This program is really Da Bomb!  By editing the labels for each scene, I can color code the corkboard view to show which scenes are concept (the race,) or specifically Lainey’s or Scotch’s POV.  There was a definite dearth of Scotch throughout the race itself, so I’ve done what I can to change that (hence the four changing POV scenes.)  Overseeing the entire manuscript as a set of index cards has been quite helpful on other books, too.  I’m glad I invested in the program!

Not much else going on.  Cool and rainy in these parts. Picked up my wife’s Yule gift yesterday (she’ll love it!) I think I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon plugging my Iditarod research into the Broken Trails project.

What with exhaustion, Poison Night, a six day stretch of Hel, and a mountain of unfinished chores, I haven’t actually written anything on Broken Trails.  I’ll work on it tomorrow before work.

Which is not to say I haven’t been productive in some manner.  I’ve recently discovered a new Mac program called Scrivener that’s an absolute wiz!  I’ve completed entering in data from my Orphan Maker project, and am now working on doing the same for Freya’s Tears (a space adventure.)  As I’ve mentioned on Facebook, I’ve been able to finally see the big picture of the novel’s plot, and have added some scenes to help flesh it out more.  The first draft is about three quarters finished, but has been sitting in limbo because that indefinable something was missing.

Caught the last episodes of Heroes and Stargate Universe last night.  I’m betting that on SGU, Destiny dipped into that gas giant to deploy its ramscoops — it was refueling.  Any takers?

Still reading Duma Key by Stephen King.  I only have time to read at work, and the last week hasn’t left me much opportunity.  I’m about a third of the way through it now.

Being a complete World of Warcraft geek these days, I’ve been watching a web series called ‘The Guild.’  Hilarious!  Anybody who RPGs will get a lot of the jokes, and those who predominantly play online will love it!  Go.  Check it out!

So … Happy February!  LOL!

The first Sanguire book is still in my hot little hands. I’ve been scouring it for recurring words, thereby beefing up the narrative. (At least I hope that’s the end result.) My wife has suggested that I’m procrastinating (true) because I’m afraid to send it out… Well, okay. She knows me pretty well after two decades. There might be a small iota of truth in that belief… Oh, alright, alright! I confess! I have a very wide yellow streak!

To that end, my personal deadline is the end of this month. If it’s not out by March 1st, everybody who reads this has my permission to nag, rag, cajole me, and beat me about the head and shoulders until it is in the mail.

Besides, Iditarod is beginning to burn a hole in my mind. I can’t ofer it to my publisher until it’s rewritten…

Speaking of procrastination, I’ve certainly found a lot of things to assist me in the endeavor! Singe Yule, we’ve acquired a Wii console, the Wii Fit board, and Band in a Box with Guitar Hero. Ah, bliss! We haven’t had a gaming cosole since the kids were little (read ‘fifteen plus years’!) I’ve already burned through Guitar Hero World Tour on the easy setting. The medium level is a pain! Whew. (Please blame this particular distraction on my best friend who hooked me on it last month.)

And then there’s Facebook and, by extension, Mafia Wars. Again, this isn’t entirely my fault. Certain individuals lured me there, and then stooped to addict me to the game. (Linda… Steph… uh huh.) So, that’s been a distraction, too.

Finally, there’s the Obsidian Fleet, a conglomeration of PBEM and SMS Star Trek role-playing simulations. After months of research — reading mission posts, studying ships and personnel, etc. — I’ve joined up. I’m playing a security officer on board a small vessel patrolling the Romulan Neutral Zone. I’ve only had access to their forum fo a week, but I think I made an excellent decision. My TrekGeek yearnings have been soothed, and I now have a venue to vet future characters. (The one I’ve created is one I have in mind for a future space smuggler series. By running her against other people in different situations, I can better write her in a book.)

So, that’s my month in a nutshell (no peanuts!) Hope everyone else is a little more motivated than me these days!  LOL!  I’ll try to curb my growing gaming habits.

Take care!

Now to find something else to distract me from the possibility of losing my lunch.  (Yes, the flu my wife had last week has finally worked its way to me.  Blech.)

Now that I’m managing all sorts of crap, I need to organize myself better, and Backpack is the way to go for me.  With an eMac at home, an iBook for roaming, and a PC at work, this web application has already gone way past its worth in monthly payments.  I can log in anywhere to access lists, notes, files, etc.  I’m also using it to organize my personal and home life, as well. (Yes, and writing.)

