I still have to edit pictures and I am too tired to stare at Lightroom on my screen right now because I get sharp, stabby head pains but this made me happy so I wanted to share it.
Work is pretty boring/slow, my supervisor and other warehouse colleague are both not here today so it’s just super quiet here except for whatever weird thing the glassblowers are listening to now.
Basically arriving at work at 5:30 AM is outstanding because they don't start production until 7, which means the dumb dog can roam and sniff and tire herself out. There was no production at all because the power went out during the "storm" (California, you are full of winy babies) and as a result the gas went out, which meant the furnaces were too cold to make product with. I'm sure they'll be back at their regular toasty 2,000+ tomorrow.
Don't want to post videos of Saoirse at work because too much company logo everywhere but she goofed around for a solid hour all over the warehouse and then passed out for most of the morning, it was pretty great.
Anyway. Alex isn't in immediate danger of dying in the next couple of months but it's becoming more and more real that time is limited because there are no effective long-term curative treatments for osteosarcoma. It doesn't feel fair and I feel like an asshole because I can't help but feel resentful of other cancers that aren't orphan diseases because they affect more people so more money is thrown at them.
I'm just experiencing bone deep psychological weariness and I feel that's the only thing I ever post about anymore. But anyway. Clinical trial was a bust, a new node popped up between late July and August so our next bandaid fix is SBRT and maybe some more clinical trials when something else inevitably pops up. Chemo is not on the table because it's such a massive reduction in terms of QOL.
I just feel for our poor oncologist because he's young and very human. All I could focus on at our last appointment was how he was fiddling with his wedding band as he talked hard, awful stuff with us. All he's ever known since meeting us has been delivering us bad news.
rnoachi replied to your link “Handbook for Mortals’ Pulled From ‘New York Times’ YA Best-seller…”
What’s going on omfg
LMAOOO. All right Ima try and explain this succinctly as possible. Basically this random-ass ‘young adult’ book, ‘Handbook for Mortals,’ hit the NYT Bestseller List on the #1 Spot for the Hardcover Young Adult Category this morning. Only problem is that literally NO ONE had ever heard of this book before, like nada marketing, publicity, etc. Zilch. It was supposedly published by a company, GeekNation who only announced their publishing arm back in July.
To hit the Bestseller list, the book would have had to sold at least 5,000~ copies within the first week, but a few people were quick to point out a major discrepancy where the book was literally out of stock everywhere in all major retailers, like legit you couldn’t find it on B&N, Amazon, and so on.
YA Twitter basically crowd-sourced an investigation where a few anonymous booksellers revealed that they had gotten calls first asking if they were NYT-reporting bookstores, and then received bulk orders of the book but not caring when the books arrived. Soooo essentially what happened was that this book scammed it’s way on to the top of the NYT Bestseller List by figuring out which bookstores reported sales to the NYT (to determine what hits the bestsellers list, the NYT’s methodology takes a sample from various bookstores, and this supposedly changes every week). They then ordered thousands of copies of the book from those stores and only those stores - and by doing so, this was all a scheme in the hopes of driving the book to the top of the bestseller list.
The main impetus for hitting the bestseller list was for getting a better chance to have a movie adaptation of the book made with a label like ‘#1 NYT Bestselling Book!’ which would have made it more appealing to potential investors. Butttt all of this was discovered and the NYT sent out a revision where they removed the book on the list a few hours ago.
Someone also compared an excerpt of the book to an excerpt from ‘My Immortal,’ so now there’s a conspiracy theory that the author, Lani Sarem, is actually the author behind that fanfic. She’s also a former music manager who worked with bands like Blues Traveler, and the official Blues Traveler account weighed in and claimed that she was fired for ‘pulling these kind of stunts.’
And IN ADDITION to all this craziness, you had the bizarre emergence of random early-2000s celebrities linked to all of this - Lani is apparently JC Chasez’s (from N Sync) cousin who promoted the book on his twitter, and the co-founder of GeekNation (the publishing company behind this book) is Clare Kramer, who portrayed Glory on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and actor Thomas Ian Nicholas (American Pie, Rookie of the Year) was allegedly involved and planning to star in an eventual movie adaptation.
So, yeah that’s what happened in the last 12 hours of YA Twitter lol.
actualvampireang
This is the wildest thing and I love every minute of it.
This doesn’t even cover half the craziness. Some of my other favorite parts:
- The cover wasn’t even revealed until the beginning of August
- The ONLY chatter on Twitter before this was a little blog tour they’d put together, but nothing else
- The distribution company behind this is the same people who distributed Milo Yadablahblah
- Whoever was behind this knew August was the best time to push a book onto the list (as opposed to September, which is bananas)
- Whoever was behind this knew the EXACTLY how many books to order form each store (the number that alerts NYT to start giving you a hard time is like 80 books at indies, so they went around and ordered 79 each.)
- But they were dumb enough to wildly over-order (they ordered over 18,000, over double what it would’ve taken)
- Also dumb enough to straight-up tell the booksellers “This is for an event but it’s okay if it doesn’t arrive”
- The book only has ONE blurb. One.
- No trade reviews. No blurbs from other authors within the community
- The ONE blurb is from an “international bestselling author”
- No. She’s a self-pub romance author who’s besties with LS
- You find all that out in the foreword (who puts a foreword on a YA novel???)
- Also the main character is 25 and there isn’t a single teen in this supposed YA novel
- Also also the cover may have been plagiarized
- Also also also the book knocked The Hate U Give to #2 and Everything, Everything off the list entirely, so people were maaaaaaaad
- And finally, when confronted with all this, the author tried to pull a “#KeepYAKind uwu” in her response to PW.
IT JUST KEEPS GETTING WEIRDER. The publication date was last week but literally one has a copy. I’m beginning to think the book just straight up doesn’t exist.
Also the My Immortal thing is priceless.
@curliestofcrowns, @ipomoeaj THE POSSIBILITIES
Construction is going well. We'll have our own space in just a couple of months and I could not be more thrilled. Also I am so tired from having walked 56 miles this week alone.
A most helpful noodle at work today. She's turning out to not be a terrible dog to bring along and she's exhausted by the end of the day, which makes up for my 5 am wake-ups so I can walk to work and also exercise her. We also had a thoroughly unpleasant encounter on our lunch walk where I literally had to punt a Yorkie that tried launching itself at her throat. That was fun.
vampireapologist-archive-deacti
Anonymous asked:
I only wish to share the truth of the universe. My Immortal was not written as a joke. It was taken seriously in the mind of its author. I know much. I have seen the lost, unpublished chapters. I know the truth about the rift that occurred between the author and her friend. I know it all. Because I know where to find the author herself.
This is what it feels like to be Agent Mulder. I want to chase you down eight flights of a parking garage, screaming at you about what your name is and how you know this, desperate to know if I can trust this information.
an emotion: *happens*
me: Get Back Into The Feelings Box You Dirty Gremlin