Reading and Writing…No Arithmetic

I have a sleeping disorder. I've had it all my life, and it's mostly just tedious. There are certain facts that go along with it that are just a part of my life and always have been.

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For one thing, I never just fall asleep at night. You know how sometimes, after a long day, you're sitting on the couch trying to watch television and your eyes just start to close? Or maybe you've actually gotten into bed and are reading a bit before turning out the light and before you know it, you're sound asleep. Yeah, that never happens with me.

Every single night of my life, I make a conscious decision to go to bed, usually because it's getting late. I always read a bit in bed, and every single night, I put the book down and turn off the light because it's getting late and I should go to sleep. There might be nights when I'm tired and know for sure I can get to sleep now, but it's always a decision. If I don't make that decision, I'll just stay up, reading or doing whatever I'm doing.

Until this last year. Suddenly, I can be struck while sitting on the couch and my eyes will start to close of their own accord. If I summon up enough strength of will, I can get up and go to bed, but a lot of times it just feels too good to cuddle up on the couch. The point is, however, that I cannot stop myself from falling asleep.

And this has become really, really aggravating. Because I'm accustomed to getting things done at night and now I can't count on that happening. I don't fall asleep every night, but there's just no rhyme or reason to it, and it puts me off-schedule.

Two nights ago I was over at a friend's house for dinner. I've noticed that frequently an extra glass of wine means I'll fall asleep later, so I watched my intake and switched to club soda early. I was, I swear, dead sober when I left and went back to my house. I settled down on the couch, feeling perfectly peppy, and starting writing. I took a break pretty soon to do some online research, but then somehow didn't go back to the MS. Instead, I brought up a game of solitaire. This is something I frequently do when I need to let something I'm writing simmer a bit before I go back to it. Only instead I started to fall asleep. Did I mention this is really aggravating?

So, okay, the word count for the day was definitely low. Next day I have to work at the bookstore. I was closing, and I've noticed that when that happens, I come home, have something to eat, and then start falling asleep. By then it's usually late enough that I just go to bed. 

So I didn't figure on getting anything constructive done. I came home, made dinner, ate it, and then turned on the TV and picked up a book. Before I knew it, it was nearly two, and there were a couple of things I wanted to look up online. I was still wide awake. So I logged on, started looking, found what I needed and then got involved in looking at a bunch of other stuff that was not really necessary but which I found interesting. Ends up: nearly four before I turned out my light. But no writing, because I figured I was going to fall asleep and I hate falling asleep in the middle of writing.

Really, really aggravating.

So here's my long-delayed post on what I'm doing with myself these days. It's been long-delayed because the last year has been really rotten. Really, really rotten. 'Nuf said.

As I posted on my website some time ago, I am working on a fifth Bethancourt and Gibbons mystery, which I plan to e-publish since St. Martin's has dropped the series. There's a big however coming, though.

However, mystery #5 (no working title as yet), has been put on the back burner while I try to resurrect my career and enter the fantasy genre. For many years now, I've become much more of a fantasy reader than a mystery reader, and in my spare writing time, I've been jotting down quite a lot of stuff. I have finished the first novel in a trilogy, which my wonderful, wonderful agent currently is looking at to determine whether or not it's salable. In case it's not, I've also started work on an urban fantasy which I originally thought might be YA, but probably isn't.

For the B&G fans out there, I haven't forgotten you and I will get that fifth book out as soon as I can. It turns out that I'm an absolutely terrible blogger, but I will try to keep everyone posted. If you have emailed me via the website about the Bethancourt & Gibbons books, you will receive an email in return when I've got the fifth ready. I've also recently written a B&G short story, but I'm not quite satisfied with it yet and am letting it "stew" before sending it out. If it gets accepted for publication, I'll post about it.

So my experiment with audiobooks continues. It's very hard to have any objectivity about the effect listening rather than reading has on me, but I have a couple of thoughts. First, though, let me say I'm not just listening. I currently have a 45-minute drive to work, so I like to listen to the audiobook then, but when I'm at home, I'll pick up the physical book and read that instead. So it's a combination.

