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October 28, 2005
Doldrums
It's been an iffy week here at Chez Bedford. The headaches are now pretty much constant, and for the first four days of the week there was a dose of nasty free-floating depression to go with them. This was particularly bad last Sunday evening when my folks and Michelle and me were having a big celebratory dinner, paid for with some of the proceeds from the "Project Mimosa" money. It should have been a wonderful occasion, and it was for Michelle and my folks. I felt awful, just dead and hollow inside. This is not the way you want to feel when, just that previous week, your new book arrived. It makes it terribly difficult to enjoy things, anything at all. And, because it's the bipolar thing flaring up, you know full well it's nothing personal, in that it's not that you're all feeling dismal because you had some bad news or something awful happened. It's not that at all: it's just that your brain chemistry is temporarily out of whack. Too bad it happened right when you're trying to celebrate something.
Writing this week has likewise suffered. I've been focussing on one key scene which, once it's finished, will set up the proceedings for the middle of the book, with things getting more complicated, the stakes higher, and so forth. I think I must be on about the third version of this scene. As of today, I cut a bunch of stuff and came up with a bunch of new stuff, but the word count did not budge: 41,600 to start with; 41,600 when I finished. I swear I did a whole heap of actual scribble, but the word count alone doesn't reflect that. Despite this, the big scene is nearly done, and our hapless artificial protagonist is learning just who his enemy is. Exactly why this person is out to get him he's not at all sure about, but there you are. Anyway, it feels like I've been stuck in the low 40K area for ages now. I really want to press on, but I don't feel like I can until I get this scene right. It's nearly there. Tomorrow Michelle is off for an afternoon with her mum, so I might take advantage of the free time to do a bit of scribble, and sort out this bloody scene once and for all. (Assuming the headaches let up, of course...)
My fun with Linux is going well. It's now something I play with in the evenings, once I've done my scribble shift for the day. After some alarming teething troubles, I think I've now good a decent handle on it, and starting to learn more. Last night I ordered a book from Amazon.com that deals with this particular distribution, which should help even more. I can certainly see that future computers of ours, unless they're Macs, will be Linux boxes.
Last, if you're one of the brave souls who have so far managed to get your flippers on a copy of ECLIPSE, thank you very much indeed! I really appreciate it. Tell your friends! I'd also be quite happy to send signed bookplates to anybody who'd like one. So far, customer number one for a bookplate will be a certain Charlie Stuart, who reports that he's finished his copy already--zoinks! This sort of heroic above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty reading effort will not be forgotten!
Posted by adrian at 06:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 25, 2005
Boids of a Feather
I'm noodling with another new toy, an experimental web browser called Flock. One thing about this browser, and the feature I'm using as we speak, is this newfangled blog interface that's actually part of the browser itself. It's sniffed out my Movable Type sign-in page, connected with it, and now here I am writing stuff. Flock is also big on sharing favourites/bookmarks between users. So far it's pretty much like Firefox, but with extra features, and a bit more zip.
Okay, time to get back to the scribble. Wish me luck. In today's episode, Our Beleaguered Protagonist is having a chat with the deranged former captain of HMS Eclipse about all manner of interesting things, which is precursor for some Big Things coming up a bit later.
Meanwhile, my almost-completely-blind, non-sf-reading mum has just finished reading ECLIPSE. She says, bless her, that she wants to see what it is I'm writing. Her one-word review of the book: "harrowing". Sounds like she "got it". :) Maybe I should suggest a few other sf novels she might like. I've often thought she could probably enjoy a bit of Connie Willis or Anne McCaffrey.
Posted by adrian at 02:42 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 19, 2005
Greetings From the Linux Dimension (cue theremin music)
UPDATE 21 October
Since I posted last, I've been spending a lot more time playing with Linux--and in the process discovered that, when I said in the earlier post that I'd managed to download and install Mozilla Thunderbird, I really had not. It was there, and it was working, but it wasn't installed. How that might be, I do not know. Since then I've discovered the correct way to go about installing software, got Thunderbird downloaded and properly installed, and now all is good.
I also reported that the UMBRA manuscript was up to 46,000 words. This was wrong, I learned today. It was, as of when I posted, actually 44,000 words. And, as of shortly after I got started today on the daily scribble, when I cut a big chunk of stuff I no longer needed, suddenly it was 39,000. Ack! I then scribbled like a man slightly possessed, and got it back up to 40,200, with the whole thing suddenly flowing and looking a lot better. There might be life in this thing yet!
Even better: shortly before starting in on the scribble, I got an email from the Acquisitions Editor for HarperCollins Voyager, the sf imprint of Australia's HarperCollins division. She'd heard that ECLIPSE was out, and wants to see a copy--stat! We're going out tomorrow to post one off to her. Oooh!
And now, after leaving me be for a couple of days, the headache's coming back. Bollocks.
* * *
I've been playing with Linux again. I dallied with it several years ago, and had nothing but trouble, principally in trying to get the Internet to work from inside Linux. I later learned that I was doomed to failure because the computer I had at the time used a so-called "Winmodem" (ie, a software emulation of a real modem), and Linux was looking for a real modem. I also had a bugger of a time with the installation of software, which was a baffling and counter-intuitive experience I'd recommend to nobody.
I always liked the idea of Linux, though, and I've been keeping a bit of an eye on it ever since. This past weekend I found a new Linux book in a newsagent, promoting a product called Simply MEPIS 3.3, a packaging of Linux in which the CD you get is bootable, and provides a Linux experience you can try out without having to install the thing and go to all the trouble of partitioning your hard-drive, or whatever. I clicked, I loaded, and I went, "oooooh! shiny!" This was a lot less confronting than the previous versions of Linux I tried.
