Month: January 2018

Gunn & Bohemia: The Sequel

~ petefordwriter ~ Leave a comment

If all goes to plan I’ll have three – count’em, three – books coming out in 2018. Exciting times!

The Artemis Device* is under contract and currently undergoing copy editing. That’s been slow going, but I’m hoping that the pace will pick up now that the holidays are behind us.

Phantasms & Magicks* has been submitted to my publisher and I’m waiting to hear if they want to take it on. Fingers crossed, but if they decide they’re not interested I’ll almost certainly self-pub. Either way there’s no reason it can’t be out there this year.

Last but far from least, Britannia One* – the sequel to Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia – is at the writing phase; I expect to have a first draft completed around the end of April, which could put publication somewhere around October**.

There’s a little bit of a story behind Britannia One. I actually started work on a sequel in 2014, not long after G&B was published. Then, life happened. We moved house, which threw writing work into a tailspin for a while. On top of that, while I thought the story I’d developed was pretty good, I wasn’t happy with the timeline. So for various reasons I put it to one side.

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I was ready to pick up from where I’d left off. For some reason I was under the impression that I’d stopped somewhere in the middle of developing the timeline.

So I was pretty surprised when, just the other day, I went back and reviewed what I had. The timeline was done; not quite correct – it needs a couple of changes – but complete. I had a line drawing of a map showing the area where most of the story takes place. Not only that, but there were two first-draft chapters already written. What was most surprising was that, until I looked at it, I’d completely forgotten that I’d got that far.

That’s why work on it is already at the writing phase, when I hadn’t mentioned anything about the prep work here; all the groundwork is already done. I just need to tweak the timeline a little bit, and I want to make a couple of changes to the supporting characters. That’ll take a day or so, then I can start pounding keys.

I’m planning to post regular updates here as the work goes along. Watch this space.

* working titles

** total guesswork

Hey, @Microsoft: Where Do I Send The Bill?

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Windows 10 finally rendered my laptop unusable, except maybe as a doorstop.

Just switching from Windows 7 to 10 was a big mistake. At the time, Microsoft kept pushing me to switch to Win10 (“All your Hardware and Software is compatible! Go on, do it while it’s free!”) to the point where I basically did it just to stop the incessant messages.

As it turned out after the fact, not all my hardware and software was compatible. The touch pad stopped working, but that was a minor thing because I don’t use it much. And a new driver did come along after a while, and it started working again. The big thing was the DVD drive, which disappeared from the device list and never came back; it’s an older unit and it turned out that Sony has no intention of ever releasing a Win10 driver for it, so that’s that.

On the software front, my video editing software doesn’t run any more; neither does PaintShop Pro. I fiddled with compatibility settings, did a little googling for solutions, but nothing worked. I ended up downloading Paint.net for image editing, so at least I can do my picture work, but video editing is a lost cause.

Compatible? Really, Microsoft?

thatword

The latest (“Creators”) update was the last straw. The machine just couldn’t cope with it any more. Chrome has stopped working; it fires up and opens tabs but after a few seconds it freezes and stops responding to clicks. Reinstalling makes no difference.

Now the machine won’t shut down or restart cleanly – it sits at the spinner and eventually the only thing to do is hold the power button until it switches off. I hate to think what that does to the file system. I left it overnight one time, to see if it ever finished, but it was still sitting at the “Shutting Down” spinner eight hours later.

The thing is, the machine is my workhorse. It’s what I use for most of my writing and all of my editing, because it’s where I have Word installed. I need Chrome because I use Google Drive to back up my files and share work with my editor. Without Chrome, I can’t do much. And since the machine is now so compromised, I can’t trust it not to corrupt my Word documents – so I haven’t done any writing work since the “update”.

In the end I decided I had no other option but to buy a new machine and retire the old one. It took a while to install all the software I use on a regular basis, and several hours to move all my documents and stuff from the old machine, but it’s all done now.

But here’s the point: I wouldn’t have had to spend all the time and money if it hadn’t been for Windows 10, and Microsoft’s “alternative facts” about compatibility.

So, Microsoft, I’m out of pocket and it’s all because of you. Thanks for that. Where do I send the bill?

Back From Vac and Nothing Has Changed

~ petefordwriter ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been bad. It’s been over a month since I posted anything here.

Worse, I’ve done hardly anything at all on the writing front since right after Thanksgiving. Not a damned thing, unless you count a hastily scribbled note with an idea for a short story. I really needed an actual, honest-to-goodness vacation, and I made a point of getting one. That included not doing any writing work beyond the relaxing kind (i.e. thinking about writing). Instead I’ve been watching a lot of TV and playing games (including playing World of Warcraft for the first time since 2014—if you play, and happen to be on Cairne and see a level 64 Paladin in Zangarmarsh, say Hi).

I did do one thing related to writing: I made a decision about my next project. The As-Yet-Untitled SFF Project? Nope. What about that story idea I mentioned in the last post—you know, the one I mentioned that started off as a short story idea but mushroomed into a full length novel? Not that either. I’m not abandoning those; just putting them on the back burner for a while I attack something else that I need to do first. And that’s all I’m saying about it for now. I’ll update when I have something a bit more concrete to say.

But back to the point of this post, as hinted at by the title. What started off as a few days away from social media over Thanksgiving turned into a month or more away from it, spanning Christmas and New Year. And I don’t regret it that much, either. Honestly, Twitter and (especially) Facebook can get more than a little toxic in large doses. Or even small doses, now that I think about it. Being off the things for a few weeks has been cleansing.

But the downside is that I didn’t realise just how much social media has become the first source for daily news. As a result, I really only found out some important things when I started tracking Twitter again. Notably, Trump and the rest of the gang of criminals are still not in prison. Yeah, I know: just getting rid of one turd won’t help when the whole steaming pile needs to be flushed, and that’s going to take time (I imagine the stack of indictments that Mueller and his team are building up must be pretty damned huge by now, and growing daily). But I was kinda hoping for some good news by now. C’est la vie.

The one good piece of news—which isn’t really news to anyone, actually—is that come the midterms anyone who stands with Trump as he sells the country to a foreign power, empowers bigots and sex criminals, condones violence, tears up the constitution he vowed to protect, etc., etc., is going to have a tough time staying in office. Names are being taken; this will all be remembered when the time comes.

Although I don’t know that the country can stand to wait until November to see Trump dragged out of the White House and into the Big House. Every day that passes sees more damage, more erosion, and the longer it goes on the harder it’s going to be to fix. What worries me most is that there might be a point of no return, where the damage is so bad that there’s no fixing it. That’s a horrible thought.

Right, that’s enough of the depressing stuff. Lunch break is over, and I need to get back to work.

Until next time…