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james_davis_nicoll
rolanniSumming up: Many many people have applied for the beta reader slots. I can't possibly accommodate everyone -- it's me, not you -- but I am truly amazed and honored by the outpouring of generous offers of help. Even more are the little catch-up notes some folks have included. I love you all. Thank you.
Because the Universe is aria performed by Chaos, yesterday afternoon the page proofs for Liaden Universe Constellation No. 6 landed, sending all my happy thoughts of glass art and gathering up the tax documentation in a non-crazy kind of way out the door. I did, however, bake a loaf of bread. Damn, that's good.
This? Catches us up to Friday morning
Sunny and chillier than yesterday. The 'beans have been moving the /f/u/r/n/i/t/u/r/e atmospherics around to achieve a more favorable feng shui. We're still looking for colder'n a frog's ear starting tomorrow, but the snow has been shoved over to Sunday/Monday, with a forecasted accumulation of 8-13 inches.
PT may not happen on Monday. I think I'm OK foodwise for the cats and myself. The generator light is showing green, and I've got plenty of blankets to snuggle under while I sit in the window and read page proofs.
Breakfast for those keeping count was fresh-made bread-n-butter. Because I am an adult.
Sarah's due in realsoonnow to defur the joint, which will be much appreciated. I need to make some hot tea for my thermos and another mug, and then I'll be heading back to Steve's office to!
Yep. Read page proofs.
How's everybody doing this morning? Weather, much?
rolanni5 *Carpe Diem ((Liaden Universe® #3), Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
4 *Conflict of Honors (Liaden Universe® #2), Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
3 *Agent of Change (Liaden Universe® #1), Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
2 A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (Lord Julian #10), Grace Burrowes (e)
1 Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green, Linzi Day (e)
________
*I'm doing a straight-through series read in publication order
james_davis_nicolllydamorehouse
james_davis_nicoll
lydy
They told you
“When it happens to you, it will be different.”
And of course, you believed them. Why would you not?
They had been where you have not been. You believed.
But when happened,
You wondered why they had bothered.
When the invaders were in your city,
On your bike paths
In your grocery store,
When they came for your people, your neighbors
Your friends
It was unimaginable.
It was different.
You want to grab
Your friends and loved ones who live elsewhere,
You want to warn them, you want to tell them
“When it happens to you, it will be different.”
You want to protect them.
But the truth
Which you are staring at
Is that it is not different.
It’s just local.
redbirdrolanniThis is the official call for Beta Readers.
Things you need to know upfront:
This is a Beta Read; which is not as nitpicky as a line-by-line hunting of tyops, but requires attention to story, character motivation, setting, narrative flow -- you know: the easy things.
This is a volunteer gig. Nobody's getting paid, except in Auctorial Gratitude, which means that I will with great joy list you on the Acknowledgements Page of the finished book (unless you don't want me to, ref 2(3) below).
At this point in the proceedings these are the things I need to know in order to preserve the last rags of my sanity and turn the book in on time:
1 Does the story make sense/keep your interest?
2 Are there deadends/extraneous/unresolved story lines? Tell me what they are
3 Does the story and/or a particular section lag? are you confused? Tell me where.
4 Have any of the characters changed their name? If so, tell me where and who.
5 Anything else that bothered you as a reader.
5a If you find a particularly ugly or confusing sentence and feel compelled to mention it, you must give me a search string so that I can find it. Again, typos/grammatical errors are NOT the reason for the season.
6 A Vow of Secrecy is required: You may not reveal the plot (or, in fact, the title), or any details of the novel in question.
7 There's a fast turnaround: I'll need comments no later than February 11.
If this sounds like something you'd like to do, and can commit to, here's what you need to do:
1 Email me at liadenuniverse AT gmail.com (where AT=@)
2 Tell me: (1) your preferred format (.doc, .odt, .rtf. I can probably cobble up an epub, but it will be ugly); (2) where I should email the file (even if it's the address you're writing from); (3) how you would like your name to appear on the Acknowledgements Page of the finished novel (if you don't want your name to appear, explicitly state that, please).
