Cleolinda everywhere

Awesome updates on the Haiti podathon:

Some of the prize donations I was not at liberty to reveal yesterday:

@leaky: JK Rowling has donated a set of signed books for the Haiti drive...details to come!

@melissaanelli: Also... signed Neil Gaiman book!!!

The latter is a signed copy of A Harlequin Valentine, which I don't think has been mentioned anywhere else, so: EXCLUSIVE. This in addition to the five copies of a signed/personalized Unseen Academicals that Sir Terry Pratchett is donating, as mentioned yesterday, and some prizes from The Guild folks, although I have no idea yet what they are. Oh, and at least one signed copy of the Movies in Fifteen Minutes paperback, which is wayyyyyyyy down there on the squee! scale, but it's there nonetheless. And, as I will mention again: a lightsaber. You can totally win a lightsaber.

(This came together really fast, so a few things haven't quite shaken out, and not all the prize donors are listed yet; they're in the process of updating the scrolly widget. But, I mean, I personally managed not to have a panic attack and die contacted some of them, so I know for a fact that we have some really great people chipping in. You'll love it, I promise.)

ETA: This isn't up yet, but Peter David is also donating "Tigerheart, which is a Peter Pan pastiche, and a GN of the Sir Apropos of Nothing comic series." Yay and thanks!

And on USA Weekend: Harry Potter fans unite to help Haiti. 
 
I do want to give people credit, though--it's not just Harry Potter fandom doing this, although it's hosted on a Harry Potter fansite; and this isn't THE fandom fundraiser. A fandom donation war between ontd_startrek and ontd_ai  raised $17,002 and $20,863, respectively. Misha Collins from Supernatural rounded up his Twitter minions and raised $26,251. And then on top of that, there's the help_haiti fanwork auction community. So fandom as a whole has been really, really great through this whole thing, and the LiveJournal fan comms have done themselves proud.

Meanwhile, tonight: Who You Might Get on the Phone if You Donate to "Hope for Haiti Now." Short answer: Everyone in Hollywood. Long answer: ( Read more... )

I also have some regular linkspam--really good linkspam--but I think it should wait for its own entry.



 

In case you missed it yesterday: New Moon in Fifteen Minutes. I spent something like ten days in the comedy mines on that thing--not sure why it was so much harder than even I thought it would be, but it was, although I feel like it turned out decently well--so trust me, I will not be letting you forget it any time soon. And yes, I do read every single comment that comes in, via my email, so if you go over and say something, no, I won't miss it.

So, as promised: I did not do a damn thing today. I didn't even turn on the computer until 6 pm. I did read email comments and Twitter on my phone, wrote in my diary, sat outside in the very pleasant chill for a while, played with the dogs--honestly, I do not know how I actually spent the hours from eight to three. I was kind of bored the whole time, but in a very nice way.

I also had a very strange dream--( In which I meet the man of my dreams, literally )


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

Stiiiiiilll worrrrrking on New Moooooon. To that end, does anyone have a still/screencap of that really ridiculous, blatant fanservice moment when Jacob takes off his shirt to, like, dab at Bella's head? I mean the exact moment when he takes it off, you know the shot. It's an illustrated Fifteen Minutes, and the more on-the-nose the picture is, the better the punchline will work, and I only have shots from later in the scene. I just really don't want to Google for it, you know? The internets scare me.

(I'm wrestling with the last few problem scenes and trying to go back and polish the finished ones while I rack my brain for something interesting. It's running long--well, by "long" I mean "the standard 5000 words that most of the older ones are," but Twilight has kind of taken the place of the Harry Potter fandom in terms of OMG YOU LEFT OUT MY FAVORITE PARRRRRRT complaints. Within the stuff I felt compelled to include, I'm trying to tighten as much as possible. Also, the coding on this one has been a bitch because I tried to get fancy with a text effect. Fnarr.)


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

So I'm still getting used to the keyboard (you know how laptop keyboards are more compact) and the touchpad mouse, since I haven't installed my wireless ones yet (for some reason, I never seem to hit the M key on this one hard enough), but: LIFE IS AWESOME. Also, I get to stay logged into everything (I cannot even tell you how happy this makes me), and I have all my pet programs back, or at least the ones I've remembered to go download so far (INCLUDING SEMAGIC, HUZZAH). I'm currently set up in the den with the dogs, rather than holed up in my room the way I usually would be, and I kind of love it.

My cold is still pretty gnarly; it's at that point where you can tell you're going to have to get snarflier before you get better, you know, as it progresses through the Stages of Phlegm, but I'm holding up. My nose is itching off my face and kind of hurts, plus the chest congestion and all, but I've had it worse.

