Two by Two
A June 2023 newsletter
It seems like only yesterday that I was astonished to realize we were already entering the year 2023 and now, after two seconds has passed, we are almost halfway through.
As life goes on I’ve come to realize that the more I focus on “productivity” as a measure of my life the faster the time goes, and not usually in a good way in terms of savoring life rather than scrambling to keep up. There are far better measures of life than productivity, one of the negative legacies of the USA’s current system of capitalism and its societal fixation on profit and productivity as a higher good than social and community well being.
My ability to let go of the insidious sense that I need to be accomplishing more and yet more remains weak, but I do try to spend a little time every day working very hard to be “in the moment.” Although if one is “working hard” to be in the moment, then it might not be working so well, if you see what I mean.
Maybe I’ll write more about that another time and not worry so much about measuring my productivity by whether or not I begin this newsletter with a thoughtful essay.
This month I want to share two upcoming events, link to two recent interviews, alert you to two forthcoming sales (US/Canada only, alas), and end with a mention of two typo sets in Furious Heaven that I hope can be corrected in the ebook version and any subsequent printings.
To begin with, a quick social media rundown.
This newsletter remains the best place to get confirmed information about my writing. Tell your friends! The more who sign up the better!
In the medium run I would like to move from Substack, perhaps to Ghost or some other platform that doesn’t subsidize transphobic content. I don’t have enough spoons to do what is needed for deciding on and making the move at this time, and I don’t have an assistant or web guru to do the work for me, so unfortunately this transfer is going to have to wait.
I am still on Twitter, for now.
I’m also on Bluesky, which I may shift toward as my primary social media platform, maybe. Things are still shaking out there, so who knows?
I have an Instagram account although I don’t use it much as I find the platform increasingly unusable (for me) because of the pace of advertisements and IG’s algorithm that seems to drop people into my feed who I’m not following and don’t want to follow.
I have accounts on Mastodon, Post, and Hive, but at the moment am not using any of them for various reasons. Oh! Tumblr! I’ve had an account on Tumblr for years but am not currently active there. I’m not on Facebook or TikTok.
Everything is under KateElliottSFF. Like most of us, I have no idea where social media is headed in these strange days. Twitter was a good fit for me because it allowed connection and discovery across a wide range, and it’s not clear what will follow because Twitter brought something new to the mix while the “twitter substitutes” don’t really, not yet anyway.
I do have a Patreon, for those who may be interested in that (and many thanks to those who support me there).
Two events this week!
MATT WALLACE at Copper Dog Books:
I’m delighted to be the interlocutor for Matt Wallace’s event at Copper Dog Books on Wednesday, June 14, 2023 - 8:00pm ET, in celebration of the release of SAVAGE CROWNS, the third book in his Savage Rebellion epic fantasy trilogy).
Please feel free to join us! Here is the link.
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I’ll be joining twitch-caster Gryftkin for a live stream on twitch on Saturday June 17 at 4 pm PT.
Two upcoming sales:
The DAW ebook of KING'S DRAGON will be discounted to $1.99 from 6/17/2023 - 6/19/2023.
Keep your eyes open for an ebook sale at $2.99 of THE KEEPER’S SIX from 6/26 - 7/2. It’s part of the the June Kindle Big Deal promotion but will be discounted across all ebook retailers (US/Canada).
Two recent interviews:
Five Books (five great space operas).
Campfire Writing: I talk a bit about changes in the publishing industry across my career, as well as about the Sun trilogy and writing history into space opera.
Two Chapters With Typoes!
Despite Amazon listing UNCONQUERABLE SUN and FURIOUS HEAVEN as part of a 2 book Sun Chronicles series, the Sun story has always been a trilogy and was sold as a trilogy. I think most if not all of you know that, but I wanted to clarify for any who might not know. I am working on LADY CHAOS (book 3), although it is going more slowly than I would like. However, I would rather have it done well than done sooner, so here we are.
Meanwhile, it has been brought to my attention that there are a couple of pronoun errors in FURIOUS HEAVEN. My thanks to Margo-Lea for the heads-up.
In book one Jade Lee is never given a pronoun. This was done on purpose. In book two I wasn’t able to never use pronouns for Jade because Jade is on page too much to make it workable, so my plan was to use “they” for Jade as Jade’s preferred pronoun. By and large Jade is referred to in FH as they/them.
However:
In chapter 15 there are 3 “him”s referring to Jade on page 97 (US print edition).
“I’m not about to tell him that Sun shot Navah and had James throw her overboard, still alive, for the scylla to feed on. Let Sun tell him herself, if she wants him to know.”
In chapter 49, page 293: “A new file of Guards jogs up, led by Candace. They shove past Jade’s unit and into the chute ahead of him, obviously on order of Alika.”
I checked my pre-CE (copy edited) manuscript file. The page 293 sentence is incorrect in my final, pre-CE version. For whatever reason, neither I nor the CE caught this one, and I’m not sure when or how it was introduced, but clearly somewhere in the drafting process.
In the case of chapter 15, those two sentences are not in the pre-CE version, which means I added the sentences to the CE manuscript, likely because I wanted a little more explanation about Navah’s death (for readers who may need a basic reminder of what happened in book 1).
So there we are. Obviously this annoys me greatly, as I try to do due diligence.
For the time being I am going to say that Jade uses they/he pronouns, until or unless these corrections can be made.
Finn! We’ve all been and done the dirty deed of mud-snooting at some point in our lives, surely.
As always, I could not do this without you. Thank you.
Kate Elliott