Because we're scattered throughout a zillion time zones and countries, I will be taking volunteers until Friday, January 23, 9am US Eastern Time.
In the interests of preserving the above-referenced rags of my sanity, only those people who have been accepted will receive an email. If you have not received an acceptance by Saturday, January 24, noon US Eastern Time, know that I love you, and honor you for standing up, but that all positions are filled.
NOTE: You do not have to be USian to be accepted as a Beta Reader, but you do need to realize that I am USian, and be certain you can accommodate our crazy spelling and sentence structure.
. . . I really do think that's it.
Let the volunteering begin.
cupcake_gothI need help from the sewing and costuming hive mind! I have a many dresses like this. (Mine don't have the wide sash/belt.) The skirt is two rectangles gathered at the waist, with the pockets inset at those side seams. I want to occasionally lift the skirt to about knee-length so I can wear the dress with different skirts. I've tried actual skirt lifters, and they didn't work well. I tried ribbons sewn on the outside of the waist with matching ribbons sewn on the inside at the point where the ruffle is attached to the skirt, thus catching a bundle of the skirt in a loop of ribbon that shows on the outside. (The Madwoman in the Attic saw this attempt, clutched her head, said, "NO", and left the room.) So I'm out of ideas. Help?
james_davis_nicoll
rolanni. . . speaking of words I don't get to use nearly enough . . .
I am informed by Many Concerned Persons that almost everything I posted last night was glitchy in one way or another, so! Below is what I posted last night under the Liaden Read-Along on splinteruniverse.com. Follows the whole of what I posted.
Some people have noticed that the Liaden Read-Along has, to put it gently, foundered.
Some people, not necessarily the same people, have wondered what the heck is going on with that.
I will explain.
For those who are short of time and impatient with explanations, or excuses, the short form is: I was over-ambitious.
That’s it. You may move on, as the rest of what I’m going to say past this point is an elaboration on that single fact.
Still with me?
OK.
So — over-ambitious. I had a book to finish — not due until mid-April, but I had already missed two self-imposed deadlines for producing a draft that was complete enough that I could ask beta readers for help. Ordinarily — ah. Old speech forms. What I mean to say is — Previously, I would have talked out scenes, concepts and characters with Steve and he would, in essence, since I’m Lead on this book, help me catch unfruitful discursions on the fly. I no longer have that luxury, and so find that I don’t know how long it actually takes to write a book, single-brained — thus the missed deadlines.
The alert reader will have noticed that mid-April isn’t getting any further away, so I — pushed to make it to An Ending, basically ignoring everything else in the process.
I wasn’t helped in my last minute push by the manifestation of Murphy, who decreed that I would catch a “viral something” just after the new year, so I couldn’t write for a few days.
However! I have just achieved the Good Enough for Rock ‘n Roll Draft and will be putting out a call for Beta Readers.
Which means I’ll have a couple weeks to catch up on all that stuff I let slide.
Including commentary on the Liaden Books.
I will not be continuing in a chapter-by-chapter sort of way — for one thing, I’ve been reading in the evenings, and I’m half-way through Carpe Diem, while the commentary stalled at Chapter Six in Agent of Change — and for another, that really wasn’t working for me.
What I will be doing is commenting on the books, on things that struck me, surprises, dismays, and reflections of Real Life into fiction.
And that? Is where we are. Thanks to everyone for your enthusiasm for the concept of a read-along, and I hope you’ll continue to read on until the end of Diviner’s Bow.
I certainly intend to do so.
james_davis_nicoll
lydamorehouse
naomikritzer 's write up of things to do for us if you are interested in helping the resistance: https://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/how-to-help-if-you-are-outside-minnesota/ Even if all you want is some links to reliable, detailed information about what is actually happening here, this is a good resource to start with!james_davis_nicoll
jreynoldswardWeather-wise, this has been a weird, weird winter. Normally by now we have snow on the ground. Oh, we had some snow…and then it melted in a set of 40F temps, and we haven’t had any precipitation to speak of since.
