the Author
June
26
22 Comments

For Canadians: Indigo is having a summer pre-order sale

Posted in life, promotions.

First, the good news: Indigo books, our major book­store chain, is having a summer preorder sale.

Shards of Glass is included in that most-antic­i­pated books sale. I wanted to mention it here — the sale goes to July 2nd.

***

I have had a trying month. I am still working on glasses, which has been iter­a­tive and ongoing since December. I am working on copy-edits for the West novel, and have just received page proofs for the above mentioned Shards of Glass.

And I managed, while running to inter­cept the phone, to break not one, but two, toes — and at the joint below the knuckle in both cases =/. I’ve broken toes before, but never this close to foot and oddly enough, it kind of hurts. I have a boot, which, unlike a cast, can be removed. And crutches, which seemed like a great idea at the time, but I guess my extended use of crutches when I was thir­teen is not quite like use of crutches at my current age >.<.

So I now feel like I’m extra behind on every­thing, and I’m frus­trated at myself because it’s toes, not arm, and there’s no reason I should be falling behind At All. And yet T_T.

I hope everyone is having a much, much better week.

22 Responses to For Canadians: Indigo is having a summer pre-order sale

  1. Tracey says:
    June 26, 2023 at 11:45 am

    I’m so sorry about your toes. I broke one of mine last January and now have a non-union frac­ture there. The cat knocked it the other day as he ran past and my toe was pointing up. I had to push it back down into place. I guess get lots of calcium.

    Thank you for the tip on the sale. I’m going to place an order now.

    Good luck.

  2. Tanya says:
    June 26, 2023 at 12:07 pm

    Sending you hugs. Take care of you.

  3. michelle says:
    June 26, 2023 at 12:08 pm

    It was just a Thursday from hell =/. I went to get new glasses that might finally(!) work so I don’t get headaches by 4 in the after­noon. And the poor opti­cian, who I’d asked to replace the nose pads while he was replacing the left lens with the newly ground one ended up snap­ping the arm that held the nose pad off. I swear, we were both prac­ti­cally crying. I have the same frames (different color) for distance, and we used those instead, and he ordered new frames to replace the ones that are broken.

    And then I came home, ran into a chair, broke my toe; my husband offered to come home to take me to Emer­gency, and I said, let’s just wait. I’ve broken toes before. A visit won’t help anything and it will waste ten hours. But by the time he did come home, I could no longer hobble around the house — just moving the foot was way too painful.

    So: off to hospital, except husband had promised to tutor godson for comp sci exam. So… I ended up going to the hospital with father of that godson & wife, where father of godson imme­di­ately went to get a wheel­chair because I was there with bare foot (broken toe foot) because I could not put on any kind of shoe or flip flop by that point. 

    And while we were there, he’s talking with my husband, and my husband tells him that my youngest has a clean RAT test.

    … like WHY are you giving my youngest a RAT test?

    It appears that my youngest went straight to bed with a terrible headache — which was actu­ally a fever headache T_T. It was just a every­thing-all-at-once day, and I hope to avoid another one for a good, long while.

  4. Joyce says:
    June 26, 2023 at 2:02 pm

    Well, dang. Some­thing doesn’t like you at the moment. I know the frus­tra­tions of glasses not working so my deepest sympathy. My sympathy on the rest of your travails, too, of course; but I have different expe­ri­ence to empathize with.

    I have long had Shards of Glass pre-ordered on Amazon and am as bad as a child whining in antic­i­pa­tion. On the other hand, November is building to be awesome. Your book, new Doctor Who, and Starfield all in November. It keeps me going in the extremely hot heat we in the deep Amer­ican south­land are already feeling.

  5. Maureen Panzera says:
    June 26, 2023 at 2:44 pm

    Michelle I’m so sorry for the pain and frus­tra­tion you are going through. I hope you feel better (in all ways) soon. Your books are so enthralling that I don’t thing ANYONE minds waiting for them other than the ‘I love them so much I can’t wait to read them. feeling, Take care of your­self first. We fans will gladly wait for your novels.… I know I will.

