Well, here they are, all installed:

I got the rain barrels used, almost free–but it cost about 60 dollars to put up gutters, spouts, cinder blocks and replace some of the hosing…so much for my virtually free water. Then there’s the other small item needed…rain! Not a chance today or tomorrow or until next week! You can bring the barrels, but you can’t force the rain!!!

Here’s the freesias outdoors. They are doing very well. I will be getting more of them and installing another flower bed next year!

Freesia–these are lovely flowers, although they kind of lay down out in the yard. I don’t know if that is the way they are, or if I didn’t plant the bulbs deep enough. Either way, I love the flowers. They have a fresh scent that reminds me of soap–clean, flowery and just a hint of spice. Beautiful! So far the mixed bulb pack has yielded white, purple, red/yellow center, yellow, pink-red and sort of a fuscia with yellow centers.

The rain barrels worked very well even without a gutter system up! Between the two barrels I probably got almost a quarter of a barrel. Used some of the water on my garden this morning. I’ll need to get cinder blocks and raise them up to make it easier to get the water out and we’ll work on gutters this weekend! It’ll be great to have the extra water–assuming it rains!

Best Read of the week: Flash fiction over at Abyss and Apex, a very short story by Desmond Warzel: wikihistory

Woohoo! Today I fiinally purchased my first two rain barrels for collecting water for gardening and possibly the lawn. I HATE spending money to water the lawn. Water in Texas is Quite Expensive. We stopped watering the backyard a long time ago. It’s a big yard and there’s simply no point in pouring all those dollars just to grow grass. Of course, rain barrels in Austin run 60 to 95 dollars–until I found them on Craigslist in a GREAT deal. Went and picked them up and they will soon be ready to go! We’ll need to install a bit more gutter and get some cinder blocks to hoist them up, but hopefully this summer I’ll spend a little less money keeping the front lawn looking presentable.

On the reading front, I’ve got Sandra McDonald’s The Outback Stars checked out from the library.

The freesias are blooming–just one or two here and there. I’ll put up a picture when more open. This is my first year trying them and I must say they’ve been very easy. I should probably have planted them deeper as the plants tend to lean over, but the flowers are gorgeous and it looks like there will be a lot of them. The bulbs were quite cheap considering the price of most bulbs. I think I paid six dollars for twenty-four bulbs of different colors. They are really pretty.

www.TheTownDrunk.org (moved to http://www.towndrunkmag.com) has their new issue out. Two new stories. Both of them were pretty weird this time around.

3/8/08

Unburied the plants this morning when it hit about 40. They all survived! Oh, there’s some freeze damage on a few leaves and some leaves just get battered by being covered in mulch, but all in all, I don’t think I lost any.

So I rinsed them off and they got some sunshine today. We’ll see how they look tomorrow, but they should be back on their way to getting big enough to supply me with produce.

For my future reference, I need to keep sawdust on hand for these late freezes. Past years I’ve used that instead of mulch and overall I think it’s a little kinder to the plants. Either way, mulch or sawdust, you have to apply it carefully. You have to support the lowest leaves by piling the stuff underneath and then slowly building up around each plant limb. Near the top, I usually end up with a pyramid shape and that’s why some of the top leaves freeze–not quite enough mulch stays in place. It trickles down the sides.

Onward to tomato season!

March 6, 2008

What with global warming and all, it seems that the Hill Country, Texas is having a couple of nights of late-season freezing. I’ve lived here going on seven years and not had a freeze this late in the Spring. But don’t worry, I mulched around the bases of the plants up to the top leaves and covered them. I may lose some, but hopefully won’t lose all.

The life of a farmer. Hail and all.

Update 5:15. I think it’s sleeting.

Jim Hine’s “Goblin War” is available starting today at your nearest bookstore!

Jim was kind enough to answer a few questions for readers. The full interview is posted below:

Jim, welcome to Fantasybookspot and thanks for answering our questions! First, here’s a little information about Jim C. Hines, the author of the Goblin trilogy:

Jim C. Hines began writing in the early 90s, while working on a degree in psychology from Michigan State University. For many years, he focused on short fiction. His work has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Turn the Other Chick, Sword and Sorceress XXI, and over thirty other magazines and anthologies.

His first published fantasy novel was Goblin Quest, a funny, popular* tale about a nearsighted goblin runt named Jig. Goblin Hero followed in 2007, and Goblin War will be out in March of 2008.

DAW will also be publishing The Stepsister Scheme, which will hopefully be the first book in a new series.

Jim lives in mid-Michigan with his wife and children, who have always shown remarkable tolerance for his bizarre and obsessive writing habits.

Maria: Goblin War is a great little read. I loved the new setting (Poor Jig had to go outside his “safe” mountain lair) and I really enjoyed the new cast of characters. What was the most challenging aspect of writing in the new setting?

Jim: Thank you! After two books exploring the caves, it was time to get Jig out into the world. See more places, meet more people who want to kill you, that sort of thing. The new characters were fun, but it was also nice to revisit a few old friends. I do wish I had been able to spend more time with Oakbottom … one of these days, I may have to give him his own story.

One challenge was trying to keep everything interesting. Jig gets around in this book, to several towns and camps, each of which needed its own history and description to distinguish it from Generic Medieval City #15239. I’m particularly fond of Avery. Making it a formerly-elven town which had passed into human hands opened the way for a lot of entertaining details.

Maria: While my favorite characters will always be Jig and his pet fire-spider, Smudge, I really took a liking to Shadowstar, the “god” that pesters Jig. I thought your storyline there was brilliant, fun and…quite human. Have you known all along how Shadowstar’s history meshed with Jig or is this something you invented solely for Goblin War?

Jim: I would like to say that I planned it all from day one, because that would make me look far smarter than I really am. The truth is, it wasn’t until after the second book that I started thinking more about Shadowstar’s history. This led to some problems as I was writing Goblin War. Things I tossed into the first book because they were funny suddenly needed to make sense in the context of Shadowstar’s overall backstory. (The lizard bit was a huge headache.) I also had to figure out why a relatively nice, peaceful god like Tyamlous Shadowstar would have gone to war in the first place. (It’s mentioned in Goblin Quest that Shadowstar was one of the Forgotten Gods who rebelled during the War of Shadows.)

Showing how he and Jig came together from Shadowstar’s point of view was also a little tricky, though it was fun getting to see some of Jig’s history through those divine eyes. I’m very proud of the end result, and I’m eager to see what readers think.

Maria: Will Goblin Quest (and the rest of the series) come out in audio?

Jim: It will indeed! Just … not in English. But if you speak German, the first two books have been released on CD by my German publisher. I would love to see an audio version in English, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards right now. We should be getting a goblin short or two in audio format one of these days, though. I’ll post the links from my blog and web site when they go live.

Maria: If you could choose a “voice” to do the Goblin series…who would it be???

Jim: In the past, I’ve said Patrick Stewart, simply because I want to hear that cultured Shakespearean voice doing Jig’s, “Oh, dung!” James Earl Jones would be fun, for similar reasons.

But if I could choose, I’d probably go with Jim Dale, who did the audio version of the Harry Potter series. I was very impressed with his skills as a voice actor. In some cases, I thought his characterization through voice alone exceeded what we saw on the screen. I would love to hear him bring my goblins to life.

Maria: You mean—you hear your Goblins—with an English accent?

Jim: Hm … good point. I could imagine Barius and Ryslind with the accent, and I suspect Dale would do a marvelous job with Darnak the dwarf. Ooh, what about Wil Wheaton? Do you think he’d make a good Jig?

Maria: Somehow I was thinking more a combo of James Belushi, Dan Aykroyd—and Billy Crystal as Jig, of course. Shrug. Oh well, maybe they can do the movie. Belushi…or Aykroyd as Shadowstar…now, there’s a thought!

Maria: With Goblin Quest you did a lot of online interviews, book signings, contests with book art, etc. From reading your blog, I know you’ve found a lot of the marketing aspects frustrating. If you could only do one thing–what do you think is the most effective promotion tool?

Jim: If I could do only one single thing? That’s easy; I’d write the next book. The release of Goblin Hero is the only thing (aside from Christmas) that ever caused a visible spike in my sales numbers for Goblin Quest.

I have a limited amount of time, energy, and money, so the actual writing has to come first. But I do what I can to help promote the books. The blog has been great that way. Not only have some of my readers found me and my books that way, but I get to chat and interact with a lot of great people.

I also made up some temporary tattoos of Jig. I don’t know if they’ve sold books, but they’re definitely fun!

Maria: I was very exited to see one of your short stories, Blade of the Bunny—first published in Writers of the Future—available in a “pick and build your own anthology” over at www.AnthologyBuilder.com Any chance we’ll see some of the short-stories that star Jig and Smudge over there? I’m building an anthology now, and I’d love to have a few more Jim Hines stories in there (Hint: especially Goblin Lullaby).

Jim: AnthologyBuilder is such a great project. I have no idea whether or not it will take off, but I’d like to see it do well. I’m excited to see Nancy Fulda trying something new in terms of publishing and distribution. (It was particularly nice to see that “Blade of the Bunny” was one of their top-selling stories!)

I’ve sold “Goblin Lullaby” to Podcastle, and “Goblin Hunter” (the short story formerly known as “Goblin Hero,” no relation to the book) to Clonepod. I’m looking forward to hearing these stories performed, but I don’t want to steal their thunder by publishing the stories elsewhere first, if that makes sense?

But getting the goblin short stories out there for more people to read is certainly on my To Do list.

Maria: So, if I’m looking, where can I find more short stories by Jim Hines?

Fictionwise has some of them. A lot of the anthologies I’ve sold to are still in print, like Fantasy Gone Wrong, If I Were an Evil Overlord, and Places to Be, People to Kill. Magic in the Mirrorstone should be out by the time this interview goes live, and includes a goblin story about Veka that takes place after the second book. The anthology Prime Codex has a reprint of “Sister of the Hedge,” the story that’s currently on the preliminary Nebula ballot. (We’ll see if it makes the finals — cross your fingers for me!)

My web site (www.jimchines.com) has a full bibliography, for any true collectors

Thanks for the great questions, Maria! It’s been fun!

Thank you, Jim.