Paksworld

NewBook is now over the hump in rough draft, having crossed the 60,000 word midpoint for this book.   Its first 40,000 words or so have been reworked to improve characterization (which will lead to smoother progress later on. )   It’s unusual for me to have the mid-book slow-down due to characterization problems, but so it was this time.  I expect another slow-down period transitioning over the 2/3 to 3/4 finished problem area, but–if I fixed the characterization problems–that one will be plot related and usually means a mistake made between now and then.

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As many of you undoubtedly found out over the past near-week,  Verizon screwed up royally last Wednesday and SFF.net, my website host, could not keep everything up and running.   Verizon’s inept an incomplete attempts made things steadily worse.   Websites (with any embedded blogs) went down.   The SFFnet newsgroup tree functioned intermittently.   Today, Verizon finally did enough analysis at their end to a) assign a person who had the authority to actually investigate what was really wrong and make changes to their stuff and b) then discover that the firmware they’d installed as an upgrade days before was in fact faulty (which brought  a router manufacturer in on the problem-solving circuit.)

I don’t know, as of now, if the current “it’s working” will be stable, since Verizon had told SFFnet before that they couldn’t do the real fix until tomorrow maybe (!) but  since it is working now, I’m posting this to explain the blank spot since last week and warn of a possible additional interruption.

The heroes here are the intrepid SFFnet crew, Steve and Jeffrey, who patiently worked their way up the corporate ladder of Verizon  (OK, maybe not *patiently*) until they got to a level where someone could make decisions, not just excuses.

On Thursday at 11:30 am, I will be the author guest at Coffee with the Author,  an event sponsored by Holy Grounds, the coffee/book/gift shop at St. David’s Episcopal Church downtown.   There’s a half hour interview/Q&A/etc.  with Jennifer Stayton of KUT keeping the program on track and on time.   Afterwards, lunch downtown sounds like a good idea–including at St. David’s.

This should be fun; I’m really looking forward to it, and hope for good weather so we can enjoy the outdoor terrace–but if it rains there’s plenty of inside space too.

For those in the area but unfamiliar with the venue, St. David’s is between San Jacinto and Trinity, between 7th and 8th–it, and its parking garage, take up the whole block.   The entrance to the church is across the street from the Omni Hotel.   There’s parking available in the garage (you can sign in at the main desk to get a parking voucher) or you can take a bus.

The bookstore will have copies of The Speed of Dark and Oath of Fealty if you don’t have them already and I will be bringing, for show & tell, the proof copy of Deeds of Honor, the print-on-demand paperback of my first indie-published eBook.

If you’re in the area, and can come, I’d love to see you there.

So it’s been a busy week-and-a-day.  All did not go as planned, except the bluebonnets really did peak when HouseGuest was here from upstate New York and they smelled amazing and we got several walks out on them between showers.

HouseGuest, who like most people who come to Texas did not want to see–particularly did not want to see–what she saw on her last full day, when she ventured out to the north horse lot alone.  She had said she didn’t want to see one.  I hoped she wouldn’t see one.  We wandered here and there among the bluebonnets, with me being very careful, insisting that we move slowly and only when looking at the ground ahead…that no, we could not just walk through the flowers  without using our poles to move them and check for…etc.  And then…there it was in front of her.   Did she shriek and run back to the house?   No.   She took pictures of a nice (!) good-sized, not at all friendly rattlesnake, staying out of range of its strike and using the zoom.   Pictures on my LiveJournal: http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/  for those who want to see our most dangerous snake.

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