Talked to Robert Kempe…

Talked to Robert Kempe at Penguin -- both he (the web guy) and Betsy Dejesu (the publicist) have been very sharp and pleasant to work with so far. Yay, Penguin! And fast! We've agreed that he'll send me the GIFs that they used for their website, plus a few additional pages, to take the story further. Then I'll put those on my story page, along with the option of a text-only version, for those slow-of-connection. Their site doesn't offer that, and I can understand why, since it's a slick publisher website, but I'm still trying to make my home page as lynx-friendly as possible. :-) That should be going up early next week -- in the meantime, do click through and take a look at their site -- it's spiffy, and he's going to be counting over the next week or so to see how much extra traffic they're getting from my site. So stop by! Tell your friends! :-)

I'm going to be doing a lot of unabashed shilling for these books in the next month or so -- because if they do well in the first month of sales (esp. that critical first week), Penguin will be much more likely to decide they want to continue the series. And if they do decide to do that, it looks like Melcher may want me to be series editor. Which means some money that I could sorely use, now that next year's fellowship has been taken away from me (sob!). So brace yourselves. :-)

And in that vein, a note for those of you going to WisCon -- A Room of One's Own will have advance copies of the books, and you can buy them directly from them if you want to avoid Amazon and support a lovely independent bookstore -- plus, you can then bring them to my signing on Saturday, so I'm not sitting alone and desolate at my table... They're lovely little books, really -- I got copies this week, and they feel so nice in my hands -- a sort of textured, thick paper feel. Almost the antithesis of the glossy waterproof books, actually. I don't think it matters to Penguin whether you buy them at the bookstore or through Amazon -- just so long as they get bought. :-) Gifts for yourself! For your sweeties! For your friends! For your enemies! (Because even enemies need to get off once in a while...)

Okay, clearly I'm spending too much time in publicity-head this morning. But actually, it's sort of fun. :-)