I'm trying to get back to work now--had a day off, as it were, to freak out over the new laptop--now that I've successfully delivered 2012 in Fifteen Minutes and survived the New Moon preview on Wednesday. I'm not even going to pretend that New Moon in Fifteen Minutes is something Of Which We Do Not Speak, because we've all known since they greenlighted the movie the very day after Twilight was released that I would be doing it. So I'm working on that--couldn't sleep last night due to congestion, so sat up and wrote about six pages on it by hand (this is not all that much, though), and handwrote a bit more this morning. It's really intimidating, not just because I've got the Twilight one (which turned out pretty well) to live up to, but I've also got the last one I did--2012, of course--to live up to as well, since that turned out unexpectedly well. (Probably because writing these for five years with a determined focus on getting better at it has... well, in fact, gotten me better at it.) So I guess you could say that the problem with working on growing as a writer is that you have to keep growing, and sometimes you end up rocking in the corner and twitching a bit because of it. But really, my performance anxiety isn't as bad as it was last year, probably because I've got more time to wrestle with it. Please, let me somehow find a way to see an early preview of Eclipse next summer, I've been ever so good.

Speaking of which, I don't know that I've seen this posted anywhere:

Oh, and we'll be recording the new Made of Fail on Sunday, BECAUSE I HAVE A COMPUTER AGAIN AND I CAN.

P.S. I'm a Master Sparkler Taunter!



(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

So someone else has run off and reposted my work (this time, it's Twilight in Fifteen Minutes. NO DOGPILING, Y'ALL). I don't go looking for this stuff, because honestly, if I started trying to police the internet--which I did try for a little while, back when I was first writing these things--I would never, ever get anything else done. But I feel like once you've brought it to my attention--I don't know that legally I have to do anything; this isn't an issue of trademark, which has to be defended pretty vigorously; it's a simple matter of copyright flowing from the pen, as the expression goes. I wrote this, it is verifiably mine, and I have the right to decide who does and does not get to run off with it. So morally--perhaps, more accurately, emotionally--you feel like you're not supposed to let it go.

( The problem with this one is that the girl's gotten defiant )


ETA: Okay. She's apologized. As for you guys? I have finally read most of the comments, and while I said NO DOGPILING, most of y'all were admirably civil. However?

The authors onto you, BTW: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/820888.html?#cutid1

Check out the number of commenters on that post - that's the number of people who hate you right now.

BAD FORM. You better hope I don't find out who that was.

I have a few links I want to talk about, but I feel too scattered at the moment to really pull those together. I will say, in terms of working on the "Vampires" e-book, that I sat down with a calendar and started working backwards from dates that are already set in stone:

1) New Moon comes out on 11/20 or somewhere around then, I don't know. That weekend, something.

2) My understanding is that we're going to record a podcast (not specifically about New Moon, but it will help to have seen it) that Sunday, 11/22.

3) I don't like to put out Movies in Fifteen Minutes entries until the Monday after a movie has come out, at the earliest--reader statements like "Now I don't have to see the movie!," while well-intended, are probably not going to endear me to whichever Studio Powers That Be. So I want to at least give any given movie a full weekend, since nowadays that's the most important time period financially anyway. SO MY POINT IS, I'm assuming that I can't not do "New Moon in Fifteen Minutes," so that would go up no earlier than 11/23.

4) I want to give myself at least a week of rest between the e-book and the Fifteen Minutes. Therefore, working backwards, I would want to have "Vampires" on Lulu by 11/16.

5) That's two and a half weeks or so from now. I know a lot more about the process of actually "publishing" the e-book now--how to convert the wonky footnotes to PDF (or who I need to do that for me, rather), how to navigate Lulu, and so on. But I would still like to give myself a week of padding to take care of problems, wait on people to get back to me on certain issues if necessary, do my obsessive proofreading, so on and so forth.

6) Therefore, I need to have a readable draft of "Vampires" by 11/9.

7) That's eleven days from now.

8) I've never made a deadline in my LIFE.

9) I did 90% of the work on Van Helsing and Dracula last year, though, when I was doing the previous, longer, more complicated incarnation of the e-book. It's mostly Twilight I'm dealing with right now. I hesitate to say "I can totally do this," in a Famous Last Words kind of way, but theoretically: I can totally do this.

10) Oh God I totally can't do this.

So basically, that's what's going on at the moment--I'm trying to work myself into an It's Go Time, Bitches mindset on the front end of the process and have plenty of emergency padding on the far end in case shit happens, because you know it totally will. I should probably refrain from testing Twilight merchandise during this time, in fact--sweetdragon tried some assorted Twilight chocolates the other day and they nearly killed HER.


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

O hai there is still an e-book. And will be, until the end of time or Lulu, whichever comes first. Sample screencaps and how to PayPal instead if necessary are here.



Completely sluggish and irritable, which sounds like a classic case of PMS to me. A number of things I need to get done, like a new doll entry and, oh, THE NEXT E-BOOK, but would rather curl up in the recliner and sulk. Fnarr.

New Jane Eyre adaptation (DO NOT DISAPPOINT ME).

Essential plot twists for writers.

So it looks like it's exactly one month until Sparklemas. Sarcastic yay. I am adamantly refusing to watch any clips, because I actually get bored at movies if I've seen too much of it beforehand. Still not sure who all I'm going with; I get informed a lot by various people that I WILL be going to see the movie with them, but who knows how that'll actually shake out.

Meanwhile, I hear that the Official Drinkable Merchandise I promised to try For Science has arrived, and will reach the house whenever my mother brings it home from the post office. God help me.

