It's the 11/11/11.

My parents and Barbs parents served in the World Wars. May we never come to that again, and let us remember what they opposed for us.

I was feeling a bit off-colour yesterday and today. To whine, it's always hard finishing up a book. Hard pushing... demands on my mind and body and family life, and then very little in the way of reward for some time. No feedback from readers for a long time. Even merely getting paid usually involves a lot of nagging. I thought I'd set up an Australian US dollar account yesterday so I could start going direct to Kindle and finally do something that I could have direct input and view of, and get 70% instead of 8% of the sale price. It's not of many copies, but it's cash coming in, hopefully for some years... only to have Westpac tell me that would be $50... a month. It's just not worth it. So right now I am muttering in unadulterated irritation. It will have to be done by cheque. Which will cost me extra, and mean payment only happens if we're over $100 threshold every 3 months. And then Westpac will take up to 6 weeks to clear it - something which dates from the mailship era, before the invention of those odd little silver birds and the steam driven internet. What a bunch of useless bastards the banking industry is. Now judging by the US sales on shorts, that will happen. Those add up 100-150 dollars a month, split between Eric and I. The sale of the rest through Naked Reader... well, I don't know. But I'm guessing it comes to something (I've been promised figures, but really this is why I want to do this for myself, directly. No more having to ask, and ask and ask. I appreciate they're doing their best, and struggling with being too small for too much work, but I do need this.). The UK Amazon sales however... are pretty feeble. I would yet to have got anything from them for all the shorts that are up there (the electronic payment threshold is $10 -which means I'd have a few pounds trickling in, if I was paid that way, but it might take two years to get a cheque. Yes, more stories and it will get faster. The idea behind all this is to add a cash trickle into the account to help to slow the steady monthly bleed while I wait for the if I'm lucky twice a year inflows from publishing. It won't be a flood, but publishing is being slower than usual and not keen on buying... so we have to keep trying. Not helped by Westpac who suggest I get Amazon to change their way of doing business. They also suggested I get my publisher to do things in ways that make their lives easier... I give up with these people. Do they get that actually I need Publishing and Amazon? They do not need me. I suppose that's what it is with banking. They do not need you, there is always some other sucker.

Anyway. Nil Carborundum Illigitimi
There will be e-books forthcoming from Dave Freer directly.
The hell with all of them. I will beat them yet.