Revamping the blog

I'm usually several years behind on what's going on on the Internet, and this blog has been showing it. I've gone through and revamped it a bit, adding in options to allow people to post what I'm saying elsewhere, although I'm not sure why they'd want to...and adding a few other new features.

Not really sure what I think of it yet, but we'll see...

Catching up on life

Today is our one month anniversary, so I celebrated it by starting the job hunt once again. I'm not very optimistic about finding anything given that very few places are hiring, but we do need the extra income, especially with the baby on the way, so I shall look.

Speaking of the baby, one of Rebecca's friends is going to be putting together a baby shower, so we put together our baby registry through Target last night. It was very hard to do because Target seems to charge a lot for things that shouldn't cost so much. Therefore we'll be telling people that we need clothes and receiving blankets from anywhere, because Target just charges way too much! Of course, we'll also tell people that they can get us stuff from this site because they actually have some really cool baby stuff. I especially like the Star Trek onesies.

We're still trying to get the youngest (soon to be middle) child ready for Kindergarten, but she's bound and determined to not learn how to write her letters. She just doesn't seem to care...

An Ephemeris update

The one thing that's fallen through the cracks the most lately has been the Ephemeris RPG. With everything that's been going on, I've just had trouble finding the time to work on stuff for the game, but I am still working. The Law Enforcer's Sourcebook will be out in early July, and then there will just be a few more character class sourcebooks to finish.

For now, however, there are a couple of Ephemeris sales that you should know about. The publisher, Nomadic Delirium Press, is having a sale on all of the products, with savings up to 50%. You can find that sale at http://www.nomadicdeliriumpress.com/ephemeris/store.htm.

There has also been a bundle put together at DriveThruRpg that features all of the Ephemeris titles for just $23...a great deal. You can find that one at http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=81841&filters=0_0_0_0_0&manufacturers_id=2805.

Both of these sales end on June 30th, so there's not a lot of time to take advantage of them...

A discount on the e-book version of The Opium of the People

If you're interested in reading the e-book version of my first novel, The Opium of the People, you can pick it up for $3.95 by entering the discount code QJ52F when you check out at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/16609. That's $1.00 off the list price.

This discount is only available to readers of this blog (and the half dozen feeds of this blog elsewhere on the net), and it only lasts until the end of the month, so take advantage of this sale while you have the chance.

And also remember that you don't need an e-reader to download a copy of the book. You can read it right on your computer if you'd like.

Marionettes on the Moon is now an e-book

My second short story collection, Marionettes on the Moon, is now available as an e-book, and it's just 99 cents. This was the collection that looked at whether or not mankind has control over their destiny with 13 stories about characters trying to take control of their lives.

Like The Opium of the People and Seedlings on the Solar Winds, this book is available for a wide variety of e-books. They're even available in PDF, rtf, or text for people to read on their computers.

You can find it at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/16865.

A reminder about The Martian Wave

I just wanted to remind everyone that the premier issue of The Martian Wave is still available at The Genre Mall. For years The Martian Wave had been a webzine first produced by ProMart Publishing and then later by Sam's Dot Publishing. For most of those years, I was the editor, and I moved right along with the zine when it went to print.

There's a great list of names in this issue, so you really should order a copy...

stories
Steve De Beer: Adaptor
Tyree Campbell: Somewhere With Mornings
Dan Thompson: Prize Crew
Keith P. Graham: The Reefs of Jove
Patty Jansen: Luminescence
Bret Tallman: Into the Silence Flies a Moth
Rick Novy: The Pillars of Europa
Lawrence Dagstine: The Great Martian Depression
poems
Shelly Bryant: Bypassed
Justin Bohardt: The Barren Wastes
s.c. virtes: another pit for sale
Marge Simon: A Hollander's Secret Weapon: 1609
Marge Simon: Hindsight

Red Moon Rising has been delivered

I've just finished the final revisions on Red Moon Rising, and I've sent it off to Sam's Dot Publishing. This book has been more than 15 years in the making. I first started working on it before I'd ever even sold a story, but now it is done, and I can move on with my life.

I will be sure to let everyone know when I have a release date...I'm expecting it to be this fall, but I don't have anything specific yet.

A menagerie of links

Rather than post several blog entries, I'm just condensing everything into this one.

