Next week
Maker: Commence edits on HEATSTROKE HEARTBEAT.
Manager: Couple details to hammer out re: HEATSTROKE HEARTBEAT cover.
Marketer: Start accumulating newsletter material.
Last week
Work: ✅✅💀
That skull feels like it needs an explanation. The tl;dr is a couple folks on Facebook made a convincing case against promoting the dragon books with only two out. The basic argument was sell-through, which isn’t necessarily dispositive; the fact is I’m operating at a loss right now whether I put a bit of money toward a promotion or not. But it doesn’t feel crazy to take the time to focus on creation now and do a little better on the returns on a promotion later. In fact, there’s probably a strong argument for doing it when HEATSTROKE HEARTBEAT has a preorder available.
This also seems like a good spot to mention that editing OCRed text from the reMarkable is so much better than transcribing from a notebook, it cannot even be believed. I got through something like 41 pages in a couple of hours. The reMarkable is accurate but not super accurate — there are more sentences with an error than without, and it wasn’t that uncommon enough for the transcription to be so bad that I had to look up the original handwritten document. I think it’s easier for me to pick up the reMarkable’s errors, which are mostly glaring screwups that cause the sentence to make no sense, than it is for me to see my own typing errors, most of which are little omissions. But honestly the big selling point is just the reduction in physical effort and awkwardness — I don’t have to hold a notebook open, I mostly don’t have to read my own writing, I don’t have to type every single god-damned word. I envisioned this as nicer — i.e., I envisioned the transcription as more accurate — but it’s still really nice.
Inputs:
- DZUR, by Steven Brust ✅
- JHEGAALA, by Steven Brust 🌗
- THE WESTING GAME, by Ellen Raskin, read by Cassandra Campbell 🌗
- BETTER CALL SAUL S6E12, “Waterworks”; S6E13, “Saul Gone” ✅
- (FiveThirtyEight Politics) The Case For and Against Ron DeSantis ✅
- (FiveThirtyEight Politics) There’s A Debt Ceiling Agreement … For Now ✅
- (FiveThirtyEight Politics) Trump’s Indictment, The Sequel 🌗
- (On The Evidence) Former Biden-Harris Administration Official Christina Ciocca Eller on Turning Evidence into Action within the Federal Government ✅
- (Maintenance Phase) Oprah v. Beef Part 1: The Rise of “Veggie Libel” ✅
- (Maintenance Phase) Oprah v. Beef Part 2: Apocalypse Cow 🌗
- “Nemesis,” by Tim Kreider ✅
- “Junk science: It’s not just for Ted talks, NPR features, and airport bestsellers. It can also ruin people’s lives,” by Andrew Gelman ✅
That last post is the kind of thing that very badly makes me want to talk out of school; instead of doing that, let me just say (1) I’ve had no professional exposure to the 911 call analysis method described in the Gelman article and (2) Jesus that tracks though.
Today’s image is last week’s air quality map — this is from Wednesday, although things were probably worst on Thursday.
Currently reading: JHEGAALA, by Steven Brust.
If you’re a fantasy reader in the market for a different twist on dragons, have a look at BRIMSTONE SLIPSTREAM, the opening novella in the Streets of Flame series — free to download on all the major retailers.
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