catherineldf | Entries tagged with audiobooks

Well, this month is the proverbial mixed bag. I just wrapped 3 events in a row, all pleasant and resulting in some sales. Then I torqued up my bad hip at West St. Paul Pride so I've been limping around for the past few days. So this week:

Bad hip and leg issues. much ouch
Smashwords book sale on Queen of Swords Press titles!
Just did the first big round of paperwork to get Jana's CADI application in. This is for the whole process of getting her evaluated and tapping into county funds since she's too young for federal. She's getting lost more often and is less interactive so if I can get CADI funds, I can get her into things like adult daycare and assisted living and so forth. Fingers crossed that it goes smoothly.
We have a new book coming out this Thursday! Dee Holloway's new historical fantasy novella, Little Nothing, is terrific and we can hardly wait for you to discover it!
I have a new list up at Shepherd.com - "Best Fantasy Tales About Women Over 40" I had some fun with this one and think it's pretty solid.
Blood Moon is out in Audiobook and Audiobook.com has a promo sale on it.
I am experimenting with different sizes of ollas, terracotta jars that you plant in your yard or pots and fill with water, which then gradually seeps into the soil. I'm not ready to deal with buried soaker hoses and we do have a drought so we'll see if these help.
The roof, the siding, the insurance, the endless phone calls. Maybe we're getting new siding on the garage and around the windows due to hail damage?
Mother Earth's Gardens field crew came by and did an epic cleanup on the yard. It looks much better, except for the bare spots which I now want to fill with things. Except drought and the wrong season for planting.
On Friday, I get to go into HCMC for not one, but two procedures! My mammogram last month was a tad iffy so it's Boob Smoosh 2 plus an ultrasound for me...right after I get a steroid shot in my hip. Am I worried? Maybe a little. A friend is coming with. Needless to say, no Diversicon for me this weekend. I might be spreading Mom's ashes down at Prairie Oaks Eco Garden on Sunday though, assuming her memorial brick is ready and I'm up to drive to a suburb.

Have I mentioned I'm tired and sore? Because yes. Anyway, off to bed with me. Please send good thoughts that I weather the rest of this week. And maybe go buy a book or ask for one of ours at your library. Every bit helps.

Today, the air quality is pretty crappy, I didn't get enough sleep and i have a headache from the hovering storm so I'm working on projects and watching the Netflix series Word of Honor. I'm a big wuxia fan from way back so this is a fun one. Very pretty, moderately interesting and laden with interesting subtext.

Apart from that, the month has been filled with caregiving-related stuff, miscellaneous events, day job, the Pride StoryBundle and sundry other things. Not so much rest or sleep, alas, though perhaps this weekend will bring some of those around other things. I'll need it - I just scheduled two procedures in a single day for two weeks from now - both needful, but it will be a lot and means that I probably won't be at Diversicon. I'm also also talking to the burial ground/nature preserve about a good date to scatter my mother's ashes and that is likely to happen that weekend as well. Which is a LOT.

Anyway, this week:
Two events! The release of Blood Moon in audiobook! The end of the Pride StoryBundle for this year!
Tiny Diner Art Market - June 29th, 5-8PM. Minneapolis. I'll be there with books by local authors and some of Jana Pullman's handmade boxes and book

Raedial Reads Book Fair - July 1, 11-5PM. Harriet Island Park, St. Paul, MN. Queen of Swords Press will have a table, staffed by me, with books and tea.

Blood Moon comes out in audiobook from Tantor Audio on 6/30! It's up for preorder now and is available everywhere you buy audio books, as is Silver Moon. And you can request them at your local library. Please do! This will be a big part of their discoverability.
The Pride StoryBundle ends this week (7/1) and this year is particularly outstanding in that we have 17 books (biggest bundle ever!) and of those 17, 4 wound up as finalists for the Locus Awards and one was a winner! Big shoutouts to Sam J. Miller for winning best collection for Boys, Beasts and Men and to R.B. Lemberg, Nisi Shawl and Naseem Jamnia for being finalists! Also: this has been a harder than usual bundle to sell, in part because of, well, everything. So if you're thinking about it or want to give someone a copy or you've already gotten it, please, please tell your friends and followers! We've got some amazing books this year and Rainbow Railroad could definitely use all the extra funds it can get.

And on that note, I am off to bed. May tomorrow be a mellower day!

WisCon was quite pleasant, if a bit gruelling between juggling Jana's schedule, our book table, programming and so forth. But I got to see lovely friends who I haven't seen in far too long and that made up for a lot. I also met some new folks, sold a bunch of books, both ours and some from Stone Raven Press, who we were hosting, and some of Jana's blank journals. Did some wandering about in Madison, which looked a bit better than last year. The trip home was kind of scary because I was more tired than I realized and we hit heavy traffic near the Twin Cities, but we got home in one piece. I had, fortunately, paid our cat sitter for an extra visit just in case, so she made sure the beasties were fed (and would have done it anyway, if I'd asked, but always easier when already planned).

