Tag: searching for malumba

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Mostly Human edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Stories8 Comments

coffee2

If we were having coffee, I’d clue you in to a monumental development: last night I felt normal for the first time in two weeks.  That is not a minor thing.  This week I was reminded rather emphatically that my blood pressure medication includes a water pill, which I had completely forgotten about, and that it is sometimes possible to become rather badly dehydrated despite drinking water all the goddamn time.  The reminder was rather unpleasant.  My doctor used the phrase “perfect storm” to describe the wicked bout of dizziness and exhaustion that closed out my week, and it turns out that I need to start slamming a bottle of Gatorade as my first act of the morning until I run out of the current bottle of blood pressure medication, at which point they’ll yank the water pill part of the prescription.  Also, the Lexapro has been cut in half.

I’m out of sick days for the 2015-16 school year, by the way.  In October.  That’s… kind of a problem, but there are ways to get some of them back that I’m looking into.  Hopefully I won’t follow up two weeks of struggling with medication and anxiety issues with actually getting physically sick.  But hey!  I feel human.  Let’s focus on the positive, hmm?

I’m also kind of sick of talking about medication, so let’s hope this is the last time for a while.

This would be the point where I’d realize that drinking coffee is probably not the greatest idea, as coffee is a dessicant.  Waiter!  More Gatorade!

Book news: Searching for Malumba is out in just a few weeks, so I really ought to finish the damn thing.  As you might imagine, the last few weeks have not been good for any sort of creative work, and while the book mostly requires some fiddling around the edges– it’s 98% releasable in its current form without another touch–  I need to actually do that fiddling.  I’m hoping to be working on the print cover by tomorrow, which will mean the manuscript itself is ready by tonight.  Early commentary has been good, so if you enjoy my commentary on teaching around here, you may wish to pre-order.

There’s no #SilerSaturday this weekend, by the way, as I currently lack the time and energy to be a salesman all day.  However, my buddy James Wylder’s birthday is this weekend, and he’s put all his stuff up for free, so go download his books instead.

How’re you?

SEARCHING FOR MALUMBA: Anybody wanna help me out?

On By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

IMG_2872I’m starting to look around for promo opportunities for Searching for Malumba: Why Teaching is Terrible, and Why We Do It Anyway.  It’s currently available to preorder for $4.95, and comes out October 27th.

If anybody’s interested in a guest post, or an interview, or anything like that, or knows anyone running an education blog who might be interested in such things, would you mind letting me know in comments?  We can work the details out by email.

Thanks!

ANNOUNCEMENT!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing2 Comments

If we talked about you being an alpha for Searching for Malumba, you probably ought to check your email right about now.to_the_internet_mlp_by_gcrebel-d586z4c

SEARCHING FOR MALUMBA now available for pre-order!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing5 Comments

This is probably a teeny bit premature, since the book description’s not done and I’m not completely set on the price, but Searching for Malumba: Why Teaching is Terrible… and Why We Do It Anyway is officially available for pre-order at Amazon!  The cost, in line with my other books, is a completely reasonable four of your dollars and ninety-five of your cents for what is currently a 116,000 word manuscript.  A Goodreads page ought to be appearing at some point today too.

Release date is October 27, y’all.  Woohoo!

SEARCHING FOR MALUMBA cover redux and subtitle

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing7 Comments

Better?  I hope?  

SEARCHING FOR MALUMBA: Call for Alpha Readers

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing10 Comments

Malumba cover roughThis still isn’t the final cover, mind you.

Abruptly, and rather surprisingly, I have deemed SEARCHING FOR MALUMBA very close to being ready for alpha readers.  Maybe a week away, which means that it’s time to start begging for people willing to look it over.  Note the shift in subject matter: MALUMBA is nonfiction, and if you’re a regular blog follower you have already read chunks of it.  It’s basically a compilation of everything I’ve written about education or teaching since 2001 and still think is interesting.  There is some new material still to be added, but I think the book is in the 85-90% ready stage, so it’s time to kick it out there in the wild and see what people think about it.

Further instructions to follow; the only guidelines for now is that you need to be someone I know, either in the real world or through interactions here.  I’m not sending alpha copies to people whose names or handles I don’t recognize; sorry.

Thanks!

On the learning curve

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy9 Comments

scrivener-512One of the fun things about learning a new piece of software is that you can completely screw yourself if you do things wrong and not learn about it until it is deeply obnoxious to fix what you did.

I have committed myself to writing Searching for Malumba and Starlight in Scrivener, and I intend to keep to that.

Searching for Malumba has, at present, about 140 individual essays.

I have just discovered that each of those essays, which are technically each chapters, needs to be in its own folder in order to compile properly.  And I keep accidentally clicking the wrong things while trying to create those folders.

You may fire when ready.

A couple more notes

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing5 Comments

Malumba cover rough lowercase(No, that’s not the cover; I heard y’all. But it’s a decent placeholder for right now.)

Spent my morning finishing off the rather lengthy process of culling the Teacher Posts from Blog Previous.  I had initially thought that Malumba would come in around 75000 words; after the first round– and including nothing from this site, to say nothing of original material, and there probably ought to be some— I’m at 83000 words.

Now, this is just the first cull.  There’s going to be a second phase where I decide to eliminate a lot of the stuff I just dumped into Scrivener.  And about 1/3 of those 83000 words are “fuck,” so at least some of those probably ought to go.  But damn.  You may not have noticed, but I tend to talk about teaching a bit around here, and I feel weird letting the book abruptly just stop in 2012, especially since I wasn’t writing much in 2010 and 2011 and so those sections of the book are really sparse.

What I’m getting at is that this book might end up a bit longer than I had initially intended.  Which, whatever; the ebook is still gonna cost $4.95 (or maybe less) and I doubt it’ll make a ton of difference in the cost of the print edition.  But man.  This could be a pretty long book.

(Next step:  going through this blog, then figuring out how to organize this mess, then actually editing/rewriting everything.  Whee!)