Last year, FB helpfully informed me, this weekend I was out sick with something sinus so I couldn’t make FenCon. This year, I can home from work Thursday after putting in less than three hours of my shift, and collapsed in bed for a nap. (I never nap; it messes up my sleep schedule.)
When I woke up, on the bedside table where my husband puts a cuppa for me in the mornings… was a still-warm bowl of chicken soup.
I love that man so much.
I’d feel worse about having nothing for you, if I hadn’t been taking advantage of having very little brain to look through some old files. In information I wasn’t expecting to find, in 2019 and 2021, as well as 2022 and 2023, within a two week range of today, I noted a sinus infection bad enough to need antibiotics and steroids. (2020, I got it a month earlier.)
…I got nothing. Go be healthier than me. Go read Cedar’s new Groundskeeper story she just released, or browse Team And More’s Open Call list and see if you feel like writing a short or thirteen.
And then leave a comment and tell me what you’re working on.
Mad Genius Club 
14 responses to “Out Sick”
The nice side of this is that you got over being sick all those other times (and I wonder what is in the air?) so you will this time as well…
I realized how to do a better villain after last week’s discussion so that’s what I’m up to. I’m not totally happy because I was dreaming of finishing a rough draft for my WIP this month; this is likely to make it take a bit longer. Hopefully it will actually be a better book…
When I lived in the SF Bay area, I’d get horribly sick every early September. It turns out I’m very allergic to Chinese Elm, and the knock-on effects frequently made for sinus infections and really sore throats.
No elms can live where I do now. Bwa-ha-ha-cough-choke. Didn’t say anything about fall weeds…
I have sent a final draft to the Grammarians, and am attempting to pick up a story that was stuck in the long middle of gradually worsening problem . . . while my fans and husband ask about another that got stuck, and the Muse waves a whole new idea at me . . .
Unfortunately nothing that antibiotics and steroids can cure.
Working on — major world building revision to series-in-progress before release of 1st 3 books. And combining this with my first attempt at Atticus.
Atticus… I have issues. I am (among other things) an old applications programmer. I don’t care how Dave Chesson wants to dance around it, a product designed to allow the smallcaps format in use and in output that fails to allow it on import has a Design Flaw. That’s not how formatted text interactivity between products is supposed to work. Now, I don’t mind hearing an “oops” or a “On the list for a software update” — things happen — but recognition that my test case is accurate but denying it’s a design flaw is not a confidence-building look.
Biggest product gripe… No Indexed Documentation and No Manual. You either watch innumerable videos (if you can find the one you want, else contact support) narrated by an insufferably squeaky little girl, or read innumerable text links with insufficient details about specifics, if you can find the one of interest. Alas, the product hasn’t been around long enough to accumulate general internet search results by others to search on.
Big picture gripe… Most of us would never try to compose our text (do our writing) in Atticus (despite what they apparently hope) — instead we will write it elsewhere and import it. Importation is on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Output is only to PDF or EPUB (both of which are dead ends). If your manuscript is in, say Word, and you notice & fix your typos in Atticus, you can’t get them back in a useful form (e.g., output to Word), so if Atticus “goes away”, there goes your most recent reusable text. You MUST make all corrections in both your original text and in Atticus, unless you feel like risking the currently-corrected/updated version. That is, to me, another design flaw. It should allow output to Word or some conventional text format which allows reuse. (Mind you, post-publication corrections without Atticus require changes to both your Word and your Epub texts, so that’s similar. Still, it would have been a straightforward feature to include.)
All that said, if you can identify the “doesn’t behave as expected” quirks (why does every engineer want to try and invent his own doorknob?), the product does seem to work. For all the basic flowing text (unless you tried to import smallcaps) it’s fine — it does make good-looking PDF and (somewhat enigmatic internally) EPUB files, for its limited but adequate set of designs. Where it drives me crazy are the pages that need at least some rigid formatting (Also By…, Copyright…(haven’t looked at my index of names yet)) to look well. And everything takes a lot longer without documentation, since you have to keep trying things and then attempting to figure out what Atticus is doing re: layout formats.
I decided to invest in it particularly for support for bundles/box sets, and for “master” pages (such as Also By) and it does seem to do that properly (in my trials so far.)
I’ve had that problem with basically every formatting program I’ve found when it comes to importing from word. Which has reaffirmed that I don’t want to format in word, the formatting just doesn’t carry over reliably except in the most basic. Word does too many weird things and I don’t feel like having to extract all the stupid extraneous code from it. Can I format in Word? Yes, very well. But there’s no point in getting fancy (unless the final product is also word) when I’ll just have to do it all over again regardless of program. (This includes InDesign)
What I do is edit a scene then paste it, plain text, into Atticus and apply formatting from there. Book fills as I finish edits. I ONLY use it for formatting.
I get some use out of publisher rocket, which is by the same people IIRC but more about market research. It’s fun but could use more documentation about what to do with the information you’re given.
working on reshelling (new roof, new outsides) my woodshop, both because it needs to get done to take care of some rot (chronic here in the Pacific North Wet) and to improve the curb appeal for when we sell in a couple of years, and move to someplace not trying to out Califonia California.
Oh, wait, you mean what am I writing… Still working on Scout Ship Trigger, the first of a series. Space opera.
The United Star Systems are at peace, but war is on the horizon. The Sakari are invading their neighbors right and left, in the pursuit of natural resources, food, and just because they can… After all, if you’re not Sakari you’re not sentient.
The Strykahr are also swinging sharp elbows in all directions. The USS and other nations are in the middle.
Lieutenant JG Bradford-Smith left his last command under a cloud and was dumped into Scout Ships, well known as “D, D,&D” (Dangerous, Dirty, and Difficult) throughout the fleet. To Scout Ships falls the brunt of “Actions less than war.” “Welcome to Scout Ships, Lad.”
I’m writing a necromancer/superhero high fantasy — series, perhaps, big fat novel definitely
Three projects for this weekend: Get Ko-fi set up (most of the freebies are, but I need the first week of paid, preferably the first month scheduled), make progress on the edits of Bearskin for publication on Tuesday (probably night) with attendant e-mailing of Sarah for the promo post, make progress on short story sorting (both what I have and what calls are out there that I might be able to answer.)
I dunno. Got a eleventy-fifty something story ideas knocking around. Got a thing of sci-fi that needs finishing. Got Spirit Beasts that wants to be something between psychological horror and cozy with kittens. Got that darned noir detective sci fi that I’ve been bugged to write something on.
Also I have been demanded to get off my foot that’s not working right, so writing might just happen. Assuming the apocalypse holds off for about five or so days and nothing else important breaks.
I *want* to write that litRPG bit that’s been busily gnawing away at my hindbrain. It’s gonna have to wait though. Probably a loooooong time.
I keep being derailed by new (ooh – shiny!) hobbies — doing Barbershop Quartet singing at a state fair, for example. Trickier than you might think… 🙂
State of the Writer?
-Very late stages of writing Hunter Healer King. Rough idea of how frequently to update the Vella version so I can put up the novel version 30 days post Vella conclusion, preferably on the Feast of Stephen/Boxing Day. Vague ideas for a prequel short story for the Raconteur Steampunk anthology.
-okayish grip on main characters’ arcs for the two sequels to above, still trying to get the adventure plots for both sequels to at least vaguely come together. Vague ideas for prequels and sidestories related to the hero’s extended family floating around. We’ll see if my interest in setting and muse lasts that long.
-it’s TV Wheel of Time season again, and that means I also poke around with High Fantasy ideas that usually don’t go anywhere.
I’ve got a whole pile of stuff in various stages of progress — and four more conventions to do before the retail business pivots to online sales for the off season. I’m hoping that will finally give me the time to get more stuff written and either turned in for anthologies or released through Starship Cat Press. Assuming the world doesn’t go crazy again — right now I’m getting steadily more uneasy, and consciously thinking of strategies to keep me on track so I don’t end up spinning my wheels for an entire year like I did in 2020.
1. Getting comments back from the beta readers for my second mystery novel.
2. Restarting / rebooting the third.
3. Working on my second children’s book, Zoe the Flying Rhinoceros.