After learning that fixing the typo in Chapter 20 would cost me an extra $75–on the grounds that this would mean making a new master file for Third Place’s printing system, and that new master file would mean another round of plugging it into the system, which means another setup fee–Dara and I have elected to NOT fix the typo yet. We will fix it when there’s enough more to do to the print editions to justify changing the master files. Just taking out one character, not really so much of a justification, I fear. When we get closer to releasing Bone Walker, maybe I’ll stick a preview chapter in there or something–enough new content to justify the new setup fee, anyway!
For now, though, I WILL fix the typo in the digital versions, since that’s easy and free, and I will distribute the fixed copies to all the sales channels. Anybody who already has a copy can get a corrected version on request, too!
AND, I have requested a new print run of 25 copies from Third Place. So I should have new copies of the book back in stock soon! If anybody out there wants one, the time to express your interest is NOW!
Continuing my quest this year to get to see as many Quebecois bands perform as possible, this week I finally had the pleasure of seeing De Temps Antan perform for the first time! I’ve gushed about these boys in blog and journal posts before, of course–but as always, getting to see a group in live performance is another order of magnitude above experiencing their recorded music, or online videos, or what have you.
I was particularly grateful for this chance to see them since the show was, as far as I know, kind of wedged in at the last minute. They’d been scheduled to do a mid-day performance in Kent, which I was sadly unable to make due to it being right smack in the middle of my workday. But booking fortune was kind and produced a one-set show at the Royal Room, a place I’d never been to, on Rainier Ave South. Dara and I had a bit of an adventure getting down there as miscommunication on my part of the proper address–and Google not being terribly helpful with the directions–caused us to overshoot and go to East Rainier Avenue South, instead.
Pro-tip for those of you who aren’t local: NOT THE SAME STREET.
But! All was well after all because we scooted in just under the wire. When we arrived, the boys of the band were still sound-checking, so we wound up not missing anything at all!
De Temps Antan only have two albums at this point, so it wasn’t terribly surprising that their single set was slanted in favor of stuff that appears on their second album, Les Habits de Papiers. A good many of the songs they performed were tune sets as well, showcasing André Brunet on the fiddle as well as Éric Beaudry’s prowess on guitar and bouzouki, with Pierre-Luc Dupuis chiming in on accordion or harmonica. Notable among the instrumentals was M. Brunet’s breaking out of a new waltz, which was lovely. I do fangirl me some Olivier Demers-brand violin, to be sure, but M. Brunet? Also a very respectable fiddler. Since De Temps are a trio and comparatively sparse on the instrumentation, it falls to each member of the group to pull as much vigor as possible out of his instrument. The result is a crackling energy that makes it very, very easy to forget that they do not, in fact, have more than three guys on the stage!
When it comes to instrumental prowess, though, with these boys I have to throw my affections over to M. Beaudry, and I’m not saying that just because I love me some bouzouki. Now that I’ve seen him do it live, I have all the more respect for what this man can do with a guitar and a zouk. I was particularly struck by his finger work on the guitar, swift, adroit runs that called his guitar’s deep ringing voice out and made it sing. And as for his bouzouki, wow. I’ve swooned before for what he whips out on the zouk in this video. Seeing him doing it live, and hearing that zouk roar in a way I have to date only heard out of my belovedest Dara and her Kohaku (heart), was amazing. Especially given his flying podorythmic feet, which he unleashes along with his hands on the instruments AND his singing. (I have just enough experience trying to sing and play at the same time on a zouk or a guitar, without even trying to throw my feet into the mix, that I admire the hell out of anybody who can pull that off!)
Vocally, all three members of the group are also very strong. M. Dupuis is the dominant vocalist, with a rich, expressive voice that he uses to great effect. I’ve read up some on his stint in La Bottine Souriante, and have seen some references to him having taken over briefly as La Bottine’s lead singer because of his style being a bit of a callback to the redoubtable Yves Lambert. I can buy that. M. Dupuis’s voice hits me in the same way M. Lambert’s always did, full and round. Maybe not as powerful, but that’s okay! I’ve always liked to say that M. Lambert’s voice hit me like 900-calorie cheesecake. M. Dupuis is maybe more like 600 calorie cheesecake. But the long and short of it is, cheesecake is still tasty, and Pierre-Luc can tear his way through a song.
M. Brunet is also a fine singer, though he doesn’t take over lead vocals as much as the other two. He mostly got to shine vocally on “Dominic à Marcel”, a ditty with something of a Southern twang to it–by which I mean, US Southern. The boys in fact referenced Mississippi, introducing this one! It’s a style that works when you throw it together with Quebecois music, to be sure.
Here, though, I also have to throw my affections over to M. Beaudry. He’s not as forthrightly expressive in his vocals as his bandmate, but he’s still got some strength and resonance to his voice, and I love, love, LOVE hearing him whip out “Grand Amuseur de Filles” or “Jeune et Jolie”.
