She had some 200 spammers and asked help clearing the pile. I don’t know what piece of nastiness was contained in that lot, but when I tried to clean up her list of members to her site, a category appeared that doesn’t exist on my page, and when I tried to clear that…some of her actual members that I know began vanishing.
We do have backup and have contacted Lynn to see if we can recover the list.
In the meantime, please be advised it’s my fault, and be patient. We’ll try to get everybody back.
It appears that I am able to log in, but, caveat! Jane has asked that we not put in any comments until the problem is solved, and she will let us know when it’s solved.
All I did was log in, and everything looked to be normal, at least for my account.
I do notice that selected avatars have gone to the default ones on older posts; something’s gone weird with the gravatars.
The adventures of naughty kitty spawn make me snicker. Have either of the boys ever eaten themselves sick on unauthorized treats?
Oh, God, ask Jane (when the blog works again) about the koi food.
Oh yeah… the Library Cat where I used to work developed an unnatural fondness for the big (pea-sized) food pellets we kept for the giant cichlid who lived in the back workroom. Whenever we fed Oscar the Grouch, we also had to put a couple of pellets down for Junior-Boy, or he would try to go fishing for any Oscar didn’t snap up immediately!
Uh-oh. My usual gravatar doesn’t show up there. — I can’t log in to Jane’s blog. It won’t recognize my username or either email address I’ve used there, and it rejected my saved username and password. — I expect I may have to re-register, which will be fine.
Two items there: One, I believe I registered with my BlueCatShip (at) shiny fiction (dot) com email address, rather than my other email with Yahoo. Two, some months back, I changed my password at Jane’s (and also CJ’s) blogs.
Third item, I recently took down my blog after lack of activity and response and increased spammer attempts. However, that shouldn’t affect my presence at either of your blogs.
Just in case any of those clues has any bearing on debugging what happened.
One remains gladly at both blogs.
While you’re unscrewing things, so to speak, how about adding the preview module to Jane’s page–unless she dislikes it, of course.
CJ, I’ve been reviewing – and trying to fill up – my e-library of your books in the sci-fi genre. Some titles have eluded me, however. Thus, my e-library is incomplete.
For example, I recall reading The Faded Sun Trilogy, borrowed in paperback from the library several years ago. That convinced me I wanted to own it. The omnibus, however, appears never to have been published in e-format. The same seems to be true for Forty Thousand in Gehenna, another book I borrowed from the library and want to own in e-form.
Am I correct that those titles haven’t yet been published as ebooks?
(There’s no room in this wee place for print books and a bad wrist painfully protests holding them.)
I’m a longtime admirer of CJ’s fiction and reader of the blogs since the the early 2000s. I registered a long time ago, but this is my first post.
Like Tidewater I now have problems holding books, in my case because of arthritis, and would very much like to have CJ’s books, especially The Foreigner series, as ebooks. But I live in England and can only look in envy at amazon.com.
Naomi, I don’t know about format issues and what your reader is like, but it would seem logical that there would be some way for a friend to buy a Kindle file in the States and send it to a Kindle in England. I’m not ‘up’ on the procedures with Kindles, but does anyone know how it would or would not work?
CJ, I believe it’s purely a rights problem, the publishing rights being sold separately for the US and the UK. From Tidewaters’ link, below:
If the giver and the recipient do not live in the same country, the book may not be available to the recipient due to copyright restrictions. In these cases the recipient will be given the option to request an exchange for gift credit on their Amazon.com account during the redemption process, or they may contact Customer Service for assistance in exchanging the book.
While one might be able to establish a US identity using a proxy server, it unfortunately would remain a violation of the UK licensee’s copyright, as I understand it. IANAL.
It may be that Kindles have location codes, like DVD regions. I do not know.
Though amazon.co.uk basically only has the Fortress books in Kindle form, they do have most of the Foreigner series as downloadable audiobooks – which are arthritis-proof! People in the US can generally buy stuff from amazon.co.uk if it is for delivery to an address in the UK (or indeed in most of the rest of the world) – we in Australia can buy from either amazon.com or amazon.co.uk with only limited delivery problems, though I had to choose just one for my Kindle id.
Here’s Amazon.com on how to Give and Receive Kindle Content as Gifts. I hope Naomi has a friend in the USA who can help her out.
I use a Kindle, so there would be no problem with the format, but no friends in America I’m afraid. Is there any chance that the titles will ever be published on amazon.co.uk? I imagine Closed Circle is not possible. I’m sure that there are many others in the UK beside me waiting to buy them.
