OMNIBUS!

So I spent Saturday through Wednesday in Minneapolis, signing all the Kickstarter rewards for the Digger omnibus, and first of all OH MY GOD THEY ARE SO AWESOME LOOKING and also there were a lot of them.

TheBooks

And by a lot I mean eight pallets.

This photo, incidentally, is after we’ve gone through a couple and you can’t see the Wall ‘O Digger spines behind me and also they hadn’t delivered the softcovers yet.

(The softcovers are also really swank.)

Here is the wall of signed copies and then we ran out of space and started putting them back in boxes.

morebooks

Also, these suckers have weight. They come in at four pounds apiece. You could club an intruder to death with one. It is amazing how much more impressive they were than all six of the Digger volumes stacked up–even though they’re nearly the same size, something about there being a spine with DIGGER on it makes it really look like eight years of work.

But yes. Lotta books. Lotta BIG books.

This meant a lot of signing.

A lot of signing.

All the signing.

Also, there were posters. And postcards. About a thousand of those.

Toward the end, I started to get a little fried…

littlefried(Horribly, I think I was trying to look perky for the camera in this one. Kevin assures me that all the other photos have been deleted. Apparently they were…not flattering.)

And then Tuesday morning, with a load of softcovers rolling into the warehouse, I woke up, had breakfast, went to get up and…

My back went “DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE THWANGGGGGGG DIE DIE OH HOW I WANT YOU TO DIIIIIIIEEEEEE.”

I made a noise. It was not a scream, largely because screaming would have used my back muscles too much. I had just thrown my back out in spectacular fashion, one of the worst I’ve had in years, possibly the worst I’ve had—it was a really impressive level of pain. Throwing your back out at any point isn’t fun, but there’s a spectrum between “Uh oh, better lay down, there goes the rest of the day” and “suspended alone in the bloody void with the God of Back Pain.”

“Yo,” said the God of Back Pain.

“‘sup,” I said. “Haven’t seen you for awhile. Incidentally, AAAAUUUUGGHGHH!”

Kevin got me downstairs into the bedroom–getting my legs on the bed involved more noises-that-weren’t-screams–and we moved into Damage Control Mode, because there were still a whole lot of books to sign and I had a flight home tomorrow morning.

(The reason? Those darn heavy omnibuses. You can see me sitting at the table up there, and I was pulling the books toward me with my left hand, signing, then twisting in the chair and stacking them. My own damn fault, both for setting up a poor workflow and for writing a goddamn four-pound epic.)

Ironically, my signing hand? Great shape. Didn’t need the wrist brace, the elbow brace, any of it. I could sign another thousand of them and then punch Larry the intern a few times* and not break a sweat. It’s never the things you expect.

So, we got a heating pad on it until I could move again. Kevin ran out and got thermarest back-heating doohickeys. We drove Dale’s super-comfy office chair to the warehouse, and they set it up, and I stood bolt upright with the weird little hot back brace and…signed.

I was forbidden to lift anything. They slid books in front of me, on an elevated table, I signed, they took the books away and boxed them. (They let me check off the invoice numbers on the master sheet, so at least I did that much!) In between pallets, I sat in the office chair, reclined back all the way.

And stuff got signed.

And I flew home yesterday–an IcyHot muscle patch, incidentally, can REALLY fill the cabin of a plane with aroma, quite a throw on those things–while Kevin fretted and lifted all my bags and finally took me home and put me to bed.

I’m in a fair amount of pain, not gonna lie–but stuff got signed.

And dude, those omnibuses look AMAZING.

 

*We are friends from way back. I do not punch most interns.

11 thoughts on “OMNIBUS!

  1. Liddle-Oldman says:

    Yep — a bend and a twist. Fatal to backs on a random enough schedule that we all forget in between times.

    Hope it resolves briskly!

  2. Angel G. says:

    Nuts, I missed the Kickstarter. Is there any way to still order an omnibuse or am I going to have to be content with the six individual volumes?

    I hope you get well soon.

  3. Don Hilliard says:

    I have a sick feeling that I’m one of the three whose names got bollixed…and I’m OK with that. (I blame Arial.) And I might – oh joy – be WRONG!!! (And if I’m not…eh, shit happens, and thenkew.)

    The back business…eh. I have done Nasty Things to my body over the years, both as a video equipment tech and as a marine engineer – but it’s positively insulting to pick up a mildly weighty bit of gear (15lb at most), turn 10 degrees to one side and go “SHIIIIIIIT!!!”. I feel for you, and I hope it improves shortly. (I’m presently nursing a shoulder that’s decided “i don’t like you” and is spasming around the nerves down to my fingers. Not good when you’re climbing ladders up engine stacks…but it’s getting better. Slowly. The 30-degree temps aren’t helping.)

  4. Kristian says:

    I am reasonably certain (for a value of “certain” that isn’t) that the plural of Omnibus is Omnibi (pronounced Omnibee for you non-godless, non-heathen USians).

    In other news, that was one really convoluted way of putting that. Ah well.

    And I seem to remember seeing Digger Omnibi(uses) being offered for sale on Sofawolf.

  5. Nathan Baruta says:

    Well, I know what I want for Christmas.

    Please, Please, Please tell me they will be available for order by Christmas.
    <3

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