I noted with pleasure that the boys presented us with not one but two new songs, including one M. Dupuis noted would be included on their next album (and yes, mes amis d’Internets, I perked up considerably at the magic words “next album”). One of these was the aforementioned waltz, but the other one was this, captured by Dara on video!
And much to my massive, massive delight, they closed with a one-two-three punch of my three favorite songs of theirs–“Grand Amuseur de Filles”, “La turlutte du Rotoculteur”, and then right into “Pétipétan”. The first delighted me immensely when André and Éric leapt up out of their chairs and had a bit of a standing stomp-off, grinning at each other. The second was great when all of us in the room started singing along on the turluttes. And the last, whee! This being one of the few De Temps songs I can actually do a bit of response on, I happily jumped in on that too!
We did get one encore, which was also great fun. Afterwards, Dara and I had the brief but happy pleasure of chatting a bit with M. Brunet, since we were able to tell him that HEY! We’d just seen him perform with Bernard Simard et Compagnie in Joliette! And with the help of Dejah and Devon Leger, I also chatted very briefly with M. Beaudry, expressing how Dejah was helping me with my French, how I was learning some of the differences between Quebec and Acadian French (h/t to brightbeak!), and how we’d been trying to transcribe the lyrics to “Grand Amuseur de Filles”. I’m pretty sure my nervous fangirl babbling got a bit ahead of M. Beaudry’s English–he leaned over at me a couple of times with this “quoi?” look on his face, and Devon Leger helpfully translated for me (many thanks to Devon for that)!
It was only yesterday though that I thought to check the new and updated De Temps Antan website, where I discovered that why yes, they had in fact finally gotten around to posting a lyrics sheet for the second album–including the song in question. Which, I suspect, contributed to M. Beaudry being confused at me. *^_^*;;
But! All in all, a great time, even given that I was a bit worn out from dental surgery recovery and a cold, a sub-optimal state to be in when you’re trying to watch a band whose music makes you want to get up and dance. (I settled instead for trying to practice a bit of my own podorythmie between tables). I really hope I get to see these boys perform again, and I very much look forward to their next album!
Okay so yeah, second printing for Faerie Blood! Dara and I want to make this happen!
But as I’ve posted before, before this run goes out, I want to fix the typo in Chapter 20 reported to me by eagle-eyed Kickstarter backer Scott. Here’s the part that stymies Dara and me, though: does fixing a typo, a fix that is literally just removing a single character from a word, justify updating the printing information listed at the beginning of the book, on the copyright page?
Right now that information looks like this:
Second edition 2012
First printing, this edition, 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Third Place Press
Lake Forest Park, Seattle
And what we don’t know is whether making a change so small would justify changing this to read “Second printing, this edition, 2012”, and/or changing the line of numbers. Sure, this is self-pub and we could do it either way–and it seems weird to me to go to the trouble for removing a single character from the story–but Dara and I are cognizant that there is PROTOCOL HERE DAMMIT and we’re genuinely curious about what the protocol actually is. We’re treating this book like it was professionally produced, we want to damn well follow appropriate protocols!
I’m going to do an entire post about Memoire et Racines, because I am here to tell you, Internets, that deserves an entire post to itself even if we only made it to one day’s worth of awesome!
And this is going to get long, so this is getting a fold!
Hey Internets! So I’m back from my vacation and it’s time to get back to writerly business. One of the items at the top of my agenda is to do a second print run of Faerie Blood!
A few of you out there wanted copies that didn’t get accounted for in print run #1. Some of you have also just expressed general interest before. So here’s your chance, people–anybody out there want to claim a copy out of the new print run? Please check in with me and let me know, so that I can get a decent count of how many copies I should ask Third Place to run off for me!
As before, my asking price is $15 per copy if you’re local or I can otherwise hand-deliver the book to you. If I need to mail it, it’ll be $20. Thanks all!
After a VERY long trip all the way across North America, solarbird and I are back at the Murkworks again following the conclusion of our musical vacation! I will be resuming the writeup posts of everything that went on, including linking up to both Dara’s and framlingem‘s pics as soon as there are links to be had.
But in the meantime, there were books AND CDs aplenty that were bought, and so they must be duly documented! So here we go, first with the books!
Picked up at a queer bookstore in Toronto:
Three, by Annemarie Monahan. This seems to be a “road not taken” kind of book, about three possible life paths for the same woman, questioning her sexuality. Possibly with some magic realism thrown in, I don’t know; the blurb suggests that these life paths are all about to collide, which suggests something magic-realism-y going on. Anyway, it sounded interesting, so I grabbed it!
Picked up in Quebec at the Archambault right by our hotel, which turned out to be an awesome store full of ALL THE THINGS I COULD EVER HOPE TO BUY, except maybe groceries and underwear. It’s probably a good thing for my pocketbook that I do not in fact live in Montreal:
Luna: La Cité Maudite, by Élodie Tirel. This is a YA fantasy novel which came recommended by the redoubtable cow, on the grounds that it not only includes drow, it includes pretty much the entire R.A. Salvatore mythos, without even any of the serial numbers filed off. One presumes or at least hopes that there is some kind of licensing going on here, but really, one has no earthly idea! Grabbed it partly because it being YA means that hopefully the French will be easier for me to follow, and partly because the art on the cover is of this silver-haired elf girl riding a wolf, which TOTALLY made both me and Dara think “OH HEY! Clearbrook!”