I've recently read three books this way, all of them part of various series. One, Sue Grafton's V is for Vengeance, I'd been eagerly awaiting. I like the Kinsey Millhone series and U is for Undertow had really done it for me. So I was dismayed to find that I couldn't really get behind V. It was okay--a perfectly serviceable entry in the series, but somehow it failed to grab my interest. And I began to wonder how much of that had to do with listening rather than reading. I mean, when you're reading you can skim over parts that deal with, for example, a character you don't much like. And you can linger over the parts that you particularly do like. But when you're listening, everything's given the same treatment.

So I bought a book on Amazon. I would have much preferred to buy it at a bricks-and-mortar store, but, well. Firstly, my local Barnes & Noble didn't have it. To buy it at an indie would have involved a drive, which I might have considered, but they didn't have it either. 

But of course the most important reason was money. It's a $26 book (Skirmish by Michelle West). I got it for $16. Yup, a whole ten dollars less. And I didn't pay for shipping or for sales tax because a good friend of mine is an Amazon Prime member. 

Did Amazon sell the book at a loss? No one knows. Certainly an indie store would have been selling it at a loss at that price, or at least at a margin so slim it wouldn't have been worth it to order the book in. So here's the thing: until publishers address the disparity in prices, there's really very little a physical bookstore can do. It's all very well for Ann Patchett to take the high road and say that if you want to continue to shop in a physical bookstore, you should pay 40% more for the privilege. Most people can't really afford to make that choice. At the moment, I can't.

I could, of course, have gotten a copy of the ebook for $13 pretty much anywhere. (Paper, printing, binding, warehousing, & shipping--does it really add up to $13 per book?) Lots of people will tell you that soon I won't have the choice. That may well be true, and the price disparity is certainly helping that very bleak future along.

Lately I've been listening to the Dresden Files on audiobook. James Marsters reads all of them except the latest, Ghost Story. I understand that there was much reviling of the switch to John Glover, and there were those who felt that this was the worst thing ever to happen in the history of the Dresden Files. So I went into listening to it with a solid heads up and a determination to be objective. Or at least as objective as I could manage.

First, a disclaimer: I haven't listened to a lot of audio books. I recently acquired a 45-minute drive to work as well as a copy of the audiobook of Dead Beat, which is what started my current audio craze. It remains to be seen whether I'll like other audiobooks as well as I like these, or whether I'll just go back to listening to podcasts.

Back to Ghost Story (which is a fantastic book, by the way). I'll admit it took me a good quarter of the book to get used to a new narrator. I tried to imagine what I would think if I'd never heard any of the others, and I concluded that Glover did a fine job. I'm not sure but what some of his voices weren't even better than Marsters. Listening to the beginning reminded me that when I first plugged in Dead Beat, there was a certain cadence in Marsters' reading that I found a little irritating and I was surprised to find that by the end of the book I couldn't hear it anymore. Couldn't even remember what it was.

Glover was a little different--his quirk (to my ear) is a careful pronunciation, almost as if he were reading to a child. It completely disappears whenever he's reading dialogue, and after awhile I stopped noticing it most of the time. But it never went away altogether for me. Still, after I got past that first quarter, I was really enjoying it, very caught up and thinking that although Marsters' voice *is* Dresden's to me, Glover was doing a very fine job indeed.

Now, I only listen to the audiobook in the car. I rarely listen to them in the house--too many interruptions. So I always have a copy of the book as well, and read it during the evenings, picking up from wherever the audiobook left off when I got home, and then advancing the audiobook in the morning to where I'd left off reading the night before. With the Marsters, I often found myself listening to the part I'd read the night before, just to see what he made of it. Hearing him read it was part of the experience of the book for me. But as Ghost Story went on, I realized I wasn't doing that anymore.

I thought at first that this was just because of the difference in narrators. Especially for a book written in the first person, a narrator is like a character on TV--you can't replace him with someone else. It doesn't matter if the new guy is a better actor because his interpretation of the character will never be the same as the one you've bought into. So the fact that I wasn't listening to the parts I'd read told me that I hadn't been doing that just to experience those bits in audio, I'd been doing it specifically to hear Marsters' rendition of the text.

I still don't think Glover's reading was better or worse than Marsters. But it didn't have the same resonance for me. Although I enjoyed Ghost Story, if it had been the first one I'd listened to, I probably wouldn't have gone haring after all the others.

