A Two-Post Monday

I have two posts going up today. The first, my usual Monday Magical Words post, can be found at http://magicalwords.net, the group blog on the business and craft of writing fantasy that I maintain with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, and C. E. Murphy. The post is called “A Luddite Looks at the Future of Books” and it’s about e-books and what they mean for the future of writing and publishing. The second is a special Halloween Week post that I’ve written for the Knight Agency, where I’m represented. This post can be found at http://knightagency.blogspot.com/. I hope you enjoy both posts.

I’ve Downloaded a Monster….

So there’s this site, connected to the Apple site, from which you can download apps that are designed specifically for macs.  Many of them are shareware or freeware.  Others are demos for programs you have to buy to really use.  A few days back I downloaded a couple of games — solitaire type things — thinking, “Where would be the harm in having a couple of these games on my computer?”

Well, the harm is that they are totally addictive!  I just got sucked into a game and only emerged 45 minutes later.  I have no idea where that time went, but it certainly didn’t go into anything productive.  Dangerous.  Very dangerous.

I think I should delete them.  Maybe tomorrow….

New Computer’s Here!!

 Just coming up for air from my iMac immersion.  The new computer arrived yesterday and I’ve spent much of the last 24 hours trying to get the thing to work the way I’d like it do.  I’ve already discovered that my laser printer won’t work with it at all, but I can create files in Pages, save them as word docs, put them on my pc laptop and print them out from there.  A pain, but frankly I only need the laser printer for printing books.  My inkjet will work fine for less important documents.

Getting Mail to accept my addresses took a while, but that’s working now.  I’ll have to recreate my groups, but I can deal with that, I guess.  I love the way the thing looks, and I love photoshop for mac.  Wonderful.  Other aspects of it seem pretty straight forward.  I suppose the real test will come with I start my next book.

More later.  Bye for now.

Finally Pulled the Trigger

Finally took the plunge and ordered my iMac tonight.  I should have it by next week.  I’m very excited.

Now if someone can just tell me how to get my Outlook Express (not real Outlook, but the Express version) information over to the Mac platform, I’ll be most grateful….

Computer Decision Update

So some time back I posted about my desire/intent to get a new computer to replace my ancient desktop. I was trying to decide between another Dell PC, with Vista, and an iMac. Well, I put off that decision for a while, mostly because I was torn between wanting to get away from Windows on the one hand, and not wanting to spend lots and lots of money on the other.

Well, I am SO glad I waited. Two things have happened in the last few days to make up my mind for me. First, on Sunday, my daughters’ brand new (December) Windows Vista machine came up with a malware problem. A pernicious program called Antivirus-1 had gotten on the machine, no doubt while one of my kids trolled around the web visiting game sites or shopping for clothes. It took me hours to get the computer back to normal, and by the time I was done, I was ready to take a sledge hammer to the thing.

And then today Apple announced that it has dropped its prices on the iMac significantly. My mind is now made up. I’ll be buyng my new Mac within the next few days, probably right after I finish my WIP, which is very close to completion.

Thanks again to all who offered advice.

Calling All Apple Users

On December 21 of 2008, my Dell Inspiron 4300 desktop computer turned seven years old.  That’s 49 in dog years and probably 204 in computer years.  Let me tell you a little about this machine.  It’s got a 40 gig hard drive, which is darn near full.  It’s got 512 megabytes of what was once smokin’ hot RAM, but which nows seems to wheeze and cough when asked to do much more than boot up.  It’s running Windows XP (Service Pack 2, but only because I upgraded a couple of years back) on a Pentium 4 chip at 1.7 Ghz, and it’s got several USB ports, all of them USB 1.1 (except for the entra ones I installed myself, which were supposed to run at 2.0 speeds, but didn’t until I installed the XP Service Pack).

This computer has been wonderful to me.  [Knocks on wood.]  It has never crashed.  [Knocks on wood again.] I’ve written many, many books and stories on it. And it only occasionally does annoying stuff, like shutting down programs that I’m still using or closing Internet Explorer while I’m in the middle of looking for a site.  That said, I’m ready for a new computer.  I am SO ready for a new computer.

I had convinced myself for a while that I was going to get an iMac, that I was finally going to make the big jump over to Apple.  I’d heard all the horror stories about Vista and I wanted no part of any of that.  Then we had to get a new computer for my girls and because we couldn’t afford an Apple for them, we got another Dell desktop.  Yes it has Vista.  And to my surprise and delight, Vista has been fine.  More than that, it’s been great.  The girls love it.  I love it.  [I've heard the Windows 7 is just about ready to come out, but the other day when I tried to go to a site and read about it, my computer closed IE.  I tried again.  Same thing.  Every time I went to that site, it closed IE.  Every.  Single.  Time.  It's like it knew what I was thinking.  Creepy.]

Anyway, now I’m back to trying to decide between a new iMac and a new Dell.  The iMac costs more by quite a bit and I’ve been using PCs a long time, so I have lots of old software that I’d have to abandon if I made the jump.  But I’m ready for an OS that doesn’t need to be handled like a pinless grenade. 

So, all you Apple users out there (Stephen Leigh, I’m talking to you!), this is your chance.  Proselytize away.  Convince me.  Talk me down from the Windows ledge.  Why should I switch?  Why is it worth the extra hundreds of dollars?

Progress Report on the Current Book

Well, I’m moving along on the current work in progress (Book 3 of Blood of the Southlands) and have little else to post about today, so I thought I’d throw a new progress bar at you. It’s been a while and I’m far beyond where I was the last time I posted one.

Not bad at all. I’m looking at a November 1 deadline, but I’m hoping to finish the book by the end of this month and let it sit for a couple of weeks before submitting it at the end of October.

Anyway, that’s where I am. And I just love playing with that technology. It may not look like much to you, but that’s about as bells-and-whistle-y as I get….

By the way, I still haven’t come up with a title for this book, but I have a contest up on my website in which you can help me choose from among some options (or suggest a title of your own).  Check it out!

A Post About Distractions

Today’s post, “Distractions,” can be found at http://magicalwords.net.  Come to the site and check it out.  And, of course, enjoy!

To Drill or Not to Drill: A Special BOW Award

This week’s BOW (Buffoon Of the Week) Award is a bit different from recent ones, in that we’ll be focusing in depth on a single issue question.  

I’ll begin by stating the obvious:  There was plenty of buffoonery this week — the staffers with Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign who refused to let two Muslim women sit behind the candidate during a campaign appearance because they were wearing hijabs (traditional head scarves) come to mind, as do the Republican operatives who have been pounding away at Michelle Obama for a remark she explained months ago.  And then there was Rep. Steven King (Wingnut from Iowa) who won the first or second BOW Award I gave out with his offensive comments about Obama.  This week, in questioning Scott McClellan, he asked, “Couldn’t you have taken this to the grave with you and done this country a favor?”  Apparently Rep. King doesn’t understand that while McClellan’s book might not have done any favors to the GOP or the Bush Administration, it has done a great service to our country.  But the man’s an idiot, so it’s not surprising that he doesn’t get this.

Book Titles and Progress Bars

We’re quickly getting into summer mode here in our household. The university had its graduation nearly two weeks ago, so Nancy is already into her summer research program. My older daughter (the newly minted teenager) is now done with her school and is officially an eighth grader (Yikes!), and my younger daughter finishes up next week.

All this means, of course, that the kids are going to be around more, which tends to make writing that much more difficult. I’ve finished the copy edits on THE HORSEMEN’S GAMBIT and am now back at work on the STILL untitled third book of Blood of the Southlands. I might need to have a web contest: “Name the third volume!” The winner gets his or her idea splashed across the jacket of my new book…. The first book was THE SORCERERS’ PLAGUE, then THE HORSEMEN’S GAMBIT. Right now I’m leaning toward THE AUTHOR’S NEMESIS, but I’m not sure my editor will go for that….

I’ve made good progress over the last few weeks, so I thought I’d post my second progress bar. Last time I was at 14% — 19,700 words or so. That was April 22, exactly a month ago.

I’ve made pretty good progress since then, especially if you consider that I’ve also had to travel to a con, copyedit a manuscript, and take down a photo exhibit. If I can continue to average 26,000 words a month, I’ll be done by the end of September. I can live with that; the book’s due November 1.