For readers of Aoife's Kiss, The Genre Mall is having a sale on the first 24 issues of this great magazine from Sam's Dot Publishing. You can order them for just $3 + shipping & handling. Several of the issues feature stories from me. http://www.genremall.com/zines.htm

Speaking of sales, Nomadic Delirium Press is having a sale on Ephemeris products, with discounts on all of the titles. The sale only lasts through the end of June, so if you play the game, or if you'd like to play the game, now's your chance to pick up everything you need. http://www.nomadicdeliriumpress.com/ephemeris/store.htm

Two of my books are now available as e-books, and they can be read on most readers, or on your computer...

Seedlings on the Solar Winds: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/16551

The Opium of the People: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/16609

Also available is James Baker's novel, The Poet. Jim's the editor who first published my work, and he's also the one who got me into editing. His novel can be found at: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/16552

Opium of the People as an e-book as well

My first novel, The Opium of the People, which was first published by ProMart Publishing and then later re-released by Nomadic Delirium Press has been turned into an e-book that should be readable by most readers...this includes people on computers that want an rtf or PDF file...so you don't necessarily have to have an e-reader.

You can find Opium at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/16609.

Seedlings on the Solar Winds is an e-book

My short story collection, Seedlings on the Solar Winds, and other stories is now available as an e-book for a wide variety of e-readers. You can find it at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/16551.

It's currently listed as being by Nomadic Delirium, the publisher, but I think it should be changing over to being by me at some point in the future.

Meanwhile, revisions continue on Red Moon Rising.

Working, working, working

Rebecca went back to work on Thursday, so my lazy couple of weeks of work came to an end. I've posted several new titles to The Genre Mall, I've updated the Sam's Dot website, and I've gotten back to work on the revisions of Red Moon Rising.

Tyree suggested a few more changes to the book, which I'm working on, and I'm also adding a few details, thanks to the morons at BP. In the book, I've mentioned several times about oil leaks into the Gulf of Mexico, and a few early readers had mentioned that didn't seem all that plausible...but I kept them in any way. And now I get to add details from an actual spill. It's a nice little piece of synchronicity, but in truth, I'd rather it never happened. I feel so bad for the people and the animals along the Gulf. This will be an accident of epic proportions, and I think it will take a long time for the Gulf to recover...if it ever does. And I also don't think this will be the last time this happens. Government regulations on off-shore drilling have never been tight enough, and I doubt that they can really tighten them now. Big Oil owns too many politicians in Washington...sort of a theme of the novel...

I'm hoping to get the revisions back to Tyree in the next couple of weeks. Then I'm hoping we'll be going for a September release, although I think October might be more practical. If we get a September release, I'm going to try to set up one signing here in Denver before MileHiCon. After the Con, there just won't be enough time for me to do signings, since the baby is due just a couple of weeks after the Con.

I'm no longer an Amazon Associate

It came as quite a surprise to me when I got a payment from Amazon for my Associates account that was smaller than their minimum payment. But it came as an even greater surprise a couple of days later when I got a letter from them telling me that they'd completed closing my account.

I never asked them to close my account, so I was quite confused. An e-mail to them got the response that my account had been closed because I live in Colorado, and the Colorado government had recently enacted a law taxing on-line merchants.

This was all understandable, and I can actually agree with Amazon's decision to close the Colorado Associates accounts, but I don't agree with their decision to do it without contacting the associates themselves. What if I hadn't e-mailed them? Would I have ever found out? Still, I can't say that I'm actually unhappy with Amazon, because this is pretty much business as usual for them.

Look for all of the associate links to disappear from my site over the next few days.

The wedding

The wedding has now come and gone, and what a great day it was. We had to give up a lot of the things we'd wanted when we first decided to get married, and we weren't very happy about that. Of course, people kept telling us that when the day came, it wouldn't matter what we'd given up...all that would matter is that we were married. It seemed kind of crazy to us, but in the end, they were right. Not much of what we did was traditional, but it was a great day, with just one minor problem...

We got to the park a little late for pictures, but those all went well, and we had a lot of fun with it. We took the pics with the fathers first because we needed them to go pick up the cake and deliver it to the restaurant. When we'd first talked to King Soopers about doing the cake, they'd said they would deliver it, but when we ordered it, they said they wouldn't...should have been a warning sign. Shortly after the fathers left to get the cake, her dad called me to let me know that King Soopers hadn't made the cake. Even though the order form clearly said 5/21, they thought it was for Saturday. I don't know how much hell her dad raised, but we ended up getting half the price of the cake back, and they did a rush on it, so we could pick it up after the ceremony. Of course, when we picked it up, it was a little lopsided. I'd said all along that if anything went wrong, it would be the cake, and thanks to King Soopers, I was right.

