At last! I’m finally at the point where I can offer you something along the line of entertainment in exchange for your hard-earned dollars. As you might imagine, not having the multi-million dollar support structure of a traditional publishing house behind us is causing me and my coauthor, Bonnie Biafore, endless worry. We did some research and found out that, as first-time novelists, there really wouldn’t be any support for us anyway. Plus, even if we found someone to publish the book, it would take years for it to see the light of ink and end up on the clearance shelf at your local Barnes and Noble – assuming of course that B&N survives that long. This made us worry even more. We – and you by the way but you don’t know it yet – don’t want to wait that long so, for our new novel Fresh Squeezed, we’ve decided to jump into the world of indie publishing with all four feet.
“Indie” is new-speak for “on your own dime” and there are a fairly large number of dimes that are going to be needed as we move forward. There’s hiring an editor, graphic design work, layout, printer setup, and on and on and on. I mean, we even have to buy the barcode that goes onto the back of the book. Bonnie and I have each ponied up a big pile of dimes but we still could use a few more to make ends meet. To that end we have decided to offer an opportunity for you to be the first on your block to own a collector’s edition copy of Fresh Squeezed as part of a limited edition Proof Set of wonderful goodies.
All, as they say on TV, for the low, low price of $25.00.
For this amazingly low price you’ll get (before the actual release date) a signed copy of Fresh Squeezed in the form of an actual book printed on Genuine Paper! Gasp! But wait, there’s more. In addition you’ll receive the eBook versions for BOTH Kindle and all other eReaders. AND just to tip you over the decision point we will include in your Limited Edition package a custom designed Fresh Squeezed T-shirt to cherish for a lifetime, or until if falls apart in the wash.
All that for only $25? You ask.
You betcha.
You sharper knives in the drawer will have already figured out that for the low, low price of $25.00 you get not one but four items which can easily be passed off as gifts to your local library (for a tax deduction), and to two people you know who own eReaders, and as your last minute contribution to this year’s Secret Santa gift exchange at work. What a deal.
In an effort to appeal to your elitist natures we are restricting this offer to 100 Limited Edition Packages. After that you’re S.O.L. Make sure you don’t miss out, just click on any “Support” button here or on my website (like that one right over there to the left) and select the $25.00 Fresh Squeezed Limited Edition Package. It’s a PayPal transaction but no PayPal account is needed. Make sure you write your T-shirt size in the notes box. Act fast so you can be the first on your block.
What? You want to read some first? You want a chance to see some characters, some narrative, and some scenery? My, you are a demanding crowd. Well okay.
Click here to meet Juice Verrone.
On with the blog.
It all has to do with scale. If we wanted just one copy of Fresh Squeezedprinted up I could fire up the HP and in about twenty minutes be published and only out of pocket about six bucks. But we want thousands of copies so it’s a completely different story. There’s all the stuff listed above plus distribution, wholesaling, and on and on. The costs jump to the stratosphere all because we want to play in the big leagues.
Like on the micro-farm. Those four little letters: f-a-r-m, completely change the scale of the venture. The “yard” becomes a “pasture”, “wildflowers” become “cover crops”, the “garden” turns into the “south forty (square yards)”, “pets” become “livestock”. The whole scale of the operation changes; all because “micro-farm” has a much better ring to it than “pretty big lot”.
I’m running face first into the scale issue right now. Back in the day when I had a “garden” my pre-season needs could be met by a couple of grow-light equipped lamps and a workbench. I’d plant the seeds, switch on the lamp, and a couple of months later transplant the seedlings outside. I figured that the micro-farm wasn’t that big so I could get away with a similar setup. So I converted the shed to a micro-nursery using a couple of fluorescents and a space blanket to keep the light in place.
The first thing I had to plant was lavender; it takes about three to four months to get it ready for the outdoors. I measured the bed that was going to hold the lavender (along with some heather) to provide summer forage for the bees. Not bad, 600 square feet or so, let’s see that means I need, jeez, 100 lavender plants. I measured up the other planned perennial areas, counted up the number of plants the micro-farm was going to require and then looked at my pitiful excuse for a plant nursery.
I wept.
So I went down to our local nursery, Bay Hay and Feed, and talked to the helpful staff about buying all the plants I was going to need. We totaled it up and it came to within one order of magnitude to the Greek national debt. And Bay Hay has good prices. Crushed, I returned to my calculations. It was a classic Catch-22. The only way I could afford to do everything we wanted was to grow things from seeds or cuttings but to do that I needed a well-lit space with room for two or three really big tables.
What I needed was a greenhouse.
I looked online: a four by six foot “starter” greenhouse kit was the price of my first car. The costs went up geometrically from there. Something in the size I wanted – roughly that of a small cottage – would set me back well over ten-grand. Then, by accident, I clicked on a website that offered “greenhouse fittings” – whatever they were – and a screen appeared.
Oh look, plumbing supplies.
This was a site dedicated to PVC-pipe fabrication for a kind of greenhouse known as a “hoop house”. For a visual, if you had a coffee can, cut the cylinder vertically down the middle, and wrapped it in wax paper you wouldn’t have a model that looks kind of like a hoop house. You would have a model that looks exactly like a hoop house. And I knew where to find one.
Bay Hay and Feed.
We walked down the road and stepped into the nursery yard. There it was.
“You want to put that in the backyard? Right outside the kitchen window?”
“Uh, yes?” I was crestfallen.
“It looks like a coffee can covered in wax paper.”
On to Plan B.
The budget would permit a hoop house but not a greenhouse. The esthetics would permit a greenhouse but not a wax paper clad Quonset hut. I pondered the idea for a moment and came up with the perfect solution. I’ll build a greenhouse out of clear roofing panels and plumbing supplies.
Those of you paying attention have noticed that nowhere have I mentioned the plans I downloaded, or the diagrams, schematics, or even photographs I used for researching my construction project. You must be new here. Once again, as with all of those earlier escapades, I’m going to wing it.
Which is how we come to have a remarkably small pile of stuff in the carport just itching for me to turn it into a greenhouse. There are sixteen roofing panels, about twenty pieces of pipe, and three plastic bags filled with PVC pipe fittings. All for a total of about three-hundred bucks.
It’s now Monday afternoon and at this point I have to press the pause button on the blog and go build a greenhouse. If I can.
Blogus Interruptus…
It’s now Friday morning and, since we last spoke, I have had no sleep. I also have no completed blog, and I have no greenhouse. Here’s what I have to say about that.
Fuck Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes and the historically appropriate four-legged beasts of burden they rode in on.
It should have been so easy. It was just geometry. There were only five angles to consider: 0, 45, 90, 135, and 180 degrees. There was no pi. No R2. It was all straight lines. Shit.
I now have a larger pile of smaller pieces of PVC pipe which, when assembled, looks like the cross between a geodesic dome and a hamster ball. How could it turn out so bad? Hours spent carefully measuring twice and cutting once. Dimensions being evermore refined: 1 inch, then 1/4, then 1/16. Angles checked and double-checked. How could it have ended up so… so… wrong.
Here’s how bad it was. When I assembled the front wall of the greenhouse (which took place in the kitchen) and stepped through what somebody tripping on acid might have recognized as a “door”, well, I found myself standing inside the upstairs hall closet. Come on, I should not have to consider Lorentz transformations when all I’m doing is a simple construction project.
So out came the hammer and my carefully measured plumbing supplies became “disassembled” and thrown back into the carport where they now rest.
The end of the story is that there is no greenhouse to show you. I had hoped to post a picture showing me, all smug, standing next to the little crystalline cottage, but it was not meant to be. Maybe by next week.
Not to worry though. Right next to my hand-crafted greenhouse “kit” is another, even larger and more expensive, pile of construction material; this one all wood. It’s destined to become the “chicken tractor”. Soon.
I mean, come on, how hard could it be?