So I installed the product, and had no trouble with partitioning the hard-drive (a process that had been tooth-gnashingly hard before), and generally had a pretty relaxing time of it. The acid test, of course, would be getting on the Internet. And, sure enough, this did not disappoint. For a long time I couldn't get a connection going to save my life. Then, last night, a breakthrough: the connection opened, and actual Net content came through--but only for about 15 seconds at a time. Tonight, I tried again, and after much faffing about, discovered what I might have been doing wrong. In any case, I've had the Internet going here all evening.
Next up was attempting to download and install software. The MEPIS package, while it contains Mozilla Firefox, it does not give you Mozilla Thunderbird. This had to be fixed. So I downloaded the T-Bird, and after some frantic clicking, got it to install. It worked perfectly, first time I tried it. Next up will be updating the other software packages that came with this package, but that can wait for tomorrow, or whatever.
Right at the moment I'm feeling pretty chuffed. It's like having two computers in the one box. And I've always disliked Microsoft, so this could be the start of something big--or big-ish. :)
In Other News:
Author Boy has been busy flapping the flippers at the keyboard this week as well. Currently up to about 46,000 words. All of which is more surprising when you consider that I've had a miserable headache now for several days straight (I've lost count). Right at the moment not only is the head blazing away, but so is the back of my neck. Mystic Adrian foresees another sticky and aromatic encounter with Deep Heat.
Posted by adrian at 10:21 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
October 14, 2005
Look What Author Boy Got In The Mail Today
This is it, folks: your humble correspondent's second actual book, in the inky flesh.
[swoons; needs to lie down]
Posted by adrian at 01:17 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
October 12, 2005
Day 37-39: Back on the Beat
Author Boy, back from a fabulously restorative holiday with Michelle, got straight back to work this past Monday. Not exactly breaking any productivity records, but all the same banging the flippers with gusto, revising and adding to the material I had before we went away, improving things as I go. Right now the manuscript for UMBRA is up to 41,600 words, and I'm as happy as I'm likely to get, this side of finishing the thing. Beleaguered Protagonist has become aware that the bad guys opposing him are much nastier and more powerful than he suspected, and has just had to have his brainstem rebuilt (he's kind of agog at this idea) after it melted down following the revelation about his true background.
* * *
I did take a few photos while we were in Mandurah, but as fate would have it, Michelle has the camera with her at work right now. You'll just have to take my word for it that, when it was sunny, life was good. It was sometimes unsettled, and here and there downright all grey and cold and pouring with rain. On such occasions we huddled in one of numerous cafes, consumed excellent coffee and other nibbles, and played lots of a new boardgame we like called Carcassonne (Michelle beat me several games to one--dang!).
I also spent rather too many hours after Michelle went to sleep each night playing Metroid Fusion on my Game Boy Advance SP. It's the first game for the GBA that I've liked this much, and I find I'm spending hours and hours at it. Also helped that the game itself only cost $20 retail, since it's a few years old now and was heavily marked down from its normal recommended retail of $70.
* * *
We also went to see SERENITY, the new movie based on the cancelled FIREFLY series. I'd seen a few episodes of FIREFLY and wasn't real impressed. But earlier this year I started to hear enormous buzz regarding a trailer for the forthcoming movie, and went to download it. The trailer surprised me by suggesting the movie was somehow going to be much more interesting than the series had been. Then another trailer came along, and that was even more tantalising. At this point I realised I was actually interested in seeing this movie--and could scarcely have been more surprised. Then, last week, on Tight-Arse Tuesday, when most movie theatres charge half-price for tickets, we went along.
And we had a brilliant time of it. The movie stands alone, requiring no previous familiarity with the series. It was gripping, affecting, intense, funny, and terribly sad. All the things you want in a movie experience, or at least that I want in a movie experience. It's one of the best sf movies I've seen--though, in all truth, the actual sf content is fairly light, and not exactly rigourous (a solar system with scores of terraformed planets--um, what?). What makes up for that is the writing: smart dialogue, vivid characters, brisk pacing, and, of course, marvellous effects work (also some truly huge guns). We came out of the movie all excited, and didn't stop chattering about it to each other for hours afterwards. It reminded me very much of the feeling I had after seeing the very first Star Wars movie, back in 1978--and how bitterly disappointing Lucas' most recent efforts have been, despite the vast financial and technical resources available to him.
How much did this one film change our thinking about FIREFLY? We are now hunting for the DVDs. It's amazing how much my mind has been changed on this. Those few episodes I saw struck me as hokey, dull and kind of lame. I have no idea if they were shown in or out of sequence or whatever, and I hear that in its US release the actual pilot episode wasn't shown until much later. After we enjoyed BUFFY and ANGEL so much, it was surprising to see Joss Whedon and his minions produce what seemed like such a dud. Now I see we were greatly mistaken.
If I was a movie scoring sort of person, I'd give it a strong 8/10.
The outrageous gouging of the snack department at the theatre, on the other hand, deserves a rant for another time. Good freaking God!
Posted by adrian at 07:14 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 03, 2005
Author Boy in "Seaside Follies!"
Later today, Michelle and I zooming off for a week's holiday down south in Mandurah. This time of year we were hoping for a bit of sunny weather. Alas this looks like something that will only happen once we're on our way home again. Not to worry, Mandurah has no shortage of cafes and other scenic diversions.
We're staying here. Just substitute grey and wintry skies in those photos, and you'll get the idea.
Posted by adrian at 10:19 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack