Ignore the icicles, it’s Spring. No, really.
Flowers are popping up all over the yard, the sun is staying up long enough for office sunshine from beginning to end of the workday, and I’m itching to plant things in the yard which I cannot realistically plant for another month. Hard frosts most nights, but jacket weather during the day.
So am I pleased? Yes. But also no. Spring is my least favorite season, except for the return of the sun part. I’m not a fan of slipping in smelly mud, I’m not a fan of multiple days of steady rain, and I loathe leaf blowers.
Spring is peak leaf blower season here in the ‘burbs. I’d estimate 50-75% of the property owners ‘round here hire landscapers to do “spring cleanup,” which consists of crews carrying or driving around multiple gas-powered noisemakers for multiple hours. Bad enough they blow dust and gravel all over the neighborhood (yay, allergies, grr) remove the most-active top layer of baby topsoil, destroy pollinator eggs and chrysalii, and spray noxious chemicals over monoculture turf grass lawns—but the worst in my selfish perspective is THE NOISE, which won’t stop again until the end of November.
Once the half-day “cleanups” are done, crews will return to each property for 30-60 minutes of Obnoxious Disruptive Noise every week rain or drought, needful or not, without fail. And since coordination is not a thing, some places get work on Monday or Tuesday mornings, others on Wednesday or Friday afternoons, yet more over lunchtime onThursdays. Et-fucking-cetera.
Every weekday and some Saturdays, someone somewhere is serenading the neighborhood with leaf blower noise. And while the landscapers are the worst offenders, we have plenty of folks who spend an hour chasing that last stray leaf all over their property with their own leaf blowers.
The Daily Disruptions annoy the hell out of me every time I fail to put on headphones before sitting down to work.
I’d like spring a whole lot more if leaf blowers were outlawed or at least strictly regulated. When I am Queen Of The World, the maximum decibel levels of landscaping equipment will be strictly regulated. That’s all I’m saying.
The countdown to the Minicon road trip is T-minus 10 days, and I’m uncharacteristically prepared. This is usually the point pre-convention when I remember I am low on book stock, can’t find gear I stowed after the last event, or realize I’ve forgotten once again to order something tangential like ribbons, booth supplies, or con survival food.
I guess there’s something to be said for scrambling to order a year+ worth of books, ribbons, stickers, etc back in early February, I guess. (The things to be said mostly involve muttered invective in the direction of dictator-wannabes, accelerationists, clwoncar cabinets, and jackbooted thug squads, but I’ll take any tiny silver lining I can find.)
With every passing day I’m more relieved we did the car and electronics upgrades over the last year. Both were cases where we could’ve pushed things off another year or three but went ahead and leaped. I wish I could claim it was a cunning plan, but it was more like a new manifestation of my perennial lack of faith in societal stability.
I do still need to order more loose tea ASAP, and I’m gonna do our annual paper products restock a couple of weeks early. I don’t expect prices to be dropping any time soon, and if they go way up, welp, I’ll at least be staving off the pain as long as possible.
“Stave off as much pain as possible as long as possible” is my general approach to life, now that I think about it. Probably an outgrowth of having to navigate everyday tasks as if they were contact sports.
(Annnnd here’s the moment where I have an epiphany about why I relate so hard to Miles Vorkosigan.)
ANYway. None of that was what I sat down to write about, but here we are nonetheless.
Relics From A Traveling Show was what I planned to write about, and about how I’m really proud of myself for entering it in the librarian-judged Indie Author Project contest for this year, and about how much requesting a purchase by your library will be a huge help for my baby book’s visibility that costs nothing but a bit of time—and makes it super easy to recommend, because recommending free things is wholesome and guilt-free!
There’s still a long way to go before it hits 1 library in each state. (It’s one of my achievement trophies) So far it’s in a New Hampshire library as a print book, and in Ohio as an ebook.
I’m also going to be asking for more reviews for Relics all over the place until I get at least 10 reviews on Amazon, because reviews in the first year are also a huge boost. (Not for my ego, but for the book’s respectability.) Even if/especially if you hated it or were simply underwhelmed, PLEASE plant that 1, 2, or 3 star review up there. People trust good reviews of things more if there are also mediocre reviews. (Why? Complicated psychological reasons. I don’t make the brain rules. I just have to live by them.)
So. Libraries and reviews. That’s what I came here to write about this week. The tariff thing and the spring rant were just extras.
This week instead of panicking over convention prep I plan to get in some Quality Writing Time ™️ on the “Entropy Girl and Library Auntie Talk Pets & Powers” short story. it’s shaping up okay so far. Definitely fun to write. They have some issues to work though.
And I havent’ abandoned my Maggie & Lauren short story. I just can’t get them to stop bickering and let me give them a plot. No one needs a story that’s basically two teen girls slap fighting in their bedroom over who’s THE ABSOLUTE WORST.
Anyway. That’s all for now. Until later!
But wait, here’s the best part of any post: Cat pic!
Pippin “helping” me put up the new window cling. Bonus shadowy author selfie in the pic thanks to the sunshiny day.
Final note: Remember, if you’re a current Patreon member in the US, free or paying, you can get one of these clings or a sticker mailed to you for free. (see the New Shinies post for deets.)
Okay, ‘bye for now for real this time.
What’s on your bookshelf?
This is the part where I talk about my books.
Relics From A Traveling Show
The newest of the new! A collection of all my short fictions in one handy volume, available now from your favorite booksite or local shop.
Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.
Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:
Title: Relics From A Traveling Show
Author: K. M. Herkes
ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)
Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.
If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.
I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.
All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.
Support your favorite independent bookseller! Find a local shop via Indiebound
Be a potato.
" Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."
Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)