A Curious Statistical Anomaly

The flight home from San Jose was much nicer than the one going to San Jose. For one things the flight home didn’t have two screaming babies. I really wish there was some no-fail method of seeing that babies didn’t have to suffer from blocked ears. I understand the crying and feel so sorry for them, but when you’re crammed into too small seats in a full plane it’s hard to maintain perspective and serenity. But coming home we only had to deal with a completely full plane and no empty seats at all.

We got in and crashed. We slept almost twelve hours. Then went out bought a few supplies, emptied the fridge of a few things that didn’t make it. The big surprise was at the Post Office. We stopped the mail from Thursday to Monday. So, Tuesday when we picked it up, getting two filled US Postal bins was a bit overwhelming especially when added to the FedEx and UPS deliveries that had come to the house while we were gone. (We have two trash can just for deliveries — to protect the books from wet weather.).

Needless to say, I spent today entering books into the database and clearing out regular mail and spam as well as the electronic kind. I ran some system checks on my PC too. Mid-morning (I got up at 6:30AM), I found I could barely keep my eyes open and ended up taking a nap.

Somehow, I associate napping with being either very young — I hated them as a child — or very old. Well, I’m not that old but with the two conventions separated by a week and a cross country trip for one of them, I guess I’m getting into napping territory. It did help. When I got up — I really felt refreshed and the minor headache I’d had was gone. Of course, that was hours ago and now I’m dragging again, and the headache — not to mention other aches and pains — are back.

Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll be back on schedule and can get my reviews up and finish off the odds and ends of the November issues of the zines.

We went live with the magazines at midnight on September 1st, but we just finished all the tweaks and polishing of the chrome this evening.  The major problem this month was me.  Yup, me.

I got the flu or a cold but it might be the flu.  Yes, I googled the symptoms and I’ve got all of them so I don’t know what I’ve got.  So, I’ve been dragging around for a couple of weeks barely getting out of my own way and trying to do the things that absolutely had to be done and smoothing over the rest.  That means I OCR documents, put the pages together and proofed  them.  Entered and proofed reviews that were sent to me.  Stared at the screen for inordinate amounts of time but didn’t add a line to my novel.  Sent out the announcement of the finalists for the WSFA Small Press Award. I answered some email and entered books.

And I read.  I don’t know what most people do but when I don’t feel good I read.   I read nearly everything I was assigned this month and then some.  The problem is that, feeling as crappy as I did — I didn’t write the reviews immediately but waited.  I thought, silly me, that I’d write them the last three days of the month since I’d already taken notes and stuck stickies in the books to remind me of things I could do that.  Except I then got laryngitis and Hyperion got sick and several people who normally don’t wait to the last minute did and ….

Well, I ended up adding new material on September 1st and 2nd.  So, now we’re really done with the zines and so, if you already checked it out — check again — there may be new stuff because I combed my email today for everything I missed and now–deep sigh,  it’s time to start all over again for the October issue.

Speaking of upcoming events, I’m hoping to get an interview with Monica Fairview the author of The Other Mr. Darcy in October.  She’s doing a blog tour and I’m hoping she’ll be able to squeeze it in between stops.  I’ve got the list of the blogs she’ll be visiting and will post it closer to the start of her tour and just before I post my review of the book.

Gumshoe is going to be running an interview with Laura Childs in October to go with the release of her new book, Tragic Magic (A Scrapbooking Mystery).  I’ll also be reviewing season one of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

On the SFRevu side, I need to see what books we’re reviewing for October and start contacting people to line up an interview.  The problem is usually not that there aren’t enough people to ask but that I dither on trying to decide who to ask because I want to ask them all.

Then there’s the knitting.  I’ve got a pair of socks on the needles and the first one is nearly to the heel.  I’ve got a sweater that needs to be steam pressed and hemmed and a button added.  And, I’ve got two other started sweaters that I hope to finish this fall.  Then there’s the spinning of yarn that I need to do.  I’d hoped to get some spinning done by requesting an audio book for review but when it arrived it was print–no problem but I was looking forward to the listening time.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get my act together to get geared up for Capclave 2010. I’m really excited about the opportunity to be a convention chair and hope that the convention will turn out to be one that everyone enjoys from the Guests of Honor to the Volunteers to the attendees.

Looking this over, I think I may be over-committed…nah…it will be fun.

It’s been a long week catching up on all the things that needed to get done to go live with the SFRevu and Gumshoe Review‘s September issues at midnight tonight. Adding to the difficulty this month is that for the last week or so I’ve been fighting off the flu or a cold (the verdict is still out on that one–symptoms of both) and Sunday I woke up with laryngitis. I can squeak but not talk…arghhh…no yelling from my office space to Hyperion’s space. Thank heavens for ICQ. No being able to talk is very frustrating just when I don’t need more frustration.

This month, I want to focus on Gumshoe Review for a moment. A couple of months ago, the Senior Editor Ernest Lilley and I decided to add essays and fiction to Gumshoe Review. We checked over other magazines and decided on $.05 (5 cents) per word up to a total of 1,000 words — thus we meet most mystery writing associations criteria for professional pay to writers. We hope to publish one story and one essay per issue to start but to do that we need to get the word out. The following announcements has been listed in my Just the Facts post in this months issue and I decided to post it to my blog hoping it will get picked up and noticed by interested parties. Anyway, check out the zines and let me know what you think of them, I’m always looking for constructive feedback.

