Please spread the word: Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter now live

Originally posted by time_shark at Please spread the word: Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter now live

I am very pleased, thrilled, chuffed (and perhaps even a little nervous) to announce that Anita and I have launched a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of raising the funds to assemble and publish a fourth volume of Clockwork Phoenix. It has a convenient Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/CP4antho

We very proud of the first three anthologies and we want to read for a fourth; but it's absolutely clear — even as successful as those first three books were, with the great reviews and award nominations our authors received — in this economic environment, if we want to continue making these books at the standard we want to hold them to, we have to crowdsource the funding and publish the next one ourselves.

If the project is a go, we'll open to submissions in September and aim for a June 2013 release.

I could go on about all the rewards we came up with and what we hope to accomplish, but it's probably much simpler if you just click the link (here! here!) and have a look at the Kickstarter page, where it's all spelled out.

Please help us spread the word! (And please feel free to repost this entry if you like.)

I am still in bullet-point mode.

* The main thing is that I have injured my back, and so things from me have been and will be erratic until I feel at least a little better. Short version of long story: I have a torn L5/S1 disc. I've had it since my late teens (thank you wilderness survival camp). I go for months sometimes without it bothering me much at all, but when it flares up, holy shit, y0. Generally I lie down and breathe through the pain (which is worse when horizontal because my back muscles are relaxing or something, but barrelling through the worst of it gets it over with) and it's fine within a few hours. On Sunday, it was, I'm pretty sure, the worst it's ever been; thank goodness for partners who are capable of leaving the room when I ask them to even though I am making horrible cries of anguish between rapid bursts of words. (When I am in agonizing pain, I need to not be expending energy reassuring other people.) The pain got less acute, but two days later, I still have a lot of dull-but-nasty pain. This is exhausting. I saw the doctor yesterday; he said lots of ibuprofen (check) and a heating pad (I don't know where ours is) and gave me a referral to the spine center. Who allegedly take e-mail requests for appointments, but in reality they just reply with "call us", so ugh whatever, I will have to do that.

* Judah has an Etsy store! Right now he's stocking clue-by-fours, balisong screwdrivers, and tablet stands (iPad, Kindle, Nook, etc.). There will be more. I have actually had some ideas that we're working on. Fun! But yes, go order stuff. Yesterday was Judah's birthday! Sales would be a great gift!

* Also I sold another poem - "Mushroom Barley Soup: An Invocation", to Stone Telling. It's about my grandma. And stuff.

* We got a lot done around the house this weekend. Which is why my back is augh right now. But! We excavated the laundry room and packed up all of the stuff that the previous tenant and/or landlord left there and stashed it in the garage, and reorganized it to suit our purposes. Same thing with the storage room, although most of the stuff in there was ours, haphazardly dumped in there during the move because it was out of the way. It is now a perfectly clean, organized, and functional media room. The downstairs living room is really starting to shape up, too. We settled on colors for the dining room (purple above the chair rail, dark grey below), half-bathroom (the same green as the living room), and craft room (a surprising bright spring green), and I've talked Judah into a darker shade of purple for my bedroom. Clearing the laundry room area also meant that we could bring three bookshelves down from Judah's room and set them up in the space that was no longer a random dumping ground, so that looks snazzy and now Judah has a lot more space in his room. Unfortunately, the first of those shelves was the last straw for my back. So. I am haunted by the knowledge that there are books out of order in the basement, but I can't go reshelving right now.

* Speaking of which, I have a recommendation, and that recommendation is Cozi. This makes running the household much easier. The thing that makes it a killer app for us is the to-do lists; you can have separate lists for separate people and separate needs (Judah and I each have work and home lists). They sync to other devices, so if Judah's at Home Depot and needs to know what color paint I wanted, it's right there. I need to sync our calendars to it, too. But everyone in the house likes to check stuff off a list, and Adam and Elayna both need things broken down into manageable chunks and visible. I'm a big fan of lists, of saying okay, we have half an hour before we have to do X - what can we get done off the list? Everyone is happier when I am checking stuff off a list with a determined nod, I tell you what.

* Iiiiii have a sneak preview of the Pi-Con schedule. I am quite happy with it. Enfield, CT (across the street from Springfield, MA), August 17-19, I am Guest of Awesome, you should come.

* And right now I should go eat lunch and then get to my writing. This has been a long morning of catching up on e-mail and associated other stuff that I was too insensible with pain to deal with for the past few days. (Still in pain, but using complete sentences now.)