Where Personal and Professional Life Collide...

1. SILVER ON THE ROAD, being deemed readable by mine agent, is now with mine editor, as is GIN & TONIC #4 (different editor). I am thereby released from all - oh wait, I still have two novellas to finish by September. On it, boss.

2. I have copies in my own greedy little hands of DOGHOUSE (Gin & Tonic #3)!! There will be a contest, most likely next week when America's recovered from our three-day holiday weekend and picnic-a-thon. But you know, you can order your own copy now, too...

3. The new iPad mini has officially been named. We ran through a number of suggestions and ideas, including Dum-E, Loiosh, Bucky, Jeeves, etc, but I finally determined that the iPad Mini has just enough evil in its brilliance, just enough petulance in its helpfulness, and is just wee enough that it really needs to be…

Sterling.

I can safely give an (initial) review of my iPad Mini.

First, the negatives:

* still no godsdamned Scrivener for iOS. Seriously guys, please?
* Notes - at least in the form I have - is good for short jots but it's still a little bare bones for writing anything with emphasis or formatting.
* still really not the ideal ereader for me, although it works in a pinch. I can't even tell you WHY I prefer the shape of my old Nook Color, but I do.
* still don't like the mail program (although since I keep most of my email on the laptop, only an irritating issue, not a massive drawback)
* browser is...limited.
* I'm still having trouble wrangling iTunes properly.

the positives:

* fits into every pocketbook and most jacket pockets I have. Dude. This thing goes everywhere with me.
* watching videos on this is better than my 13" laptop. Especially when traveling.
* Notes is pretty damned good for, well, notes.
* Putting all my social media on the iPad will, ideally, keep me more writing-focused at the laptop.
* the camera's pretty nice, although it could use a few more native editing functions. Hell of a lot better than my phone, anyway.
* did I mention that it's the absolute perfect size for 95% of everything except writing? (and even that - working on the side projects isn't too bad, 500 words at a time).  Dear Steve Jobs: you were SO WRONG about the worth of a well-managed 7".
* the calendar and list function is making me a happy obsessive Virgo-stereotype meerkat.  It's becoming my new Dayrunner.
* the on-screen keyboard is actually good (for variables of hand size) and buying a stylus made note-taking a breeze.


Overall? I need a better writing program for it - one that doesn't lose all formatting when transferred, and ideally can be opened directly into Evernote - but I can, in a pinch, work on this for a day or two if the laptop is unavailable. But I didn't buy this to be a primary writing machine - this was supposed to pick up the slack for all my other digital/Internet needs.  And on that score, the iPad's a solid 9. Unless I'm writing/editing, the laptop now stays on my desk, and I'm far more likely to curl up with the pad on the sofa or in bed to watch a movie or browse online, or check social media.  And yeah, having my to-do lists travel with me? awesome.

My 10" tablet-with-keyboard is still going to be the "I'm hitting the road and need a not-$1500 writing machine" choice, and when Scrivener for Android finally hits, I'll be happily rocking all flavors, but right now, the Mini has pretty much justified its acquisition.

It has not, however, settled into its name.  I'm re-mulling that one.

The new television* is successfully set up. The new blu-ray player is successfully set up and hooked into the home network (after a mighty battle** skalds would not scorn to sing).

I am going to celebrate by wailing on a scene that needs to be revised and put to bed. Hey, you have your victory celebrations, I have mine***.






*my friends insisted I needed a 46-50 inch television for the lounge area. My friends are size queens. The 40" does the job perfectly well without overwhelming the space.
** seriously. It was a battle of wills and ice-cold hate and steely determination, and in the end, the player blinked.
*** and, at some point after that, I need to rearrange the artwork, because moving one piece meant everything else had to be reconsidered, too...

Internet continues to be unreliable. Cranky writer is cranky, as there's stuff I need to research/sites I need to check...

Day 6

Realized that where I’d opened chapter three was utterly and absolutely WRONG. *sigh* It’s a lovely scene, a perfect scene perhaps, and it does all the things I wanted it to do, but it asks the readers to take too much of a leap on faith, and I haven’t earned that faith yet.

New opening line: The almanac might say Spring, but Winter kept its fingers wrapped around the Midwest.

So there, I’ve given the reader an idea of how much time has passed, and reminded us where we are, and also set the scene for how the POV character will be reacting (to the unexpected cold).

And, nearly 3000 words into the chapter, after reading my beta-readers’ notes and seeing a number of different comments on the same section – nobody had the same point to make but they all know something wasn’t right - I realize that I’d totally screwed the pooch on one of the subthemes. So fixing that - unwinding the threads and then sorting and reweaving them into the existing pattern – took most of the day. Brain, tired.

Best typo: “raising the ice book.” It took me a while to figure out that was supposed to be “raiding the ice box.”

Day 7:

Ok, it was Christmas and therefore the annual tradition of the Sibling Lunch (wherein my mother and her sisters and brother and all the family within reach descend upon one of our favorite and most tolerant Chinese restaurants and take over the entire back for several hours.) So… only a few hours of work, most of which were spent agonizing over an incredibly important speech a secondary character gives that puts the ENTIRE BOOK in motion.

That speech gives me ulcers. I killed a lot of darlings, changed the emphasis, and made the speaker far more of an intentional trigger. I’m still not sure it works. But it works better that it did before.

And I’m in negative numbers for the day. Oh well.

Approximately 20,000 words revised/fine-tuned/rewritten so far.

Last night, for various reasons, I did not finally pass out and sleep until close to 3am. And so, on waking at 6, I said "sod that" and went back to sleep until 8. Which meant that my plan to be at the DMV at 8:30 came to naught. So, fine, sez I, I'll go on Thursday, and off to work I go...

Only to discover that I had no connectivity. None. Not an erg.

40 minutes on hold later, I am informed that there is a borough-wide "service interruption" and no, they have no idea when service will be restored. Thanks for nothing, Cablevision.

I am not a multitasker - I like to do one thing and then do another thing serially - but having the steady buzz of the Internet is like listening to the office around me, it takes up enough of my brainpower so that I can focus on the thing-being-done.

No email? No search engines? No war room? I find myself MORE distracted than if those things were around.

And so off to Starbucks I hie, to join every other freelancer in town (and there are a lot - the Bronx may not be as trendy as Brooklyn, but for the fiscally aware NYC freelancer, it's a great deal) in sucking down coffee and sucking down the flickering connectivity.

And in all that chaos of sorting and resettling, I almost forgot - SHIFTER'S DESTINY is out (in paperback) today! .

So, y'know, if you're looking for a fun little read about a shapeshifting unicorn, and grotesque monsters, and a young girl who can speak to animals, and a Terribly Nasty Villain, and a woman who can dream true.... this would be just your cuppa. :-)

So yesterday I set up my to-do list, and I settle in with my cup of coffee #1, and I lift the lid of the trusty workhorse laptop (whose name is Archie to Nero-the-cranky-desktop), and…

The screen displayed not the usual “okay boss, hopping to it!” energy, but the unending beachball of doom-about-to-fall.

And sure enough, soon after that: everything froze.

Not having time, patience, or any other valuable commodity to spare, I finally did the only thing I could do: a hard reboot.

And got the Grey Screen of UnBooting.

We’ll cut the begging, pleading and attempts to fix it myself using all the helpdesk things that never work.  I got a Genius Bar appointment at 2pm.

…Four Hours Later….

It took TWO geniuses to fix things (the second was named Lex.  I can has an Evil Genius?  I can!),  but at 6pm I was on my way back home with a new hard drive, and the promise that yes, it was all working now, all I had to do HONEST was plug it back into my Time Machine/Time Capsule, and everything would be restored.  Really.  Trust us*.

Having a hard drive fail, when you’re mid-book, and being told “yeah, it happens” does not make one feel inspired to trust.  I’m just saying.

I want to give kudos to my geniuses, though.  They were dealing with a writer on deadline, whose writing machine had just failed under her fingertips, who had stormed into their bar on a quivering high of coffee and not a hell of a lot else (me to a friend, via text: “oh crap, I haven’t eaten anything today.  It’s 5pm.  I’m about to go into meltdown”) and kept me from utterly losing it, even when reinstall after reinstall failed.

Anyway: if you haven’t backed your shit up today, whatever your shit may be?  Take a moment.  Do it.  Trust me.  Full system backup.  Every. Damn. Day.

And now, I need to finish this coffee, open up my (restored!  Up-to-date!) files, and get the hell back to work.

*edited to add: they were right

Originally Published at Practical Meerkat: A Blog. You can comment here or there.

And now, of course, the desktop is working perfectly, as it is prone to, and I am faced with the same question I have with the cats: who gets mom-time?

For now, for various reasons, it's Wolfe (the desktop). But I have a project started last night on the yet-nameless laptop that will stay there, and we'll see how that goes....

Meanwhile, I have coffee, it's raining, the cats are snoring, and if I want to go out and Play tonight I have to get me some work done. So...working.

(I've seen a launch from the VIP site, and this was even more breathtaking, if less immediate)

I have been using my new Nook pretty much...well, not nonstop but quite a lot. So yesterday I went to recharge it, as I was going to be Out and About, and wanted to make sure that nothing interfered with my finishing the book I was currently reading. And the charger did not charge.

I plugged it in, the yellow glow started, and then...died. Nothing.

And, of course, B&N has made their charger proprietary (grr) so none of my other mini-usb chargers would work on it. That's the one thing I will not forgive them.

Anyway, while I was Out and About I stopped by a B&N, and they determined that yes, it was the charger, not my Nook that was broken (whew). They could not hand over a new one (having no extras) but got on the phone with customer service and arranged to have a new one shipped to me right away. So that was good.

And then they offered to top off the charge, to keep me going. And that was even nicer.

(I was told that, until the charger arrived, I could come into the store and have it plugged in, but alas, there is no B&N within walking distance of me, I have to take a subway, and I still have physical books to keep me company. Which is one of the great joys of physical books. They're bulkier, but they don't require a battery.)

And did I mention New!Bookcase arriving tomorrow? Am I maybe just a little too excited about that? Nah. Can't be too excited about New!Bookcase.