I'm a writer. There, I've admitted it. I wonder if there's a 12-Step program for folks like me...

Most of this blog will be about writing for a living. Or maybe about trying to earn a living as a writer. Or maybe about trying to have a life while you write.

And maybe I'll be able to avoid the driving temptation to write about politics. But I'm not very good around temptation, so all I can promise is that I'll try to avoid writing about politics.

But I will write about the software I use, and the software I try out, and what I think about it. I actually spent lots of years in software testing - as a tester and as a manager of testing departments. I actually started work in software development in 1971, so I have a bit of experience with computers to back up what I have to say on this subject.

Friday, December 31, 2010

I know it’s not Monday, but…

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How do you write your books?

Believe it or not, folks really do ask that question. Writing is not an easy job, and producing one of my novels requires around two years of steady (all right, mostly on-off, but kinda-sorta steady) thinking, researching, writing and re-writing. Lots of re-writing.

In all truth, my contribution to these stories is a very small part of the project. Important – at least I’m told it’s important, but for all that a very small part of the process of writing.

Because I don’t write by myself. I don’t mean that I have a staff of hack writers. I wouldn’t know what to do with them, if I did. I do the creative thinking, at least at the beginning. And all of the typing. And deleting, and formatting and re-formatting of the text.

But the characters write their parts. They decide on what has to be done. Sometimes they argue among themselves, but that’s usually quickly resolved.

The environment plays a big part in the story, too. The roads, the shopping centers, the design of Terry’s office, the layout of his hotel room, what kind of vehicle he’s driving, that sort of thing. The layout of the city he’s working in plays a big part in these stories. I don’t make these things up, folks. Or, I don’t make most of these things up. It’s just too much trouble keeping track of them when I’ve got an entire world filled with stuff I can make use of.

The environment shapes the story. It provides the backdrop and the scope for the lives and actions of my characters.

The climate plays a big part in any story, or it should. Is it January in Tampa, and pouring rain, or summer in the Everglades? Are the roads slippery from the grease and rubber caked into the surface? Climate should play a big part in the decisions the characters make and how they react to their changing situation.

And, of course, there’s the ever-present plot. Or not. Frankly, I don’t care all that much about plotting in my stories. I do care a great deal about how my characters react to the situations I put them in, and the decisions they make and the prices they inevitably have to pay for having made those decisions.

I don’t bother with a plot outline. I find it very restricting. I do care about my characters. My characters drive the stories I write. Not some damn plot outline.

Have a Happy and Safe New Year!

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Writing is an art, similar to pulling ones own teeth without anesthetics

 

I managed to put in a full week on “Twisted Key” and now have forty-one pages of new material. I fully plan to do the same thing this week, unless Life gets in my way again.

It did, this morning. I had to drive my sister up to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. She’s got a nasty case of bronchitis, and at her age that can lead to other issues she’d much rather avoid.

So, it’s 4:30 in the afternoon and I’m just now sitting down to the computer. We’ll see how far I can get today without another interruption. Don’t get me wrong – I was happy to be here to help her today, but like I said – Life can get in the way of progress. Can, and usually does. Working past the problems Life throws at us, getting the job done and maintaining ones sense of humor is a very useful life skill. I haven’t quite gotten the hang of that one, yet.

But I’m still working on it. Persistence is another very useful life skill. I’ve got that one down pat.

Six pages a day is not bad, considering all the rewriting involved in coming up with six useable pages every day. I mean, there is less than no sense in turning garbage over to your editors, is there? You’d wind up looking for new editors real quick if you tried that more than once, I promise.

My brother-in-law came back from the store yesterday and handed me a web cam. It’s a MiniCam Pro, a GE product, and has a focus ring, snap shot button and mic, and comes with some very basic software for editing photographs and video clips. It’s a fun little critter to play with.

We use ComCast for our television and internet connectivity. I wish we had a choice. The last apartment we lived in we received both a Netgear router and a wireless adapter for the second computer. In this new apartment, we signed a new contract with ComCast and requested a new router and adapter so we could trunk in the old gear. They said, “Okey-dokey” (okay, they didn’t really say that, exactly), and promptly sent us a new Netgear router. When I called about the adapter, I was told they don’t supply those, that we would have to purchase that ourselves.

It’s no use arguing with them over any of this, really, it’s not. I have done that, several times. It really is not worth the wasted time.

Yesterday morning, I got busy and swapped out the old router for the new one. No joy, no internet. I called ComCast and after a brief meaningful discussion with their tech support, who told me they only deal with the modem and I would have to speak with NetGear about any problems I was having with their products, was transferred to the Netgear help desk, where I hung on hold for twenty minutes before I hung up. I had replaced the old router with the new one, remember. Identical in every way, except for the dust on the case. So I swapped them back. The old router picked up the connection with no problem. So I put the new router in the old box.

Then I hooked up the new wireless adapter (a Cisco product) and it picked up the connection with the old router with no problem after I provided the key code to authorize the connection. The old adapter was put back into its box. The whole thing took about two hours, which is about one hour forty-five minutes longer than it should have.

That’s tech support for you.

But I got to curse a lot – not over the phone, of course, but I did get to use some words you’ll never see in anything I write.

The new router and the old wireless adapter went back to ComCast this afternoon, and the money ComCast had held back has been credited to our bill.

Have a Happy and Safe New Year.

Writing is an art, similar to pulling ones own teeth without anesthetics

 

I managed to put in a full week on “Twisted Key” and now have forty-one pages of new material. I fully plan to do the same thing this week, unless Life gets in my way again.

It did, this morning. I had to drive my sister up to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. She’s got a nasty case of bronchitis, and at her age that can lead to other issues she’d much rather avoid.

So, it’s 4:30 in the afternoon and I’m just now sitting down to the computer. We’ll see how far I can get today without another interruption. Don’t get me wrong – I was happy to be here to help her today, but like I said – Life can get in the way of progress. Can, and usually does. Working past the problems Life throws at us, getting the job done and maintaining ones sense of humor is a very useful life skill. I haven’t quite gotten the hang of that one, yet.

But I’m still working on it. Persistence is another very useful life skill. I’ve got that one down pat.

Six pages a day is not bad, considering all the rewriting involved in coming up with six useable pages every day. I mean, there is less than no sense in turning garbage over to your editors, is there? You’d wind up looking for new editors real quick if you tried that more than once, I promise.

My brother-in-law came back from the store yesterday and handed me a web cam. It’s a MiniCam Pro, a GE product, and has a focus ring, snap shot button and mic, and comes with some very basic software for editing photographs and video clips. It’s a fun little critter to play with.

We use ComCast for our television and internet connectivity. I wish we had a choice. The last apartment we lived in we received both a Netgear router and a wireless adapter for the second computer. In this new apartment, we signed a new contract with ComCast and requested a new router and adapter so we could trunk in the old gear. They said, “Okey-dokey” (okay, they didn’t really say that, exactly), and promptly sent us a new Netgear router. When I called about the adapter, I was told they don’t supply those, that we would have to purchase that ourselves.

It’s no use arguing with them over any of this, really, it’s not. I have done that, several times. It really is not worth the wasted time.

Yesterday morning, I got busy and swapped out the old router for the new one. No joy, no internet. I called ComCast and after a brief meaningful discussion with their tech support, who told me they only deal with the modem and I would have to speak with NetGear about any problems I was having with their products, was transferred to the Netgear help desk, where I hung on hold for twenty minutes before I hung up. I had replaced the old router with the new one, remember. Identical in every way, except for the dust on the case. So I swapped them back. The old router picked up the connection with no problem. So I put the new router in the old box.

The I hooked up the new wireless adapter (a Cisco product) and it picked up the connection with the old router with no problem after I provided the key code to authorize the connection. The old adapter was put back into its box. The whole thing took about two hours, which is about one hour forty-five minutes longer than it should have.

That’s tech support for you.

But I got to curse a lot – not over the phone, of course, but I did get to use some words you’ll never see in anything I write.

The new router and the old wireless adapter went back to ComCast this afternoon, and the money ComCast had held back has been credited to our bill.

Have a Happy and Safe New Year.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

I know it’s not Monday - again

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I’ve been getting up at 4:30 in the morning for years, now. Usually I get a cup of coffee started in the drip coffee maker, pour some orange juice and get a handful of pills down and then watch the news for an hour or so. Unless I’ve got a manuscript in the works, in which case the TV never gets turned on.

So that’s why I haven’t posted anything to my blog this week. I am now under a deadline on “Twisted Key”. I need to have the manuscript ready for an editor by June of next year, and the sooner the better. I’ve got a non-fiction project I’m working on as well, and I need to have that one ready for an editor by September.

It’s nice to be busy. Unless Life is really ticked off with you, in which case being busy is the least of your worries. Right now, however, Life is ignoring me, and I am doing all I can to ignore it in return. I’ve got just enough on my plate as it is.

The CD-ROM drive died on my Dell last week. It’s been moving in that direction for the better (worse, actually) part of a year, and it finally gave up the ghost. So I contacted CompUSA, spoke with one of their tech people and got a recommendation for a new drive. It went in without any fuss and when I turned on the computer, it showed up in Device Manager just like it had been there all along.

But I’m not so happy with Dell. Admittedly, the Dimension 2350 model is about seven years old, but there is essentially NO upgrade path on this machine. You can add (as I just did) a new CD or DVD drive, but don’t even think about removing an old drive that’s died. You cannot do that. The entire frame is pop-riveted together AFTER the CD-ROM is installed, so you cannot remove it without destroying the frame. Never mind being limited to a whacking great (sic) 1 gigabyte of RAM, having to keep a dead drive in the case is frustrating as all get-out. Well, it was a gift, so maybe I shouldn’t complain too much.

In a vain attempt to get more use out of my 1 gig of RAM, I recently purchased a PCI video card with 512 MB of RAM onboard. It worked fine in DOS during the boot-up, but when Windows loaded the screen went black. I got onto a geek forum and asked about that and was told I needed a new 400 watt power supply to power the card. So I got back in touch with my buds at CompUSA and they gave me a recommendation on a replacement PSU. Now, the video card ran me $64.00, and the new PSU will run $50.00.

And the DVD/CD drive cost me around $45.00 (with a new data cable and shipping, that is). New computers run around $300.00 and up. Maybe I should just save my money. But I’ve got all this stuff on my computer, and it’s set up just like I want it. I’d dearly love a new machine, but believe it or not, I can’t afford to put out all that cash at once. Besides, I kind of like this one. I’m used to it, and I can blame it for a lot of stuff I’d have to take responsibility for if I had a new one.

Merry Christmas, and  a Happy new Year!

Friday, December 17, 2010

An apology, and some Warm Fuzzies

 

Please accept my apologies for not posting at the beginning of this week (along with most other weeks). I try to get these posts out on Monday or Tuesday, but Life, working on my book projects and small interruptions tend to get in my way. Bedsides, I just love the sound of deadlines as they go wooshing by.

I’m scheduled to be at a charity benefit at the Middleburg Elementary School scheduled for tomorrow, December 18, and because this is one of Jacksonville’s damper seasons I have been keeping a close eye on the weather. Naturally, there is a 60% chance of showers and the odd thunder storm. But I’ll be there, smiling, rain or no rain. In my tent. With the sides down, sipping hot coffee. Cold, and probably somewhat damp.

But I’ll be there.

I had a phone call from one of my customers who purchased “The Big Bend” for his wife about a month ago. He wanted to know how he could purchase “Hog Valley” for her because she enjoyed “The Big Bend” so much.

This is a charity event to raise money for a young man with Hodgkins Lymphoma, and I’ve committed to providing a few signed copies for the fund raiser auction.

On the 17th of January I’ll be at “All Booked Up” on Bichara Blvd in The Villages between Leesburg and Ocala for a signing.

If you’re in the area of either event, please stop by and say hello.

On another note entirely, my CD drive gave up the ghost. It’s been reluctant to accept some of the CD’s I’ve tried to access, and finally the cup holder wouldn’t even slide out when I pushed the Eject button. So I ordered a new one, along with a PCI graphics card with 512 MB RAM on board. I might have mentioned an earlier attempt to order a PCI graphics card; that time I would up with a PCIE card. Needless to say, it didn’t fit any of the three PCI slots on the motherboard…

Wish me better luck this time.

I purchased Serif’s DrawPlus X4. That’s one of the CD’s my CD drive refused to recognize, so I couldn’t install the software and test it out. Or report on it. But I will, as soon as the new CD drive arrives. And I get it installed. And install the new graphics card. Which, if all goes well, shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes.

I’ll be sure to tell you all about that, too.

Have a great weekend. Mine will be somewhat damp and a bit on the chilly side, but if you’re anywhere near Middleburg, Florida on Saturday, be sure to stop by the event at the elementary school on Blanding Blvd. Spend some money, help that young man, and stop by my tent and visit for a bit.

Bring hot coffee. I take mine with cream and sugar.

Monday, December 6, 2010

A busy week ahead

 

Being sick – with whatever it was – is a bummer. Getting better isn’t much of an improvement, because you have to run twice as fast just to catch up to where you should have been. And there you are, all tired and worn down from being sick, putting yourself into deadly danger by all that running and worrying, knowing your bills are coming up fast behind and waiting in ambush up ahead.

Life just ain’t fair, I tell yah.

So I don’t do that. I admit that I used to, but not any more. I prefer to maintain a slow and stately progress through life. I get bit on the butt by an especially aggressive bill or two, and I may blunder into an ambush set by an especially devious bill lurking somewhere up ahead, but for the most part I get to where I’m supposed to be, more or less intact, and not all sweaty and wiped out from all that running twice as fast business.

Actually, if I just absolutely, positively, had to be sick, last week was an particularly good time for it. I didn’t have any events scheduled, you see.

But I do this week. In fact, I have three events scheduled in the next ten days. I’ll be speaking at Rasmussen College in Ocala on Wednesday, December 8, and signing books at the Fleming Island Winter Festival on Saturday, December 11 and at the Middleburg Winter Festival at the Middleburg Elementary School on December 18. That last is a benefit for a young man afflicted with a serious disease. I will be donating a few signed copies to the event promoters for their auction.

The Post Office just delivered a book order this morning. I usually get such deliveries well within a week of placing the order. Now, with the holidays closing in on us, this particular order took well over two weeks to arrive. Not good.

I’m working hard on “Twisted Key”, the third novel in the Terry Rankin series, and I just started a new, non-fiction project that is still very much in the research and organization phase of its young life. But it is looking good.

 

I hope you all have a very good week.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

You know that toe just beside your big toe…

 

I started to feel a bit peckish around mid-week last week – dry cough, bones hurting in places I didn’t know I had bones, like that. Thursday night I was pretty sure I was gonna die. My sister said she thought I had the flu, while I was pretty sure I had a nasty cold. I woke up Friday morning – actually I woke up several times during the night with the bedclothes all wet and soggy and chilly, and I was sweating, and hacking, and coughing, and groggy from lack of sleep. My nose was all stopped up and I couldn’t draw a decent breath.

At that point I didn’t much care if I had a cold or the flu. I made it through the day – in fact I even put my bedclothes through the washer and dryer and got them back onto the bed before I crawled back into it for the night. But it turned into another night just like the last one, with one major exception. I broke that damn toe.

At one point during that night I got up with a bad case of dry mouth. Freezing and shivering and dripping with sweat I climbed out of bed, and stumbled into the kitchen for a bit of orange juice. Unfortunately, I didn’t lift my feet quite as high as I should have. My sister has a thick rubber mat in front of the sink. That toe on my right foot caught on the edge of that damn mat and I heard the little ‘snick’ sound as the bone broke.

I was cold, and sweating, and groggy, and thirsty and I really, really had to stop in the bathroom on my way back to my now soggy and cold bed. So I ignored the additional insult to my much abused body, got my orange juice and took my badly shivering, sweating and now injured body into the bathroom and then climbed back into my damp and cold bed. Baby-ing my poor toe all the way, of course.

In the morning my toe was very much black and blue. My bedclothes went through the washer and dryer and again. And that’s how I spent the rest of my weekend.

My health started to return on Sunday, and, desperate to have something to show for all the time spent flat on my back, I ordered a graphics card for my computer. I work on an older Dell Pentium. It’s got serious limitations compared to modern machines. The greatest impediment I have to deal with isn’t the speed of the machine – it’s the 1 Gig RAM limit that’s got me boxed in. What I hoped for was a PCI graphics card with at least 512 MB RAM on board that would take the processing load out of the motherboard RAM. I do a lot of my own graphics work, and layouts for book covers and such like eat RAM like candy.

So I found a Diamond ATI Radeon card that fit the bill, and after checking the specs for the Dell Dimension 2350 it seemed to be a good match, so I ordered it.

Don’t ever do that when you’re sick as a dog and can’t string two thoughts together without screwing up.

The card showed on on Tuesday. Five minutes later I had the computer laying on it’s side with the cover off. I removed the card from the packaging and tried to fit it into one of the two open PCI slots. It was too long. It was a PCIE card. All I saw when I read the tech specs on line was PCI. When I checked the web site for the specs again, it said, PCIE. The ‘E’ is for “Extended”. My Dell does not have any PCIE slots.

I’m feeling a bit better today.

I hope your weekend went a bit more smoothly.

Here’s what I have coming up in the next month or so:

Book signings and speaking engagements

December 8    Rasmussen College, Ocala

December 11    Fleming Island Festival, Village Square Gazebo, 2245 Plantation  Center Drive, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

December 18    Middleburg Christmas Festival, Middleburg Elementary School
                          Blanding Blvd, Middleburg, 10 AM - 4 PM

January 17       All Booked Up bookstore, 1126 Bichara Blvd, The Villages,
                          11:00 am - 1:00 pm