INTERVIEW!

My friend James Wylder interviewed me about SEARCHING FOR MALUMBA.   Check it out!

Comics!!!

I’ve got a brief piece up over at Sourcerer reviewing a couple of new comic books you might have missed last week.  It’s Wednesday!  Go grab ’em!

In which I’m in the hospital again

TotalHipReplacement_-_Before__AfterDo not panic!  It’s not for me this time!  Honestly, though, I’d rather it was, as my last couple of ER visits were for not especially big deals as hospital visits go.  My mother is having her hip replaced, converting her even further to a cybernetic organism, because she already has a replacement knee, artificial corneas, and I think maybe something in her lower back as well.  I have to admit; if it weren’t for the years of pain that led to each of the surgeries, I’d almost be jealous.  I wanna be a robot too!

Then again, all I really have to do is wait.  I have indisputably inherited my mother’s knees; I stood up yesterday from my recliner and the crumpling-paper noise from both of my knees was so loud that my wife heard it.  It didn’t really hurt, precisely, but the holy shit what was that reaction was so horrifying I almost wish it was pain.

What will be painful: they’ve got CNN on in this damn waiting room, and they keep going back to that poor kid getting her ass beat by that cop in South Carolina the other day.  Having to watch/hear the footage is rage-inducing enough; I swear to God if I have to listen to some fucking Hoosier conversation about it I’m gonna go to jail today, and it’s good that we’re already at the hospital.

Mom’s gonna be fine, by the way, but good vibes are appreciated anyway.  More later.

EDIT:  She’s out of surgery already, which is ridiculous.  The doc said she had a lot of arthritis in that hip but everything went fine.  She’s in recovery now and we’ll get to see her in a couple of hours.  There’s still the standard post-surgical suite of potential complications to worry about but the surgery itself went as well as it possibly could have.

A technical question for the #indieauthors out there

As of right now, I’ve sold fewer copies of Searching for Malumba today than there were pre-orders for it.  Now, don’t get me wrong– I was quite pleased with the number of pre-orders, and in fact I have reason to believe that I sold a copy or two to people who did not actually pre-order the book.

Which leaves several people who appear to have not gotten their pre-order.

I mean, I pre-ordered the damn thing myself, right?  I know how this works.  The date rolls by, they send you an email that the thing’s on your Kindle, and boom– there it is.  So how is it possible that I have people who haven’t received their pre-orders yet?  Do I just have a handful of people whose credit cards aren’t clearing or something like that?

(Also, once again, the book isn’t getting credit for the number of sales today, meaning that doing pre-orders actually hurts your ranking on launch day– meaning that I won’t be doing this again.)

Any theories, other than that I know several grown adults who literally don’t have $4.95 right now?  Because that seems somewhat unlikely.

SEARCHING FOR MALUMBA now available for purchase!

Let’s not bury the lede: my book Searching for Malumba: Why Teaching is Terrible… and Why We Do it Anyway is now available at Amazon in both a Kindle ebook version (4.95!) and, if I may say so, an incredibly handsome print edition (15.95!)  The first essay in this book was written in 2001, guys, and this book has been in the back of my head for a very, very, very long time.  If you’ve ever enjoyed anything I’ve written about anything, please, please check it out.  You won’t regret it.

Malumba print cover full resolution

(There should be some reviews popping today, too, and a few promotional thingies over the course of the week.  I will, uh, be being kinda noisy about it.  Just buy it now and then ignore me for the next couple of days.  🙂  )