BA 1, two Sanctum, and one lonely-ass copy of Skylights. Total print sales for the month: 0. Total zero days for the month of August, after only having had one in the previous three months? Five, including two in a row at one point.

Fuuuuucccckkkkk.

Okay, I get it, no one reads in August, and August was my worst month last year, too. But damn. And that’s not even the worst news of the month. That honor goes to OpenBooks, which “recalculated how we count downloads” this month and promptly saw everyone’s downloads fall straight into the toilet. In July I had a hundred and seventy downloads of BA 1, supposedly, and in August I had 42, none of which happened after the 19th and only four of which happened after the sixth.

So… are your numbers now crap, or are your numbers previously crap? And how alarmed should I be that sitewide metrics used to be posted on literally every page at OpenBooks and now they can’t be found anywhere any longer? That tells me something, and it doesn’t tell me anything good– and I’ve logged four hundred and seventy downloads through OpenBooks in 2015. Were those actually to anyone? Did they happen? That’s a solid third of my downloads for the year and now I’m not sure if they were all phantoms or not.

This does not make me happy.

Hell, I even tried an Amazon sale for a few days and it really didn’t get me much of anywhere. I got a few sales out of it, but one of the 0 days was during the sale. I may have to go crawling back to Prime after all, and that does not make me happy, but shit has cratered since leaving, and while I do like the idea of my books being available in all markets it doesn’t seem to have actually helped me any.

Bah. I need to come up with something clever for September, dammit. I can’t have two months like this in a row, and right now I can’t even count on those 45 from OpenBooks showing back up again, so I’m looking at hands down the worst month of the year in September unless things improve. I should get a little boost when Malumba launches but right now that’s late October if I spend the rest of this week completely on my game. We’ll see. Until then, though? I need an idea.

#sevenlines from STARLIGHT

On September 1, 2015August 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

So Katherine Lampe tagged me with a Twitter meme. It entertains me. So why not? I gave you seven paragraphs, not seven lines, because this happened to be a conversation and they’re short. And I don’t think I’m tagging anybody. But have fun with a quick glimpse of STARLIGHT anyway.

There’s a Twitter game going around, #7Lines. The rules: Go to page 7 of your current WIP (page 7 of chapter 1, for those of you who, like me, start a new document for each chapter). Count down seven lines and post the NEXT seven lines (i.e., lines 8-15). Then tag seven writers to do the same.

“None of them know yet,” I pointed out. “The only people who were in the room when he said it were Dr. Rosansky and I.”

“We can’t keep something like that secret,” Celeste said.

“I think at the very least we ought to talk about it,” I said.

“No, I don’t mean shouldn’t, I mean can’t,” she replied. “Think about it. This ship isn’t that big. There are eight of us. Unless we’re talking about keeping these people confined to quarters for the entire way back home there is no way that the five of us can keep a secret that big from the other three for the entire trip home. If we’re even blowing orbit, which I’m not convinced is a good idea anyway.”

“We’re not going home?” Kathryn said.

“Later,” Celeste said. “The math is…complicated. I want to talk things over with Zub and Haipeng before we make any decisions about that. We should be safe in orbit.”

“That’s what the Tycho thought,” I said. “And no doubt the Shenzhou XIV, too.”