All right: here's the thing. Discount Armageddon is officially released March 6th. That's the date we've been talking about for months, that's the date you should be able to obtain the book, that's the date when sales begin counting against my first week numbers. Any books which escape into the wild before then count against my overall sales, but do not count for that all-important first week. Also, because I am number-based OCD, any books which escape into the wild before then make me feel sick, cry hysterically, and basically become non-functional with stress. It's THE BEST THING.

As of midnight Monday/the very beginning of Tuesday, Amazon has been shipping copies of Discount Armageddon. Consequentially, Barnes & Noble is doing the same thing. I haven't been saying anything because DAW is trying frantically to fix it, and I didn't want to drive sales to the sites which have chosen to release my book early. (I don't blame B&N for reacting when they saw that the book was on sale; they're a business, after all. But it's not helping my stress level any.) Please, please, do not buy my book early. I know it's hard. I know that the urge to have the shiny thing now is strong within us. I've ordered dolls from Japan and Australia, and DVD sets from Canada and the UK, for just this reason. But those things were legitimately released in the regions where I was ordering them, and Discount Armageddon has not been legitimately released anywhere at all. Please wait until March 6th. Don't punish independent bookstores, and local brick and mortar stores, for some computer's hard-to-fix mistake. Please. I am literally begging you here.

It doesn't help that so much of a book's success is measured by their first week. I've basically thrown up every time I thought about my week one numbers (including just now), because these early sales could mean the difference between a series and an accidental duology. It's unlikely—DAW is very loyal, and they stand by me—but it could happen, and I am very much worst-case-scenario girl when I'm this flipped out. So please. Do not buy early. Wait until March 6th.

And then there are the ebooks.

Both Amazon and B&N have put the physical edition of Discount Armageddon on sale, but are still holding the electronic edition for the actual release date. People who receive their physical books early are reaping the benefits of a fortuitous, author-breaking error. People who have to wait for their electronic books are not being denied anything; they're doing what was supposed to happen in the first place. This has not stopped the exciting emails from rolling in. They mostly stopped after the first day, but on that first day, I was called...

( A lot of bad things are behind this cut. If you don't want to see, just go with 'I was called a lot of bad things.'Collapse )

See, apparently, the ebooks are being withheld because I, personally, am trying to force everyone to buy my preferred format (physical). So sexual threats and relentless abuse are totally acceptable, because it just shows me the error of my ways.

I have nothing to do with the books being available early. I wish they weren't.

I have no control over whether the electronic editions are available early. I'm glad they're not, but it's not because I'm a greedy bitch; it's because I don't want any editions available early.

I am literally sick with stress, and this is not in any way helping. Please, don't buy my books before their actual release date. Please, don't place an order with a site which is offering my books before their actual release date. Please, don't call me horrible names because you can't have what you want the second that you want it.

Please.

(Because it must be said...comment amnesty. I'm already crying hard enough.)

I haven't been blogging about my cats recently.

Some of you may have breathed a sigh of relief when you realized that you had entered a relatively feline-free zone. "Finally," you said. "She's going to talk about something that doesn't meow." Others may have been concerned. (I've heard from the concerned contingent, not from the relieved, but I have no trouble with the idea that both sides exist. Honestly, I don't demand that anyone be interested in everything I have to say, and that includes my cats, machete collection, horror movies, the X-Men, and candy corn.) Even more of you may well have been confused, given how focal cats have traditionally been around here. But I haven't been blogging about my cats.

John Scalzi has just made a lengthy post about the shit female bloggers get that he doesn't get. Go and read it. I'll be honest: after more than a decade on the internet, I find his experiences to be pretty spot-on. I make a controversial comment, I get death threats, comments about my weight, accusations of bitchiness, comments about my weight, offers to "fuck the stupid" out of me, comments about my weight, insults, comments about my weight, and, best of all, people swearing up, down, and sideways that I deserve whatever I get. It's been a few years since I've had a really bad troll problem, but when I had one, it was...

It was bad. It was "Kate monitored my journal and deleted comments before I could see them" bad, with a side order of feeling sick every time I considered getting online. I didn't sleep, I didn't eat, and I was scared all the time. It's invasive, and it's scary. Cracks about my weight aside, I'm not that big, and if someone wanted to fuck me up, they could. Easily. (Is this a motivator for my large and oft-discussed machete collection? Possible! Anybody comes to my house with the intent of doing me a mischief in the woods, they will not be thrilled by the results.)

And I haven't been blogging about my cats recently.