    Maureen

  6. Elizabeth Olson says:
    June 26, 2023 at 3:40 pm

    So sorry to hear about your toes. I hope you feel better soon.

  7. Mary Allen says:
    June 26, 2023 at 3:51 pm

    Michelle, I too am sorry for all you are going through. It has to effect your mood and mood does effect produc­tivity. Listening to music is my only sugges­tion for some relief. I have had my pre-order for Shards of Glass on Barnes and Nobles web site for months or I would take advan­tage of the sale..

  8. Steve Faught says:
    June 26, 2023 at 4:11 pm

    ❤️❤️❤️ Get better soon!

  9. michelle says:
    June 26, 2023 at 4:12 pm

    @Mary Allen: it’s mostly that I feel like I *should* be able to get normal work done, and I’ve fallen behind that so I feel guilty =/. But today is better, productivity-wise

  10. michelle says:
    June 26, 2023 at 4:12 pm

    @Maureen: <3

  11. michelle says:
    June 26, 2023 at 4:15 pm

    @Steve: Crossing my fingers. I don’t normally have so many things go wrong all on the same day, but at 4:00 a.m. Friday morning, I think I was into hyster­ical laughter terri­tory because it’s the kind of day that happens in sitcoms, not in real life. Except when it does.

  12. Susan says:
    June 27, 2023 at 8:14 am

    You won’t be old enough to remember the Lil Abner refer­ence but I call those Joe Btfsplk days. (Had to google the spelling, I pronounce it more like a curse word :))
    No use ttrying to be produc­tive for at least a few days after one of those cosmic joke episodes, you need to ease slowly back into life to make sure the universe has turned its eyes to some other poor schmuck. You have to pull the plug and press reset when you turn back on.
    Glad your son, toesies and glasses are okay and hope that was your Joe Btfsplk day alott­ment for the decade.

  13. Aquilegia says:
    June 27, 2023 at 10:43 am

    Pain is pain. It doesn’t matter if it is your toe, your arm, your head, or your heart. It will break your concen­tra­tion and over­whelm every­thing else. All you can do is try to heal and then get back to your routine. You can push your way through the pain for short periods, but you will pay for it later. Take a deep breath, take a few sick days, and take care of your­self. Life happens to all of us some­times. We understand

  14. br60103 says:
    June 27, 2023 at 8:34 pm

    Shards of Glass must be in that most antic­i­pated list because I pre-ordered it as soon as I could.
    Do I cancel it now and re-pre-order?

  15. michelle says:
    June 28, 2023 at 10:46 am

    @br60103: I think cancelling and re-pre-ordering is perfectly reason­able – and I do really appre­ciate the instant pre-order!

  16. michelle says:
    June 28, 2023 at 10:48 am

    @Aquilegia: I did some writing in the morning yesterday, but I admit the low-level consis­tent pain was distracting. So I stayed off the foot for the rest of the day. I’m…not always the best patient, and the part of my brain saying: It’s only two TOES, just ignore it, what is WRONG with you, is pretty loud. 

    Also, appar­ently my cousin broke her foot while dog walking on the same day.

  17. Gretchen says:
    June 28, 2023 at 12:45 pm

    @michelle Healing is exhausting! It may seem like it shouldn’t be such a big thing, it’s *just* toes…but the body is broken and healing. You had a horrible day, but it’s a new one now. Yes, crutches are MUCH harder to live with as an adult than as a teen. Once you are past your growing phase of life, you liter­ally have hardened/stiffened up. It’s sounds like you are finding the humor in the disaster, which is awesome! It’s so hard feeling like you are constantly behind, but I’ll warn you now that foot injuries can take several months (and even years) to fully feel back to normal. Give your­self some grace.

  18. Sandra Lynne says:
    June 28, 2023 at 5:31 pm

    I really feel your pain and discour­age­ment, I broke my index toe at Christmas, which I almost twisted off on my way to the floor. It was my left foot which is still halfway numb from damage done when I broke my ankle in June last year. So believe me when I say I can feel your pain.(Even if I don’t entirely feel my own). Take your time getting better.
    I agree with Gretchen above with the prog­nosis of not healing rapidly or even at all without some phys­io­therapy if recomended by your doctor.

