Today I am a Novelist.

[wednes]

My books arrived today, via the good people at UPS. They sent me 29 copies, which takes care of all the preorders placed before April 15. Any orders placed after that are not going to be signed by me unless it is sent to me by the purchaser. I'm still baffled that anyone wants a signed copy, but I did sign them all and stuff them into shiny red envelopes for sending. Hopefully I'll get a ride to the post office in the next day or so. Any volunteers?

The books themselves look really good. My photo on the back cover is small and looks cute. The bio on the back is good as well, I'd forgotten. And some of you are in the acknowlegements, which I imagine will be a pleasant surprise for you's. The book paper has a nice weight to it and the binding is nice. I'm very pleased with the work Lightening Source did for us. You know what though? I signed all the books on the inside cover. Only then did my buddy Steve mention that I should have signed them on the cover page. So sorry about that everyone, but what's done is done!

The man we call madush69 mentioned the novel on the radio today. I didn't get to hear it because if you can believe this, we don't have a radio anywhere in our apartment. I literally would have had to sit in someone's car in order to hear it, which I didn't. So hopefully Dan is saving me a copy of my mention. Then I can podcast it at my seldom-used podcast site.

I decided to send my own actual Mom a copy of my novel. I went back and forth about this for a long while and finally opted to go ahead and do it. I even put my return address on the envelope, not that she'd use it for anything. I imagine the book will come back to me unopened, but you never know. H thinks I'm sending it to show my Mom that I'm "successful" despite her. I don't feel particularly successful, more lucky. I dunno, I guess this whole getting published thing is not as validating as I thought it would be. I just feel pressure to sell a lot of copies so people will think my books is good. Which is odd, because plenty of people have already told me the book is good. Anyway, I wouldn't mind hearing my own actual Mom's opinion of it, but once I did hear it, it would probably just make me mad.

One week from today is my appearance on Paranormal Women League's Blog Talk Radio. I will, of course, be talking about the book. This show is hosted by the legendary kissdbyagnome.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

And at what frequency will this be broadcast?

[madush69.livejournal.com]

maybe every other newscast. Fairly fequently, y'know, but not every half hour.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should rephrase this. What will the frequency be of the radio waves carrying the audio signal? So that I might adjust the L-C circuit in my reciever to resonate with said carrier wave, so that it might extract said signal, and convert it to sound waves so that I might be able to hear it.

[madush69.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's 1600 kHz.

If you've ever heard of WAAM, 1600 AM, that's where I work.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Nevermind--I followed your profile to your website, which specifies 1,600 kilohertz. I'm set.

[madush69.livejournal.com]

I like your dish icon. I should try to take a cool nighttime shot of one of the dishes behind WAAM.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

That's U of M's 85-foot radio telescope at Peach Mountain, out past Dexter. That's Comet Hale-Bopp at the top right, and the Pleiades star cluster at the top left.

Here's a larger version of the picture, taken in April of 1997:

http://members.aol.com/petealway/Hale-Bopp-dish-small.jpg

(I drive by WAAM every couple of months on the way to the Red Cross to give blood.)

[madush69.livejournal.com]

That's really a neat shot. Did you do any type of digital manipulation to it?

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Only things like color balance and maybe reduction of vignetting on the scan. The original was done with 35 mm film and printed on old-fasioned photographic paper. The comet, the star cluster, and the moon were all there, though the crescent moon is grossly overexposed and just looks like a bright blob.

I was a fanatical astrophotographer back in the early 198o's. Here's my astrophoto page with some examples: http://members.aol.com/petealway/Astrophotos.htm