Monday

News For Today

Three people so far have taken advantage of the yearly newsletter buy-in option I posted about yesterday, which is nice... since all three used the $25 option, that definitely makes it worth the time I took to set it up. I've also had an equal number of new Good Will sponsors at the $1 level in the past 24 hours or so, people I assume who liked what they saw of the newsletter and want to keep receiving it. This tells me that I'm pretty much on the money (literally) as to the value of the newsletter as a perk.

The Gift of the Bad Guy/LitSnacks news - as people who read the newsletter know, I've got a lot of novella-sized projects percolating (including the GOTBG follow-up, Working Class Villain, and I am fixing to start bringing those to completion here. In order to have more time to do that and to free myself to flog GOTBG without worrying about being swamped, I've switched fulfillment methods from email to download for standard editions and I'm announcing the close of Author Appreciation Editions, effective May 22nd. May 21st will be the last day you can order one for The Gift of the Bad Guy.

I'm undecided as to whether I'll offer them on future offerings. It's an interesting experiment. It's made me a good bit of money, but I'm not sure it's worth the ongoing labor it adds versus writing a book, putting it to bed, and letting money come in on its own. If I do carry the idea forward it will be a time-limited offer.

Anyway, I've got the fulfillment switched over and to celebrate the fact that I no longer have to fulfill each order by hand I've temporarily slashed the lowest price to a mere 49 cents. That's like 500 words for a penny.

At the moment there is a small glitch in the site... when you buy the standard edition it will begin your download but the website will display the 404 error. This doesn't affect delivery of the files. It's just due to an unforeseen interaction with the site software. I have a fix but it involves using a separate subdomain and I have to wait for the DNS to propagate. When it does I'll fix that error and start touting GOTBG more widely; for now, I'm only going to mention it on my blog.

Anyway, link.

Personal Status

Waking up slowly today, but doing good.

Dreams From Last Night

Weird and strongly influenced by Doctor Who... it involved a fearmongering spacesuit vendor.

Plans For Today

Already accomplished some of them. The remainder? Write Tales of MU and post a Fantasy In Miniature.

Magic Under Construction: TOMU 2-11

Started: 4/29/2011
Status: In Progress.
Last Updated: 5:30
Word Count: ~2900
Hours writing: 2

( Spoilers. )

Can we go back to talking about last week's news again?

Even though I live in a country that has lowered being famous for being famous to an art form, I get a weird kick out of seeing headlines referring to Kate and William as a celebrity couple as she is very specifically a celebrity only in that she's famous for who she's married to.

Re: second episode of Doctor Who.

I feel like the two part season opener is the results of unearthed footage of parts 1 and 3 of a 4 part story. Part 1 was aired in its entirety and it was pretty solid. Then they took part 3, some extant promotional footage of parts 2 and 4 like the bits from "previously" and "next times" clips, and edited it together to try to recreate the rest of the story.

Part 1 was solid. Part 2 was just... slapdash.

Someone commenting on a friend's post said they believed this was setting up larger arcs and we may yet look back on it as the second part of a great television novel.

Well, I remain hopeful. There has yet to be anything like a perfect season of the revived series and there are always bad episodes. So, yes, we may look back on this as the second episode of a great series and the second part of a great storyline.

But it'll still be a slapdash episode. No amount of continuing or expanding in future episodes is going to change the fact that we've been given half a story presented to us as a whole, with the holes spackled over badly.
( Dr. Song's standard injunction applies. )

There are some episodes I love so much that I immediately watch them again. After watching this one, I went back and re-watched "The Impossible Astronaut". And parts of the previous season. So much promise was squandered that I had to hop into my own personal TARDIS and go back in time.

Edit to add: Strangely, though, I still enjoyed it. Bad Doctor Who is still Doctor Who. I think the unevenness of the series is part of its charm at this point, at least for me.