Writing Update 24 Jan 2014

I have two stories vying for attention at the moment to be in the next book, which I tentatively plan to call At The Turn Of Midnight.

The Forbidden Knowledge story keeps popping into my head for some reason.  Maybe I should take that as a sign.  The latest way it popped into my head was via the main character’s name:  Nathaniel Scribner, which seems to fit a librarian character from the mid-1800s in my mind for some reason.  Maybe this weekend I’ll see if this story is serious about wanting to be written, or if it’s just taunting me with trying to stay in my mind for some reason.

Of course, at the same time, the untitled zombie story keeps popping into my mind, though not as intrusively as Forbidden Knowledge.  It doesn’t want to be forgotten either (as I wrote at the end of Vivarium), but definitely has spoken to me about changing its format from simply a “first person zombie story” to something more.

I also plan to sit and edit some.  My method for self-editing takes two forms.  First, I read each sentence one at a time in reverse order (since I’m already familiar with the story, this is the best way to see if each sentence works alone).  Then, I’ll just read through and make sure that no story/plot/character flaws stand out to me.

I need to set a deadline for editing and cover art for Dark Stories For A Restless Night so that I’m at least forced into trying to meet it.  I’ll have to ponder just when that might need to be.  I imagine it’ll take at least a good month or two to get both done.  And maybe a month after that to get everything set to pull the trigger on publishing.  Which means I should probably pick a date about three months before I plan to publish.  Whenever that is.  Maybe right at the start of summer for the available online dates?  Feedback would be appreciated.

I’m toying with the idea of using an actual photo for the cover art, or a “sketch” of the photo.  I’ve found some decent photo to sketch sites.  This one does just grayscale:  http://www.dumpr.net/sketch.php, while this one does color sketches:  http://www134.lunapic.com/editor/?action=color-sketch.  I think our concept is going to be a table set up for a garage sale or antique  store with items related to each story on it.  This stems from the story Mary’s Painting in the book where she buys a painting from an antique store that leads to the story line.  I’m not sure what item would be there from each story yet, but I like the idea.  I just don’t know which might prove to be better - a sketch of “live” photo.   

There are eight stories in Dark Stories For A Restless Night.  Some stories lend themselves easily to what the item or items on the table could be, while others aren’t so easily.  Here’s a listing of the stories included in the book:

Mary's Painting - A woman buys more than she expects when she purchases a painting on a whim

Sins of the Father - A priest defends the mission he presides over

The Fall - A young boy awakens after a bad accident while playing

Darkness - A group sets out on a rescue mission in the Mexican jungles and finds themselves at peril

Cat's Eye View - Find out why cats behave the way they do

The Viewing - Witness the last days of life on a distant planet

The Journey - A man travels exestentially through the cosmos

Un-Separation - A man's unhappy and unexpected reunion with his wife

That’s all the news directly related to my writing projects.  There has been some that affects my ability to write.  This past week saw me lose my laptop.  It also saw me figure out a way to salvage a laptop from two unusable laptops.  I took the hard drive from my most recent laptop that won’t even power up any more and put it in the older laptop that wouldn’t boot up completely and system restore couldn’t fix.  I was able to get system restore to reset the newer hard drive’s software to work in the new laptop, but also had to reinstall any software that I use regularly like Microsoft Office.  Fortunately, I still had one more install available for my last Office purchase.

That is all of the writing related news.  For those of you that are interested in other stuff, feel free to read on.

In the past few weeks, everyone in the house has gotten sick in some way or another.  Gabe and Candice have both gotten strep.  Grandma has some mystery illness but hasn’t gone to the doctor about it yet.  Donna and Megi got a stomach bug that saw them both throwing up.  Poor Megi was throwing up for the first time and was terrified.  And I had an intestinal bug the other night.  I’m hoping that the girls and I don’t catch the strep that is making its way through our family.

That’s all I have for this entry.  Thanks for reading!

Inches to Spare

Since Sunday, I've been sick with a terrible cough and fever.  If I moved at all or allowed cold to touch my chest, it would start another batch of horrible, violent coughs.  I went to the doctor yesterday, and she said it wasn't pneumonia, and probably wasn't the flu or bronchitis (though she swore it was the flu until the flu test came back negative).  It's probably just a virus.  The cough has given me a tremendous chest pain, and I think strained a muscle in my back.  Anyway, I've been fever free for 24+ hours now, so I'll be going back to work tomorrow.

Phases one and two of operation clean the garage are complete.

