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I got the call this morning from the RN at Evergreen’s breast center, who told me that the results are clean, and that they are likely just the results of passing benign cysts that just sometimes happen in breast tissue.
I told her she’d just handed me one HELL of a birthday present and thanked her profusely. :~) You guys, I don’t even WORDS for how relieved I am, and I’m a goddamn novelist. Coming up with words is what I do!
I posted a bit about this on the social networks, but here’s a somewhat longer report.
What I went in for this morning at Evergreen was a stereotactic biopsy. Which basically means, a minimally invasive procedure in which they use targeted imaging and a thin needle. I had to lay face down on a table with a hole in it, so as to let them get at the tissue they needed to get at. And they shot me up with three different kinds of numbing agents, which was good; otherwise all the various pokings and proddings would have been a lot more uncomfortable than they actually were.
The doctor and the nurse tech (Dr. Shook and Jennifer, respectively, as they introduced themselves to me) who did the procedure looked pretty familiar to me, once I showed up, from the first round of fun I had with this. Which would be almost amusing if not for the whole “not wanting to do this again” thing, but hey. They’re good people and they do their job well.
And their job was done well this morning, thankfully. There was some concern about their being able to get to the tissue they needed to get to, given that the calcifications in question were so tiny that that might have been a problem. But they came in from the underside of my breast, and got a good track to the calcifications–so they did get the samples that they needed. And they promised to fast-track the samples through Pathology, so as to hopefully have them for me when I come in to talk to Dr. Towbin tomorrow. (Dr. Towbin, comma, who I also remember from the previous round of fun; kinda difficult to not remember the surgeon who does major surgery on you, even five years after the fact.) I asked them to yes, please, do try to get me the results before Wednesday, since if it’s going to be bad news, I’d just as soon NOT get it on my birthday, thanks.
So. All things considered, it went as well as possible. When they were done they took a couple of quick mammogram images, and sent me home with a yellow rose.
I’m under instructions to take acetaminophen as needed for pain, and to ice the affected area for the next couple of days. I’ve been having trouble keeping my mental ducks in a row for most of the afternoon, and had to zonk out for a while; but then, I did just have a biopsy done, and I’m still kind of stressy and just waiting for whether the shoe is going to drop tomorrow morning. So I’m trying to cut myself a little bit of slack on that even as I’m trying to get work done, both for the day job and for the writing.
More bulletins as events warrant.
Just the other day I was posting to the social networks that I’d just realized that I’d passed the five-year mark since my original breast cancer diagnosis in 2007, and was closing in on five years since I’d been pronounced cancer-free and had commenced reconstruction surgery. (All that got started in 2008, until everything was finished off in 2009.)
I’d just had my latest mammogram this past week, and was expecting it to be routine. They’ve been having me in for regular mammograms ever since the 2007-2009 excitements, and they’ve been keeping a really, really sharp eye on me in general.
Which means that when they see things like new calcifications in a mammogram, this trips all their alarms.
Calcifications in the breast, for those of you who don’t know, are one of the very early warning indicators of breast cancer. They are in fact what got me started on the first round of fun, with my first mammogram back in 2007. Apparently now I have some new ones–this time on the left side.
They are very tiny, only 3mm in size. But the fact that they’re there at all, given my history, is suspicious. So the team at Evergreen has scheduled me for a biopsy next week to see if they can get a better look at them. Since the calcifications in question are so tiny, however, a biopsy might not even work. In that event, we punt to Plan B–sending me to the same surgeon I worked with before, who’d take out the suspicious area. The biopsy is scheduled for Monday. The backup surgeon visit is scheduled for Tuesday.
And Wednesday is my birthday. Which means I get a biopsy for my birthday. And another possible round of DCIS, depending on how this goes. I don’t mind telling you, Internets, I’m really nervous about this, because really not in the mood to do this again.
All good thoughts, crossed fingers, prayers, lit candles, fluffy small cute creatures, awesome bouzouki players, podorythmic fiddle players, or crack ninja assassin teams to take out whatever gnomes have dedicated themselves to taking over what’s left of my breasts would be most appreciated. If I have to do this again, though, at least this time my choices will be much clearer. If there’s anything going on on the left, we’ll be going straight to mastectomy.
More bulletins as events warrant.
Every so often well-meaning family and/or friends ask me questions like “So when do you get to quit your day job?” or “When do you get to be the next Tolkien/J.K. Rowling/Stephanie Meyer/Amanda Hocking/etc.?”
