Rosemary Kirstein

The Language of Power is now onsale at Smashwords!

Go ahead and click. You know you want to.

As ever, it will take a while to promulgate out to the other sellers (iBooks, Kobo, etc) — Smashwords has to get it to them, and they each have their own schedule as to when they go live with newly-arrived ebooks.    I wanted to get this done today, so I’m glad all the factors came together nicely.

So, for your Kindle, Amazon is the place to go; and for everything else, it’s all at Smashwords now, and other ebook-sellers soon.

Well, must go; busy day tomorrow.

Just before the scheduled surgery, I was set to undergo a needle localization, in which they insert little bits of wire in front of and behind the tumor, so that the surgeon can find it easily.  The procedure takes place right in the MRI, starting with a long period where they take images, evaluate them, maybe do it over again… a lot of time in a very uncomfortable position (ladies, think: mammogram where the compression part lasts 20-plus minutes!).

Unfortunately, they had to call a halt when the images showed up a couple of new suspicious areas, near the original tumor.   We need to find out what those are all about.  Might be nothing; or it might mean I’ll need a mastectomy instead of the lumpectomy we’d planned.

Thus, no surgery today.  We’re doing the biopsy Tuesday, and we’ll decide what to do for surgery when we get the results back.

We could have done the biopsy right then, instead of the needle localization, as the setup is exactly the same  — but after all that time motionless and aggressively SQUEEZED, my body used its unilateral over-riding veto:  dizziness, faintness, sweats, and great big drop in blood pressure.  So they got me out of there fast when that happened.

So, we’ll do another MRI under compression, this time with biopsy,  on Tuesday.   Except: drugs!   Because no matter how tough you think you are, sometimes your body has a mind of its own.

I’m massively annoyed that this could not be over and done with TODAY.    And naturally concerned about what the biopsy will show.

But I wanted to let everyone know, because you’ve all been so kind with your good wishes and hopes and encouragement!  I couldn’t leave you hanging.

I’m going to take another nap now.  Because: really tired.

More later.

Thought I’d try to get this done before being knocked flat by surgery tomorrow…

Clickable!

Smashwords has it in all formats, and as usual, will promulgate them out to iBooks, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, etc.  It will appear on those sellers’ sites according to the sellers’ own schedules.   They’re not immediate, as you know.

The Language of Power should follow in a couple of weeks…

Must go now, other stuff that has to get done before tomorrow…

The estimable James Davis Nicoll continues reviewing the Steerswoman series with book 3, The Lost Steersman, with interesting discussion in the comments in his LiveJournal blog.  It’s also up on his Dreamwidth site; nobody seems to comment, over there.   I guess the LiveJournal people are just livelier!

As ever, MANY SPOILERS — so, be warned!

By the way, if you know of other current reviews of the series (or are reviewing it yourself), if you let me know, and I’ll post about here.   I do a google search every now and then, but you might know before I do…

Meanwhile, The Lost Steersman is currently being set up for Smashwords, so depending on whether or not it needs further tweaks, and how I feel post-surgery, it could be on sale for non-Kindle sometime next week.

Other meanwhile: still in the countdown to surgery.  I thought I wasn’t all that nervous, but surprise!  I am.   I can tell because I can’t focus on anything for very long, I dither over simple things, and I want to watch more television than is good for me.

But I’m sure it will all be fine.  They know what they’re doing.

Which means that it will soon  be promulgated across to other ebook sellers (iBooks,  Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc.).   But that hasn’t happened yet.

clickable!

Only Smashwords so far.

 The Lost Steersman and The Language of Power should follow in the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, I have three days before surgery, and lots to do to set things up at home…

Forgot to mention:  The Steerswoman is available in all formats directly from Smashwords itself.

Also, if you buy it from them, I get a bigger royalty than if you bought it from oh, elsewhere…   Just sayin’.

Click ‘n’ go!

Well!

The ebook of The Steerswoman is up for sale at iBooks, for those of you with Apple devices:

No, don’t click on it — I can’t link you to an iBooks entry! You’ll have to go there yourself.

Now, I know for a fact that the ebook has also been sent to Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, Baker & Taylor Blio, and Flipkart (that’s in India — I’ve already sold in India via Amazon, by the way) among others.  However, it hasn’t shown up on their websites yet… So it could be a case of Real Soon Now, depending on the individual websites.

How do I know this?  Well, for everything not-Amazon, I’m using Smashwords as my distributor, and they do have some nice tracking, so I can see which online stores have been sent the ebook.    But so far, only iBooks actually  has the book on sale.

So, if you’ve been waiting for this, check your favorite ebook source, to see if it’s up yet — if it’s not, it will be, soon!

Next up: I have to do the same for the other books…

In other news:  Hey, James Davis Nicoll  has put his review of The Outskirter’s Secret online!  Go here for his fancy-blog version, and go here for his Live Journal version, which has a lot more comments from readers. I’m finding the discussion pretty interesting…

Be warned that there are TONS of spoilers.