After the pics, we went to the courthouse to do the ceremony, and we had a great judge who performed a very nice ceremony. Neither of us collapsed during the ceremony, and Rebecca only cried a little...or so she says.

We had our reception at the Macaroni Grille, and they did a great job. The food was good, the service was awesome, and they did everything they could to make sure that Rebecca and I didn't have to worry about anything.

We had a great time talking with family and old friends. A lot of people we wanted there couldn't make it, but we still had a good time. Cowardly me even got up and did three toasts. The first was to my "new" family. The second was to all of our guests, and the third was to the "people" who couldn't be with us. Those "people" were Jim Baker, Joe Mackey, KJ, and Rebecca's brother Danny. That toast brought a few tears to some eyes.

After that, we left for our brief honeymoon in downtown Denver...not the honeymoon we really wanted, but still a good time.

Prairie Dog Massacre

Many long time readers of this blog will know that I'm a nature lover. Even though we live in the city, there is a large field and a wooded area near us. Over the years, we've seen all kinds of animals around here. For birds we see all of the normal birds plus a lot of hawks. We even see an occasional egret or bald eagle. For furry critters, we have squirrels and rabbits, and even an occasional deer or coyote. But more than anything, we have lots and lots of prairie dogs...hundreds or even thousands, or at least we did.

Today, Denver Water came through and killed most of them. They dropped poison down the holes, and then collapsed the holes. I have no idea of why they would do this. We know that they're going to be putting in some new sewer lines at the farm on the other side of the field, but considering that there's a creek between these prairie dogs and the farm, it's kind of hard to believe that these lines will be in the area with these dogs. The fact that there are apartments on the side of the field with the dogs means that they can't run the lines to the street, so there doesn't seem to be a logical reason for the massacre.

I know a lot of people hate prairie dogs, thinking that they're just disease carrying rodents, but it's really not true. They actually serve an important role in the ecosystem around here, and even though a colony will occasionally be infected with the plague or some other nasty disease, how many diseases are humans passing around amongst themselves?

The simple fact is that we love our prairie dogs around here. They're fairly intelligent creatures, and we love to watch them, especially since we've learned a little about them. We're also questioning the timing of this slaughter. The young have only been out for a couple of weeks, so it seems very inhumane to kill all of them. If there really was a logical reason for this massacre, why not do it in the fall before the adults breed?

Plus, they did leave some of them alive, and they left some of the hole untouched, so if there was a logical reason for doing this, why would they leave some of them alive. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Overall, we are quite pissed with Denver Water. We're trying to get an answer for why this massacre has happened, but so far, we haven't heard anything.

FlashForward

It looks like ABC has decided to cancel FlashForward. I'm not much of a TV watcher, but this is the one show every week that I actually looked forward to. I also watched Caprica and V, but neither of those story lines come close to comparing to FlashForward.

I worry about Caprica because of the way BSG ended. The last thing we need is another deus ex machina ending. Any writer will tell you that's the worst way to end a story, and as for V, I mostly watch it because it's SF, although I don't think it's anywhere near as good as the cheesy 80's TV show.

FlashForward was different from most SF TV, however. The show had an intellectual edge, but at the same time, you didn't have to understand the physics they were talking about to enjoy it. I think the biggest thing that made the show different from other TV shows on today is that the drama between the characters was more realistic, which is probably why it didn't succeed. People want to watch shows like Grey's Anatomy, where the drama between characters doesn't really resemble anything in the real world. In that show, as well as a lot of other shows, people are sleeping around like crazy, which I think is what some people dream their lives could be like. In FF, when Olivia starts to feel an attraction towards Lloyd, she doesn't just jump into bed with him. That resembles reality a lot more. Most people don't have an affair just to have sex with someone else, they have an affair because they're having troubles with their significant other, and they feel an attraction towards someone else, and then over time, that leads to the affair. This is how FF dealt with the issue.

Most of the drama between characters was like this. It resembled what we see in the real world, and that is what drew me to it, and like I said, probably what turned others off.

Was the acting sometimes a bit stiff? Yes. Was some of the writing not the best? Yes, but these are true of most shows when they start out...especially SF. Look at the first two seasons of ST:TNG or the first season of Babylon 5. They had some horrible acting, and some really bad story telling, but the series grew into their own, and turned out great. I really think this is what would have happened with FF.

There are people trying to save the show on ABC, and others trying to get another network to pick it up, and I'm certainly hopeful that something will happen. There is a petition making the rounds to try to get ABC to save the show, if you want to sign it, go to http://www.petitiononline.com/47110815/petition-sign.html.

