Sharpening the Knife

Blog Post No. 419

While Christian has been going over the latest draft of Break/Interrupt, I’ve been working on the ebook (still). I’ve made some good progress, but the deeper I dig, the more mistakes I find in my current attempt. It’s gotten to the point where I have a single major issue remaining and I’m going to (hopefully) fix it by redoing the whole thing with new encoding. That means creating a new file and moving all the code over, then reviewing my code looking for places where I can replace old tags with new one. (Tag being the wrapper for the content i.e. <p class=”first”>content</P> for a paragraph). It’s more complex than that, but really not by much.

Coding for ebooks

Blog Post No. 418

One thing to get out of the way right off the bat. I am not a coder and my meager accomplishment would likely insult the sensibilities of a real coder at a single glance. With that in mind and the overwhelming amount of help I’ve gotten from Arvin (my bad code is in no way representative of the help he provided but is an example of my own shortcomings) I am on the cusp of finally having the epub version of The Thinking Machine finished. There is still the Kindle version to do, but I hope that it’s as easy as the tutorials make it seem and I can just press a couple of extra buttons in the program I’m using and it will be spat out the other side.

Gaming with Friends

Blog Post No. 417

Last week I finished off the third draft of Break/Interrupt and (like passing off a mewling baby) handed it over to Christian for review. There is still a lot of editing left to do, but other than more potential cuts, the story is pretty well set. With the novella out of my hands, I am trying to be productive in other ways without diving into another project that will have to be put on hold when I get the edit back. At the top of the list is coming up with some good ideas for the cover so that Glen Hawkes can turn my scribbles into something cool.

Virtual Launch – Tomorrow

Blog Post No. 404

I messed up. I was so surprised by the news last week that I wrote a post about not going back to the Day Job for the rest of the year when I should have made a post about the virtual launch that Adventure Worlds Press is doing tomorrow (Friday August 14th). Since we released three books this year and we haven’t been able to do traditional launches we decided to put together something online. It’s strange to think that the book I’m promoting, Broadcast Wasteland, came out in April, but since time has lost all meaning in the pandemic, I’m sure it’s fine that I’m launching it now.

Called Off

Blog Post No. 403

As you probably know, I’ve been home from the Day Job since early March. There are a lot of people in similar situations, and to be honest, it hasn’t been too bad for me. With Employment Insurance and the Emergency Benefits, I’m not really losing much money. (Some months may have even been better than what I sometimes get since the Day Job fluctuates so much). With the various stages of opening (for better or worse) across the province where I live, some folks have been going back to work, and many more are scheduled to when my area hits the third stage and schools open. As for me, I’ve been officially informed that my Day Job won’t be reopening until 2021.

Invasion Novel

Blog No. 386

I mentioned last week that with Broadcast Wasteland finished and the shipment on its way (currently somewhere near Etobicoke according to the package tracking, but it has been historically, wildly inaccurate) I’ve dived back into the novel. It has always been my plan to eventually write a novel (eventually being the key word in that sentence). Initially, I was all in on short stories as that is what brought me into reading in the first place and the plan was to cut my teeth on the shorts and build the skills to write a novel. After a couple of years working on stories for AWP, I rolled up my sleeves and made my first attempt at writing a novel.

2019: A Year in Review

Blog No. 372

Welcome to the long post where I look back on my previous year on this blog and as a writer and feel things. Those of you who have been with me for a while (hi mom and dad) know the story of this blog all too well. Some time back in 2010 I decided that I should have a blog. I was still in the “I want to be a writer but I don’t actually write,” phase, so it fizzled out rather quickly. Then, at the end of 2012 something clicked and I actually started to do this thing (for real). I started writing stories to go up on Adventure Worlds, and I restarted this blog, aiming for a weekly post. Now it’s 2020 and I’ve managed a post a week since January 10th 2013. Most of the time it’s been on Thursday, but there was that one hiccup that I will never live down where it came out on Saturday because I was bad at organization and planning and overwhelmed with three jobs at the time. Still, it was a learning moment. I think it taught me to think long term and realize how a simple slip-up or lazy moment can blemish an otherwise impressive (if otherwise meaningless) achievement. That said, 362 posts in a row, seven years, and over 270 000 words. That’s not nothing.

Changing Gears

Blog No. 366

The Fall Book Crawl is over, and I’m not sure what to do with myself. That’s a lie. I have a literally endless list of things to do, but no events scheduled anytime soon. It’s about this time (often sooner) that Christian and I sit down and put together a list of events for us to approach and/or plan in the new year. It hasn’t happened yet, however, and I suspect that the delay is down to simple priorities. I was laser focused on the novella, and he is knee deep in his next novel. I’m at a standstill with the novella, though, with the second draft finished and doubt. As Christian goes over Broadcast Wasteland for me (another distraction from his novel) and I finalized the title of the next novella (a little early, but I have to put it in the back of this one) I have the comic as my main focus. Scripts are a tricky thing to write. You’d think that with so much free space and mostly just dialogue to write, it would be way easier. In my experience it isn’t.

The Rest of the Year

Blog No. 364

I’ve got one more event this year. It’s the Fall Book Crawl, a local author signing event at the Tecumseh Library on November 23rd. It’s a Saturday and I have no idea what to expect except for a bunch of authors (some I haven’t met before). It’s being organized by Tim Gabrielle, an author I haven’t met, but whose books I’ve spotted at Biblioasis. He’s done a good job so far getting a number of authors organized, finding prizes for a draw, and advertising the thing. I’ve been in his shoes a few times, so I know how much work it can be (and how you can never know what thing you do will or won’t bring in the people. Either way, it should be a good afternoon with a bunch of different genres represented and some new people to meet.

First Draft Fury

Blog No. 356

I suppose this is going to be mostly an update. I’ve so far avoided reviewing the two events that happened early in the month (that were steamrolled by the Neon Heart behind the writing posts). I may get to them in the future, but it’s already been a while and if I let it go too far, I will probably skip it. The only thing that’s happening right now, though, is the first draft of Broadcast Wasteland. I did a little post over on Adventure Wolds Press about what Christian and I are working on, but I was a little vague as I was trying to encapsulate a few things on one short post. So, I’ll go into more detail about it here. Even though there isn’t that much to get into in the first place. Basically, I’m currently writing the first draft of the next novella and I’m trying to do it in a month.