  19. michelle says:
    June 29, 2023 at 12:31 pm

    @Sandra: Ouch T_T.

    I’ve broken toes before (twice, once in Yoga when my attempted jump “through” kind of connected with the floor, and I don’t remember what caused the other break). In both of those cases, it was fine. I hated to go to the hospital because they don’t *do* anything. It’s a broken toe. They send you home and tell you not to walk on it for a while. But … these two were different and honestly far, far worse in terms of pain. 

    But I also — when I was thir­teen — broke my ankle falling out of a tree, and that break was actu­ally bad — it snapped a large chunk of bone out of the ankle, so they had to operate to clean up shards, and to pin the two large pieces back into place. Which meant two subse­quent oper­a­tions to remove the pins in ques­tion. And there was minor nerve damage there, so across the very large inci­sion scar there’s less feeling. 

    Today I went to the frac­ture clinic and was told to a) wear the boot for 6 weeks and b) don’t lift boxes, don’t lift anything heavy, don’t go on a hike, etc. I asked about walking, and they said, yes “within reason”, and also “expect to be in pain for two or three months”. I said: I don’t care about pain; I want to know when I can safely *ignore* the pain — i.e. when walking will not risk further damage. There was no concrete answer for that — although one of the doctor’s said, “How long is a piece of string?”

    This caused my husband to laugh — it’s a phrase he hasn’t heard for a long time, but he was familiar with it. I was not. And I admit what I was *thinking* was “How long do you need it to be? I mean, who cuts a piece of string without measuring it?” so it flew right over my head =/

    Obvi­ously ladders are right out. So I will not be working in the book­store for six weeks. 

    And if I were not so *tired*, I would grate­fully take that time and use it to try to get ahead of All The Things.

    …I’m sorry I’m whining so much T_T

  20. michelle says:
    June 29, 2023 at 12:38 pm

    @Gretchen: thank you. I am trying to keep that in mind, but it’s very diffi­cult to be patient with myself. I can even vent my frus­tra­tion on the chair because people use it as it was intended, rather than as a conve­nient way to break toes.

  21. Joyce says:
    June 30, 2023 at 10:50 am

    Michelle, your toes resonate with my own expe­ri­ence more than I thought. I cracked a rib by trip­ping and falling on my camera, I cracked my tail­bone falling off a horse. In both cases I did not go to a doctor because there was nothing to be done. It will be fine, I said. I was stunned to find out how often one sits and flexes a tail­bone and breathes and flexes a rib. Those “just a” bones are exhausting if abused and it’s hard to think of anything else. May peace and patience find you soon.

  22. Jazzlet says:
    July 1, 2023 at 10:42 am

    That sort of day is horrid, sorry you ended up with broken toes.

    As someone with a chronic pain problem — scar­ring on my colon, so all food going through hurts — I am going to rein­force both the “pain is tiring” and the “healing takes a lot of energy” points others have made. It is extremely hard not to feel guilty about what you are not doing because you simply do not have the energy, I’ve been prac­tising for years, and still feel bad about it on occa­sion … so _try_ to acknowl­edge the guilt and set it aside; feeling guilty or frus­trated about feeling guilty just uses up more of your limited resource of energy! Also seri­ously consider taking painkillers pre-emptively, even though your toes may not hurt all of the time, as the relief they give will allow you a little more energy. Over the counter like parac­etamol or NSAIDs can make a lot of differ­ence, but work better if you take them _before_ you are in pain, obvi­ously with the caveat that I am not a doctor etc. etc., so bear that in mind. Also if you do decide to take painkillers remember you have done so — don’t use it as an excuse to overdo the exercise!

    I hope that you heal quickly, but again don’t forget you won’t heal as quickly as back when you broke the toes when you were much younger, plus it sounds as if these are rather worse breaks. Patience is hard so wishing you luck with that!

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