Not that it’s been sunny all the time. Far from it. The fog blew in a couple of days ago. Until now, we’d been free from the freezing fog that gripped the lower valley. No longer. It started blowing in while I was preparing to go ride Marker, wisps suddenly blocking out the sun and limiting vision, then clearing out with sun while tendrils of fog rose faintly from the plowed land near the ranch before disappearing.
It looked promising to me, like maybe we wouldn’t get locked into days of rime ice and shadow.
No such luck.
That night, the fog settled in. The next day I rose to shadows and rime ice. While the fog hung a little bit above the ground in town, it hit the ground near the ranch. I couldn’t see even halfway across the horse pasture. We went from the ground thawing slightly enough to be soft over frozen soil to hard frost, and no thawing. A damp chill settles through everything, feeling colder than what the thermometer says it is. While the sun tries to break through, that doesn’t happen everywhere.
Everything slows down. The horses don’t do much running, except in small eruptions to warm up or break up the monotony. The ground’s just too hard. Unlike old Mocha, Marker doesn’t want to run very much in these conditions. I started riding him in the arena and in an open right-of-way to give him a break from the herd and the field. Because of the hard ground, we’re doing different types of work. Schooling at walk and occasional fox trot, although it’s a slow fox trot. Slow, careful, detail work. Spiraling in and out. Serpentines. Circles. But it’s a shorter period of work, avoiding concussion on his hooves. I don’t want to ride on the road in this fog, even though the visibility isn’t horrible—the fog can thicken without warning. Too much of a risk.
So we do our slow work in the arena, me riding him without a saddle today. Rime ice forms on his forelock, the tips of his ears, the hair on his legs, and the edges of my coat collar in sharp little spikes. But even though there’s a thin pad between us, to keep my pants cleaner, Marker’s body warmth radiates into my legs. A lot nicer than the saddle.
Meanwhile, the quail have decided to revisit our feeding area, though I suspect they’ve been sneaking in and out for some time now. The other day, I saw three males out there, then, later, the entire covey of about eleven or so. We think they might be a clutch that has gathered together for the winter—they’re all on the small side. No idea how often they’re coming by, but it’s a welcome sight to look out the window and see their bobbing topknots as they scratch chicken-like to unearth seed that we’ve either spread or that blew out of the feeders during windstorms.
The cold creeps into my bones and I find refuge in the heating pads. It’s damp. Not the same damp as the Willamette Valley, though—this is a sharper, edgier damp. I’m at the stage where I have the indoor base layers and the outdoor base layers. The chill gets worse at dusk, then warms back up.
A lot of people saw a truly amazing aurora last night. We didn’t. Oh, we probably could have driven out of town to a higher elevation—some of the people who did that got amazing pictures. But we just hunkered down, though I kept slipping out in hopes of seeing something.
Beyond a pinkish tinge to the fog at times, there was nuthin’.
The lack of snow means I don’t get the same vertigo I do when the fog sets in during a snowy period. It’s not as bad on horseback as it was when I was skiing the Magic Mile and had those moments when I didn’t know what was up and what was down, what was fog and what was snow. But it still has those challenging moments.
Eh, soon enough it will clear off. Maybe. Until then….
james_davis_nicoll - The Angsana Tree Mystery (Crown Colony, volume 8) By Ovidia Yurolanni - Catching up and getting behinderrolanni - Books read in 2026james_davis_nicoll - Trump demands Carney give him his standing ovation from Davosjames_davis_nicoll - Tragiclydamorehouse - Antifa Regimental Gear!james_davis_nicoll - The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W. P. Kinsellalydy - Occupation poemjeliza - RIP Davidredbird - good news: healthrolanni - Official call for Beta Readerscupcake_goth - Frivolous ditheringjames_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: Dead Air: Seasonsrolanni - Erratumjames_davis_nicoll - Adventures in the Public Domain: On Updating Out-of-Copyright Worksjames_davis_nicoll - Admission of ignorancelydamorehouse - The Rebel Alliancejames_davis_nicoll - The Ayakashi Hunter’s Tainted Bride, volume 1 by Midori Yuma & Mamenosuke Fujimarujreynoldsward - Winter Natteringsrolanni - Liaden Read Alongtimeasmymeasure
