this is the bit where the brain starts to splinter

 shadow bound  2 Responses »
Dec 292008
 

I keep losing days. Today is Monday, apparently, but I'm pretty sure yesterday was Saturday. This means I'm either going insane, becoming ever more inattentive, Sunday was totally and utterly exactly the same as Saturday and thus they blurred into the one day in my memory… or Sunday just vanished out the calendar.

I'm betting on the last one. For sure.

My inattentiveness and the sameness of my days would have nothing to do with the deathmarch status of the revisions, nosiree, why do you ask?

In other truly momentous news, yesterday (er, Saturday?), Spawn greeted Brutus with the phrase "Hey, Brutus!"1

Wiktory! My work here is done.

  1. For those who are curious, yes, I do actually call them Spawn and Brutus in person as well as on the blog, although expediency sometimes forces me to revert to their real christened names instead. Not often, though. [↩]

phrases heard in my house over christmas

 asides, journal  1 Response »
Dec 282008
 

"Has Apple bought the bloody Greek pantheon now?" (Me)

"I'm only hanging out with you so your girlfriend thinks you're a child person. You owe me." (From an 8yo)

"Meow likes ball!" (No prizes for guessing that one was Spawn. She used to call the cats by their name, but would always get them mixed up. She now refers to the cats individually and collectively as Meow. Much simpler.)

"I did warn you that you might find an Apple frustrating."

spawn has a kiwi accent

 journal  5 Responses »
Dec 262008
 

There's a possibility I might emerge, if not unscathed, at least relatively intact, from the operating-system-switch.

Excel proved very traumatic, as the Mac version tries valiantly but in vain to open the files I created in Windows. I use Excel all the time to track manuscript changes, revisions, word/page counts per scene, character placement and action per scene. In other words, Excel is the brain that is capable of holding the whole novel in one place, unlike my actual brain.

Thank the powers that be for GoogleDocs, which I think I can use to strip all the Windows-only functions from my spreadsheets. The Mac seems to cope with GoogleDoc exported spreadsheets just dandy.

I also found a lot of the files I thought I lost (although not in time to save my iTunes ratings and playcounts; thankfully I found an Applescript which recovered probably 80% of them).

And now that I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, I think I like my MacBook. Leopard is a very nice, distinctly unflappable operating system. And I promise I shall attempt not to bore you all any more with details of the switch.

In proper writing news, after a last visit to the post office all the competition prize books have been posted. Domestic winners should receive them within a week; international within…actually, I forgot to ask. Let's say a fortnight to be safe. If your book doesn't arrive, please to be letting me know!

macbook!

 journal  9 Responses »
Dec 242008
 

I am typing this post on a brand new, shiny MacBook.

I won't trouble you all with a photo (mainly because, um, I haven't dug the camera cord out of the old PC yet), but suffice to say, oh, my, she is pretty. So very, very pretty.

A long time ago, when my brother first set up the home network, he had a theme of Greek Gods for naming the computers. I've always gone with a sub-theme of Greek Goddesses. The old desktop (may she rest in peace (actually, may my brother be able to resurrect her, because despite all that backing up there's still some files missing (moral: you are never as backed up as you think you are)))1 was called Nike. The Dell laptop is Nyx.

In honour of the operating system wars, the new MacBook shall henceforth be named Nemesis.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a whole new operating system to learn. And keyboard shortcuts. I am slowly but surely conquering the Command/Control muscle memory, but so far I totally fail at navigating the application menu by keyboard. Where oh where is my Windows-Alt functionality?

  1. bet you never thought i'd escape out of all those clauses intact, eh? [↩]

i hate rivers commercials

 journal  4 Responses »
Dec 222008
 

Today marked my last shift at the baby mines. Although I am still officially employed until after Christmas, it's annual leave between now and then, and I have now Left The Building.

So it seems a pretty good time to indulge in that end-of-year first-sentence-of-the-month meme.

January: Ah, summer…!

February: While in Melbourne, I caught up with Andy, who claims he owns the most annoying cat in the world.

March: Right. Hi there. This is me, marginally returned from the brink of lunacy.

April: The last of my travel documents arrived today, making it all official: I'm going to Bhutan.

May: "What kind of books?" the receptionist asks.