Would the Amazon USA store allow an American customer to buy a book as a gift for an English customer, if the book is country-restricted?
Considering point-of-sale is the American customer, it should be allowed; but the two Amazon sites are quite separate entities as far as accounts and registrations and such go, and I rather think it wouldn’t be easy to get such a book transferred to a UK-based account.
The Foreigner series isn’t complete as ebooks yet, though I read somewhere that the publisher intends to bring out the last four in 2014. Books 3, 4, 5 and 6 aren’t available yet. The rest all cost 5 euro 92 each on Kobo, except the new hardcover Protector (no.14) which is 16 euro 08; but probably they are only visible to Americans and the non-English ‘rest of the world’. Kobo books are Epub format, and would have to be converted to Mobi for reading on a Kindle, but Calibre can do that. I have no idea how you’d then get them onto your Kindle.
— Checking the options on Kobo now … —
I thought I’d seen a button for buying a book as a gift, but that has disappeared – now they only have digital gift certificates, and I don’t get the option of buying a book for the second time if I already own it.
So that option is out, and I can’t help you.
Sorry.
Tidewater and Naomi, and others outside the USA —
(As a fellow fan in the USA, I’m adding this.)
You have full access to CJ’s, Jane’s, and Lynn’s ebooks on Closed-Circle.net , and these are available in EPUB and Kindle formats and PDF. (EPUB can be used with Apple’s iPad and other iOS devices in iBooks. EPUB can also be used in many other ereader application programs.)
US customers have access, via Amazon, to most, not all, of the Foreigner series, now to the Chanur series, and a few others of CJ’s Alliance-Union books, the Fortress series. Notable exceptions still not out include the Faded Sun books and many of her Alliance-Union books, and IIRC, the Morgaine / Gates book(s), and the Dreaming Tree series. — US customers would dearly love for *all* CJ’s books to be available either from Closed-Circle.net or sources such as Amazon. Heck, we’re not picky. SmashWords, Lulu, wherever! 😀
Yes, UK and EU, AU/NZ, and other international customers lack many of those, because of international rights issues. That is, from the fans’ (paying customers’) perspective and probably from CJ’s (author who’d like to get paid) perspective, really not ideal. We fans would be more thna happy to buy CJ’s (and Jane’s and Lynn’s) books (and many other SF&F authors’ books) and of cours, CJ and co. and other authors would love to get royalties from the sales of their books.
If, somehow, we could only speed up the production of quality-produced ebooks, in a manner that would benefit the authors and publishing houses (and the buying public, fans, readers). — And if only that could be done so that international rights were not made an obstacle to international buyers or to US citizens who live overseas. The whole “region coding” and international rights issue is, these days, a needless obstacle that, in my opinion, only limits and prevents sales to people who would happily buy and read them (or listen or watch). It works both ways, for US customers who’d like to read (listen to, watch) “foreign” content.
And…given that readers (fans, buyers) want to buy and read the books, authors want their books to be read and want to be paid for their work, and publishers are in the business to sell books…it is a source of dismay why we all can’t find some way to work it out so that the books are available as ebooks world-wide, through whatever hoops one must jump through to get to that happy point.
I suppose my post is mainly to say, don’t despair, Tidewater, Naomi, and other international readers. There must be a way, and your fellow fans in the US are right here with you. We want to see the entire bibliography / library available too.
(I’d love to see Faded Sun, Merchanter’s Luck, Finity’s End, and many others available, for instance. It was a real thrill to find Chanur released after Christmas.)
Well, the first three Chanur books are available, the standalone first book and parts 1 and 2 of the trilogy – I do hope the trilogy’s conclusion will follow soon.
I find it completely incomprehensible that any publisher could divide the story that way for the paper omnibus editions, when the whole trilogy is one very fast-paced and tight story arc. It’s as if they heard there was a Chanur trilogy in these five books, and just assumed books 1, 2 and 3 were it. Either that, or it was just a matter of packaging for the omnibus size books – in which case it might almost have been better to package books 1 and 5 separately (or even together, though that’s not optimal), as long as they kept the three-book story arc together, in my view. And now they’re repeating that grouping in the timing of the ebook releases, where packaging doesn’t play any part at all!
I did buy all of them, to encourage the publisher to prep the rest, but I’m putting off the reread till I’ve got the finale too (as well as some more free time 😉 ).