The Story:
So last week, John Scalzi posted up a blog taunting folks with his ARC of the Wise Man’s Fear.
I was jealous. Partly because he had a copy of my galley and I didn’t. But also because *I* wanted to taunt people. But I couldn’t, because I didn’t have a copy yet.
But look what showed up a couple days ago.
(As always, guest starring my thumb.)
Needless to say, it’s really nice to see a bound copy of the story after all these years. Even though this isn’t quite the finished, polished, tweaked, as-perfect-as-we-can-make-it version that will be hitting the shelves in March.
Because I was excited, I brought home the ARC and took it into the bedroom where Sarah was hanging out with Oot. She thought it was pretty cool, too. But surprisingly enough, out of the three of us, it was actually Oot who was the most enthralled with the book.
It was funny, because the book is almost as big as he is. It has some serious heft, and weighs in at (and I’m not even exaggerating here) a full three pounds. Still, he wanted to play with it. He opened it and turned some pages. He pushed it around on the bed. He even did a “nice touch” on the cover, displaying one of his newer, rarer skills by petting it gently.
But while Oot loves books, he’s not always gentle with them. So after a couple minutes of closely supervised play with his younger sibling, I tried to take the book away.
Oot wasn’t having any of that. He clutched at the book, shaking his head. “Noo,” he said. “Noo noo noonoonoo….”
This is a new word for him, but you’d be amazed at the amount of distressed dismay that he manages to pack into those two simple phonemes.
So I stopped trying to take it away from him. He immediately relaxed, picked up the book, put it down again, then gave it a hug.
It was, quite honestly, the most adorable thing.
An Update:
T-shirts came back from the printer yesterday. Simply said, they’re gorgeous. I’m so pleased.
I’m really relieved. This whole t-shirt thing is completely unexplored territory for us, and it’s proven to be a lot more complicated than I expected. We couldn’t have made things work without all the considerate help from the lovely folks over at Poseur Ink.
The fabulous Worldbuilders team was up packaging late last night, and we’re shipping out hundreds of shirts today. Tomorrow, we’ll be shipping out hundreds more. Rest assured that we’re getting your orders out as quickly as we can. But be aware that we’re sending a LOT of shirts…
That means e-mailing to ask where your particular shirt is won’t get you your stuff any faster. Quite the opposite in fact.
[Edit: if you’re looking for a link to the store to buy a shirt, here it is… ]
A Milestone:
Yesterday, Worldbuilders passed the 100,000 dollar mark. This gives me a huge happy.
I’ve raised the donation goal on the Team Heifer page to $128,926. That might seem like a strange number, but I chose it for a particular reason. If we can raise that much money, it means we’ve beaten last year’s total.
It would be a pretty big deal if we managed to do that. It would mean that Worldbuilders is continuing to thrive and grow as a charity.
Personally, I think we can make it. The combined force of our geekery is mighty. We cannot be stopped.
An extension:
When I started this year’s fundraiser back in November, I planned to run things for one month, ending the fundraiser on Dec 13th.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. But there have been a few problems with that as an end date.
1. The first problem is that we still have a bunch of cool donations we haven’t managed to make public yet. We got more stuff than I expected this year, and that means we still have books from Gaiman, Sanderson, Butcher, and many others that we haven’t even mentioned on the blog. There isn’t time to post them all in the next three days.
2. The second complication is my own production deadlines. I have to turn in my page proofs for The Wise Man’s Fear on Dec 13th. This is the last step in a long, LONG process of revision. This is my last chance to catch any little mistakes that might slip into the finished work. My very really seriously final last chance.
Needless to say, it takes a long time to read a book this big. And I realized yesterday between posting new blogs, shipping t-shirts, and occasionally eating and sleeping. I couldn’t get everything done by Dec 13th.
So we’re extending the end of the fundraiser by about a week. The new end date for donations is noon Dec 17th (12:00 PM, pacific standard time.)
That will be enough time so that I can give my novel the attention it deserves, AND post up the rest of the donations so people have sufficient time to bask in their radiant glory before the end of the fundraiser.
Have a great weekend folks, and keep an eye on the blog, some of the best stuff is still to come….
pat
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