The back is feeling slightly, very slightly better. Overall it feels like there's an improvement, but by 'improvement' I mean I can walk twenty metres before the crippling pain kicks in, as opposed to ten. I've got my fourth visit to the osteopath tomorrow afternoon. After that, I'm giving up since I'm increasingly sure I'm not getting any benefit from it. I feel exactly the same after each session as I did before, except poorer.
What has helped, is very gently returning to most, if not all, the physiotherapy exercises, performed two or three times a day, for about five minutes at a time. Very gentle stretching of the muscles, and so forth. But yes, a mild improvement, which cheers me up no end.
I got two copies of the mass market paperback of Against Gravity through from Tor today, and I'm not happy. I'm not happy because when I saw the cover on its own for the mass market, at Eastercon earlier this year, I was assured the reason there weren't any quotes from the reviews I'd read was because they'd decided to put them on the inside of the book instead. So I cracked open the book and ... no reviews, no pull quotes telling you what a terrific book it is, nothing. All there is is the same, out of date bio about being a designer and writing since the age of fourteen. Like, who cares? I've got a web address for that - www.garygibson.net. That, plus a couple of good review quotes, would be far better.
It isn't even like the first time something like this has happened either. I feel kind of churlish for complaining - but the fact is, when you spend a year or more working really, really hard on something that's sprung completely out of your own imagination, when hours a day are spend wondering and worrying over every minute detail, trying to get it right, you want your stuff to get treated with at least reasonable respect. All I'm saying is, when I pick up a book by an author I haven't read, I often check out the pull quotes. They can sometimes motivate me to buy a book. That's why they're there, to sell you the book.
Back when Angel Stations came out, I vaguely recall, they didn't leave enough room for the acknowledgements. So I had to write a much shorter version of it, missing out people, to fit in a much smaller space on another page with other information on it. I'm reaching back here memory-wise, but I do seem to recall being told the full thing would be in the mass market. It wasn't.
I should be happy to have the mass market paperbacks in my hand, but all this has kind of taken the edge off it for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment