A Writing Week

This week was a writing week. I went through The Rise of Aethan Lightbringer. I found a few mistakes. Can you believe it? I know. Me either. It was things like titled instead of tilted, a stray apostrophe, etc. Spellcheck won't catch those. I made notes for corrections, but I'll need to go through it one last time. It was in preparation for going through book 2 in the series, which I published a while back but withdrew. It just didn't feel right. I needed a break from the series and went on to working on AoE. After book 1 this week, I went through book 2 and spent more time on editing it. Now that I've been away from it for a while, it was easier to see the problems. Sections of it are just fine. Other sections will need to be fixed or possibly re-written.

Book 1 has a certain feel to it. It flows along pretty nicely and carries me along. Book 2 is set a few years later. The gap of time and the events in it have to be explained. That takes some space. The things going on at the time sometimes need additional context. It all works to slow it down. Another problem that goes along with that is that things can be happening, but there's a lack of urgency to them. Not everywhere, just in some places. It's hard to explain. The story is unfolding, but it doesn't pull me along the way book 1 does.

How do I fix book 2? The most radical solution is to scrap the entire thing and start over with it set immediately after book 1. The current book 2 could become book 3 or simply abandoned altogether. I don't entirely like that solution. The gap of time is already written into book 1. Changing it would require changing book 1, a distasteful solution but certainly doable and with not a lot of effort. Then there's the problem of: What happens after book 1? Practically nothing, although I could make something up with Ashley, a minor character from book 1. Hmm, maybe it could be a 99-cent novella, something I could do later.

Another way to fix it is to go in and change the wording of the prose to alter the tone. I could also change the tone of the characters and remove some of the sense of humor and replace it with seriousness. Maybe I could condense some of the chapters together and still convey the same information. I could change settings. Maybe, instead of meeting in public, a couple of characters could meet secretly. A simple change would be having the characters talk about the pressure they're under or the time deadline. Another change would be to put more pressure on the characters or change their reactions to the pressure that's already there.

I'm thinking book 2 doesn't have to have the same exact feel as book 1, but it needs to have the same pacing. Book 1 pulls the reader along. Book 2 only does that in certain sections.

I just finished going through book 2 last night before bed. I haven't had time to look through any of it again. I'm thinking that maybe I'll pick a small section that's not working and try to fix that to see if it can be done easily. If so, then the changes won't take long. Even if I have to re-write some of it, it still shouldn't take too long to get it out the door. I hope.

Have a great weekend.

Water Leak

I woke up to a water leak today and spent a while cleaning that up before breakfast. It was hard to get to the leak, because I need to take two boards out of the wall. I'd already bought the sealer but not the replacement boards. I sealed it as best I could for now. The whole time I worked on it, my cat waited for breakfast. It was hard to be a person today. It was tough to be a cat, too.

Before the Notre Dame cathedral burned down, this year there has been a string of attacks against Catholic churches in France, including an arson attack last week. Speculation about the true cause of the fire at the cathedral is forbidden by the liberal media who have been speculating about Trump since 2016. The media thinks it's okay when they do it, using nothing more than hatred as their foundation. They think it's a crime when we do it, using published facts as ours. It's like things are to the point where a journalist is just as big a liar as a politician.

The week was otherwise unremarkable. I've been practicing with the graphics tablet working my way up to making real covers. It's not going as quickly as I'd hoped. I'm going to have to increase the amount of time I put into it. I was able to make some rocks that didn't look bad and a cliff face. I need to go through more brushes figuring out what they all do. I've been using a handful and practicing with those, but my goal is to develop a small set of brushes and only use those. I can see improvement. It's just slow. I've been toying with the idea of doing at least parts of a cover with real paint, photographing it and finishing the covers with the graphics tablet.

I've put some work into the book after AoE. I haven't done any writing on it. I'm still developing the plot and the details. Some key things have fallen into place. It's a detective/mystery story set in the science fiction universe of the first book. The mystery aspect is forcing me to take a different approach. The Messengers series is pretty straightforward. In this book the mystery will have to be solved by following the clues in a logical way. I need to figure out all the clues and the sequence as well as the story surrounding the detective. It's good practice for other books. I've had this science fiction story in mind for a while that's set on a space station at Jupiter or Saturn. In that story a murder occurs, but the video evidence has been removed from the main computer, a near impossibility. I think about that book sometimes but not enough to come up with the sequence of events. The book after AoE will help with that.

However, I need to finish the B'vellah War series before doing too much more. I've been thinking about that, too. I may do that instead of the book after AoE.

Have a great weekend.

Buying Overseas

I buy things from overseas from different countries. It's not frequent at all and never anything expensive, but every once in a while, I need or want something I either can't get in the U.S. or can get more cheaply elsewhere. Now that I'm reading French books, I need to buy books from Europe. Sometimes the price is better in the U.S. Sometimes not. The difference makes it worth it to buy certain titles from Europe.

It turns out my debit card won't work for that, because my bank has a restriction on it. I've ordered books only to have my card declined. I talked to the bank, and they told me they could lift the restriction for a 24-hour period, if I called them before I wanted to buy something. I usually don't know I'm going to buy something until I see if there's anything to buy. Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago I called them. They said I was set.

