I’m a couple of days late. It’s been a difficult month.

You can see by all the red on my calendar, I’ve not gotten as much done as I wanted.

On the plus side, Owner’s Share is doing well. The repaired file was up within hours but Amazon didn’t notify the 100 or so people who bought it immediately so people are still finding that they purchased a bummed file. Thanks to a sharp-eyed fan, we discovered why the error got in there – and why I didn’t see it. I should have held the book for another month until I had the time to review it properly. Mea culpa.

I also got the markup done for the Full Share paperback. I’m chipping away at it.

I’ve also gotten a couple of audio projects off the board entirely. They’re not big projects but distractions and distractions are not anything I need right now.

For the rest of the month, my goals:

• Get Double Share into a paper proof copy for markup in April
• Get the changes to Full Share loaded into the ebook and paper.
• Publish Full Share in paper
• Finish the last two audio shorts that I owe to other people.
• Be more consistent with the daily walk.

Wish me luck.

Some of you will be hitting the end of the Trader’s Tales for the first time in a few hours. Many people find the ending a bit troubling. Many of you will be prompted to make comments about that ending because – yeah – it’s an ending. A really final ending.

Ishmael Wang has many more stories to tell and we’ll get to them. Have patience while I finish grinding through the old work.

In the meantime, I would ask you all to respect the terms of Article 37 of the Confederated Planets Joint Committee on Trade’s Handbook For Commercial Space Operations (commonly referred to as The Spacer’s Handbook) quoted below for reference:

Article 37

Certain circumstances require the Captain of a vessel to exert extraordinary control on the flow of information from the ship. Special cargoes, important passengers, or other sensitive information can be temporarily suppressed for the safety and welfare of the ship and crew. When questioned about these situations, all crew will be instructed to politely invoke Article 37 and refer all inquiry to the Captain or other designated source for official information.

Anytime you feel the need to curse me for the story, please feel free to do so, but instead of creating the spoiler by saying why you’re cursing me, invoke “Article 37.”

Some examples that I have received to date:

• “You *@*@*#& Bastard! You [Article 37]??”
• “How could you [Article 37]!! I’m never reading anything you ever write again! Ever!!”
• “You have violated the reader’s trust with [Article 37]. Unconscionable!”

Thank you for your understanding in this manner.

The month ended with a very tough week. We’ve got a child in the hospital and it’s rather a challenge to keep things moving forward. (She’ll be home on Monday.)

I only missed a couple of days for the daily walk (red circles on the date) at the end of the month but most of the work days have been either blue (good progress) or green (goal met).

Careful viewing will show that I’ve been working on Owner’s Share for the last ten days or so. The goal for the 28th was “publish.”

Here’s the link for Owner’s Share on Amazon.com.

ETA: Yeah. Apparently the first upload had conversion errors for ellipses and an odd font change in chapter four that I didn’t see. If those are bothering you, wait until the 2nd (for the file to have time to update) and you can get the new file by “managing your kindle” on your Amazon account page.