CALL FOR SUBMISSION:

Special Announcement: Fiction
Gumshoe Review is now open to accept fiction. The short stories should be no longer than 1,000 words. Pay will be 5 cents per word to a maximum of $50 (so if the story is longer you still only get $50). Our plan is to publish one short story per month. Essays should be sent as plain text within the body of an email or as a .txt, .pdf (not password protected), .doc, or .wp attachment to editor@gumshoereview.com. Please use the subject line “Gumshoe Short Story Submission”. We will acknowledge receipt of the story immediately but it may take us longer to respond about whether we will use the story in an upcoming month. Unfortunately, until we see what type of response we get we won’t be able to estimate response time. Please include a short bio with the story. Works should be original and unpublished.

Gumshoe Review Special Announcement: Nonfiction Essays
Gumshoe Review is now open to accept nonfiction essays on topics of interest to readers, writers, and students of the mystery genre. The essays should be no longer than 1,000 words. Pay will be 5 cents per word to a maximum of $50 (so if the essay is longer you still only get $50). Our plan is to publish one essay per month. Essays should be sent as plain text within the body of an email or as a .txt, .pdf (not password protected), .doc, or .wp attachment to editor@gumshoereview.com. Please use the subject line “Gumshoe Essay Submission”. We will acknowledge receipt of the essay immediately but it may take us longer to respond about whether we will use the essay in an upcoming month. Unfortunately, until we see what type of response we get we won’t be able to estimate response time. Please include a short bio with the essay particularly mentioning your qualifications in the field. Works should be original and unpublished.

That’s right. We managed to get an interview with Terry Pratchett for SFRevu this month. Emily Whitten, the Vice-Chair of the North American Discworld Convention 2009, actually interviewed him late last year and was kind enough to share it with us.

We also have Drew Bittner’s interview with Mike Carey about his work on The Torch comic series. He also interviewed Scott Neitlich of Mattel about how toys get from the drawing board to your shelves.

The issue is rounded out with a short memorium for Charles Brown and of course our columns and reviews.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

It’s been a long two days. I lost about 8 hours of prime work time when we lost power on Wednesday after the storm. So, it’s been a wild two days getting the zines up and live for your reading pleasure.

Please check out:
SFrevu
Gumshoe Review
and our weekly zine:
TechRevu

and as always feedback on the issues is welcome. I’m so looking forward to a good nights’ sleep.

Gayle asked me to post since we are currently without electricity, and my laptop has 30 minutes of juice left in it … plus the only network connection.

We had a severe thunderstorm move through the area about four hours ago, and now our county has 1000 people in the dark. The next biggest outage is the town just to our north which has 90 people without power.  So I figure we really should be on the priority list.  But there’s no guarantees.  The power company will get to us when it gets to us.

We have wind-up lanterns and what not (and battery powered laptops), so we’re good to go as long as the power doesn’t stay off too much longer.

Gayle’s getting a bit nervous since the zines go live on Friday, and she’s now losing an entire evening’s productivity.  Personally, I’m not worried.  Everything will turn out okay.  I’m in my positive thinking mode.  Maybe we should eat that ice cream before it can melt.  That’s thinking positive, isn’t it?

It’s been a mad house here all day. The napping thing seemed to do the trick. I’m still a bit behind but the magazines are done and will be online and live at midnight or July 1st. (There may be a tweak or two done tomorrow for the things that came in too late for me to deal with tonight–but they’re going live anyway.)

Check them out:

SFRevu — all things science fiction and fantasy

Gumshoe Review — mystery,  thrillers, and related.

TechRevu — updates articles on Mondays and news items everyday.

Now it’s time for me to gear up and go battle the Insomnia beast into submission — I’d say sleep or die but I’m still working on that napping thing. Good night and let me know what you think of the zines.

Guess you all know where I’ll be for the next 24 plus hours. Sitting in front of a computer screen pulling out hair I can’t afford to lose, wondering if that word should be hyphenated, why can’t people at least run the spellchecker (I mean if it pops up on my browser in red — that should be a hint right)?

Why oh why did I wait so long to get my stuff pressed and polished — I should have known that at least 10 more things would pop into my “need to check it now” stack at the last minute and they did…

Deep breath. I need a nap. It’s already been a long day. Tomorrow at midnight the zines go live. Beware the anticipation… Breathe.

I think after that nap, I’m making a pot of coffee with triple scoops of COFFEE…maybe with coffee syrup and coffee flavoring. I might even add chocolate. But first the nap…provided I can get to sleep.

Insomnia. I hate it. I deal with it a few times a month. I haven’t had coffee or caffeine in four days thinking that was it and I still haven’t slept more than 2-4 hours a night lately. I’ve decided to change my attitude. I’ll now be taking a nap tonight. Not sleeping mind you just napping for 2 or 4 hours. See. It’s not insomnia now, it’s planned. I’m not trying to sleep. (I’m using reverse psychology on my sleep engine — do you think it will work? ) Anyway, it’s not like I don’t have plenty to do in the next 24 hours anyway.