July Fourth just past and only now getting to blog a bit more personally. Progress on every side–just almost no free time. Kristen Henderson’s eLit Awards gold medalist book of poems, Drum Machine, is now available in paperback as well as eBook forms. Just that for now, if you’d like a copy, you would have to request it by email through the ALVA site contact page. However, come Monday, Alyssa will list it with the other books that can be ordered on ALVA’s buy now page.
Carl Waldman’s enchanting mystery Streetscape: A Jake Soho Mystery will be released July 15 as an eBook with ALVA and if all goes as planned, Lorna Tychostup’s Tales from the Revolution.
And as for me, I’m looking toward a bit of a lull with only Charles Van Heck’s marvelously human and extensively researched historical novel, Mr. Lincoln’s Elephant Boy still in the contract completion process while the other several writers with whom I am working being either on vacation or back at the drawing boards.
Meantime the whir of a rage continues both online and in reality. Authors struggle to determine should they ‘sell’ free and starve as they in this way serve to somewhat glut the market. And then, to only further complicate the glut many are self publishing their works minus and Digital Rights Management (DRM). This in turn permits readers to pass their copyright protected books along on a ‘free-free’ basis as I call it. The free-frees occur under the radar as readers fail to recall that somewhere some writer labored long and hard to get them the book in the first place and that hopefully that writer still holds the copyright. And if even if that copyright has been signed over to a publisher, that publisher then holds it. However, regardless, every reader is assured, someone does–usually not the reader.
As for the summer, around us all along the East Coast and Southwest, the temperatures soar, fires rage, and everyone figures as best he or she can, a way to mitigate its effects–running to the mountains (where it is also hot), baking at the beach, hiding in the cellar, remaining locked in the A/C, or like too many, just toughing it through.
At Astor Home for Children where I work, summer school reopens next week for six weeks with typically shortened days. We finish at 2:00 instead of 3:00 as kids chomp at the bit looking toward a swim in the pool and in down times observe the progress on the completion of the new sleeping units being built to guarantee each child resident a room of his or her own. As such there will be no longer a necessity for any of the already severely emotionally challenged child residents to share space and keep personal belongings separate while also wading through the ups and downs of a roommates’ behaviors and moods.
The major part of the Astor new units project appeared to have been done by summer break. The roof was on and they were working on the interior and finishing a glassed-in sunroom of some kind. I believe the plan is for Astor Services for Children and Families to have its Rhinebeck, NY, residential placement for children’s new units ready for habitation come September. Amazing the space and variety the relatively small campus offers in its various buildings for use by staff and children.
Meantime, my two weeks summer break draws to a close, its highlights being the pleasure of my twelve year old and eight year old grandsons spending time with me when possible and the kick of having passed the above publishing milestones. And tomorrow I shall head to Cherry Valley, NY, in a one day run for the opening of colorist Ed McDaniel’s art show at Cherry Branch Gallery and the chance to spend some time with my pal Kristen Henderson and maybe chat a bit with Carl Waldman–if he makes it back in time.
In the frying pan, a couple of projects: some research into noirs–which I would love some help with–including just possibly the chance to interview someone on the topic–maybe Carl Waldman– and what started out as a request for an interview but has ended up in quickly becoming a hefty research assignment in which I struggle to determine who is Charley Pymell?
Meanwhile I continue with my lopsided life as it flops one way and the other among my publisher, speech language pathologist, writer, family member, and friend identities. Its parts dominate the scene for lengths of anywhere from an hour to a several weeks as I constantly struggle to move back the walls of the day only to find that anything more or other than 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. just won’t work.
Roberta in Po-Town
robertamroy 