Ack!  Must run now.   I am suddenly in a time-crunch.   This because they’ve set the date for my surgery as May 9, just over a week away, and now I must accomplish everything that needs to be done before that in that short span of time.

More later…

ADDED INFO I FORGOT:  Hey you can get it in every format, right now, from Smashwords themselves!

Still here, but kind of worn down… now that I’m off the Taxol and only getting Herceptin, I’ve been trying to do a bit more, to build up my strength.  I actually drove myself to all my appointments on Monday!  It was rather mind-boggling, after being chauffeured by my long-suffering sister for the last couple of months.    On another day, I took a half-hour walk!

Of course, both of those things completely wiped me out afterward, which is ironic: to get stronger, you have to make yourself more tired.  But that’s how you do it, push a little bit more each day.  Feeling tired is part of the process; it’s how I know I’ve actually done something.

I’ve received a lot of encouraging emails and comments — I probably won’t be able to reply to each one, but it really is good to hear from each of you.   It means a lot, and I want to thank you all.

In between resting and not-resting, I’m still working on getting the ebooks out on non-kindle platforms, with Sabine’s help.  I can’t give you a definitive timeline on that, not yet.   I should know more in a few days…

In other news: James Davis Nicoll has written quite a nice review of The Steerswoman.    Here’s the link to it on his website.

It’s also posted on his LiveJournal page, where other LJ’ers have left some comments.

More later; I have some stuff to do before I turn in…

Well, on Amazon in the US, that is.   Slight delay for Amazon sites in other countries, as we’ve seen.

But, yep. There it is.

That’s right.

Next project: getting all four ebooks out on other platforms.

Sorry about being offline for — heck, almost two weeks!  That final dose of Taxol hit me a lot harder than I expected, the steroid crash was worse than usual, and I was useless for much longer than from previous chemo sessions.  And as soon as I was able to do much of anything, I spent whatever energy I had on getting this ebook out.

Which it now is.  So happy.

More later; I’ve spent the last 3 days in a white-hot copy-editing heat, so I’m kinda beat now.

I think I’ll turn in… g’night!

(Click images to embiggen for better legibility)

However, the good news is: Today was my last dose of Taxol.  That’s the T in the TH of my current chemo regimen, and it’s the culprit in the peripheral neuropathy.  So, whatever increase in side-effects I get in the coming week will be the last increase.   Then it’s just a question of will it go away?  And if it does, how long will it take?

Meanwhile, the usual steroid crash I get after these is due, probably by tomorrow night, after which I will lie around like a plate of particularly uninteresting aspic until, oh, Saturday night.  But also on the upside: I only got that massive dose of steroids because of the Taxol, and this was my last Taxol.  Sooo … after this, also no more steroids or steroid crash.  That will be nice.

Going forward, we just have the Herceptin every week (which does not knock me back as much as the Taxol), then surgery in May, and recovery, and soon after that, radiation therapy.  Which will be a whole new adventure.

In other news:  I missed the window for getting the ebook of The Language of Power completed before this week’s chemo and steroid crash.  So, it’ll have to wait until Sunday earliest for any further progress; ditto with the non-kindle versions of the ebooks.

One thing that ate up time was my taxes!   While in theory it could have been simple, it was complicated by the fact that I actually did get some miniscule amount of money from Del Rey on the paperback versions of my books.   I do have the rights back, and they’ve stopped selling my works — but the delay in their accounting system meant that I was still owed money from before I disengaged from them, and this money was paid in 2013 and I had to include it in my income.  Using the Profit or Loss from a Business 1040-C form.  I wanted to do it right, and be beyond reproach for 2013, because 2014 is going to be crazy-time, what with income from various streams, and all sorts of business expenses, as well as the Day Job that provides my health insurance.  It’ll be complicated.

And I had to get the taxes done before Chemo and steroid crash, because although I’ll probably be past the crash by Sunday, I might not be, given that it takes longer to recover each time, and it’s possible my down-time might extend into the tax-filing deadline.  So I wanted to do the taxes while I still had a brain I could count on.

Unrelated info:  Sabine and I have been watching Continuum on Netflix, which I quite enjoy.  They put a lot of work and thought into the future-scenes, and the acting is pretty good, the storyline complex.  Don’t let the synopsis fool you: “Cop from the future chasing terrorists.”  Bleagh.  Doesn’t cover it.

Also: I’m currently reading  The Little White Dove by JM Barrie (of Peter Pan fame).   This was a book I had stumbled upon ages ago when I was house-sitting in an old historical home, which had all sorts of fascinating old literature and scrapbooks lying around.  I found the book hilarious and sweet at the same time, and I love the narrator.  I just picked it up in a massive Kindle compilation of all of Barrie’s works, with cost next to nothing.  I’m glad to see that I’m enjoying The Little White Dove as much as I did the first time.