Computer Update {Smile}

I'm relieved to report that my new computer is officially handling email a lot better now. Kind of. Mostly. As in not perfectly, but I can live with this. {Relieved Smile}

I had taken the computer into the shop because it wouldn't delete old mail on the server, and I considered the ISP tech's recommendation that I do that myself unsatisfactory. The Computer Store kept it for a week and a half, then sent it home. Norman warned me that a Microsoft tech he'd talked to a few months before had said that deleting email was a "known issue," meaning they knew there was a problem, and they hadn't fixed it yet. So Norman fiddled with the settings. I'd had it set to delete email if I deleted it on my computer (spam), or if it was over a certain age. Suspecting the problem might be an "and" where an "or" was really wanted, he told it to stop deleting email because I'd deleted it as spam. Last weekend, the quantity of old email went way down at my provider's. I think a particularly large chunk of email suddenly got old enough to delete.

{sigh of relief} So it's working. Mostly. I still have to go in and delete the spam if I want to get rid of it quickly. However, my computer is deleting old-enough email on its own. I can live with this. {Sigh of Relief, worn but relieved smile}

So this week I've been getting back into the blogs I like to read, and trying to catch up with them. I’m also thinking about what else I want to get back into. I had been sticking almost purely to Facebook games because I feel better about dropping them without warning if my computer has to go into the shop. Since it shouldn't now, I can use my computer to communicate with friends and family members the way I like to, including making posts and commenting on others' posts here. {Relieved SMILE}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

The tsunami

There are advantages to living at 800 feet elevation. When most tsunamis hit, we're well out of the inundation zone. That includes all earthquake-generated tsunamis, like the one from Japan. My town of Hilo got five-foot waves. so the damage should be limited to coastal areas. Hopefully, we'll even be able to get groceries later today, since we're running low on milk. I figure if that's our biggest concern, we're very blessed indeed today. {SMILE}

Although there is one other problem. My computer is in the shop, so I don't have access to my current friends-and-family email lists. I have a backup, but Dad's computer can't read the disk. I'll have to figure out something.... {rueful smile}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

My birthday

On Tuesday, we celebrated my birthday. I meant to tell about it earlier, but somehow it's Friday already. {apologetic smile}

My birthday was very nice, in a quiet sort of way. I like quiet celebrations, so that's good. {Smile}

Breakfast was French Toast with Portuguese sweet bread. Portuguese sweet bread really is bread that tastes sweet, unlike the other "sweet bread" which is no such thing. {Smile}

I opened presents before dinner, with my parents popping in and out to see what I got and get other things done, too. It was their choice. {Smile}

Dinner was chicken piccatta. In our house, that's also called "chicken katsu with caper sauce." You could also replace the veal in vienner schnitzel with chicken, and add a caper sauce. Elsewhere, bread the chicken, fry it, add a caper sauce, and translate. {Smile}

Dessert was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Of course. I love chocolate too much not to choose that! {REALLY BIG GRIN, wink}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Mattress update

First, if I sound tired, I've come down with a cold. That's not the only reason for me to be tired, but it makes everything worse. {lop-sided smile}

{bite lips}

Okay, the mattress arrived early Wednesday afternoon, just as I'd hoped. Once it was on my bed, we quickly realized we had a problem that hadn't even occurred to me in the store.

My bed is a raised mate's bed, with several drawers underneath. The slats that my old mattress rested on are a little higher than most chair seats, tho not as high as a kitchen stool. The old mattress was probably 8 inches thick, so it was noticeably high, but not a problem to get on and off. {bite lips}

On Wednesday we put a two inch bed board on top of the slats, because the new mattress is foam, and foam mattresses aren't supposed to rest on slats like the old innerspring mattress did. Then we put the mattress on top of that, adding another foot. (Yes, my new mattress is fully a foot thick. As Dad says, it shouldn't bottom out on me.)

Now I am just under 5 feet, 2 inches high. The bed, bed board, and mattress came to about an inch below my waist. With my severe permanent vertigo/ terrible sense of balance, I have trouble with stairs, so I can't just use a step stool. I had to climb onto it from the floor. I found I could do this. I did so twice that afternoon, and four more times that night. I also managed to strain my back somewhere in there, almost certainly while climbing onto the mattress. {wry smile}

So... crisis. Dad came up with a plan even before I strained my back. He went to the hardware store Thursday, and bought some one by twelves. I took the mattress off, and helped Dad remove the bed board. Then he took out the slats, and put in the one by twelves, making a solid layer. He ended up adding a couple of the slats, because they filled the excess so neatly. I am very relieved that he did this in one day. I suspect he'd normally take two days to do a project this big, but he knew I needed a bed to sleep on that I could get onto. {smile}

Now we didn't need the bed board. All three of us put the mattress back, directly on the new platform. It is now on the high side of hip height to me. It's still not easy to climb onto, but it's no where near as hard as before. I didn't bother to count how many times I got on and off it last night, and I didn't strain my back again, or this morning, when I attempted to nap. (The cold messed up the nap, not the mattress.) {smile}

{bite lips} It's still not good, but it's doable for now. Dad has another idea for the future, involving building a small ramp to give me a little more height without stairs. But he doesn't have to do it today; he just has to do it before my balance goes out. I think I'll need that ramp most when I'm on two canes. Since my balance is relatively good, I can manage until he gets around to it. {Smile}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

New Mattress?