Still doing lots of reading, as evidenced by my Now Reading list.  Once things settle at work, I think I’ll be able to get back to writing again.  Both Iditarod and Sanguire edits await.

You’ll note that there’s a bar above this text stating this is page 1 of whatever . . . There has always been the navigation link to the left saying ‘Older.’ You just couldn’t see it because I couldn’t figure out which stinking piece of code in the style.css to rewrite!

All is right in my world! Thank you, Hakan! You rock!

I’m not in the mood to reprogram each and every novel so that it looks like the style.css I have. Tiopa Ki Lakota is especially difficult with the multitude of different language italics and such. Any future novels will be made as WordPress Pages so that they’ll have the same style as the rest of the site, though.

The wife’s home from Seattle. Got a bag of fruit rolls for the trip on Tuesday and we’re finishing the last of the chores in preparation of a long absence. Funny that I’ve been off work for two days, yet I wanna get on the train NOW!

Vacuuming is complete. Still need to clean the bathroom, sweep and mop. The wife will be home this afternoon . . .

My gallery is still offline because it takes forever and a day to upload it. I hope to get that done by next Monday at the latest. (Other than a couple of errands then, it’s the first day of vacation and I’ll have all day long to mess around.)

On the convention front, it sounds like some folks had a decent time at the GCLS con in Atlanta last weekend. I’m sorry to have missed hanging with my buddies. Scrolling through the offerings for panels, though, I’m glad I didn’t pay the money.

But major props to my buddy, Blayne Cooper, for her award in lesbian romance! WOOT!

* Happy dance! *

Yesterday I CHMOD my .htaccess file to include executable (which it hadn’t been.) It was only this afternoon that I updated Permalinks for the dozenth time. This time, however, I skipped past my custom setting and picked one of the others.

And now Pages works! Woot!! I can put my site’s specific links THERE instead of the blank pages they are now. YAY!

To divert myself from the website tweaking, I focused on my browser. I have a Mac, using OS X 10.3.9. Up until the last few months, Firefox 1.5 has been an excellent browser. Works fast (and I tweaked it to work faster,) which is a good thing for the fickle StumbleUpon clicker I am. But it’s been slowing up considerably, enough that the impatience has won out. (It’s a sad thing when Safari is faster.)

So, the rest of yesterday afternoon and evening was utilized in synching my bookmarks. Found some interesting ones I’ve forgotten, too, so it’s been entertaining.

I’ve downloaded the recent update for Firefox. I’ll give it a shot today and see if there’s much of a difference.

I think I need a list of files I need to transfer over to my iBook before I leave on vacation IN 9 DAYS! Gods, I can’t wait!

Tweaked the style sheet as best I can. At least I have the background and image correct. Originally, I had darker text boxes for the main content as well as the sidebars. Can’t figure out how to do that now… I’ll continue to ruthlessly scan my previous style sheet to see if I can piece it together.

Additionally, each menu item on the sidebars had their very own text boxes (as opposed to simply changing the background color from top to bottom. Can I even do that? Ugh.) I’m not sure, but I think it had something to do with an ‘ li ‘ thingamajigger I added. I could be wrong (and most likely am.) Can’t find the original WP 1.5 website I used to create my site.

Other than that, life is good. Boring, but good. Most of my online buddies are at GCLS in Atlanta, so it’s kinda lonely. And I even got the weekend off, too! What a rip! Still, we went to Waterfront Park where the Rose Festival is in full swing. Had a bratwurst that was eh and a frozen chocolate covered banana with almond toffee covering it. Sheer bliss, I’m telling you!

1) Widgets are great!

2) The interface is cool.

3) Widgets rock the house!

4) The three column theme I’m using is pretty nice (it’ll be better when it’s tweaked.)

5) Did I mention how awesome Widgets are?

Things I hate about WordPress 2.0:

1) Pages! They SUCK!

2) Having to redo everything on my website to make it mine.

3)  I can’t seem to make Pages work in any way, shape, or form.

4)  The whole CSS / PHP learning curve (or lack thereof.)

5) Have I mentioned the sheer headache I’m suffering from the Pages thing?

For now, things are working, so I’ll be happy with that.

Sorry if I interrupted anybody’s reading today!!

Unfortunately, it only works with WP 2.0, and I’m at 1.5. This means a total upgrade. I’m laying the groundwork now, backing up the mysql database, downloading what I need, backing up the individual files of the program on my site . . . I work today, so that’s as far as I’m going to get today.

Tomorrow I’ll be dumping the current WP program and reinstalling it, so expect an outage. Don’t know how long it’ll take. My webhost, DreamHost, has it as a one-click installation, so it’s just a matter of how long they take to get me up and running. Then I’ll upload Akismet, the individual CSS files and the like. Hopefully it won’t take too long to sort out.

So, be warned. Writing in Shadows will be down tomorrow from approximately 9am PST to . . . the gods know!

Not that big a deal, really. Not many of you comment here. (I get more responses at my LiveJournal.) I’ll reinstitute it in a few weeks.

I’ve got almost a week off, however, due to the holiday and lack of business demands. YAY!

So, yesterday, I tweaked my website a bit. Added book covers to the random quotes box on the upper left of the sidebar. (We’ll see if that drums up sales or not.) Also, added a couple of links to programs I’ve been playing with. One is a gallery, to which I’ve added a few pics. Nothing major, but I thought it’d be fun. The other is a calendar program to show future plans. I think I’m going to also put my wordcount and writing progress here for those of you who are interested.

Today I’ve been trying to figure out the php for the gallery program. There’s no link back to the main site, and for the life of me I can’t locate the right data in the forums to figure out how to add one. Someday, I’m sure. Until then, folks will just have to use their browser’s back button.

I’ve also got about a third of the house clean. Bathroom sink and toilet are a mess, but the floor’s swept and mopped. Sheets changed on the bed, bedroom dusted, last year’s paperwork finally filed into the closet, and vacuuming done. Now I have to get the kitchen and dishes done, the kitchen floor mopped, the livingroom cleaned and dusted, and then vacuumed.

Figure if I do it now, I won’t have to do it again for a bit and can enjoy my days off!

On the book front, I blew a hundred fifty bucks on books over my birthday weekend. I’ve read the RV book, Fried Green Tomatos, a field guide on the Apple iBook, and the second in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series. (I’m over halfway through the third, now.)

I think that’s all.

LOTS been happening here. Mostly work. But this next month is supposed to be slower than molasses so I’ll have some extra days off. Not good for the paycheck, but fantastic for the RA recuperation and writing!

Obviously, from the first paragraph, you can deduce that I have an iBook now. It’s a few months old (my wife’s. We replaced hers,) but fine and dandy for me! I’ve actually gotten writing done after work!! WOOT! Part of my problem has been an inability to wander off to Coffee People and write — my new Palmie, while nifty in the extreme, doesn’t have a Dvorak keyboard driver for the keyboard. No Dvorak, no type, no writing. It’s been the cause of a year’s worth of dead time. By the time I arrive home at work, I get too comfortable and nothing gets done unless it’s my day off.

That’s changed, though. When I’m positive I’m going to get off work on time (or early! SQUEE!) I bring the iBook to work and hit the coffee shop on the way home. It hasn’t doubled my production by any means, but 500 words two or three days a week is better than none.

Right now I’m drinking an organic mocha with a touch of cayenne pepper in it. Not at Coffee People, my favorite place to be, but at the Urban Grind in the Pearl District. Yesterday I went to CP after work but it was packed (misty rainy weather brings out the coffee drinkers.) So no writing cuz I went home. Today’s a day off, and I figured I’d check out the local hot spots with wi-fi and get some writing done.

Rewrites on Born of Silence are going well now. I’ve added over ten chapters of new material and have three more new scenes to write before another spate of editing only. I’d like to get these three scene written this weekend (or the lion’s share anyway) so I can whip through the edits. A couple of weeks ago I blasted through four thousand words in a day.

Castle Walls is up for edits, too. I’m nearly through with them. The publisher wants to add a paragraph or two at one point and I’ve been mulling over the options there. This WILL be done and sent back by Friday. I’m not sure what happens next as far as editing goes. It’s due out sometime this summer.

After that, who knows. On Azrael’s Wings is still calling, but I think I may reread Iditarod. My publisher may be interested in it and it seems that a lot of folks are asking about a book.

Went to see Varrakai!, a Cirque du Soleil act here in town. Very nice. We sat third row to the side. The set was marvelous and the acts were terrific. Lots of aerial acts, though. Had I really paid attention, I would have gotten seats further back. We ended up with cricks in our neck from constantly looking skyward.