Many years ago, I came across a series that had, at the time, maybe four books in it. Since I like both fantasy and mysteries (though the traditional hard-boiled genre is not my favorite), I gave it a try. I really liked the first book. I didn't care as much for the 2nd for some reason (I have since speculated that it was my mood at the time), so I didn't go on to the third immediately. But eventually I did, and I liked it enough that I went on to the fourth, and I liked that even better.

After that, of course, I had to wait for Jim Butcher to write more, and I got my Dresden fix every year or so. My personal favorite remains Dead Beat (at least so far), but I didn't read the penultimate book, Changes, because what I heard about the ending led me to speculate that it might be the last of the series. So I was saving it for a special occasion. Then Ghost Story came out and it turned out I needn't have worried. 

Then the other day, a copy of the audiobook of Dead Beat came into the store. Like I said, it was always one of my favorites, and since I recently acquired a 40-minute commute to work, I thought I might as well give it a try. I fell in love with James Marsters' reading of the text, and in love with the book all over again. So I embarked on listening to *all* the audiobooks, in order, and also to reading them over again. I have to say, it's given me a very different appreciation of the series. The arc of the overall story comes out much more strongly if you read them all back to back, and I find it really adds something when you don't have to search your memory for references because they're all still fresh in your mind.

It was from here that I finally approached Changes and now Ghost Story. I've only just started Ghost Story, so I won't comment on it, but I had a few thought on Changes, and on Turn Coat, the preceding book. 

BEWARE!!! SPOILERS BELOW!!!!

In both books I wasn't too fond of the earlier parts. In Turn Coat, this had largely to do with the "the-butler-did-it" motif introduced early on. I kept hoping that it would turn out to be a blind, that it was a clever misdirection on Butcher's part. But, no, as it turned out, it really was the old cliche. I really honestly felt that a plot element that had run for several books deserved to have a better conclusion, and the answer should not have been a character that we had never met before. Additionally, there were plot holes you could drive a Mac truck through. But the second half was so spot-on emotionally that I didn't care a whit about any of the rest by the time I got there. Butcher even made up for Peabody with the introduction of Cristos. I have rarely encountered a scene as emotionally satisfying as the one with Morgan at the end. And, to a lesser extent, the scene with Luccio.

In Changes, I mostly felt that poor Harry was getting hammered on just a little *too* much in the earlier part of the book. But again, Butcher pulled it out in the second half, and especially with the slam-bang ending. I mean, I sure didn't see that coming. Not even a little bit, and it was heart-wrenching once I got there. I was sort of dreading the end, since I'd heard what happened, but actually I really liked it. 

As an aside, I was talking to my agent about the Dresden Files the other day, and she mentioned the phrase "urban fantasy." I was a little startled. I know what urban fantasy is, of course, but I've never actually read any--as a genre it doesn't particularly appeal to me. But what I thought was funny was that I've never thought of the Dresden books as urban fantasy, even though they clearly are. Thinking it over, I decided it was probably because when I first encountered them, urban fantasy wasn't as common as it is now and might not even have been on my radar at the time.

Anyway, I've immensely enjoyed my re-reading of the series, and I've found that, taken as a whole instead of individually, they have a much more epic quality to them than I had remembered. I'm awfully sorry that I only have one book left.

The cats have had a rough couple of days. 

First, I ran out of cat food (I was having a bad week). That was on Friday night, and I only realized it after it was too late to run out and get anymore. I felt really bad about that, and it didn't help that while I was performing my nightly ablutions Niko kept sitting by the empty bowl and staring at me. Having attracted my attention, he would sniff the bowl to show me it was empty and needed to be filled. When no food was forthcoming, he repeated the process patiently. This does not make me feel better.

Come the morning, I arise, pull myself together and run to the pet store to procure cat food. I bring it back, open the fresh bag and fill the bowl rather fuller than usual because I am still feeling guilty. Then I leave for work.

When I go up to bed that night, I am astonished to find that the cats have actually eaten all that food. I fill the bowl again, checking them over worriedly for bloat. I mean, that was a lot of food.

Which brings us to this morning, when I was awakening by a clinking sound coming from the bathroom. Blearily, I sit up to behold the greyhound up on her back legs busily eating the cat food.