Which are lovely questions and I do appreciate the support, but the long and short of it is, the likely answer to both of these questions for the foreseeable future is “I don’t”.
For a writer, especially these days, getting to a point where quitting the day job is feasible is extremely hard. For one thing, I live in the United States, and while I’m fortunate enough to have a good job with good medical benefits, if I left that job, those benefits would vanish. And getting health coverage on your own? That’s just about as hard as trying to support yourself as a writer. And after all the medical adventures I’ve had over the last ten years, frankly, I ain’t leaving a well-paying, benefits-providing job unless my books start selling a few million copies a year.
Which brings me to the second question, i.e., will I ever match the sales levels of those aforementioned famous authors? Probably not.
Because let’s get real here, folks–even though I do have a trilogy about to start coming out via Carina, I do remain a primarily digitally published author. In 2012, I sold 143 copies of Faerie Blood to the general public (which doesn’t count the Kickstarter backers). Some of those are print copies, but the majority are ebook. The maximum number I’ve sold per month is just over 50. The minimum is 12. Given that I suck at self-promotion, I’m deeply grateful that I’ve managed to score even these numbers–but still? They’re tiny numbers.
And I don’t honestly expect them to change much when Valor of the Healer comes out. A few reasons for this.
One, people still keep periodically saying to me, “Well gosh Anna, I’d love to read your books, except I don’t like ebooks/can’t read them/can’t afford an ereader/etc.” Whatever the reason, it boils down to “I’m not going to buy your book.” So the fact that I’m a digitally published author means that I don’t pull those readers in.
Two, even though I do have print copies of Faerie Blood, you do still have to buy them from me directly. This takes effort, more effort than just walking into a bookstore and picking a book off the bookshelf. There’s an inevitable delay between “asking me for the book” and “actually getting it so you can read it”.
Three, it’s going to be a tough sell to get Carina’s majority book-buying audience (which is coming out of romance) interested in what I write (which is to say, SF/F with romantic elements). Likewise, it’s going to be a tough sell to get SF/F readers willing to look at an epic fantasy trilogy sold by an imprint of a company primarily known for romance–because there’s still a lot of genre snobbery out there, and a lot of it is unfortunately directed at romance. So I fully expect there to be some level of “well, she’s published via a romance imprint, her book must be a romance novel, pass” in play.
Four, even among the digital book-buying public, it’s going to be hard to stand out from the crowd. It is supremely easy to self-publish these days. Anybody with a novel and the tools to slap together an ebook can do it, and so the major ebook vending sites are awash in an overwhelming flood of digitally published work. Just because a book’s out there though doesn’t mean it’s good, or that people are going to be able to find it, or that they’re going to actually want to read it when they do.
Five, hell, you guys, I know a lot of authors in print who struggle to sell enough copies to quit their day jobs. I know of authors who, despite the fact that they are well-lauded in their respective genres, despite the fact that they do in fact have day jobs, despite the fact that they’ve gotten titles onto the New York Times Bestselling list, still have to struggle to make ends meet. I’ve seen authors in print have series collapse out from under them because print sales have taken such a hit over the last several years–authors who have then had to either start writing under different names, or choose to self-publish the rest of their series via Kickstarter, or what have you.
“Writer” is very, very seldom synonomous with “rich”.
Long story short–if the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy performs better than Faerie Blood, even if just to the tune of a couple more hundred copies sold per year, I’ll be happy. I’m not in this for the money; that’s what I’ve got the day job for. I’m in this to share some stories with you folks, and I’m in it for the long haul and the hope that each time I put out a book, I’ll maybe pick up a small number of new readers. Maybe eventually, I’ll hit that critical mass and be somebody who can get talked about on the same level as Butcher or Richardson or McGuire or Priest or what have you.
Till then, I hope y’all stick around. And be on the lookout, because Valor of the Healer is COMING.
The holidays are always a pretty low-key and kind of drawn-out affair at the Murkworks. As happens every year, Housemate Paul went to Virginia to see his family; thus, we held off the house gift exchange until he returned. Mostly, the holidays for Dara and me meant a relaxing vacation that nonetheless also involved working on music (on Dara’s behalf) and working on Bone Walker (on mine).
That said, Paul’s back now and we DID have our house gift exchange! Also on hand for the festivities were longstanding house pal Mimi as well as visiting guest Cygnet. There was tasty handmade chocolate given by Cygnet from a chocolatier she likes! And Meems gave me the third season of Due South, which I still need to get caught up on! (Seriously, you guys, I’m behind on so many things I should be watching.)
BUT! The two biggest coolest things were from Paul and Dara. For Paul’s gift, I present a bit of backstory! Back in 2007, some of y’all may recall, we went to Japan for Worldcon and had ourselves an Awesome Vacation of Awesomeness. One of the things we noticed while we were over there, though, was that Kit Kats in Japan come in approximately eight hundred and thirty-seven flavors. Way, WAY more than you ever see in the States. It got to the point where I kept ducking into corner convenience stores just to see what flavors of Kit Kat they were carrying. Which is, in fact, a Thing there–different stores having different flavors!
So for this year’s gift exchange, Paul gave me a big ol’ gift box from Japan full of different Kit Kat flavors! It’s laid out like an Advent calendar (only, y’know, totally wrong religion and all), with little windows you can punch open to find out what flavor of Kit Kat is inside. The one I tried last night was Citrus Golden Blend and I swear it tasted like an orange creamsicle. SO TASTY. It is probably for the best that these are not available in the States. Because I would be buying ALL OF THEM.
Behold the pics of tasty goodness!
And if that wasn’t awesome enough? Dara TOTALLY warmed my heart with what she had made for me. She got a Faerie Blood cover, printed on really good paper, matted and framed for me. Sniff. <3 And now this lovely, lovely thing is hanging right by the couch where I usually do all my writing! When we do the Bone Walker cover, that’ll be joining it as well! Check it out!
What an awesome way to start off 2013!
Well, this was SUPPOSED to be the day I went with and down to Oregon to see Le Vent du Nord perform, and then to meet up with tomorrow afternoon for lunch and then an excursion to Powell’s.
But the travel gods had other plans. We made it safely down to Olympia–where we stopped for lunch and then found a little shop called Bonjour Cupcakes, which seemed like a fortuitous sign, because what BETTER place could there be to visit on the way to see a Francophone band? Plus, the cupcakes were super-tasty.
After we got out of Olympia, though, we ran face-first into a massive wall of Suck. :(
The car started making scary rattling noises and vibrations right around exit 39 on I-5, so we had to pull off, slowing down hard to try to get down to a safer speed in case we were suddenly unable to get anywhere. Dara turned on the emergency blinkers, and we limped into a Shell station to seek emergency help. The Shell station directed us to a nearby mall with a Sears with an auto service station in it, and once we got over there and let one of their guys test-drive the car, he was all “well, your front axles are screwed. They shouldn’t be this loose.”
The REALLY vexing part of this is that Dara just had the damn car looked at, and those axles had just been replaced. So either our usual mechanic chose extremely poorly with the new axles, or else our car is old enough at this point that it’s just fucked and we’re going to have to see about getting a new one.
And it was glaringly apparent that we weren’t going to make it to Forest Grove in time for the show. Moreover, there was no way we could get the car fixed before Monday. So while Dara and Jenny tried to tag team on getting the car towed to the nearest shop, I cancelled our reservation at the hotel near where Le Vent was playing tonight. I admit freely that I spent some time crying inside the mall, ’cause yeah, looking forward to this show for MONTHS. Missing this was a kick right in the heart, every bit as bad as missing a Great Big Sea show would have been. But I’ve suffered worse, and when the tow truck showed up to pick up the car, things seemed like they were looking up a bit. The driver got us to the nearby train station in plenty of time to get tickets for the next train back to Seattle. So at least, if nothing else, we’d be able to get home and spend the night in our own beds and let Jenny crash at our place before we got her home.
At the train station, though, was when Dara realized her backpack was gone.
We think she had it when we got into the cab of the tow truck. I’m pretty sure I remember asking her if she wanted to put it into the actual car, since we had to stick our suitcase in there anyway, given that there wasn’t room for that in the cab of the truck. I remember her saying no. And she remembers having the weight of the backpack on her shoulder when we got in.
What we don’t know is whether she left it behind the driver’s seat of the truck, or whether she might have left it on the bed of the truck when we got out at the train station. The driver says he couldn’t find it in the truck. So at this point we have no real idea what the hell happened to it.
Dara’s iPad and Nook were in that backpack, which sucks massively, given, y’know, expensive electronics and all. But what really hurts is that her very first bamboo piccolo was in that bag too. Popcorn, the first bamboo piccolo she made with her very own hands. On which she’s written a LOT of music. We’re talking huge sentimental value here, people, and an instrument that’s irreplaceable despite its comparatively small monetary value.
