After a whole lot of antibiotics, some blood tests, and various other craziness...it's up at last. Thanks to everyone for being so patient.

The URL and access information is going out to subscribers right now. As usual (because believe it or not, the mailing list is STILL acting up...), if you haven't seen access information by the morning of April 27th, please email me and let me know. Thanks.

*collapses quietly in the corner*

(By the way: if you're a subscriber, you may get an email that's empty. Wait a while and another one will come along that's not. Sorry about this -- I accidentally hit the wrong key and dispatched the message before it was ready. A weakness in the software means it's not possible to catch these mistakes. Mutter...)

Well, the local craziness continues (the most exciting part of it being that my ear problem is back -- half back, anyway: I still have one working ear, and with any luck the other one will put itself right in a day or three). Meantime, I continue doing the tidying-up work on chapter 3 of "Big Meow", so that'll go up tonight.

One other minor annoyance: since importing my old posts into WordPress from Blogger, I can no longer publish correctly to Blogger -- I keep getting this:

"004 dk.eos.net.FtpError: Login incorrect."

There are various (purported) fixes available for this...I'll start trying them after I get this chapter work done.

Nothing that I can get into now, but the whole of today has been taken up with putting out a work-related "fire". Chapter Three will go up tomorrow. Many apologies for the delay, all.

In a purr-fect ending, a miner with a heart of gold...rescued Molly the cat last night.

After spending 14 days stuck in the guts of a 19th-century West Village building, New York's famous fur ball was safe and sound and eating sardines.

The kitty cornered in the wall had drawn such widespread attention that she had become the city's newest attraction, touching the hearts of locals and tourists alike.

...Between yesterday and the day she got stuck (April 1st), here are some of the ways they tried to get her out:

• Humane traps baited with mackerel
  
• Entreaties from cat therapist Carole Wilbourn
  
• Mewing kittens
  
• Tiny video cameras
  
• Recordings of whale and gull sounds (That was supposed to help how? Someone please explain that to me. Especially the gull sounds....)
  
• Pet psychic Maxine Albert
  
• Removing bricks from landmarked building
  
• Drilling holes in same (Before removing them, I assume.)
  
• Animal Care & Control officers
  
• NYPD Emergency Service Unit officers
  
• Catnip (Yes indeed, when all else fails, try drugs... [eyeroll]))
  

The book's second chapter is now available to non-subscribers. You'll find it here:

http://www.the-big-meow.com/ch2/ChapterTwoGateway.php

The chapter is available in Web-friendly HTML, Adobe .PDF, and MobiMate/MobiPocket .PRC formats (for the Palm OS and other PDAs).

Chapter Three is scheduled to go online for subscribers on April 21.

Enjoy!

Thanks to everybody who responded to the Shaking of the Can. :) Chapter 2 will go up for public consumption tomorrow morning, UK/Irish time.

Just a note to let everybody know: chapter two of "The Big Meow" is ready to go online for public consumption as of Monday, April 10th. (If you're a subscriber, of course, you've already seen it. Or you should have! If you haven't, please drop me a note at thebigmeow@youngwizards.com with the word ACCESS in the subject line, and I'll get the access info out to you pronto. I'm not sure if everybody's heard, but we had a database meltdown the other day, and I had to rebuild the subscribers' mailing list from scratch.)

Chapter Two, however, has not yet hit its break-even point for public release. We need at least seven more full-novel subscribers for it to do that. So if you're a recipient of this message and you haven't yet subscribed, this would be a great time to do it! We're investigating the possibility of running a matching-grant challenge over the weekend, but nothing has been finalized...so if you haven't subscribed, don't wait: just go ahead and do it. The button is on the Basic Subscriptions page at http://www.the-big-meow.com, and I'll be installing a new button on the weblog for those who're coming in at Chapter Two and need links to the original chapter as well.

Thanks again!

Put Chapter Two up for the subscribers very, very early this morning, and then forgot to edit the gateway page so that other human beings could actually get at it.

Many apologies, everybody. It's accessible now. (And I had a chance to get at it again this morning and remove some typos that squeaked through.)

If you're not a subscriber and you'd like to see the chapter before it goes public, now's the time to go to the Big Meow subscriptions page and choose the option that best appeals to you -- single-chapter or full-novel.

Subscribers, please note: chapter access and location info for Chapter Two of The Big Meow is now starting to go out (as of around 10:00 GMT) via the subscriber/donor mailing list. The directory location and username/password info for the page are different from the old ones. If you're a subscriber to the book (either whole-book or single chapter) and haven't seen an email by 1800 GMT or so with the necessary information, please email me at the address in the sidebar, putting the word ACCESS in the subject line.

The page you'll be directed to is a placeholder page only: the chapter won't be up until late tonight. Sorry for the delay, but as sometimes happens, over the weekend, Life Occurred. (Nothing serious. But things are running a little slower than anticipated, that's all.)

Onward...

If you're a subscriber, please note: the chapter access info will be going out via the mailing list this evening. If you haven't seen an email with the necessary information by tomorrow afternoon (April 3), please mail the contact address in the sidebar with the word ACCESS in the subject.