And my words like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence

[pameladean]

I haven't been posting much because, after a brief moment just after LJ struggled to its feet again in the wake of the latest DDOS attack, when everything seemed to work, LJ is again failing to play nicely with Opera. I can type in entries till I'm blue, but neither the Preview button nor the Post button works. If I click on the link in an emailed comment notification, I can type merrily away in the comment box thus provided, but the Post and Preview buttons do not work. If I attempt to comment directly on a journal, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I can comment on a journal, and if I go back to answer a response, suddenly I can't comment any more. Some journals seem permanently barred (karenkay, I would pester you a lot more if I could). LJ Support heroically worked on the problem during the DDOS attack, but told me they had been unable to reproduce my difficulty with several different versions of Opera.

I'm using Firefox to post this.

I don't know why I don't just switch to Firefox, aside from a less than healthy hatred of unfamiliar things in my working environment. I think some deep part of my brain, faced with the fact that a particular website does not work with Opera, decides "Forget that website!" rather than "Forget Opera!"

Oh, and I can't post to or comment on Google+, either. Well, I could, but only if I didn't put spaces between words. This would give my comments an interesting flavor of very old classical manuscript, but seems unproductive in the long run. In any case, I'm unimpressed with Google's handling of its insane insistence on real names.

However, I do have some good news. I heard back from sdn, my fabulous editor. She does not hate the book! It needs more cutting and tightening, as I knew when I sent it off, and hence has been moved from Fall of 2012 to Spring of 2013. This is not, I understand, good news to people who are still actually waiting for the book rather than having found authors who write regularly and don't end up expanding and shrinking their novels as if they were variable stars, but it's good news for me. The book would have needed to be in copy-edit by November if it were to be published in the fall of next year, and now it doesn't have to be in that enviable state until March. Breathing room to make revisions -- with any luck at all, the last revisions this unfortunate composition will need to suffer -- will be useful.

I should make posts about this summer's hiking and about books I've read, but we'll see.

I am reading you all, and I rejoice at your triumphs and am saddened by your sorrows and laugh at your jokes.

Pamela

Comments

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I like the image of your book as a variable star.

[carbonel]

Does David or Raphael use Opera?

I would be interested in hearing what would happen if you gave your logon info to one of them and zie tried posting to your LJ. That would test just how computer-specific the problem is.

Or have you been through all of that already with LJ support?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

pubdate--yay!!!!

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Yay! 2013, as opposed to "sometime eventually." (Thus I prove I am not your usual reader, or something.)

I can't comment on G+, either, but that's because (due to computer limitations), I can't use the new editions of Firefox et al. Gr.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I haven't used Opera to post to LJ, but I've found a similar problem with Hotwire, the discount travel reservation site. Some of their pulldown menus refuse to pull down under Opera, so you can't enter data or change the default data if any. Others work OK.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Heh. I just dropped a line from "Mrs. Robinson" in a comment in my own journal.

I am so happy about the book. Hurray!

I am finding Javascript-heavy sites more and more and more annoying. I frequently have to go from Chrome to Firefox to IE to shop at some stores. A friend just posted that google.com, the search engine itself, no longer supports her browser. (!!!!!)

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

The revised publication date sounds like good news for you, and I can wait. Yay!

[cowfan.livejournal.com]

Yay! Looking forward to the book coming out. And people may get a taste of it at Conjecture 2 (http://www.mnstf.org/conjecture/) at your Friday night reading, right?

[thinkum]

Fred's and my little niece Sonia, adopted from India as a special needs child, has a particular gift for wrapping our heartstrings around her tiny fingers. She has this funny expression that combines frustration and happiness and impatience and eagerness and resignation all at once, when she's ready for something exciting and her mother tells her, "Not yet!". Her small hands make the sign for 'Wait' and she gives a little sigh -- even while she's smiling in anticipation and her eyes are all lit up.

I look a lot like Sonia at the moment. ;-)

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

rather than having found authors who write regularly and don't end up expanding and shrinking their novels as if they were variable stars,

I don't think "rather than" is quite the right expression, because it's probably quite unusual to be monogamous with authors. Except perhaps for the partners of authors. But I digress.

I would, of course, buy books by other authors too even if you were to produce a new one every Christmas. And I am looking forward to your new one.

[phantom_wolfboy]

Commenting with Opera. Not having any problems so far.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

You have done a stunning job with this book. We're getting there ...

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

I rather like the idea of your Google+ account resembling a very old classical manuscript, unproductive or no.

And I'm very much looking forward to the book, even if the wait has got longer...

love

Catherine

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the new date!