So not only did my poor cats not have any food on Friday night, but once they got food on Saturday, the dog ate it all. Good grief.

The NYT times today has an article about how people graduating from college are moving back in with their parents instead of contributing to the economy by starting a new household. The article is interesting and talks about a lot of things, but one thing it doesn't mention at all is wage stagnation. 

The example in the article is a woman just out of college who has gotten a job as an assistant editor at a national magazine. She can't afford her own place, and so has moved back in with the parental units. What struck me about this was shortly after I graduated from college, my best friend acquired a job as an assistant editor at a national magazine. Her salary enabled her to get her own apartment in New York and move out of her parents' place.

So is not a lot of the problem here attributable to the fact that the cost of living has far outstripped current pay rates? It seems so to me. I don't have any answers for this problem, but it seems to me that it's important that it be part of the discussion.

Here's the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/business/economy/as-graduates-move-back-home-economy-feels-the-pain.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

I am getting very tired of help lines that are not helpful. The latest offender is, believe it or not, Apple.
 
I ordered an item off their website, but somehow missed arranging for expedited shipping. First off, this is something I should have been able to fix online. But when I tried, a window popped up telling me to call the help line to change my shipping instructions.
 
Let me just say that the automated system that greets you is bloody brilliant. It was more like talking to a real person than the real person was.
 
The real person came on and repeated my order number back to me. I told her I had messed up placing the order and had wanted to expedite the shipping instead of keeping the standard. She asked for my name.
 
Now, I ask you, why on God’s green earth would not the order number bring up my name? Surely it would. Therefore this is merely a question to be certain that I have not screwed up the order number and am about to adjust someone else’s shipping. Okay, I get that. So why not just ask me if my name is Cassandra Chan? This is how regular people talk to each other.
 
Now I get put on “a brief one to two minute hold” while she brings up my order on her computer. If it’s not there, then how the hell is she verifying my name? And if all her software has given her is the order number & my name, then somebody has been writing some really crummy software.
 
She returns. She wants to know my address. So apparently just checking my order number and name was not enough. We also want to check my address, just in case I am phishing somebody else’s order. Well, if I have the order number and the name it goes with and yet am not legitimate, then wouldn’t I also have the address? Good grief.
 
All right, now we’re down to brass tacks, i.e., getting me expedited shipping. I know, from having tried to do this on the website, that I have three possibilities: 1) Overnight (I know I probably can’t afford that), 2) 2-day shipping, or 3) 2-3 day shipping. They didn’t tell me how much any of it would be, so I am expecting to go over the rates. Instead I get put on another “brief one to two minute hold” (this one lasted longer), at which point she comes back and tells me she’s taken care of it. WTF? I ask how much extra it is. I get put back on hold. She comes back and tells me it’s now 2-3 business days at no charge.
 
Well, I can’t argue with that. I thank her very much and hang up on the rest of her script. I may have fixed the problem, but I am still aggravated. Why on earth cannot companies understand that hemming in their employees with scripts only annoys their customers? They end up making the person on the other end of the phone feel as if the customer service rep isn’t really listening to them or responding to what they’re saying. It also makes for a very awkward conversation when one of the people has to constantly interject corporate-speak into it.
On top of that, there is no reason your rep should have to put a customer on hold unless there’s a problem or a higher authority needs to be appealed to. Instructing your reps to say “a brief one to two minute hold” does not alleviate this problem. It just makes it obvious that the company is aware of the problem and has decided to ignore it.
 
I suppose all this does make it possible for companies to hire people who really suck at customer service. Not that I’m accusing the woman I spoke to today of that—she wasn’t given the opportunity to demonstrate to me whether she was good at it or not. 

I'm written out for the afternoon. I've had a burst of enthusiasm for my potential YA novel. I suppose I should call Jenn to find out if it is really a YA novel and, if so, if it has any possible commercial value. But right now I'm just enjoying the enthusiasm.

I probably should have been looking for a job instead of writing, since I think I'm going to need a second one. The bookstore is not doing as well as advertised. Too bad. I might still make a go of it--it's early days yet--but the first couple of months have not been encouraging.

Anyway, right now it's time for a drink and then dinner.