Some things are happening, and some more things are happening...and after that, there's more to do...

Still gotta get the rest of the trash out.... and then, closing on the refi, which will take a few hours out of the day, which means I gotta get my act in gear and get out of here to get to Augusta on time. Wheee....

After this is out of the way, need to pack about 20 SRM Publisher orders by the weekend. I'm working on it.

Also, the SLBF2008 coupon on SRM Publisher's catalog goes over very soon, the day after Mother's Day.

Please see that comments on the following properly go elsewhere. Thank you, this is a recorded announcement. Nothing can go rwong.

Ok -- The beta for the new Fledgling page is up at http://www.korval.com/fledgling/index.php ...

we're taking comments on it at: http://community.livejournal.com/theo_waitley/59335.html which is part of the Fledgling community... thank you.

Now that the work on the Fledgling and Saltation stuff is proceeding I'm also going to be needing eyes and ideas for the rest of the Liaden and Lee&Miller stuff that's been allowed to get a midge behind the times.
Don't *do* anything yet, just think about it and then we'll get things moving ... perhaps on the FoL mailing list. Maybe on the Liaden spoilers list, if I can find that link... but not at the moment...

We're closing in on arrangements for a Friends of Liad breakfast at Worldcon. We'll need a central person/place to help with this, this time around, so we can coordinate space and time with the con committee to make this an official con-type event. In the past we coordinated a lot of these things through the Meisha Merlin table and network; that's gone. Do we have enough people planning on attending to put together a Friends of Liad fan table? We're still waiting on news about the party suites, alas.

Zoom ...
catch you all in a bit ...
and do cross fingers and toes, light candles, and think good thoughts for Jay Lake, who has cancer surgery coming up RSN:
http://jaylake.livejournal.com/

As reported elsewhere.

Attention: Subscribers to Fledgling and Saltation, Fans of Theo Waitley, Friends of Liad, and All the Ships at Sea

Now it can be told.

Baen Books will be publishing the dead tree edition of Fledgling and, when it’s ready, Saltation. That’s the short form and it is Wonderful News Indeed.

The slightly longer form is that subscribers to Fledgling and/or Saltation will receive their books as promised. Baen will supply a portion of our advance in books, enough to cover the subscriptions, which we’ll sign and mail from the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory – that’s 1,200 volumes for Fledgling, and up to 1,000 Saltations.

The rest of the books will go into Baen’s regular distribution channel and will be available from your favorite bookstore. For those who prefer ebooks, both novels will be available through Baen Webscriptions.

As with any negotiation, there was some give-and-take involved. Part of this negotiation revolved around the form in which the books will be published. There exists the possibility – the language is in the contract – that Baen will decide not to publish a trade paper edition. If they make that decision, then subscribers will receive hardcovers.

Publication dates are not yet in hand; as soon as we have them, we’ll shout them from the rooftops. We did want to give this wonderful news to everyone who supported us and our work as soon as we were certain ourselves.

We’re very grateful to Toni Weisskopf at Baen, and to Jenn Jackson, our agent, who both did master class piloting in order to bring this one safely to port.

It was, very briefly, a warm and sunny day. Otherwise, I put in a lot of of miles in rain, fog, drizzle, mist, fog, and damp road spray. Temps hit 50-something. Gah ... give me my winter back.

Meanwhile:

You may have seen that the Philip K. Dick Award finalists have been announced. The other part -- choosing from among the seven -- is going on now. That's keeping the jury (including me) hopping. Our part there will be finished soon. This will free some time. We averaged something over a book a week; some days we got three or four to consider.

Otherwise:

I expect to start getting the long-delayed Dragon Tide chapbook into the mail this weekend. The proof was good, hooray.

I expect we'll be announcing, here and elsewhere, details on the Fledgling follow-on, this weekend.

Watch for changes on the SRM Publisher catalog page. We may need to shut that page down for a few days to make it happen since I'll be changing ISPs.

I'm waiting on a new-and-improved proof of the mass market LUC1. The cost has gone up but I'm not raising the price, still considering this an experiment. If the proof is acceptable we can go forward fairly soon. No individual advance orders, thanks. If you're a book club, bookstore, or dealer, we can talk...

I'll be putting this in several places...so if you see it twice, it may not be your imagination, after all.

We need some ...odd... help with Theo while other things are in process: namely, we need to get a word count on the *actually online* Fledgling.

Why is this, you wonder? Don't the authors have *one good copy*? Well... no. We have chapters hung on the web, that's what we have.

It turns out, on inspection, that Fledgling, so far has been written on two different laptops, 5 or 6 different desktops, and an AlphaSmart. OS involved? two different Mac OS, AlphaSmart's whatever, WinXP, and at least these in Linux: -- Kubuntu, Mandriva, Linspire, Freespire, and Xandros.

Portions have been written in several varieties of OpenOffice, Kword, GoogleApps, whatever AlphaSmart uses, two different versions of WordPerfect, ViM, Notepad, and (alas), even MicroSoft Word. And, for the most part, the originals are still on the machines they were written on.

So -- does anyone out there have a current word count (or could you generate one) from the web stuff? Please understand that historically we get different word counts for the same document when using OpenOffice and WordPerfect, and Word apparently counts in some world of Microsoft's making.

Why all this? Well, we've been busily doing other things and we need to make some decisions regarding Theo's story...RSN.

Thanks!

Liaden Universe Infodump #59

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY FROM CLAN KORVAL AND BAEN BOOKS

The first five novels in the _Agent of Change_ story arc will be
available electronically from Baen Books on Wednesday, February 14,
because, as editor Toni Weiskopff says, "...we love you guys."