Honeymoon, wedding, and such

I have to admit that when Sam's Dot started the drive to raise money for us to go on a honeymoon, I really didn't expect much out of it, but people have been great, and we really appreciate it!!!

We aren't going to be able to take our dream honeymoon of going to Taos, but we will be able to get away for a couple of days. We're just getting a hotel in downtown Denver, and we're going to see some of the sites of our hometown that she's certainly never seen, and that I might not have seen. Certainly not what we were hoping for, but still a nice chance to spend some time together, and we have a lot of generous people to thank for that, and we are truly grateful. Not going to Taos might also be a good thing because Rebecca still isn't feeling very good, and who wants to drive six hours when you feel like you're going to throw up all the time?

We are pretty much done with all of our wedding planning. We got our license yesterday, and now we just need for next Friday to get here. Family starts to arrive on Tuesday, so that means I will spend most of the weekend cleaning...and you thought a writer's life was glamorous? Silly readers...

A Mother's Day update

As the BIG DAY approaches, things keep getting more and more hectic around here, but we still took some time out for a nice little Mother's Day. The oldest got her a bath set and made her a bird house in school. The youngest got her a lavender scented candle. I got her a very large picture frame. It holds seven pictures, so I put one of each of the girls, one of the girls together, one of me, one of the ultrasound picture, a picture of Mikey (the turtle), and a picture of our beloved K.J. (our wonderful cat who passed away earlier this year). She loved all of the gifts, and then she had to go to work. Mothers should not have to work on Mother's Day. If she's feeling good enough when she gets off, we're going to take her out to dinner.

We have most everything done for the wedding now. There are a few more odds and ends that we need to take care of, and we need to get our license...and then I need to clean, clean, clean our place.

Writing and such has taken a bit of a hit. I'd hoped to get the Law Enforcer's Sourcebook for the Ephemeris RPG done before the wedding, but now it looks like that will be June. I also got Tyree's editorial notes for Red Moon Rising, and there's quite a bit of work that needs to be done to get that into shape before it comes out this fall. I'd hoped to get through most of that before the wedding as well, but it looks like that too will fall by the wayside.

For now, we're just all trying to keep our sanity here. Simple weddings should not be this stressful...

Sam's Dot tries to save our honeymoon

As mentioned in a previous post, Rebecca and I have been having financial difficulties, and those problems were leading us to the logical conclusion that we were going to have to cancel our honeymoon. Well, Tyree at Sam's Dot Publishing has stepped forward in an effort to save our honeymoon.

Sam's Dot now has a donation page set up on their website for anyone that wants to help us out. Tyree's always been a classy guy, and this is just further evidence of that.

http://samsdotpublishing.com/honeymoon.htm

Many thanks to Tyree, everyone at Sam's Dot, and all of our friends...the ones we know, and the ones we don't...

Five new stories at Anthology Builder

I've mentioned Anthology Builder in previous blog posts. It's a great site where you can build your own anthology from a wide variety of stories. I now have five new stories up on their site. Those stories are:

Hunted
The Magenta Equations
Forgive Men their Trespasses
Tranquility
When Living is a Crime

It's really a great site, and I would recommend that you check it out...

http://www.anthologybuilder.com/authordetails.php?byline=J%20Alan%20Erwine

Bye bye honeymoon?

It looks like due to financial reasons, we're going to have to cancel our honeymoon. Like a lot of people in America, we've had a tough year financially. I'm still underemployed, with just writing, editing, and game design monies coming in...and there's not a lot of that. My unemployment ran out months ago, and I still haven't found work. On top of that, we've had a lot of unexpected expenses come up. Both of the girls have been to the doctor more this year than in previous years. It's never been anything serious, but the bills do add up...even with insurance, plus Rebecca's health has been far from great. On top of that, last week we had to get glasses for the oldest, and our insurance saved us a whopping $30...which means they were pretty expensive. And of course, earlier in the year we had all of the cat drama. Poor K.J. passed away, and we had to get his remains back, and at the same time, we had all the vet expenses of saving Mosi. All of these things added up to well over $1,000, and that pretty much tapped out our reserves.

A few people on Facebook have suggested setting up registries or asking for donations. Unfortunately, we only have three weeks left, and I don't think there would be enough time for us to get the money we need. Plus, I've always been the type of person who is very uncomfortable with the idea of asking for help. If it was something serious, then maybe, but this is just a honeymoon, so we may just have to say goodbye to our trip to Taos...