So yeah, I’m pretty upset about not getting to see Olivier Demers be awesome on the fiddle tonight–and particularly pissed off that axle trouble on a car that just had its axles replaced kept me from that. But Dara is shattered by the loss of Popcorn.
I suspect we’re going to have to spend some time just curled up together tomorrow and taking comfort in each other and possibly also snuggling the cats. Please keep your fingers crossed that we’ll get that backpack back, people. And if ANY of you know anybody in Longview or Kelso, please, please, PLEASE spread the word that we will pay a reward for its return, with its contents, no questions asked.
We take a small modicum of comfort in the knowledge that we were able to make it safely home again, and that if the car had to fail so spectacularly, at least it did it in a way that didn’t result in any of us being hurt. We’re also grateful that it broke down right at a freeway exit right in the middle of a town, where we had easily accessible people to get some level of assistance, and an easily accessible train station.
But we’re still pretty goddamn unhappy about the way today turned out. So again–please boost that signal, people. Dara has a post about it here. And now would also be a good time to share good news, or pics of cute puppies or kittens, or something. Thanks all.
I go and announce a thing I’m attending in a writerly capacity–and then keel over and have to go to the hospital. Figures. *^_^*;;
Due to the previously mentioned hospital incident, folks, I feel I must play it safe and back out of the panels I agreed to participate in at the Sherlock Seattle convention this weekend. Energy permitting, I will still try to attend just as an attendee, so maybe I’ll still get to see folks there!
Y’all know how I said I was going to be participating in CoyoteCon this past weekend? Um, yeah, well, that kind of fell through with the whole suddenly having to be in the hospital for five days thing I just had to do. Happily I’m fine now, but I was sad to miss the CoyoteCon fun. If you were in on that, tell me what I missed, hey?
Meanwhile though I’d like to give a shoutout to fellow former Drollerie author Michael Stewart, who just released a new YA novella with zombies into the wild. Right now Ruination is only available for the Kindle since he’s released it via KDP Select. So if you’re a Kindle user, go check it out! And if you’re not a Kindle user and think this story might be your cup of tea regardless, let Michael know so he’ll be able to get it to you when his KDP Select period runs out!
I read and quite liked his novel 24 Bones, so I’m very happy to recommend him. Go give him a look, mmkay?
I’m going to do an entire post about Memoire et Racines, because I am here to tell you, Internets, that deserves an entire post to itself even if we only made it to one day’s worth of awesome!
And this is going to get long, so this is getting a fold!
Continue reading “The Great Canadian Adventure, Day 5–MEMOIRE ET RACINES!”
Since Canada is very, VERY nigh, I now present for you, O Internets, this roundup and summary of everything that 
solarbird
First up, Toronto! Where we will be enjoying the hospitality of the most excellent cow
In Quebec, we’re going to go to Memoire et Racines, at which we will be seeing Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer, with possible bonus sightings of one or more members of Le Vent du Nord depending on who’s performing on what festival event when! I also have high hopes of swooning at any wares offered by instrument makers, and the chances of consumption of proper poutine, as well as any maple-flavored ice cream we can find, are extremely high!
While also in Quebec, I will be scarfing as much French-Canadian SF/F as I can safely carry home from here! I now have five titles on my Francophone wishlist on Goodreads, and it’s a safe bet I’ll be able to find at least a couple of them.
And there will be meeting of scrunchionsframlingemlyonesse
Onward to Moncton, where we will enjoy the hospitality of brightbeak
St. John’s! The Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival! The Duke of Duckworth pub! O’Brien’s Music, renowned in song and story and Great Big Sea fandom! The Haunted Hike, a walking ghost tour of downtown St. John’s, and I ask you, could I be handed any more excellent a research opportunity for the third Kendis and Christopher book?
And last but oh my definitely not least, the Torbay 250 celebration, at which I need not remind any of you that Dara and I will be singing and bouncing our hearts out for our most belovedest of beloved B’ys. Watch the skies over Newfoundland, people, we may bounce straight into orbit!
We shall be consuming as much Grower’s Cider as we can get our tiny little hands on, but failing that, I will be on the lookout for any excellent local ciders. Because all this bouncing I’m about to be doing? It’s going to be thirsty, thirsty work!
And I will bring Norouet and Chirp, and there will be playing of tunes, and adventures in reading French street signs, and general seizing of days! I’ve already been asked by two different people to post frequent updates–and I will be doing as much of that as the wi-fi availability allows, so stand by for bulletins as they happen! Internets, I am EXCITE! Only a few more days to go! \0/