I found four books on Abebooks.com and ordered them. Even after getting the bank to lift the restriction on my card, it was automatically, instantly declined. I called the bank the next day. They claimed it wasn't their fault. There was nothing they could do. Hmm. A while back I changed banks. I never had this problem at the old bank.

I've spent hours and hours trying to find a way to buy things from Europe. The books I want are usually sold in France, Germany and the U.K. The savings makes the hassle of looking at pre-paid card after card and all the fine print worth it. It's absolutely necessary to look at the fine print, because that's where the hidden fees and charges are. Also, some cards can only be bought in certain countries. I found a great card in the U.K., but I can't drive to their office for it. However, this week I was able to order a couple of books from France, and it worked. This is how I did it.

There's a pre-paid card vendor called MOVO. There's no monthly fee as long as you buy things or transfer money in or out. No problem. At worst that's a 99-cent book on Amazon, or I can transfer funds from my bank and use MOVO instead for some things. I signed up for a card. That was half the battle. The challenge was getting money on it. Doing it at a store costs money that I'm trying to save. After a ton of searching online, I was finally able to use Google Pay to transfer $50. . .to myself. It was free. The trick was I had to have two different Google accounts and two different email addresses. The other trick was that it took two days to authorize the accounts for the transfer as well as authorizing an account on MOVO plus waiting for the money to be credited.

So. I log into Google Pay and choose the send money option. I picked the payment source and the amount. I put in an email address and hit send. I check that email account, accept the money and choose the account for the deposit.

The entire process of getting everything authorized and then waiting for the money to transfer was a complete hassle. But now that it's done, everything is set up for me to transfer money to myself that I can spend almost anywhere in the world without some ridiculous restriction.

The sad news was that by the time I got it all set up two of the four books were no longer available. I was able to order them, but the transaction was never completed. I had to cancel. One of them was a dollar less at another French book store. I ordered that. It was all good. I got three out of the four.

I should mention the currency conversion fee. MOVO charges 3 percent to exchange dollars to Euros or whichever currency. The books I'm buying are between $4 and $6. We're talking about 12 to 18 cents per book. I'm saving well more than that buying them from Europe. So, it's not a problem for my purposes, especially without a monthly fee for the card.

Have a great weekend.

Jury Duty

Around the beginning of March, I got that dreaded letter in the mail: jury duty. The reporting date was April 1st. I was summoned as a trial juror and not as a grand juror. I dreaded it the whole month. Along the way I came up with a brilliant idea: tattoo sleeves. That's for a 20-pack. The 6-pack is cheaper.

When you're picked for a jury, the prosecution and the defense can ask you questions about yourself and your life. I've had to do that. You go up into the jury box for that in front of the judge and the entire court. That would be the perfect time to casually take my jacket off and expose the tattoo sleeves to the shock and condemnation of all. Surely, no one would pick a guy with tattoos up and down both arms, right? Right. The thing that held me back was the possibility of being held in contempt of court. If they thought I was trying to get out of jury duty with a trick, I figured it might be possible to be in contempt. April 1st was a chilly day. Tattoo sleeves are partly for protection from the sun. I decided not to get them. I wouldn't have a good reason to be wearing them like I might in summer. I might get some later as a gag. I have relatives I don't see very often. . .

Part of jury duty is calling the night before. I called. The grand jury was to report at 9 a.m. The trial jurors were not to report that day but were to call after 6 p.m. I was riding past the courthouse around 5 p.m. There were a lot of cars there, though the parking lot wasn't full. Obviously, it was the grand jury. I called later when I got home. The trial jury for this week was dismissed. Yay! I didn't need the tattoo sleeves after all. The best part is I got credit and won't be called again any time soon. It's been years since the last time. Only the people who sent back the form the county mails got credit. People who didn't send it back will have to do jury duty a different week. I bet they wish they'd sent the paper back.

Book Stuff

Progress hasn't been as fast as I'd like on the books and cover fronts, but progress is being made. It seems like things keep getting in the way that weren't there before like the forces of darkness have risen against me. I just have to force a way through, I guess. One of the books I've been putting time into is the concept for the book after AoE. I believe I can make books 2 and 3 have overlapping content. For instance, a character(Keelia) who only appears briefly in book 2 for a few scenes would be doing things that are the story for book 3. In book 3 the main character in book 2(her dad) would appear a few times just like she did in book 2. That way they can't team up and very quickly solve their problems together. Even though the books are a series and not a trilogy, by book 3 it would all fit together. I've been putting a lot of extra work into book 2. I have a lot of ideas written down, but it hasn't quite come together yet. It's close.

As for the covers, my main weakness is the human figure. I can't not have people on the covers. Corel Painter, and other programs, have something called mirror mode. The way it works is that there's an invisible line down the center of a painting/drawing. Anything drawn on one side is mirrored on the other automatically. For characters facing the camera, I can use mirror mode to get the faces symmetrical instead of having to paint/draw each side. It would work for certain buildings, too. I'd still have to do the full work on characters facing to the side or away, but mirror mode is a good trick. The characters would have to be on their own layers for it to work, of course.

Have a great weekend.