("Hello, my name is Twilight and I am a Dracula.")

So. As I've told a few people, I'm not really comfortable disclosing how many copies I've sold, as much as people would like to know, in a cheer-you-on sense. The thing is, this isn't a book deal where I receive a flat-fee advance; if I tell you the number, you can do the math and figure out exactly how much I've made, and there's no way that won't get wanky. But I can tell you that I've just now made enough to cover the laptop and data retrieval on Betsy 2.0. And there's always "Vampires" next month to help out with the repair bills.

( HOW DO I CHANGE THE PRICE???? $0.00 IS NOT A PRICE!! IT IS A FREE!!!! )

I'm also trying to figure out how much promotion is sensible (I'm not very good or comfortable with promoting myself) and how much is straight-up obnoxious. Y'all have all been so great about mentioning it, though, and feedback so far has been really positive. So there's also that.

Oh, and we're working on getting the Kindle version finished and the "buy multiple copies" using PayPal thing. Hold on a bit for that.

Well, the bad news is that I was trying to wrestle the e-book onto Lulu yesterday and I realized that while it's true, there are no production costs for an e-book, they DO calculate 25% of the price when you set it and add that back on top for themselves (not unreasonably), which means that the e-book would now be $6.25, and after a quick straw poll on Twitter in which no one told me to drop dead, I decided to hell with it, we will just CHARGE that much extra, OMG WHY IS MY LIFE SO HARD ("...she said, as the entire population of Darfur shot her the bird"). (ETA: Apparently this shakes out to £3.92 and €4.47?) So after screaming at the computer for half an hour and literally pounding on the desk, I got the thing on there with relatively little trouble.

And then I had a Woodchuck and the second half of a large bar of chocolate, because I had apparently just published my second book, with this whole thing about needing to send a copy to the Library of Congress.

The good news is that someone overseas was asking when it would go up, because they were eight hours ahead of me. I had wanted to put it up on Sunday evening, like I said, because people will be bored and have nothing to do since it's a school/work night. Well, it's 11 am here, so I figure it's already bore o'clock overseas, so you can have it now. You ought to be able to use Lulu outside the U.S., but if you're somewhere that it won't allow, I have a couple of options I can work out for y'all. Right now I just want to make sure the whole Lulu thing works out okay (we did a couple of test sales yesterday and it seems to).


A few questions pre-emptively answered:

There are notes on this thing for everyone, including people who have no knowledge of Harry Potter except for the parodies, or even people who are just reading the parodies for the first time. (I actually tested this thing out on a couple such people, so I know this to be true.) I mean, you don't have to know anything about it to read me running on about the origin of the color puce or the stupidest folk band in the world or where "dead from coke" came from or the etymology of "w00t."

Yes, it ought to work on most e-reader devices--I don't know about the Kindle specifically, but this is just a PDF file. It ought to work in on your computer, Adobe Reader, the Stanza reader or iPhone app, and maybe even internet browsers? I don't know. PDF is generally one of the most universal file formats, so it ought to work for most people in most circumstances. I hope.

No, I can't really sell a print edition of this. I mean, I could, but it would be a defective product, because the outbound links and footnote jumps wouldn't work. So there's a reason this has to be an e-book; it's actually sort of interactive. I mean, it won't play checkers with you or anything, but it does stuff dead-tree books can't do.

Yes, I am going to pay taxes on whatever I earn. I'm not going down like Capone.

So... yeah. Hope you enjoy it, tell people about it if you like it, wish me luck, etc. Pardon me while I go chew my nails.

Wow. It is really kind of ridiculous how good I feel when it's sunny and how bad I feel when it's not. I joke about being solar-powered, but I'm starting to wonder.

Anyway, the entire rest of the week was nothing but nasty grim weather (although it was nice to listen to the rain at night). I'm still proofing the e-book somewhat obsessively (but then, I do this for recaps and Secret Lifes and 15Ms as well), and I'm doing a final read-through--is that really necessary, you ask? Because I asked myself the same thing. And in re-reading the notes for "Prisoner of Azkaban," I found one (1) typo, one (1) bad link, and one (1) incorrect footnote cross-reference (yes, even considering that I've figured out how to F9 and sync them all automatically). So of the three things I was looking for, I found exactly one each--which is enough to prove that I have to keep going.

But it got to the point where I wrote the introduction yesterday, worked on a few non-e-book things, and then just... packed it up for the day. (Well, the chimney guy showed up, so I had to pack up anyway. Turns out our "chase pan" is badly rusted--he took pictures on his phone and showed me--so there's yet another repair bill to add to the pile. Not sure how much it'll be yet--he has to work up an estimate and get back to us.) I made myself some soup and a sandwich and camped out to watch an old Katharine Hepburn movie--Undercurrent, which was pretty good, except that the end kind of fell apart. ( Major spoilers )

So there was that. That was pretty entertaining. And I didn't do a lick of work the rest of the day, and both my eyes and my intestinal fortitude feel a lot better for it today. Yay.


ETA: And there's an incorrect link on "Goblet of Fire." Sarcastic yay.

ETA: And there's a cross-reference that's just wildly incorrect. Outstanding.