What else?

Went bowling for the first time in a dozen years. It was a department outing. Only went for two games before it got too much for me. My highest score was 108. I would have done better, but the ol’ body was starting to rebel. My thighs were killing me and it messed up my already messed up foot for a couple of days, but things are back in place and muscles no longer aching. The boss let me go home early the day after and I slept a solid three hours that afternoon!

My wife is sicker than a dog right now. She went to Seattle to visit her sister and niece. The kid’s sick and passed it along. The wife spent last night on the couch in the living room to avoid infecting me; she was up and down all night. I’ve spent the morning in the bedroom with the iBook and decided to get out of the house for a bit. (She had a fever last night but it may have dropped some today.)

All right. Enough dithering. Time to get some writing done. I’ll try to post a bit more regularly, at least to mention word counts. (Promise, jrosestar!)

Yesterday morning we opened our presents. Woot! I got the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, and the first season DVDs of Smallville! My wife got an expensive set of professional pans and one of those Magic 8 Balls. LOL! She loves the 8 ball more than the pans, I think!

Another great gift came in the mail . . . my author copies of Warlord Metal! YAY! They look fantastic! Steph Solomon-Lopez did a killer job with the graphics!

A downstairs neighobr came up to cook dinner for us. He really enjoys cooking and trying out new recipes, but he lives alone. So he comes to our kitchen, and has fun feeding himself, us and another neighbor down the hall who’s unable to cook for himself. It’s pretty cool. Last night was a chicken/tater tot casserole. Definitely interesting, and very good.

We lit the Yule candle at sunset and between my wife and I, we held vigil until sunrise this morning. Then we both put the candle out. Welcome back, Sun!

Today’s a lazy day. (Like I haven’t had enough of them! LOL!) Just puttering around the house, cleaning up stuff, getting geared up for the feast day. Saturday will be prep work and laundry, Sunday will be stockings and friends and food. Tomrrow we’re going to see The Chronicles of Narnia, get our hairs cut, and run some errands.

I’ve been fooling around with my website some more today . . . mainly going over the added features I get through my webhost, Dreamhost. The Trek RPG I belong to has recently picked up their own website through Dreamhost. I’m fiddling with some of the features to see how we can augment our new website. Maybe we’ll break completely away from Yahoo and run it entirely on our own . . . who knows?

I made the mistake of downloading it yesterday . . . UGH! Who wants to play the Sims when you can interact with Sim-like folks in real time?

*grumble*

I need a better connection.

I need a better computer.

I MUST WRITE INSTEAD!!!

Computer and Palm crisis! ARGH!

LOL! I’ve been on day shift for two months. The only time I’ve seen midnight is when I stagger out of bed for the bathroom. Last night I worked swing (the other supervisor is partying in Disneyland. At least he’s with his in-laws, so I’m not too bent out of shape for slogging through the dark of night.) Got home in the wee hours to find TWO pleas for assistance. It’s been so long since the wife has used her Documents to Go program, she was getting fatal errors on her Palmie.

Needless to say, at midnight I was true to my nickname (Grumpy,) hungry, exhausted, and not looking forward to tonight’s swing shift. T’weren’t no way I could figure out what to do; brain function was at an all time low. Left apologies on the white board in the kitchen, had dinner, read my email, and crashed.

She left her Palmie home this morning and I deleted the entire program and reinstalled it. Working like a charm now.

Jett, if you read this . . . I love you! Even if I’m grumpy at midnight and wanting to throw a tantrum.

Ah, the smell of bleach. The floors have just been mopped. They needed it desparately. Tomorrow I’m going to vacuum.

Tomorrow night I get to meet some email RPG friends in RL. I’ve know Kat for five or six years, and her husband just recently began playing, too. We have plans for dinner at Todai’s. I look forward to seeing them.

Ever have music in your head demanding to be played? Today it’s Blood by Queensryche from their CD ‘Tribe’. HAD to hear it, maybe two or three times before I allow the iPod to go back to random play. Don’t know why. It’s been a few days since I listened to that playlist.

The next chapter of Orphan Maker opens with – “You want me to do what?” Gwen demanded. *snicker*

—– later —–

So . . . 562 words and my official word count for a work day is achieved. At least the scene is set up. It’s shearing season at the Loomis homestead, so the city kids are getting a crash course on getting up close and personal with bleeting, fleece covered animals. I’m not sure what the scene is going to be about except to show how the newbies are integrating into their places. Since Gwen will eventually corner Rick about Loomis’ mysterious nightmares, she’s working closely with him now, developing a personal dynamic.

