I’m working on Hellburner, and Heavy Time is in process. I did the covers with Jane’s able help.
Get the picture: I’m looking like the risen dead, in my bathrobe, chasing this stupid heron who is shopping in the warm end of the pond—I go flying out the door, chase the persistent bird off (fortunately we have a 6′ circular floating shield which we hope has protected the koi from predation: it defeated the raccoon; we hope it did the heron.)
Well, but back to the picture. I’m walking over rough ice in my muffies, getting soaked, climbing up the rock steps to the pond edge with a cannister of coyote urine while trying to keep my robe out of the mud, and here comes my neighbor pulling into his back drive (a chain link fence separates us) and wanting to hold converse. I am exhausted from the crunch with CC, freezing, my feet are wet, my robe-tail is in the mud, and I have a cannister of coyote urine in hand which I am trying not to shake into the fish pond…
There are moments that I just feel somewhat stressed….
😆
I wonder what your neighbor would think of the instillation of a plastic alligator head? That is what most websites recommend.
Oh, I love it. During the summer I can install a ‘scarecrow’, a whirligig sprinkler that cuts on to startle the offender—but our hoses are shut down for the winter. Alligator head. Oddly enough I think Toscano has one.
Wouldn’t a caliban head be more appropriate? 🙂
Is there an illustration of a caliban that you favor, or a sketch you have?
I’m sculpting some these days.
Mmm. I’ll think about it. A living iguana is close, but with more the look of a monitor, and eyes the size of pie-plates. Wouldn’t that thrill my neighbor?
I bought a Kindle using the click through on your store a couple days ago. Hopefully you’ll get the credit. I have no idea how they track stuff like that and tried to be extremely deliberate in my checkout process. I wish they indicated somewhere in the checkout process that the associates tag thing was still active.
Ah, thank you! And I hope it works really, really well for you. It’s supposed to be a really good reader.
Google LOST in French court! Ha! 🙂 😀 😆
Am I the only one a little sad about that? I know Google was over-reaching, and stepping on toes, and authors rights. But no other company seems disposed to take on the project of digitizing all the world’s books. A new library of Alexandria, being held up in dozens of different courts, with laws that have been outdated for years. You could argue that Google shouldn’t be the one doing it. But I hope that somebody does it. If just for out of print books.
Actually there is another project, that concentrates on public domain books. Project Gutenberg…of that one I approve, and I have a link to it over on the left sidebar. Not all their books are quite legal: Cliff Simak, for instance, hasn’t been dead 20 years, let alone the 50 that throws a book into public domain…but his estate hasn’t been active, hasn’t continued to publish, so I think Cliff would want his books out there being read, rather than let lie fallow for 50 years.
Try it. You’ll find rich pickings for your shiny-new reader softwares. I found one of my most cherished early reads: Jeffrey Farnol—Black Bartemly’s Treasure. Pirates of the more romantic sort. Arrrh!
Thanks for noting Project Gutenberg! I knew Michael Hart quite well when I lived in Urbana-Champaign during the Dawn of the Web. He’s one wonderful character, and like the Irish monks conserving Classical texts, he was long a lone torch in the e-book public-domain spaces. He ran a text-based collaborative volunteer info project long before Wikipedia.
I’m a little sad too, but mostly because the French were not doing it because of some moral high ground. They are actually trying to copy Google’s methods themselves and do so behind a veil of “government”. They just got a whiff of money and are hanging on others coattails.
A new, digital Library of Alexandria is a great idea, and I have no problem with Google doing it. But it must be restricted to PUBLIC-DOMAIN books, not OUT-OF-PRINT books, unless the authors/copyright holders specifically opt IN. Google overstepped so far on this, and all they’re going to end up doing is causing an over-reaction in the call to make copyright last longer and longer, I’m afraid, when it is already on the books for more than long enough.
Do also check out FeedBooks.
http://www.feedbooks.com/
They have a lot of public domain texts, lots of stuff that’s ah, “self-published,” and a lot of Creative Commons released work; lots of SF writers in that last groups.
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller have their own publishing house and site at http://www.srmpublisher.com . Their e-books are available from Webscriptions at http://www.webscription.net part of Baen. Would they do a cross-link?
…bathrobe, fuzzy slippers, can of coyote urine…
Now we know, friends; in addition to writing, plumbing and contracting, CJ is also…
…The Sixth Python!
😆
I have always thrilled to the sight of great blue herons, and never considered you might want to scare them away. Searching for “heron repellent” I found the scarecrow above, but that might not work if you’re in freezing temperatures.
You can try a heron decoy (http://www.gemplers.com/product/167714/Great-Blue-Heron-Decoy). I love the disclaimer: Decoy should not be used during the early spring mating period.(!!) 🙂
I love them. But not near my koi, each of whom is named: the heron and I eyed each other, and he tried landing a little way away—a heron trying to perch on a phone line is silly looking—but I persisted with dirty looks and a little advance, and he left. They’re really very shy birds. I think I will get a decorative crane or heron for pondside. Sweetbo’s suggestion of an alligator just amuses the daylights out of me, but that’ll just get into the skimmer when we finally do turn the pump back on…so a Scarecrow or heron decoy—:lol: I NEVER would have figured the bit about mating season—thanks for that very good heads-up!
The business park through the fence from where I worked in the late 80s had an artificial stream (with mosquitofish) running into a large pond with koi. They eventually had to put wire netting across the pond: egrets found it. (I figured that when they started showing up, it was a sign of successful landscaping.)
The larger herons and egrets will also eat mice.