I'll be honest: I understand people being dicks for the sake of being dicks. We're all a little mean when we've had a bad day. My mother used to snap at me, even though she loved me. Sometimes I pick fights with my friends, or snarl at my co-workers. Human nature sometimes trends toward asshole, and no matter how hard we work to control it, it's going to happen. What I don't understand is why being a dick towards a woman on the internet so often turns into a) threats of violence, b) sexual insults, c) threats of sexual violence, or d) comments about perceived attractiveness/weight. Or violence toward the things that woman loves.

I haven't been blogging about my cats recently, because someone has been sending me email, from dummy accounts, threatening to kill my cats. In graphic detail. They know what my cats look like, thanks to the amount of blogging I have done in the past, and they've been able to get really, really specific in what they're going to do. Why? Because I got my cats from a breeder, and not from a shelter, and that means I need to suffer in order to understand the suffering of the cats waiting for adoption. "Bitch," "cunt," and "whore" feature heavily in these emails, which is always a nice seasoning for my rage and terror stew. It's all very gender-specific.

And they're threatening to kill my cats.

So no, I'm not going to talk about them right now; not until this email stops, not until the trolls find something else to chew on. And yes, I realize that making this post may reawaken some of my old trolls (and oh, Great Pumpkin, I hate it so much that I even have to take that into consideration), so I'm going to be watching comments carefully. Anything insulting will be deleted. Anything malicious will result in an immediate banning. I mean that. I am not going to let that shit stand.

We need to stop acting this way toward one another. We need to remember that there are humans on the other side of all those keyboards. We need to be decent human beings, because otherwise, everything is going to fall apart.

And none of this changes the fact that if the fucker who's been telling me what he's going to do to my babies comes anywhere near them, I will probably be going to prison for assault.

Some days I hate being a girl.

My house was broken into yesterday.

I had managed to leave my house keys on the floor next to my bed when I left for work, so I called my mother and arranged for her to pick me up from the train station. The Great Pumpkin was looking out for me; if she hadn't given me a ride, I would have come home alone, less than twenty minutes after I did.

When we reached the house, we saw a razor scooter parked next to the trash cans. "Huh," I said. "I wonder what that's doing there?" But we dismissed it as having been left by one of the neighborhood kids, and kept going.

There was a large Aaron Brothers bag, and a backpack, in the front yard. "That's weird," I said. But we decided it probably belonged to my little sister, who will sometimes put things in odd places while she does other stuff, and we kept going.

Inside, the cats were in a state of high dudgeon—even moreso than normal for a weekday afternoon—and appeared to have expressed their unhappiness by knocking a bunch of stuff over. Mom scolded them amiably while I started for the fridge to get a soda, and saw that Alex's bedroom door was open. His room is one of the only places in the house the cats aren't allowed. I thought "wow, lots of mischief," and went to close it...

...only to find that his bedside table had been cleared onto the bed. And the door to the laundry room was open. And the door connecting the laundry room to the back was open. And the DVD player was gone.

Cue freaking right the fuck out.

Mom searched the house while I got the stuff out of the front yard. The bags proved to contain everything that was missing: the DVD player, Alex's computer (mine was untouched), a bunch of small electronics, a few DVDs. (Ironically, our thief only took Firefly-related material. So we're looking for an asshole Browncoat. Nice!) The Aaron Brothers bag was mine, which explains why my pictures were scattered all over the floor.

After a heart-stopping moment of not being able to find Lilly, we got ourselves calmed mostly down, and Mom went to the hardware store to get new locks while I called the police. An officer came out and took my statement; we walked the perimeter, and found that the hide-a-key (which I didn't know existed until I called Alex) was missing. So that's probably how they got inside.

We think we came home and surprised the thief in the process of going back in for another load. That's why we found all their stuff (and the scooter). Had I come home alone, they would probably have still been there. And I would have walked in on them, without a car to warn that I was coming.

Alex got home and confirmed that all his stuff was there. Mom changed the locks. Victor and Lara came and took me for dinner. The cats got fussed over. And I took a machete to bed.

So...

1. Nothing is missing.
2. In fact, net gain: I have the thief's scooter.
3. We think it was a teenage boy, based on the scooter, the things grabbed, and the fact that none of my girly things were touched.
4. Alex is working from home today, so the house is not empty.
5. The cats are fine.
6. I will be sleeping with a machete for the foreseeable future.

It's an ignite the biosphere kind of day.

Did you know that a Microsoft Word error can not only crash your file, it can delete it?

The whole file?

The whole four hundred page novel file?

The whole four hundred page, no backups from this week file?

Pardon me while I go non-linear.