General Round Up…
Life continues apace. In theory I get sales numbers for Ninja Frogs soon-preliminary call from agent indicates that it’s goin’ good, but I’d kinda like to see actual numbers of copies, since going good could cover a range anywhere between “not sucking” and “talk to your accountant about offshore tax havens.”* This is the woeful fact of many publishers-that book came out over a year ago, and I still don’t know sales figures. It definitely earned out fairly early on, but they only now are sending out statements and (hopefully) a check. Whenever clerks at the bookstore go “Wow! This one’s selling really well!” I go “Yay! Thank you-I have no idea, they don’t TELL me!”
Some publishers are better. Some are worse. Given how many books are in the series, I foresee a point ‘long about 2013 where I am getting a statement every month or so with numbers on it, at which point my brain will explode and I will no longer remember what exactly I do for a living and will probably start hawking MY TOTEM IS A SLIME MOLD bumper stickers on the street corner.
Speaking of which, I have a post about my experience with the delightful Dog Vomit Slime Mold over at Beautiful Wildlife Garden. (Howzat for a segue?)
The LA Times had a nice review of kid’s graphic novels, including a couple of paragraphs for Batbreath. Yay!
Mr. Printy II just made a horrifying series of noises and spat black ink, prompting me to finally start calling every retailer in the area to see if they had replacements, which they don’t, so I had to order on-line, from Amazon, the only place that seemed to have the damn things in stock. (Sure, it was a hundred bucks less at Staples…but they’ve been out of stock for MONTHS, so what good does that do me?) This is very sad, but I got quite literally thousands of prints off Mr. Printy II, I ran it until it nearly caught fire at times, and given how much abuse I subject that sucker to, I cannot claim anything but superb workmanship on the part of Epson. I am happy to get exactly the same thing again.
(Of course, now that I’ve ordered it, the current Mr. Printy has settled down and is printing beautifully, flawlessly, without a qualm. Watch Mr. Printy III sit in a box for a month because this one suddenly realized that it was about to go the Great Ink Cartridge In The Sky…)
And my garden is awesome, but you knew that already.
*Okay, there’s actually no chance the range includes that.
Originally published at Tea with the Squash God. You can comment here or there.