Summertime: gardening and thinking

The pink rose is almost finished blooming - this picture was taken a couple of weeks ago - and most things have been growing like mad, helped along by one of the wettest Junes in recent memory. I keep wanting to take more pictures before posting, but the weather hasn't cooperated. Hopefully more soon.

I'm still waiting for Amazon to upload the data for The Ash Spear. Unfortunately they only do this once a month, so it could be another three weeks. Trust me, I'll publicize it widely when it happens.

I've also started working on the next book. This one will be set five or six years after The Ash Spear, and will involve several of the same characters. Gwernin of course will be back as the narrator, and also Taliesin. I don't think Neirin will appear in this one unless it's a cameo, but he'll be back again in later books. There will also be a few glimpses of other people we've met before. Right now I'm doing background research (did I mention this one will be mostly set in Ireland?) and thinking about major plot elements. I've also written a couple of sentences of the first scene. I want to design the book as a second entry point into the series, something people can enjoy who haven't read the first trilogy. That's the idea, anyway. Oh, and the working title is The Druid's Son.

-GRG

One more milestone...

I got my first review for the Ash Spear on LibraryThing. (I sent the reviewer a pdf copy.) He also reviewed Storyteller and Flight of the Hawk recently.

-GRG

Milestones

I've reached a couple of big milestones in the last week. First, last week I sold my 1,000th book. This is not a lot by commercial publisher standards, but for a self-published author, only promoted through web based reviews and word of mouth, it's fantastic. Here's to the next 1,000...

And on that note, I approved The Ash Spear for distribution today. It may take a month or so yet to reach amazon.com, but it's on its way!

-GRG

Update

Still proof-reading and gardening. Most of the tomatoes are in now - only five or six more holes to dig (groan!) Corn and beans are seeded, squash seedlings planted. I'm late with everything this year because I was working on the final draft of Ash Spear weekends when I should have been tilling.

Update

We're proof-reading today in and around things like mowing the yard and tilling the garden. Tomato-planting tomorrow Monday - it's high time. This is the one year in five or six that I didn't get a killing frost after May 1st and therefore could have planted early (if I hadn't been so busy with the manuscript!) - oh well.

Back home again

Back from a weekend in the Black Hills of South Dakota at an SCA event called Quest for Camelot. As usual I forgot to take pictures, but here's one I took at the site two years ago.

Proof copies of The Ash Spear arrived while I was gone - it's looking good!

-GRG

progress

The final proof copies have been ordered, and barring any unforseen problems, The Ash Spear should be released on Lulu early next month, probably reaching Amazon.com sometime in July (Lulu pushes it to Bowkers, but Amazon has a monthly upload schedule after that). This one weighs in at 328 pages and $19.95 SRP, though hopefully Amazon will discount it a bit. For a bit more about it and a couple of quoted passages, see its page on LibraryThing. There's a lot of other fun stuff there as well ;-)

Now I can start researching the next one, and maybe catch up on the rest of my life, including my gardening - the tomatoes are climbing out of the cold frame, and have started blooming!

-GRG

Still here...

Yes, I'm still here - in the throes of proofreading / revising / all the nick-picking detail that comes at the end of preparing a book.

Tomatoes are getting big, too - I'll try and get a picture up soon. It's spring!

-GRG

Binary weather

Spring in Denver is binary: winter/summer/winter/summer/winter/summer... Snow Monday morning, nice weather Tuesday, snow (with lightning and thunder!) Wednesday evening, nice weather yesterday and today, winter storm warning for tonight and tomorrow... The picture's from last Sunday, one of the nice days.

Less snow...

We got about 8 or 9 inches of snow here, I think, but it's melting fast. The ground had already thawed, and the last two sunny days have helped. The tomato seedlings in the cold frame survived, although some got a bit spindly; I have the lid up this morning to give them more direct light.

On the writing front, I've been doing a couple of other projects while I wait for feedback from my proof-readers. One, still part of preparing the Ash Spear, is to work on the maps, which are nearly ready now - ready for the proof-readers, at any rate. I have to remind myself that things which are perfectly obvious to me, such as which part of Britain is Wales, aren't necessarily going to be obvious to my (mainly North American) readers. This is the sort of assumptions they're checking for now - things I can't see.

The second project has been a little different. I'm doing some spoken word recording - poems and stories from the books. I'd like to make some cd's presently - both collections like these and spoken book versions of the books. The new microphone I've recently bought has solved the sound quality problem, but is picking up a background hum from the computer. I'll have to figure out a way to deal with that before I can do commercial quality recording, but in the short term this is good practice, and good for proof of concept. I'm thinking of including copies with some of my review give-aways, too.

-GRG

Snow!

Denver is under a blizzard warning today, and I'm at home. Not much snow so far, but it only started here about an hour ago. I may add more pictures to this post as the day goes on.

12:15 local time - lots more snow.


Later in the afternoon... ... and 6 pm local time.

p.s. I've added a weather sticker at the bottom of the page.

More coldframe...

Titus has discovered the catmint in the coldframe. He really likes it... Yes, he's sitting in the pot. Fortunately catmint is tough!

The water bottles are there as a temperature regulator, btw.

Tomatoes in the coldframe - 2009

It's that time of year again. I spent parts of the last week starting tomato plants from seed. Almost all have sprouted now, and are in the coldframe, which I've had open yesterday and today thanks to a bit of warm weather. That will be changing tomorrow, but at least the seedlings are off to a good start!

Book stuff: I'm working on maps for Ash Spear. I think it needs a general map of central Britain and a more detailed map of Gwynedd, where a lot of the action takes place. Photoshop Elements is my friend, though I still find myself swearing at it occasionally. After that I have to create the back cover - description and layout. By the time I finish that I should be getting feedback from my proofreaders, and can start on final text revisions. Still on track for a mid-June Lulu release, which translates into Amazon etc. sometime in July.

Yes, it's been a while...

... and no, nothing's happened. I was busy last weekend with second-draft changes in The Ash Spear before printing some copies for my proofreaders. Also I've mailed out the three copies of my first poetry book as part of my on-going promotional give-aways on LibraryThing, which I suppose I should have mentioned here sooner. I've also entered some pre-release information about Ash Spear here.

More blogging soon, I promise.

-GRG

Arwyddion cyntaf y gwanwyn / First signs of spring

Dim eira am fwy na wythnos nawr, a mae'r tywedd wedi bod yn cynnes ac yn sych. Roedd Chwefror 'ma un o'r pedwar sychaf yn fwy na can mlenydd. Dw i'n meddwl bod yn mynyddoed wedi cael digon o eira, ond mae pethau dim yn edrych yn dda am y ffermwyr. Mae'n rhaid iddyn nhw cael gwlybanieth y gwanwyn er bod yn posib am y gwenith gaeaf cael ei dyfu.

DDoe rhoais i ddwr i'r coed a'r rhosynnau yn yr ardd. Mae ychydig o twlips yn dod i fynny, ond dim crocis eto. Mi fydd amser i ddechrau y tomatos yn fuan.

Dw i'n gweithio o hyd ar yr ail draft Y Pren Onn - mae e'n ddod yn dda.

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No snow for more than a week now, and the weather has been warm and dry. February was one of the four driest in more than one hundred years. I think the mountains have got enough snow, but things are not looking good for the farmers. They need spring moisture for the winter wheat to grow.

Yesterday I watered the trees and roses in the yard. There are a few tulips coming up, but no crocus yet. It'll be time to start the tomatoes soon.

I'm still working on the second draft of The Ash Spear - it's coming well.

-GRG