Blog No. 321
Over the last few weeks, or just over a month or so (time gets muddled with the holidays involved) I was reading over the latest manuscript of a friend and fellow local author. I’m not sure if it was an edit, a beta read, a review, or what. I just read it over, giving my opinion and made a few suggestions, and she seemed to think they were helpful. I hope so, because the book is good and I can’t wait for it to come out now. Also, it was brought to my attention (from a kind and anonymous commenters) that last week’s post had quite a few sloppy errors. I think I caught some of the more egregious typos, but to be honest, I don’t spend much time rereading these posts after I’ve written them. Maybe I should, but I think the nature of the writing is more important. Not to say I am happy with spelling errors or typos. So, thank you mysterious reader.
Now that the review I’ve been working on is finished (and with The Neon Heart in the hands of Christian for a once over of his own (I’m still eagerly awaiting a look at his Infested, but I’m the one who gave him an edit to do)) I’m back to scratching out some sentences for the Invasion Novel. Along with that, it’s well past due that I have some ebooks out there. No Light Tomorrow is available thought Mirror World Publishing, but All These Crooked Streets and The Thinking Machine have been waiting on me. I think I’ve found the solution to what has been holding me back, but I still have to sit down and do the work. When No Light was coming out, I managed to get the ebook done through the program I used to do the layout, but I couldn’t find a way to indent the first lines of each paragraph. The whole thing was sloppy, but other than that indent issue, I made it work. I’ve since stumbled across a feature in the program that I was unable to find through weeks of online searching. I think it will solve my problem. It may have been a new feature that came with an update, or maybe I just couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Either way, it’s time to take another shot. If it doesn’t work, I need to pester Arvin for some programming tips.
Speaking of Arvin, we’ve both been avoiding Flags and High Fives work, but the ball is currently sitting in my court (mostly). I have some unedited recordings of some of our working sessions that need to be put into an episode, but work in general has been lacking. With Arvin having the new human baby and me having the new written baby (It’s a weird metaphor, but I’m sticking with it) time has been tight. Like always, I can probably find the time, but having some drive is my biggest sticking point. And when I sit back to look at making some time, I think about all the other things I have to do and end up watching a movie I’ve seen a dozen times. But, that has to change because I want to get the podcast back on track. (I say with no plan on how to do that).
All of these things I need to (and want to) do are all well and good, but I have to get them into some kind of order. I can really only be relied upon to handle one thing at a time. Up next is the Workshop on Saturday. I’m excited to see how it works out. There are five people registered (as of Tuesday) with a couple more in communication with the organizer (Vanessa). I haven’t done any teaching in some time, so I’m curious to see if I still have any of that in me. I’m also excited to share some of the things I’ve learned over the last six or so years. Christian and I have had our semiannual event meeting and have a bunch of events already scheduled through May. There are even more that are in the query stage and we end up getting invited to, or finding out about, events that we haven’t planned for all the time. So, we have some scheduled and there will likely be more. It’s always exciting, but they tend to interrupt all my plans. I’m not likely to start on the ebook or Flags and High Fives until after this workshop is done. Then, it’s back to writing until the next event!
Ben Van Dongen 