Well, the time is almost here.  MHV officially releases in just over a month.

In the past I’ve just sold autographed copies here on the blog, which is awesome for me, and (I would hope) awesome for you, but there is one drawback to doing it that way. My blog doesn’t report to any bestseller lists. And one of the keys to building a writing career is to have your books show up on various bestseller lists.  MHI made it onto Entertainment Weekly and also onto Locus, both of which are big deals.  I’d like to get MHV up there too.

So, for this release, I’m going to autograph the books, and then they are going to go to a major independent book store. You guys can then order them from this particular bookstore. (and they’re awesome, so you shouldn’t have any issues there).  You get an autographed first printing when it first comes out, and I get to boost my stats. 

Once I get the details ironed out with the store, then I’ll go ahead and post who it is, and all their contact information.  

But I’m going to need to get an approximate headcount first, so I know how many books need to come to me first so that I can sign them, before I then ship them to the bookstore. So what I’d ask is that if you want to do this, please post in the comments below how many you want. Please be honest, because I want this to work out for the bookstore as well so we can continue to do this for future endeavors.

If you’ve got a blog or friends that are MH fans, please help me spread the word. I’d really appreciate it.

I found out yesterday that the house has been delayed another week. A week ago we thought we would be closing today. Well, heck, when we started this process, according to the ETA, we should have been living in the new house for a month now.  Building a house is an adventure. And not the good kind of adventure. More like the dreary middle part of the adventure where they walk to Mordor.

The downside of this is that the frustration level is high, the fact that we’ve got a large family crammed into a tiny apartment, and my total lack of workspace has meant that my writing productivity has suffered. The last few months have been the slowest that I’ve ever written.  I can normally do a couple thousand words in an evening and 10,000 in a weekend. Now I’m doing squat in the evenings and a couple thousand on the weekend. I need an office.  Badly.

Normally when I get frustrated, I can use my good old stand-by 80 lbs. punching bag.  20 minutes of knuckle-bleeding cardio punishment is a good stress managmeent tool. It is always there for me on those particularly annoying days. But it is in storage. Along with just about everything else we own.  And it has been. For 6 months. Wow. Thanks people who can’t stick to a schedule.

Plus, school starts next week. Which means we’ll get to move during the first week of school. Oh, and that means we get to commute to school again.  Three times a day now because we’ve got one in kindergarden. Yay. Oh, and my mother-in-law is coming to stay with us (bought airline tickets a long time ago, back when we thought we’d be living in our house for a month by now).  At least I actually really like my MiL, but it isn’t like I’ve got extra space.

My birthday is this week, so I’m going to go get all-you-can-eat sushi.  Raw tuna heals all wounds.

It’s been a busy week. We should (fingers crossed) be closing/moving soon, so the blogging has been rather light.  So in the meantime, enjoy some Ronald Reagan discussing liberalism and government control.

http://minx.cc/?post=304681

I thought that was very well done.

This is amazing. This girl quit her job by e-mailing a series of photos around her office.

http://thechive.com/2010/08/10/girl-quits-her-job-on-dry-erase-board-emails-entire-office-33-photos/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+feedburner/ZdSV+%28theCHIVE

Hell. I’d hire her. That’s initiative. 🙂

EDIT:  It turns out to be fake, but oh well. It was one of those things that was so awesome that if it wasn’t real, it should have been:  http://thechive.com/2010/08/11/a-word-from-jenny-16-photos/

I got this link from Donald on Facebook.  He has set up an RPG based on the world of MHI, set in his home area.  Okay, that alone is very cool. (writers like when people like our creations enough to play in them).

But you know what is cooler? His MHI team has their own webpage:  http://mhirangers.wordpress.com/ 

Yes. That is pretty groovy.