Tomorrow, my new mattress is supposed to be delivered in the afternoon. That's sooner than I expected, but it's not a moment too soon! {Hopeful Smile}

I'm SO looking forward to sleeping on something comfortable again! {REALLY BIG GRIN}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! {REALLY BIG GRIN}

Ours has been good, in a mostly quiet way. The biggest excitement was when a relative called. As far as I'm concerned, that's a very good Christmas. {BIG SMILE, REALLY BIG GRIN}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

{sigh of relief}

Hilo has a bookstore again. It's called "Books, Nooks, and Crannies." If you know the town, it's right above Koehnin's Interiors, facing Waianuenue.

Mom and I investigated it on Sunday. It isn't big, and it doesn't separate science fiction and fantasy from the rest of fiction. It carries a mostly non-specialized selection of fiction and non-fiction. I particularly liked the selection of books in the Independent Readers (Juvenile) and Young Adult sections. It serves coffee if you're interested (I'm not). It has a few chairs and a love seat to sit and read in. The love seat was quite comfortable; Mom and I took advantage of it when we done checking out the store. Mom sat there after she bought what she'd found. I sat next to her while I looked over four potentially interesting books; Masques by Patricia Briggs was the only one that actually came home with me. {Smile}

Mom overheard some lady asking about a book she'd ordered. So next, I want to take Dad and check out their book-ordering capabilities with a few of the books I found for Mom-gifts while poking around online. {Smile}

This is just such a relief. Part of me feels that this isn't much of a bookstore. It's small, and so are the fiction sections; so small, they're only differentiated by age. Still, it's still a general bookstore. It's got enough interesting books, going in to browse doesn't seem ridiculous. That makes such a difference, I feel more like myself than I have in months. {relived smile}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Happy Thanksgiving! {Smile}

I hope everyone who celebrates it has a Happy Thanksgiving. {SMILE}

And I hope everyone has a nice day. {BIG SMILE}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Finding books

I'm sorry I fell silent again. Early July, I found out that the local borders was closing as quickly as they could empty out their store. {pause} They closed on the 21st of this month. They're THE big bookstore in town - the only one to have a science fiction and fantasy section. So I've been rather upset. {half-smile}

I've also been looking into options. The local options are poor for assorted reasons, from too small to too unweildy. (The public library is big, but they aren't set up to help readers find fantasy. {small smile})

That leaves on-line options. I've been using on-line sorces to fill some of the gaps Borders misses, but now I need to cover things a lot more thoroughly. So far it looks rather confusing. If anyone has suggestions, I'd love to hear them. {Hopeful Smile}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Thoughts on trying to get published

A fair while back, my friend, Tia Nevitt, wrote some suggestions for trying to get published. The suggestions were variations on "write what is popular/will be popular." In other words, try to be part of a short-term or longer-term fad. {pause}

On one hand, it sounds good, as long as you can finish writing, polishing, and shopping around the story before the fad is past. {bite lips} That's the trick: getting it into shape and sold while the subject is still popular now, and hasn't fallen out of popularity. {bite lips}

That's why neither of my two major mentors liked writing for popularity. Both Vivian L. Thompson (author of many children's picture books and retellings of Hawaiian legends for all ages) and my father, Roger E. Baldwin (author of an introductory genetics text and Hawai'i's Poisonous Plants) taught me that trying to write to popularity is entirely too good a way to end up holding half-finished and half-polished manuscripts about things that used to be popular, but aren't any more. {half-smile}

They also taught me another approach to writing for publication. It's not as glamorous than being part of Today's Big Thing. However, it doesn't leave you stuck with Yesterday's Big Thing either. {Smile}

They both suggested following publishing's "conventional wisdom" until you've become established. The conventional wisdom is the set of rules that "everyone knows" in publishing, book selling and libraries. They're pratically never based on systematically gathered information, or even unscientific polls. They're usually explanations somebody thought of for some pattern of book-choosing they thought they saw. As such, they're very often wrong, sometimes ridiculously so. Even when they do have a point, they often miss something. {half-smile}

I don't know them all; there are a lot, and I'm terrible at memorizing. However, a few I've run into recently include "boys only read books about boys, while girls read books about both boys and girls;" "no one wants to read about handicapped people being handicapped;" "teens don't want to read about old folks in love;" and "Don't kill off a good guy in a kids' book."

When you're first trying to get published, it's best to follow most conventions whether they're right or wrong. Publishers and agents have heard them so often that breaking the conventional rules of publishing will usually make them look at a manuscript, and say "Well, I like it, but..." and rattle off which ever rule you broke. When you're new, you want to avoid that "but." It will make them set aside your manuscript "to think about it." It is possible they'll pick it up again, but they're more likely to reject it than a manscript they like that doesn't make them say "but." {half-smile}

You don't have to follow these rules forever. Once you're established, you can start breaking some of them. But first you have write a few successful stories. I think - and Dad agrees - that means writing at least three. The first story shows you can write a successful story, the second shows that you can do it again, and the third shows that the second wasn't just riding the coat-tails of the first. {lop-sided smile} If one of those
three wasn't as successful as you think the publisher would like, wait
another book or even two before you start breaking the rules. Still,
three, four, or five books isn't forever. Eventually, you can start
breaking rules, because the publisher knows you write books that sell.
Past success trumps these rules most of the time. {Smile}

So that's the method I was taught. I don't think it's actually not incompatible with trying to write something popular. You can do both at the same time or not, as you choose. Myself, I'll follow this. I rather not get stuck with a bunch of stuff that used to be popular. {Smile}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin