ten forward nine back... CRAWLSPACE!!!!

Well, it has been absolutely awful weather today - no possibility of walking up the mountain. (Flinders was rather Obelix's Switzerland today - Flat. To all appearances anyway.) So I had to brave the horrifying task of the shed. Hey we've only BEEN here 14 months, and the stuff 12.. That's hardly trying. Everything there was no room for was sort of shoved in there - a wise solution! But space-wise I needed a place to sort out the wetsuit collection (I think 17 wetsuits in various sizes (from 8 year old kids to XL)/ thicknesses) All elderly. Mostly second hand. All still getting used.) This involved a lot of that tedious messing around in n-dimensional space because there is so little room (and it was raining outside) that every item had to be moved to move ANYTHING, often up, over, under sideways AND through. By some form of topological miricle we got it done, and I now have a space for the gas stove, a work-bench and a hanging cupboard full of wetsuits, waders, BCs etc.
Feeling like I achieved something... I've just turned in a book (so turn in money is due), I'm due a cheque for a short story, Barbs having been working rather a lot, and with living off the land and having stocked up on the basic dry goods in bulk very cheaply with Peter's container load... I felt some headway was being made.

Then B got the post, and instead of the cheque I hoped for... and we got more than a thousand dollars of bills - all essentials - Phone, internet, Vet, and Car repair and tyre... still, when you're careful about spending (I'm a writer: translate = earn 8% of the US cover price of each paperback. Payment is in US$ (not good now)is often erratic, and very widely spaced) and live largely off the land, these sort bills about double our expenses this month, so it hurts.

But then today, Finally YAY!!!! The Kindle version of CRAWLSPACE AND OTHER STORIES - A novella and a novellette in the RATS BATS AND VATS Universe (and a few other shorts)that I wrote with Eric Flint went live on Amazon. And as we've done this ourselves, it means I can track sales. Which means... yeah. I got to see the first sale has happened! So I'm $1.75 up! :-) I know. It's a drop in the ocean but it felt really really good. I detest the vast lag phase in paper publishing (typically you may not know for a year-15 months how much you've sold, or if you will earn anything at all. This is a relic of old manual warehouse record systems, but with modern barcode/computer inventory, it's really a little archaic.) I LOVE being able to get some idea of what is going on.

Onwards!!!