On Tuesday, my new audiobook of Silver Moon landed! I'm very excited about it and am hoping it does well. It's out on all the major audio book selling platforms. :-)

On Wednesday night, the Pride StoryBundle kicked off! Melissa Scott and I have really pulled together a gem of a bundle this time, with the assistance of a whole bunch of publishers. There are books by R.B. Lemberg, Nisi Shawl, Naseem Jamnia, Sean Eads, Laurie Marks and much more! At the $25 level, you get 17 books and can designate part of your purchase price (nothing extra!) for Rainbow Railroad, an international nonprofit that helps LGBTQ+ people in danger get to safer areas. The Bundle will be running for the whole month!

And working on getting our next title up and out the door. Little Nothing by Dee Holloway is a historical fantasy, set in Florida at the start of the Civil War with weird horse girls, even weirder horses, knot magic and a ghost queen! More coming soon.

Mostly good stuff, so far. Which is awesome because I turn 60 at the end of the month and I thought I'd be traveling and doing fun things for this birthday, which between J's health stuff and the things I'm juggling, is not going to happen. In assorted bits of good news:

Just got my contract extended at my day job (my contract was up at the end of this month otherwise). The work itself is kind of nuts, but I like the team, I can WFH and the checks don't bounce so it's all good.
Speaking of checks, I got my advance from Tantor Media for the audio books of the Wolves of Wolf's Point books. Which is a pretty nice 60th birthday gift, if you ask me! And incentive to knuckle down and write the third book in the series, Blue Moon.
Got the preorder up for Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold (Lynes & Mathey #1). The gorgeous new cover is by artist and author Matthew Bright of Inkspiral Design and he's done a lovely job on the interior too!
Got in at another couple of events, including the FemFair at Hamline U., a couple of slots at Dancing Bear Chocolate and the new Raedial Bookfair in St. Paul this summer.
Started edits and chats about cover art for this summer's novella release, Little Nothing by Dee Holloway (Alternate history! Weird horse girls! Young lesbians battling the Confederacy! Good stuff!).
MarsCon was fun and I got to spend some time with friends and sold some books.
Got tickets to various fun things throughout the month.
Am enjoying the Acorn TV subscription that a friend gifted me with for my birthday.

More soon, as it happens.

Just realized that there's been so much going on, I hadn't announced the THING so here goes: I just signed the contract to have my menopausal werewolf novels, Silver Moon and Blood Moon, recorded as audiobooks by Tantor Media! I am so excited about this! Not just because it is happening at all and because I'm getting a decent advance (first time in years on that!) and because they're a well-respected company that will do a good job and because they've already requested an option on the third book (in progress!), but also because these are my passion project books. And, furthermore, they've never won any big awards or gotten reviews at the big sites or anything splashy, but they've been chugging along for years, recommended by book bloggers and readers passing them around, telling their friends about them, coming to my readings, following me online. All of that was enough to push sales over the top and inspire Tantor to pick them up, so for all of you who helped me get here: THANK YOU!

And a big THANK YOU to author and literary agent Jennie Goloboy who pushed me to try for it. I also pitched Jennie's hilarious and fun science fiction novel Obviously, Aliens, but the sales aren't quite there yet. I really want this book to find its people because I think it would make a terrific audiobook. Jennie is hitting the film festival circuit and starting to win awards and recognition for her scripts so this a chance to read someone's work on their way up. :-D

On a related topic, I have a Queen of Swords Press tradition in which when an author's book pass a given sales threshold, they get a mug with their bookcover on it. Michael Merriam's birthday is coming up on 2/19 and he's getting really close. We'd like to get him that mug next week so if you like urban fantasy, Welsh mythology, sapphic romantic fantasy, ghostly streetcars and Minneapolis circa 2007 nostalgia, Last Car to Annwn Station is perfect for you!

Otherwise, I finished a new f/f/ pirate/spy story for Heather Rose Jones's LHMPodcast, have nearly finished the preformatting and editing pass through Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold's Death by Silver (releasing soon!) and have worked with Melissa to assemble this year's Pride StoryBundle. In addition, Jennie and I are going to be teaching at the Rosemount Writer's Festival next month and some other things are afoot.

I also finished a 50 item To-Do list, which included various eldercare planning things for Jana, getting a new water heater installed, getting some things on my car fixed that have been making life somewhat less pleasant and getting in our new handywoman to work on the growing cracks in the kitchen ceiling which need to be patched, caulked, plastered and painted. I'm super tired, but have a great feeling of accomplishment. On a lighter note, have been to a couple of interesting performances and got to check out Owamni, the new indigenous cuisine James Beard Award-winning restaurant in downtown Minneapolis (it was amazing). Mixed bag otherwise on the personal front, but nice to have good news to report.