La Rivière des Morts, by Esther Rochon. This is straight-up Lovecraftian fantasy, which is generally relevant to my interests, and also recommended by the aforementioned cow. I had the pleasure of reading one of Rochon’s short stories while visiting said Cow, since she’d participated in a story exchange between the Anglophone magazine OnSpec and the Francophone SF zine Polaris, and I really liked the story of hers that got translated into English and which showed up in OnSpec. So I’m going to give this novel of hers a try when I’m feeling ambitious enough with the French.
The Tale of Don l’Orignal, by Antonine Maillet (translated). The blurb on this one describes it as a fantastic tale with callbacks to Acadian history, and the cover art was charming, so I thought I’d give it a go.
And, picked up at the Geo Center on Signal Hill in St. John’s:
Dictionary of Newfoundland and Labrador, by Ron Young. This appears to be a locally (well, local to St. John’s, that is) compendium of Newfoundland and Labrador dialect, which sounded like an awesome read–not to mention potential research material, given Christopher in Faerie Blood! So I snagged this with great enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, just to clear out some ebook purchases that need accounting for in the queue, all of which were nabbed from Barnes and Noble:
House of Doors, by Chaz Brenchley. Because desperance is awesome and really, I need to get going on reading all of his backlogged books I’ve been buying up! This one’s got ghosts. YAY!
A Raging Storm and A Brewing Storm, by Richard Castle. Because I still giggle like mad that stories by Richard Castle actually exist, for values of exist meaning “as the product of clever marketing and ghost writing”, and I’m doubly charmed that they’re extending this fun to include the Derrick Storm character.
Geekomancy, by Michael R. Underwood. Because this is an interesting experiment in ebook-first publishing, and because seriously, you guys, how could I not check out a book chock full of geeky references AND an entire magic system based on pop culture? It’s almost TOO easy a purchase!
I may be in Canada right now on vacation, but this HAS turned into a bit of a working vacation as I have extensive edits I need to do (for reasons which will hopefully be made clear soon in an upcoming post!). So I’ve brought my iPad along with me to Canada, as well as a Bluetooth keyboard to type on. Which has proven surprisingly effective as a way for getting editing work done!
But that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is to give y’all a quick status check on how the self-pub situation is going!
I just checked my numbers on the various places Faerie Blood is deployed for sale, and saw that since coming up to Canada the day before yesterday, I’ve had another couple of sales on the iTunes store and another one for the Kindle. This brings my total ebook sales for the month to 21, to wit: AWESOME. If I make it to 30 by the end of the month, I’ll double June’s numbers, and June’s numbers were only for a week and change!
The big interesting thing I’ve noticed so far is that the iTunes store is in fact my big seller so far this month–12 sales there, as opposed to only 7 so far for the Kindle. What’s particularly interesting to me is that several of my sales for the iTunes store are in fact on the iTunes Australia store! So HI AUSTRALIANS! Thank you for buying my book, whoever you are!
I note as well that mostly, the places I’m seeing the most sales are the places where I have actual reviews posted–the iTunes Australia store, and Amazon US. (I’m still getting sales on iTunes US even though I DON’T have reviews up there.) The takeaway from this, anyway, is that Reviews are Good Things. So many thanks to those of you who have taken the time to review the book on your chosen markets! It helps!
(The rest of you who’ve read Faerie Blood, please consider posting your own reviews! And do make them honest. I try not to read reviews in depth–I only pay close enough attention to see how many there are, and to get a sense of average overall rating. So don’t feel like you have to review me well to please me, because you don’t! As long as the review is an honest one and discusses what you liked and didn’t like about the book, that’s what I’m after.
Though that said, positive reviews certainly will be happily accepted!)
Barnes and Noble is clocking in so far at two sales this month, and the only reviews I have there in fact appear to be left over from Faerie Blood’s previous incarnation on the B&N store–the datestamps on them are concurrent with the Drollerie edition. Which suggests to me that B&N didn’t clean up its database when that version was yanked, but whatevs! If any Nook owners out there who’ve bought the book want to put up current reviews, I encourage you to do that too!
No sign yet of sales at all on either the Smashwords or Kobo sites. Kobo’s neat because it actually hooks into Goodreads and shows the nine reviews I’ve received there–so if you’re a Goodreads user, reviews on that site can also help me. I’m sure hoping somebody will eventually buy me on that site, though. I like Kobo!
Anyway, long story short, 21 sales so far this month of ebook editions, and 19 print copies, for a total of 40. I’ve already gotten the money for the print copies; hopefully the money for the ebooks will show up in September or October. Tiny, tiny numbers in the grand scheme of things. But they are my tiny numbers, and I love them so.
Thank you, each and every one of you, for buying and supporting my book!
