Sick Computer

My laptop that I do all my writing on, including updating my blog, has come down with a virus. I'm not sure how it happened, but it doesn't matter now. I'll be taking it to geek squad in the hopes they can fix it. Among it's other problems, it has lost the ability to connect to the internet, so that's going to make doing online diagnostics difficult. Websweeper tried to deal with it, but couldn't do the job.

Here's hoping everything turns out okay.

Friday Edition

Happy Friday folks!

It's another glorious end to another glorious week!  The sun is shining! (well, not yet) The birds are singing! (nope, not yet either) and the roaches driven in by all the rain are having race rallies across our floor! (Alas, this seems to be true.) I think an exterminator may be in our near future.

I went to Rowans open house last night and met her teacher. Mrs. Ruiz has been fantastic with our little monster, and done a great job of both educating and civilizing the little beastie. She still has her work cut out for her, but the progress has been fantastic. It was cool sitting there and seeing where Rowan spends her day, and briefly being part of the world she spends so much time in.

Meanwhile, Sheridan had a playdate with the neighbors kids, and so far I haven't heard any complaints from that direction. Since that went well, it bodes well for future visitation rights.

I bought Karla a new keyboard yesterday, since the boy had an oopsie with a cup of juice and many of her keys simply ceased to function. I got her a new wireless model with backlit keys and an lcd number pad. It's a real upgrade over the predecessor...which it ought to be since the juicified one was six or seven years old.

Now it's my turn. There is a laptop case at Best Buy that I'm lusting after. My current case is more of a laptop sleeve...which my laptop can barely squeeze into, and only if it isn't storing anything else. This other case would store such luxuries as power cables, dvds, pens, etc. Oh yesss, I want thissss...my preciousssss!

I'm at 52,000 words on Argiope and currently plodding through a charactor exposition scene. It needs to be done for later developments to have impact, and it involves the first attempts of the main charactor to try and understand a certain female lead in the story. Sigh, I'm a lot better when my charactors are just getting eaten by monsters. This icky romance stuff is hard. Although I'm sticking to my guns and doing it from a male POV.

Anyways, it seems the NFL kicked off their regular season last night with New Orleans beating the Vikes. Sigh, I had picked the Vikes for our little writer's pool on the kindle boards. Oh well, the week ain't over yet. As long as the Cowboys win on Sunday...all is well.

As a sign of how tired I was yesterday, I went straight to bed after dinner and didn't stay up to watch the game. All that writing, school visiting, shopping, and doing a load of laundry had wiped me out. Let's hope today goes well too.

The Big Five Oh....

...not me. Not yet. I still have another year before hitting that landmark of despair. What I'm referring to is hitting the fifty thousand word mark with Argiope. There were times I wondered if I would ever get close to this far with that story. I would get blocked on it, shelve it, get an idea, unshelve it, get blocked, shelve it, etc. Now I have a couple of ways to go forward, and I'm being slowed down by options as opposed to blockage...yeah, that didn't sound right to me either.

Anyways. since Argiope would be yet a third genre I would be writing in, I'm thinking of publishing it under a psuedonym. I've already published both fantasy and ghost stories under my own name, and have discovered that fans of one don't necessarily like the other. I don't think I want to confuse things further by adding another genre under the same name. Hmmmm... What could it be?

Nathaniel Hill? Daniel Crowe? Hobo Harry? Rufus the Wonder Dog?

Decisions, decisions. They all have their good points. At least I have some time, although it just occured to me I might need more than one, since I have a Christmas story unpublished and also might want to write general fiction one day...like that steamboat story. Oh well, that's a problem for another day. For now, I just need to finish the projects before me.

Work, work, work!

An Early Midweek

The Labor Day weekend has thrown my schedule off, and Weds has snuck up on me. I still feel like it should be Tuesday. I guess I'm getting set in my ways because stuff like this makes me sort of grumpy in my old age. It should be Tuesday, darn it.

So, much to my surprise, Karla will be home today...I'm surprised because she gets every other Weds off and it's supposed to be Tuesday...and will be visiting the boy for lunch at school. This is for the best, because we have discovered he can request extras in the cafeteria, and we want to be sure what it is that he is requesting. The little turkey just might be having a junk food pig-out going on right under out noses...which would certainly explain one reason for his enthusiasm for  public school. On the other hand, he does hate the fact he has to wear his shoes all day. The little private school he went to before had them leave their shoes in baskets, and they only put them on to go outside.

I'm currently writing on Argiope at the moment, since I've found a way to go forward on that. I'm still thinking about the Khrem sequel though, and considering the novel idea of working on two projects at once. On the other hand, I have a history of putting about twenty thousand words to Argiope then getting blocked, so it might not even be an issue. We shall see.

I'm still trying to figure out ways to promote. On the one hand, I think I spend too much time thinking about it since I'm doing that and not writing. On the other hand, books don't sell without it. Last month, my short stories easily outsold my novel, so I'm trying to figure out what is to be made of that. I've made a few adjustments and we shall see if that changes things. But I really need to start focusing more on writing.

