Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Updating...







As you can see, it's still February, regardless of what the calendar says. Snowed all day. (sigh)








So what have I been doing despite the weather? Re-typing my single title novel, PROMISE ME A RAINBOW, for one thing. I have the reverted rights and I want to get it into a good eBook venue. The original file was seriously obsolete -- my current computer system wouldn't recognize it, hence the re-typing. That seemingly simple project has been tedious because the aforementioned computer system suddenly developed multiple "old age" woes and required a subsequent clean install of a new OS. Twice. Which means you have to put everything back. Twice. Which then led to a semi-obsolete word processing program (read: "crash"), which led to having to scrape together enough over-budget pennies to get a new MS Word -- and eventually (finally) to re-typing some more. I have less than a hundred pages left to type, assuming my electronic and technical entities behave.

THEN, I want to start on my "Cinda Richards" categories and get them re-typed and into eBook format.

I've also been going to numerous grandchild events -- basketball games, cheerleading -- and doing general taxi servicing. I've actually had to buy myself a day planner just to keep up with it all.

And I learned to text message. This was not easy. My cell phone is a no-frills step above a Dixie cup and a string. Or just the Dixie cup. (Cells don't have "strings.") There's no fancy keyboard and the numeric buttons are very, very tiny. I'm getting the hang of it, though. The grandsons are very impressed.

In my spare time, I've been listening to digital audio books, i.e., Pat Conroy's THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE. I was interested in this particular book because of the cadet's diary -- which is very pale by comparison. My take? Wonderful imagery and characterization. Compelling plot. Realistically crude language indicative (unfortunately) of young males in a group. On the downside, I thought the tying up of "loose ends" in the final pages was a little too "pat" (pardon the pun) in that, while well-explained and logical, it seemed Charles Dickens-y minus the HEA. Maybe this was because I was surprised. The foreshadowing was excellent, and I knew which of the protagonist's peers were members of The Ten early on, but I hadn't expected or needed this particular duplicity -- maybe because I was done with the pregnant girl and didn't care what had happened to her. In any event, I liked the book well enough to have bought a paperback copy (new, not used, Mr. Conroy). I want the older grandson to read it -- as soon as I decide if he's old enough.

That's it for this time...

2 comments:

Liz Flaherty said...

Are you updating as you type? I've considered doing this--I only have one book to do it with, a Precious Gems--but I'm way too lazy!

Cheryl said...

Hey, Liz. I am updating as I type, but only minimally. PMAR wasn't as out dated as I thought it would be (I hadn't read it since I did the galleys). I'm also correcting some mistakes that slipped through and I've cut some redundant dialogue.

As for being lazy, it is definitely a bigger job than I expected, and my wrists and right forefinger often talk to me about it. Hopefully, I can get a few pennies from the effort -- for which I will be very grateful.

I hope the weather is good where you are -- it's sunny and 62 degrees here today. (Yay!)