June: Publicity photos taken (and because I didn't get a chance to clean the make-up off pre-surgery, I found mascara in my ear this morning), and home from the surgery, which thankfully I slept through (the upside to being sensitive to drugs is that a dose which should make you drowsy in fact puts you straight to sleep), with half my face bandaged like some kind of new-made zombie.

July: Today I saw the following sign at the train station: "Try the new 14 Day RailPass. It's like the 7 Day RailPass, but lasts twice as long."

August: Me, reading aloud the name of the cracked.com article: The five greatest things ever accomplished while high…

September: I'm currently reading H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, and it's quite unsettling.

October: Google Alerts had a lovely surprise for me this morning: Infinitas is listing my novel as available for pre-order!

November: Sometimes I think my metaphors require more research than the rest of my novels' worldbuilding put together.

December: What is it about cafes?

It's clear to me I shall have to work much, much harder on my opening sentences.

 Posted by at 5:09 pm  Tagged with:

the leopard approacheth…

 journal, writing life  9 Responses »
Dec 212008
 

The reformat has hit a snag. Of the "machine won't boot at all any more" variety. Er…oops?

It was all going so well, until I made the apparently foolish mistake of updating the system drivers, as microsoft requested. I should have known better, eh? I didn't realise it was possible to achieve the blue screen of death on a fresh, uncorrupted install. Not only did I achieve the blue screen of death, I've taken it a step further and trapped the desktop in a pre-boot failing cycle. I suspect this is because XP triggered an automatic restart after installing one driver, not quite realising it had simultaneously moved on to installing the next driver and wasn't finished that yet.

So I have admitted defeat: a new computer it is.

And because I don't want to fight with Microsoft any more (Vista? No thanks!), and because I don't quite trust myself with Linux yet (I'd probably spend all my time tweaking system configurations instead of, you know, writing)… there is a brand new MacBook on her way to me.

and here i thought slipstreaming was something to do with hoverboards…

 journal, shadow bound, shadow queen  3 Responses »
Dec 202008
 

There has been a sighting of Shadow Queen in the wild, in fact two separate sightings. One of them, unless I'm confused by the message on my answering machine (always possible), was at an airport newsagent, which was the cause of much amazed muttering of "Airport!" around the house. Much as I would love to provide photographic evidence, I would not love to brave the Christmas crowds surrounding the sighting within reach, so we'll all just have to use our imaginations.

Meanwhile, I am sitting at the desktop, slipstreaming SP3 into my XP installation disk, and backing up all my drivers. Oh yes, people, we're going to attempt to reformat the desktop. I would have preferred to finish the novel revisions first, but the monitor has now started in on a wacky and fun new game of powering down, then trapping itself in a random power-half-up-power-back-down cycle. Kinda hard to revise when you can't actually see what you're revising.

This could get ugly.

If I disappear from the net for the next little while, it's because I couldn't install something correctly, and I'm wailing and gnashing my teeth and generally bothering my IT-superstar brother with panicked phone calls in the middle of the night.

Or because I'm writing the novel.

But let's face it, writing the novel never kept me away from the web before. It's far more likely to be geek failure.

wait, what? i can't keep up with you

 journal  6 Responses »
Dec 182008
 

My chronic inability to make a swift (or any) decision continues apace, so no MacBook yet. Tune in tomorrow for more procrastination!

Today I posted the first couple of books for the competition winners, and the post office staff were very excited to realise they knew someone who had written a book. They were much LESS excited to realise I had secured a proper publishing deal and the books would be available in regular book stores. Apparently self-publishing, according to my local post office staff, is much, much harder and shows true grit and artistic dedication.

Also, and this is truly momentous news, today marks the start of the last week at the baby mines. Three shifts to go, people!

but wasn't it meant to be a competition?

 journal, shadow queen, writing life  6 Responses »
Dec 172008
 

And the winners are…all of you!

That's right. Because I couldn't face the thought of some of you missing out,1 I went to A&U and said, "Um… could I possibly have more than 2 books for the giveaway?"

And, because I am signed with the absolute best publishers out there, they agreed to let me send a copy of the book to everyone who commented.

So if you put up your hand, email me your mailing address. Let me know if I should be signing the book to someone else or to yourself (or not at all, if you'd prefer an unsigned copy), and I'll get the books out in the mail as soon as I can.

Congratulations! I hope you all enjoy.2

  1. this does not bode well for maintaining a hard-hearted reputation, does it? [↩]
  2. And, um, don't kill me when you realise it's a year until the sequel is published. [↩]
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