School and Writing and Stuff

So today begins week three of the kids being back in school. So far, it's been pretty good...but this has been the warm-up period. Now the newness has worn off and we shall see how things go. I hear that Sheridan actually starts getting homework in week three. I'll be keeping a sharp eye out for that, and make sure he does it. Rowan doesn't get homework, but I'm still glad she seems happy to see that bus coming. It makes me feel good that she's happy with where it takes her.

On another front, I'm looking at getting into novel writing again. I've dusted off Argiope and currently my wife is giving what I've got a read through. I had written myself into a box, but now I've figured out a way forward. I'm still debating whether I need to back up and rewrite some of the last things I've got. And then there is the sequel to The Ways of Khrem. I need to start getting it up and going. I've already written one prologue candidate, but that's a far cry from actually writing a story. I've been spending too much time lately trying to plot promoting and book covers, and not enough time writing, and now I've fallen out of the habit. It's time to crawl back on that horse, or bicycle, or whatever it is.

I also need to be really careful with the gluten and casien. Lately I've been having a real problem with typos. Bad ones. I'm gonna have to work on that.

Argiope Artwork - Metamorphosis

First I have to take this...

Then turn it into this...

This is a little concept piece my niece created for me for Argiope. I think it's really good, and it's about the right size for Molly...maybe a shade bigger than Molly, but very close. I'll just play with it a little and see if I can bring the spider out better.

Hows that?
Or, how about this?

Hmmm...if nothing else, it makes good poster art. It needs a tall, angry-looking blonde with a long braid and huge gun standing next to it though.

Yeah, this has possibilities

Writer's Night Out - Fried

Cherri Galbiati and I had our weekly writer's night out last night.

Since we had both published a story, we felt we were entitled to celebrate. Therefore I broke my gluten free diet and had a cheeseburger, and Cherri broke her diabetic diet and had a hot fudge sundae. Fortunately, the effect on me was minimal...it just made me a little sleepy...but Cherri had herself a great time. Pretty soon she was laughing, having a high old time...and attempting to fix our poor waitress up with whoever happened to be sitting in the booth next to us. As luck would have it, the girl actually knew the guy and he was a really cool guy. But the whole thing was pretty hilarious.

Stay off the sugar, Cherri! :D

Other than that, we sort of rambled on writing (as usual), pondered on publishing (as usual), grumbled about editing (as usual) and postulated on marketing (you get it...as usual). Great thoughts were cogitated, and portentious sayings uttered. All in all, a good time was had by all.

Anyways, my new story...Shades: A Memory of Me...is now available on the kindle. It's another foray of mine into the art of the ghost story...this time including graveyards, nightmares, and a very dangerous nighttime visitation. I hope everybody enjoys it.

And with that, the last of my summer projects, out of the way...I can start looking towards my autumn chores. It's time to think novels. If I have a short story idea just jump out at me, I'll still do it, but I will not spend any more time or effort on one this autumn unless it appears to me in the form of inspiration.

Time to work on the big projects.

Fun on Several Fronts

My good friend, and fellow author, Cherri Galbiati just published her first short story direct to Amazon.com this week. It is a small Christmas story called "Halo and Holly," and can be purchased on the kindle here. Way to go, Cherri!

On another front, I just hit publish on "A Memory of Me" a while back and I'll probably be showing it off tomorrow or the next day. Of course, everybody has already seen the cover since I can't keep anything a secret when it comes to my own writing, and I'm driven to rush out and show everybody as soon as I have anything. So things are getting done.

On yet another front, I managed to resolve a bit of a mental block I had where I had written myself into a corner with a story. Oddly enough, that story is my shelved novel Argiope which I wasn't even working one.

I have given up trying to figure out what rhyme or reason my mind works by, and now I just accept it when it decides to do something helpful for me...even when that help is on a completely unrelated project. This doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to pull Argiope off the shelf, not unless I get a clearer idea how I'm going forward, but now at least I know going forward is  possible again. So, we'll see. That novel with big spiders, secret organizations, and killer amazons with huge guns might still see the light of day yet. Heck, I'm already forty-five thousand words into it, so it's almost half written.

Anyways, it's time to move boldly forward into the month of September, and see what we shall see.

Tweaking, September style.

I had sat down today, with the intention to get back to writing but I found myself doing a lot of tweaking on other projects instead.

I've worked more on Shades: A Memory of Me, and it is now up on Kindle DTP waiting for me to push the publish button. I'm pretty happy with it now, after playing around with a beginning that I've always thought was a bit awkward. It turned out to be easily fixed, merely by moving one sentence forward and splitting another off from the paragraph it was in. It's amazing how the small things can immeasurably improve the flow of a story. It took me a couple of hours to get those small things right though. Sigh.

Then I had to ask for help in how to fit more book cover link-images into my kindle boards signature. Another kind author gave me the gist of how it was done, and I spent a couple of more hours fiddling with that until I got it totally figured out. Now I will be able to fit an image for my next story into my signature with the rest. Another small but important victory that took quite a bit of time to get right. Those signature images have probably accounted for at least half my sales this past month.

Now I'm simply waiting to hear from blogs to see if they will be willing to review my novel. I will be showing up in one blog soon, but it will be a review your own book situation. Naturally I found the novel to be a work of genius, destined to take it's place among the great luminaries of literature. Truthfully, I was squirming with discomfort while writing it, but it got written. Go me.

I still need to get back to writing though. It's now September!