Phase one also happened to be phase one of get Candice's art studio moved.  She's now set up with a make-shift workshop in the basement, so she doesn't have to contend with extreme temperature changes.  Phase two of the art studio will be to ventilate it better, but for now, it works, and I think she's really happy about it.  Phase three involves adding electrical circuits to the basement, that will wait until my dad comes out or I save enough to have an electrician come out and do it.  I don't feel comfortable enough messing with the circuit box.  Phase four of course, is to put up walls, etc., but that comes much further down the road after we start finishing the basement.

Phase two was move the radial arm saw and other big items around so I can park my car inside again.  Granted, due to the ginormous '53 Mercury being parked in what was previously my spot, I now have to park in the workshop area, which means moving my car out to do anything and to move the recycling in and out of the garage, but I can now do that, so NO MORE FREEZING WHILE GETTING SNOW AND ICE OFF MY WINDSHIELDS WITH A SCRAPER AT HOME!

I also had mere inches to spare with the new arrangement of stuff, but that will become easier with time as I find better places to put things, etc.

 

Anyway, that's all for this entry.  Thanks for reading.

Megi's Gone Walkabout

So, It's been a couple of months since I provided an update to what's going on in my little world.  We'll start with the main topic I started this blog about:  writing.

I've decided to put a serious effort into writing and publishing using Kindle Direct Publishing.  I'm focusing more on books of short stories than a single novel.  I plan to group them by genre, and will have one horror, one crime/mystery, one sci-fi, and one drama when all is said and done.  I've also got a lot of cool story ideas, including writing a story with a zombie as the protagonist.  Now, I just have to take the time and write the stories.

I also started a Twitter account for my author personna (@TAllanBishop), since apparently that's what people should do.  I think I have two whole tweets so far...

Now on to what has been going on. 

We experienced a quarantine for Whooping cough in our house.  That precipitated Candice and I opening one of our Christmas presents a month early to fill the dead time with the Wii U.

I got to experience an entire day of jury duty for a case involving sexual assault of a minor and 2nd degree kidnapping before finally becoming a peremptory challenge by the defense at 5:30 at night.  I think it would be really neat to sit on a jury, just not a four day trial on that kind of a case.

We got a companion for Ginger:  Bailey.  Bailey is a Basenji/mid-sized terrier mix.  And the day after we rescued him, he cut open his paw pretty bad (he could have bled to death from it had we not gotten him to the doctor right away).  He then proceeded to tear up three cones designed to prevent him from chewing at his bandages and then proceeded to constantly chew his bandages.  We gave up and removed the bandages and he mostly left the stitches alone.

Bailey has been a calming influence on Ginger.  She's less inclined to jump on people and she seems happier now that she has a friend that is around all the time.  We think Bailey had a bad incident with a car, because of a bad scar on his rear leg that he was treated for prior to his adoption and the fact that any moving vehicle scares the bejeezus out of him.  Still ones not so much so.  He's pretty well behaved except that the "fences" we put up to keep him out of or in a room are considered optional by him.  Because he's so well behaved, we think he used to have an owner, but somehow became "homeless" for a while and that's when he had his accident.

We (and the vet) think he cut his paw on the metal edging that separates different landscapings in the back yard.  I'll be taking it out soon to make sure we don't have a repeat performance.

We refinanced the house down from a 4.625% fixed rate to a 3.25% fixed rate and lowered our monthly house payment by about $400 per month.  We refinanced without any cost to us.  Donna's day care bill just got lowered by $10 per week since she's fully potty trained now.  I also plan to switch our cell phones soon to a combined monthly data usage one which will lower our monthly phone bill by about $30 per month.  That's going to help tremendously with living within our budget and getting the bills paid off.

Christmas Eve, Megi began to walk without holding on to anything!  Christmas Day, she actually started doing it as her primary means of getting around, and she rarely crawls anymore.  In fact, she spends hours just walking around because she can and it is fascinating to her.  She's gone walkabout.

Gabe has been home from school for the holidays.  He really copes better when he has school than when he's home for the entire day.  It'll be better for him and Candice when he starts back to school tomorrow.

Donna stumbled in on Santa while he was setting up all the stuff.  He had to disappear in a hurry.  fortunately, he returned later after she went to sleep and finished with everything.

In the next few weeks, I'll be buying the pieces to set up ventillation in the basement to move Candice's glass studio down there.  Once that is done, the next step is to rearrange stuff in the garage so I can park in it again (moving my car out whenever I need to actually "do" stuff in the workshop.

We've finally moved on to painting the next room in the series.  Donna's new room will be green (her favorite color) with a pink highlight wall.  Once we get it painted, we'll move her in and start work on Megi's new room.  When we finish that, we'll start on finishing touches to the rooms and the bathrooms.

Well, that's all for this update.  Thanks for reading.