Forever of the Wood picked up the Category Nonimation for April of ’09 at Lit.  My guess is that because it also placed in the Earth Day contest, it won’t make it into the finals, but still nice =)

Then again, maybe it will be in the finals.  It had a solid score and vote total, if that’s how they do it.  Would make sense to give other stories a chance when one already has a blue W next to it, though.

Think I’m going to look at SOTM 16 this morning before my boy gets up.  The other unpublished chapters had modifications made to them since my last backup, so I’m just going to wait on installing the old drive for those.  No sense trying to recreate what I’d done when I’ll have it back by about Tuesday evening.

I do remember what I did with them, though.  The continuation of the first scene of 16 has been playing through my head for a few days now, so I think I’m going to write it.  I suppose it would actually be just as easy to write the start of Lowborn Ch. 05, but I’m just feeling SOTM instead.

I hope to eventually post a progress report with a goal in mind, as I did before launching SOTM.  That way, there will be some idea of when the story will relaunch.

Well, let’s give this a shot.

My computer died on me *laugh*

Haven’t heard back yet, but I suspect that my HD is toast.  Good news is that most of my writing was backed up either on my USB drive or online.  I still have all of Lowborn, and all of SOTM except for the changes I’ve made in the last few days.  Those changes I can easily replicate.

Some other things I have hardcopy of that I can scan back in, others I can retrieve from people who have copies, etc. etc.

Lost every single word of Barren Harvest though.  Ditto some cover images I’ve made and some other odds and ends.

That is, unless I’m wrong and it wasn’t the HD.

Once I hear back, I’ll figure out where I’m going from there.  I was planning to replace the computer with a new one at tax time anyhow, so I may just jump-start that process.  Going to build from scratch so I have upgrade capability and exactly what I want — without all the crap bundled software that gets put on “box” systems.  Also have no need for any of the peripherals like mice and keyboards.

All in all — not too horrible.  I didn’t lose mounds of stuff that I can’t replace.  Just a few annoying odds and ends here and there.

Haven’t double checked all my online space either.  So, there’s a chance that some of the stuff that I think I lost might actually be uploaded.

Anyway, just wanted to drop a line.  I shouldn’t be out of action for too long.  Worst case scenario is mid-Feb., and that’s absolutely worst case that I wait until I have my tax return in hand.  The plan is to be back up and running either on my old system or a brand new one by the weekend.

I added a scene to Ch. 14, and a few lines to another.  I also expanded a scene in Ch. 15, and I think I’ve taken care of the mentions necessary to keep one part of the antagonists’ plotlines moving.  I still need to get a few strands of another in there, though.

Once I get that one in there, it will bring me up to speed and let me continue on.  I’m coming up on a thread that I’ve been wanting to write for years.  It ties another story into the central tale, bringing that story to a long-awaited conclusion and providing something crucial to the climax of SOTM as well.

It’s also a homage to something that happened in my old PnP game.

I think things are coming together again.  I might just get this moving.

Just finished my re-read of the published chapters of SOTM.  Good news is that I don’t think I’ll need to change anything there after all.  I will need to make some changes to the finished but unpublished chapters, but at least I don’t need to edit anything already out there.

(Well, there are a few typos and spelling errors…  I’d also like to go back and apply the new telepathic speech conventions to all the old chapters )

I think I’m going to look at those unpublished chapters tonight and see about getting the plot development for the antagonists’ side that’s missing planned out for insertion.  Might even write some of it if I’m feeling it.

Regardless, it will still be a while before any new chapters come out.  I’m not going to wait until the entire story is completely written, but I am going to wait until I have at least 8-10 new chapters ready to roll before I put out a new one.  That will give me a few months to get more chapters ready before I start running into issues if my muse goes south on me again.

Just about ready to roll on Lowborn, too.  That story will be complete when I release it.  My best guess is that I’m a little over half done with that one with 4 chapters complete.  I think it’s going to run about 6 or 7 chapters.

I’m off to read those unpublished chapters of SOTM and see if I can’t get some notes written down.  Then its off to the store before I run out of Dr. Pepper.

On vacation starting Monday morning.  Hope to get some things really moving then.