Oh, yeah, and one of my backstory bombshells will be blown up here. That’s right. Gotta remember that.

Now I’m being distracted by my Fed Ex delivery . . . a pair of Lacie external firewire drives. Time to get them plugged in and partitioned.

—– later —–

Wow! That was relatively painless! Decided against partitioning, though. I’d rather have the one named drive than four with the mundane titles of ‘Documents,’ ‘iTunes,’ etc. I’ve transferred my tunes, documents, pics and site there. The only thing that got deleted off my main drive, however, were the tunes. (Though my Mac will actually be the ‘backup’ instead of the Lacie.) It’s breathing easier now since I’ve about maxed out the memory storage with music since I got my iPod at Yule.

Nothing.

Crap. Batteries are dead. And I don’t have any. Pack everything up, take my untasted tea (it was still too hot) out the door to Safeway and pick up batteries. Good sale on, too, so I buy two packs for future use. Return to Coffee People. My table’s still open! YAY! Sit down and pref again for another one thousand words.

Nothing.

WHAT?

So much for writing . . . I got about 300 words, hand written on my Palmie.

Got home. Played with the damned thing, took it apart, put it back together, blew out the nooks and crannies in case a stray hair or dust mote was messing things up.

Nothing.

Deleted the keyboard driver and loaded it back up again.

BINGO! We’re in business!

*razzle frazzle*

Prior to Shadow Plan, I had to save my Note Taker files to .pdf format to upload the data to my Palm. However, my new T-5 has some programming issues . . . I miss some parts because of the data entry section when I’m in Adobe Reader. Scrolling doesn’t let me move down a line at a time, either. I automatically lose the bottom three or four sentences as it goes to the next page.

Shadow Plan, however . . . *squee!* Not only can I access the data on my Mac, but I can easily see everything on the Palm. (And there’s a PC desktop version, too.)

Needless to say, I’ve been transferring outlines and encyclopedia from Note Taker to Shadow Plan and popping them onto my Palm. Now if I’m writing away from the computer and have a question about a character’s eye color or that word in their language I need, I can go right to the information! W00t!

Oh, and here’s part 4 of the Iditarod story, too!

Guess what?

The only reason I haven’t lost the full novel and the .pdf of my notes is because both are saved on the memory card instead of the internal memory.

I think the issue is my word processing program. It’s not Micro$haft Word, it’s Mariner Write for Mac OS X. It uses less memory than the other and saves to a compatible .rtf file. (That way when I must track changes during editing, I can use the crappier program.)

Which means I either go back to the Micro$hit program, or I just bought a $400 paperweight with my tax refund . . .

Maybe I’ll use this only for short stories, character sketches and editing. Anybody out there willing to exchange a new Palm Tungsten T5 (and wireless keyboard) for a 17″ Apple Powerbook with all the bells and whistles? *user bats her baby blues in an abortive attempt to appear flirtatious*

In lighter news, I am SPLINT FREE!!! Yeah, baby! Yeah! It is ooooofficial! My thumb is healed, three long months of partial immobility are over! W00T!

To celebrate, I’ve taken myself to Coffee People again to have a soy Velvet Hammer with whip cream. It’s an experiment. After the Great Redhawk Land Cruise of 2004, I arrived home with a strong Velvet craving. I had been relatively dairy free for three weeks – a good thing since I’m allergic to the stuff – and that first cup was sweet, decadent and deadly. I got sooooooo sick!

I’m hoping the soy will make a difference.

Well, since writing is out (the chapter notes are the ones that have disappeared,) and I have about an hour before needing to be at work, I’m going to shut this down. Here’s hoping it’s still here when I get home!

I also put the comment sections back on my posts. No, that doesn’t mean I’ve enabled comments on all entries, but I’d like to offer visitors a chance to comment upon occasion. The only issue is that you’ll be required to register with a valid email address. I hope to keep things from being too spammy this way.

If and when you do, take the time to fill in the profile. Otherwise there will be no name listed in the comment section and it could get confusing!

And on that note, I’m allowing comments to this post. Sign in! Smart off while you have the chance! LOL!

All links should work . . . *user knocks on wood – her forehead*

Chapter thirty-two is finished, but Lainey’s nowhere near the next checkpoint. Hel, she’s not even at the halfway point. She’s in a convoy (safety in numbers) of six mushers as they tackle the crappy trail between Rohn and Nikolai, a total of 93 miles. This will include the Farewell Burn, an area around Farewell Lake that got toasted by a huge fire years ago. It’s still a pain to traverse – rocks, debris, stumps of trees, burned husks . . . She’s taking a break with her dogs before they head into the Buffalo Chutes, so named for the herd of buffalo in the area. (Considering my connection with tatanka I think I’ll have her see the herd on the way.)

Now, off to play with my new toy!

Another success – the wife received her keyboard yesterday after I had left for work. When she got her Zire, there were some major issues with it that we finally realized had been caused by the wrong keyboard driver. As frustrating as yesterday was (on many other levels than the one I mentioned in the blog) I was concerned she’d go through more crap. We even toyed with the idea that maybe she should leave it to me to do this morning instead.

Still, impatient as she was, she put the driver on herself, and everything worked dandy. She went to school with the new gear today. I hope it worked for her. (Me? I would have brought the old gear, too, just to be on the safe side. She’s . . . less than technologically inclined. . . )

Tomorrow is a graveyard shift. Maybe 2k will be written, maybe not. We’ll see.

Out of desperation, I hooked it up to MY computer. Worked like a dream. Huh? What. The. Fuck?

The only thing we can come up with is that her USB connection on her keyboard is at fault. For some obscure reason, when we got her system together, all the USB connections were taken so we popped it into one of the keyboard slots. Bad connection.

Of course, now I have HER user information on MY computer. It’s like kissing . . . if you can’t swap user data (spit) with your partner . . .

I get to work to discover the banquet captain in charge of my department for the evening (to cover my shift) was none other than our department’s previous supervisor. Duh. It’s not like he has no clue what questions to ask for my department.

So I didn’t attend the meeting. No reason I should. Promptly skipped out the door, singing “Tra la laaaaa!”

My day has been messed up, however, and I want a nap. Can’t have one or it’ll mess up my tenuous sleep cycle. No writing done today.

Instead, I’m taking a page out of Holly Lisle’s book and playing around with Geeklog. I think I’ll swap over to this instead if I can learn how to tweak it. Then I’ll delete the mailing lists, because I’ll have a literal community on my site. People can register, sign in, leave comments, and visit a forum. I can post my first drafts there under login lock and key rather than on the mailing lists.

We’ll see how it goes.

Tax refund has come in! YAY! Bought the wife a Palm Tungsten T5 with a hard case and keyboard. I’ll give it a couple of days to clear, and then buy myself one. I haven’t been able to use my Palm M515 for writing in months. I upgraded Documents to Go only to discover my Palm OS wasn’t sufficient enough to run the thing . . . and there’s no upgrading the OS for that model. *grumble*

Ah, well. I missed my HP Jornada with all its added bells and whistles. The T5 is similar, almost a pocket PC rather than a PDA. It’ll be good to have the large memory back. (And flash memory! I won’t lose much of anything if the thing hiccups and forces a reset.)

I’m changing ISPs which also means I’m switching companies for my DSL phone line. I think I’ve got the new phone connection, but I still don’t have the new modem. Since the ISP I currently have has made it difficult in the extreme to configure the modem I have, I’ll be on dial up until I get a delivery from the US Snail.

Wish me luck.

Many thanks to Sheila for the link on her blog!

As you may or may not have noticed, I’m still importing my LiveJournal entries and editing them. (Only up through July of last year.) Have been deleting some bizarro political stuff as I want this blog to be the primary information outlet for my readers.

All links on the menu bar to the left are working, including the contact form. Feel free to drop me a line! Also, I’ve enabled comments on this thing. No one need register to comment an whatever post they wish. (Though admittedly, it’s a moot point at the moment, what with posts being a year old!)

On the menu bar is a category list. Those are the categories the posts are in. Hence, if you click on ‘snippets’, you’ll see all the posts where I’ve quoted my work on this blog. (*wiggles eyebrows*) While writing has been rather remote the last few months with me, I plan on getting back to it once things are in place here, and do promise to continue posting bits and pieces as I go.

Happy writing!

Have a look around on the menu bar, though . . . all links should be active. If there are any errors, email me at djredhawk at earthlink dot net. (I don’t think the comment form is up and running yet.)

Buy a Bard and You Can Be the Star!

Nene Adams (http://www.corrieweb.com/library.htm) is for sale… or
at least, her story-writing talents are yours for the taking. That's
right – enter this Buy-a-Bard auction and you may win a personalized
story written especially for you! You choose the setting, you choose
the genre, you choose the adventure – take as much or as little
control as you desire.

Want pirate gals on the high seas? Chicks in chainmail? Regency
romance? Mystery, adventure, historical, cyberpunk, horror, comedy,
science fiction or fantasy – anything's possible! You can even become
a character in the story yourself. Once written, this custom tale
will become your sole property to do with as you wish. Five winners
will have the satisfaction of taking home a unique, one-of-a-kind
tale written by this talented bard.

Enter the Buy-a-Bard silent auction and you can be the star of your
own adventure! Auction bids can go to wynna1@yahoo.com and auction
will close Friday June 11th, 2004

(Thanks to Steph and the Academy of Bards for their assistance)

Do you want to participate? Send a bid to wynna1@yahoo.com. Five
lucky winners will take home a one-of-a-kind story written exactly
the way they want it. Want to help? Please spread the word! There is
also a PayPal button on the Library page for anyone who wants to make
a donation.

Thank you for your support of Nene's Living Library.

But, I found out that my Palm keyboard driver has Dvorak! I'm picking up some black and white inks next Thursday to do some creative artwork on my keyboard.

Finished jrosestar’s short story request. It’s called To The River, and has been uploaded to my site. Thanks again, Jean! You kept the fingers moving, and that’s what counts.

Love scenes at the computer.

It's SOOOOO appropriate!

Sixty pages edited today, slogging through four pages of editor's notes. I've got 131 out of 368 complete. One third! YAY!

Now I have to work. Blech.

Wasn't a bad Yuletide this year. Got to spend time with the love of my life, hanging out in our pjs all day as we watched movies and Discovery show specials. Stuffed our faces with turkey and all the trimmings, and fed the eager cats their share. (They won't get people food again until next Thanksgiving's turkey.)

Many thanks to all who sent cards. It was really cool to get them. Unfortunately, work interrupted my preparations and, by the time I realized the date, I didn't have time to send out cards from us! My goal next year is to do these during Thanksgiving week when I have free time from work. Then I can mail 'em out in plenty of advance. The three weeks before Yule were quite busy with holiday parties and coatchecks. Maybe next year will be the same.

I'm still rocking on NoteTaker. I've got eight notebooks up and am about halfway through organizing all my writing notes for different genres. I spent all day yesterday working on the cyberpunk notebook, combining information from my story, CyberEpic, and the one I'm halfway through and stalled on – Kou Itten. Had to read through both of them to pick up language (Spanish, Brazillian, cyberpunk lingo, Japanese) and characters (Nomads, Military, Techies, Netrunners.) I also dug out my old Cyberpunk RPG game notebook, found mucho weapons online for the mayhem loving people, and drew up lists of gear, cybernetics, and drugs for the mid 21st century.

I've got enough in the cyberpunk genre already to have a series. Wow.

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

You see, I currently use Word to write. I have documents for the current chapter I'm working on, the full novel as it's written, my notes, an encylopedia, AND a Sanguire dictionary. Then I have Omni Outliner for the character document and the plot line. Then, if I feel the need, I have an Architecture program to put together floor plans and maps. So, in one folder for one book, I have as many as nine or ten files. And if I have pictures of my characters, those files go into the same folder.

I've found a Mac program called NoteTaker that's knocking my socks off, man! I can literally have a virtual spiral notebook full of everything I need. I can put in tabs, pages, sections, move 'em around wherever I want 'em. I can even create the cover how I want!

So, that's what I've been doing the last three days. World building the Sanguire using NoteTaker. I've got a tab for books holding all the finished outlines and links to the documents themselves. I've got a tab for Sanguire characters alone, another for Human characters, and a third for Halfbreeds (which will be coming up in the distant future.) I've got a tab for my Sanguire Encyclopedia . . . and I even have the ability to link between entries, documenets, and pages within the notebook!

And the program automatically creates and maintains a backup of the notebook! If one is screwy, the other will survive!

If you have a Mac and are using OS X, I highly recommend this program!