Check the Webscriptions site -- for more information.


FLEDGLING TAKES OFF

The first three chapters of Fledgling are now online But that's not all! Reader donations thus far have insured that chapters
will keep coming weekly (except when the Authors' Traveling Rule is in
force) through the end of June!

Sam Chupp at Fireheart Foundry is doing a
concurrent podcast of each chapter -- check them out!

Thanks to everyone who has had faith in us -- and in the story -- and
please share the sites with interested friends.

LIADEN UNIVERSE® COMPANION, VOLUME TWO

Advance subscriptions are now being taking for _/Liaden Universe®
Companion, Volume Two_/, scheduled for an August release from SRM
Publisher, Ltd.

( even more behind the cut! )

and guess what -- it really is snowing. A flurry, but snow...

Well crew, if you're still with us after all this,
Sam Chupp has posted an article that you can digg and help spread the word about Fledgling... if you are already a member of Digg, we greatly appreciate the help... and if you aren't a member but join to do this, we *very greatly* appreciate your effort.

Me? With borderline dyslexia sometimes I have a bit of a hard time with those little boxes full of letters all at odd angles....

Thanks!

Oh yes, and I want to thank those of you who have found time and energy to read (or listen) to our chapter and contribute to the Fledgling fund... let me assure you that just because that little "percentage of chapter paid for" bar doesn't change as soon as you click the Paypal button doesn't mean anything is wrong. We -- gasp! -- manually adjust that once a day, because in addition to the Paypal donations we have donations come in through snail-mail. Every little bit helps, but you won't see that result instantly....

Later today, at as close to noon as we can make it between our atomic clock feed, my fingers, and the internet, the first installment of Fledgling should be available for your reading enjoyment. That's right -- at our special Korval.com Fledgling address which some of you have already been visiting -- the story in print, or at least on screen. You can even read the rules there while you're waiting, if you like.

A little later in the day, which is to say some what after noon, If All Goes Well, and as I learn the ways of an entirely new system... we hope to have the first installment of Fledgling available as a podcast, through the mighty efforts of Sam Chupp and the good folks at Fireheart Foundry who are already responsible for creating the podcast for our ground breaking appearance at the Second Life Library a few months ago.

While the storyteller bowl concept and podcasts are not new, they're new to us, so we'll hope you'll hang in with us if we get a bit fumble-fingered... and we hope that if you've got good ideas you'll share them. In some ways, in this bright new age, all of us are amateurs.

As always, if you're inclined to share links to our projects, we appreciate it greatly.


version 1.11

Yes, a beautiful day in neighborhood, cloudless sky, proper temperatures... and the birds working hard on the last 20 LB bag of mixed food. The cardinal, alas, prefers the goodstuff bird food, of which the last loose-style was distributed during the snow storm. We do still have several of the wood-pecker favorite food, which the cardinals also devour... I see a trip to Agway in my future!

Meanwhile, I'm working on some details of the Fledgling Project... everytime I say, "OK, we're set" a little voice says to me... "By the way, did you remember to..." and I won't repeat my usual follow-on.

We've long been fans of Narbonic and if you're not familiar with it, this is a good time to start on the Director's Cut version since the strip is .. finished after 6 years. I mention this because Narbonic, like a number of webcomics, offers fans and friends an opportunity to contribute Narbonic-related art to an on-going gallery.

So here's the question: should we create a Fledgling art gallery? I know, you haven;t seen the story yet and there may be absolutely nothing art-worthy in it. On the other hand, since we're going to have at least 30 installments, something picturesque may result... who knows, maybe a Liaden Universe® fan-illo-of-the-week could follow.

...and the bad news is that either either the Seahawks or the Bears will lose while either the Colts or the Patriots will win today. Sigh, what a hard day it is for a dyed-in-wool Baltimore fan! I think it ought to be the Bears vs. the Seahawks in the Superbowl, myself...

How cool?

"Cooler with lows around 5 above. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph. Wind chill values as low as 25 below after midnight." .. Oh .. that's about -31C, if I recall correctly. We... have plenty of blankets and a couple of cats to help, and plans for a warm breakfast, too.

Meanwhile, Rolanni recently discovered the web feed for WFUV which has been a great treat over the last few days. May have to send them a donation... wonder if they have a yard sale or something I can donate a signed book to...

Also meanwhile, both of us have been working on Fledgling today, with the result that a bit of sharpening got done on the first chapter, and just in time, too, since that's launching come Monday. Aieee... talk about hold the press!

The revised GnuCash might be the ticket... we'll have to see if I have time to grab it and mess with it. What I'm looking for should have reasonable small business capability. It needn't be scalable to 300 desktops.

Meanwhile: it's -3F at 7:12 AM and we're going to start the car so the seats are warm when we take off out of here to deliver Rolanni to the hill.

Yesterday I looked out the window and saw our local eagle fly over -- about 100 feet away -- on his way to scout one of his favorite fields. Note that I did not go outside with the camera to grab his portrait, this time time.

Yesterday's mail run and email run together yielded a lot of junk mail ... and a single fair-sized paper check in support of Fledgling, for which we thank you, folks. We didn't get a chance to upgrade the numbers yesterday, but once folded into the total I think that'll finish up Chapter 16 and start Chapter 17. In my calculations we'll hit the half-way point when Chapter 19 is paid for, since I'm guessing we'll have 37 chapters and maybe an author's note there at the end to deal with. This is a guess... we might do 35 and we might do 40, depending on the story.

I see Andrew Wheeler of Science Fiction Book Club took note of our project in his blog early in January. Please, if you happen to notice such links or mentions of Fledgling or any of our work, feel free to let us know. We can't egoscan everyday, after all.