06.28.00

June 28, 2000

Posted in General at 6:33 PM by Jack Chalker

The only thing of any excitement recently was the arrival in hardcover of the first copies of Balshazzar’s Serpent from Baen. It’s a nice looking book at a good price. Those of you who really think you would like to read it online can now get the whole thing; physical copies will be in stores in a week to ten days. We will be at Louisville at the end of July for the last Rivercon (do a www.google.com search on Rivercon to find it), and we still plan to be in Chicago for the worldcon over the 5 days of Labor Day Weekend. I’m still working to finish the second of the Three Kings books for Baen and should have it done by the end of July, and I’ll do the third and final as soon after the second as I can. THEN comes the fun, because I’ll have no outstanding contracts to fulfill (and no future money on new books!). Baen, by the way, sells his books in online form as well (HTML, though, alas) so if you really think you can get as much money out of reading BALSHAZZAR’S SERPENT online in this sort of format rather than as a real book, you can save some money by doing so. I still prefer the physical book myself. Laptops are hell in the bathroom.

My pussycat, Stony, died of cancer in mid-June. He was 16 so don’t weep much—he had a good life. This was the first pet death for our 8 year old son Steve, but he’s taking it well. Stony’s buried in the yard of the home he knew most of his life, and only the dog seems really upset and keeps looking for Stony. She, too, has cancer (different kind) but so far is living with it and is still very perky, but she, too, is getting old. We plan to replace the cat soon, but need to find one the dog won’t go nuts at.

Nice to see so many old friends at Midwestcon. It always puts me in a better mood to have a good convention, but getting back to work after is tough. SIgh…. Oh—for those of you who’ve been reading my adventures with Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, it might be noted that my son David currently is working in the main Random House warehouse and his section includes shipping the few books of mine still in print from them. He’s making decent money, hopes to save most of it to use to transfer to a new university which has the major he really wants but is out of state and not offering major scholarships in that field. We’ll see. jlc

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