No body showed up. In fact, the carpet they pulled up yesterday was never replaced today. We called management. They had no idea these guys weren't doing the job today. We told them we wanted another 24 hour notice. If anybody shows up in our apartment tomorrow, there's gonna be hel to pay. My wife had a crappy day in algebra and she's looking for a fight.

No editing done. No writing done. Had to keep an ear open for the door, and be certain the boys (Lester and Shade) didn't make too much noice while they were locked in the bedroom for 8 hours. Besides, I have hearing aids. Can't listen to tunage without taking the aids out and putting on headphones. No aids, no hearing the knock on the door.

Instead I read. Born of Silence and Angels Deserve to Die. Born starts off a bit sketchy, but the flow picks up about halfway through. I can tell where I stopped gauging my production by ‘I’ll write half a scene today’ to ‘I’ll write one thousand words today.’ The words are much smoother in the latter half.

Also brought up a lot of questions, a lot of reminders of things I need to take care of in the third installment. As of right now, I have about 20 major scenes sketched out. That should stretch to 35 or so, once I take each scene and expand on it. (i.e. “Jenna finally discovers which Phyle she belongs to” will flesh out to three or four supporting and linking scenes to flesh out the book.)

Things to look forward in False Side of Shadow:

1. Why didn't the Symbouhera just put someone else on the throne after Elisibet's assassination?

2. Margaurethe's mother really hated Elisibet, and that's translated over to Jenna. (Mother-in-law problems. Why not?)

3. The Symbouhera arrives to settle into their new digs in Portland. Five pissed off Sanguire, two of which want Jenna dead. Fun, fun, fun!

4. Jenna has an official debutante ball at Tribulations! LOL!

5. Bertrada Nijmege and Jenna have their final showdown.

I'm liking it. Anybody out there on my mailing list who's read these? Got any questions I left unanswered? (I mean, other than the MAJOR ones, like who's the mysterious councilor hiring assassins.)

Only four hours of work this evening. Afterward, I came home, and returned to slogging through my website upgrade. Finally finished my link page. I wanted to actually have graphics instead of just typing in something and creating a link to a site. That’s what was so time consuming about the whole thing – had to go to each site I wanted on the page and hunt down a graphic I could use as a banner.

I split the links up according to writing, geek stuff about my writing, and then the research links for each of my published book. I’m really looking forward to creating links for several I have in editing or writing works right now. Orphan Maker alone should be worth quite a bit of link space!

Tomorrow, I write 1k on Angels Deserve to Die. Probably officially plot out the Loomis homestead on graph paper. Begin working on the characters for the new novel.

I have a hearing appointment tomorrow afternoon. I hope the doctor will be better than my last one (“Gee. You’re going deaf. Don’t know why. Here’s the bill.”) I’d really like to know WHY I’ve lost my hearing. And if there’s a possibilty of getting part of it back. We’ll see how it goes.

Thanks to feath for that wonderful script! Now all I have to do is program in my quotes instead of the ones already there. It's made my life a hel of a lot easier!

And, I've finally figured out where to change the title page on the frames. I downloaded a handful of templates that I'm adapting for my new, professional image. The problem is that I've never worked with frames before. Spent a disgusted two hours last night trying to locate where to change the title but couldn't do it. I thought I'd have to reprogram each and every frame by hand. Started doing that this morning; opened each frame separately, code view only, and scoured the thing for information. Finally located the one in the index that I hadn't gotten to. Voila! Instant 'Redhawk's Realm' in the title bar! YAY!

Came across another story idea over the last couple of days. A friend of mine has made mention of a New Zealand kids' program called 'The Tribe' that seemed pretty interesting. I checked it out on satellite. It's alright. Nothing I'd watch. But the premise is damned cool! Similar in tone to the original Star Trek episode, 'Miri' – all the adults die of a plague, leaving the kids just below the threshold of puberty and younger to grow up on their own. The difference between that and the Trek ep, of course, is that it's a fresh occurence and as the child matures, he or she does NOT contract the disease that killed the adults. Of course, 'The Tribe' has taken these kids and given them mass weapons of destruction, enough brains to keep the electricity running, and computers. Not too realistic to me (at least not from MY childhood.)

So, I've been playing around with that idea. Already have a couple of main characters and three supporting. I'll probably have another handful of supporting characters by the time I'm finished dallying around with the concept.

Okay. Off to work.