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However, I do know exactly when I’ll be back again. No worries.

I don’t think I’m going to be one of those fellows who has to go online to tell the world how his vacation is going. I mean, when I’m standing there staring at something I never thought I’d ever see, my first impulse is *not* to think, “My god, I should tweet this.” And honestly, I probably won’t be thinking of this blog while I’m away, either, despite the fact that in all likelihood I’ll be writing up a storm in my spare time.

Oh sure, I do happen to have this WordPress app for my iPad which would allow me to update while I’m in Europe. I’m just saying that I might not remember to do it, or not have Wi-Fi . . . and I’m definitely not going to be posting on a schedule until I get back, so don’t expect any updates or anything until about Aug 30th. Anything posted between now and then is gravy.

Mmmm . . . gravy.

Emergency recovery and dealing with problems. Always interesting, always engaging . . . hardly ever fun.

The more time goes by, the more it looks like Beast is an unfortunate casualty of the ill-fated “Monday evening walk home” that saw about fourteen quarts of water shoved into the backpack where I’d stowed all my electronic gear. Oh, and an antique hand-bound leather sketchbook, although the water hardly seemed to bother it one bit. Actually, if anything, it made the sketchbook look even more antiquated and valuable.

Not so with my iPad and Beast, my netbook.

The iPad I managed to recover somewhat. There are some dead zones on the touch screen now . . . still visible, just not quite as touchy. Now whenever I’m attempting to drag something across the screen, I’m reminded rather jarringly that certain portions of the screen no longer work. Saddening, but somewhat salvageable.

Beast, I fear, is dead. The bottom row of keys has not returned to life these past few days, and several of the keys that do work are having so much fun when I press them that they’re waking up all their neighbor keys at the same time and holding a “Let’s all appear on the screen at the same time” party. Hard drive still works, monitor portion still works, it’s just the keyboard that’s become the problem. My only real hope at this point in time is to crack him open and perform emergency surgery.

And even in the midst of all this, I managed to (sorta) finish the prologue, which represents the kind of commitment that a totally unbiased person might refer to as ‘superhuman’ or ‘just plain bonkers’. I’ve also outlined Chapter 1, and will be proceeding with that sometime tonight or tomorrow. Right now, I’m attempting to rig a solution that uses my iPad as a display screen and word processing software, but uses a bluetooth wireless keyboard for all my typing. You know, since it’s got those dead spots on it.

Sigh.

Anyways, that’s as much of an update as I feel I’m capable of at the moment. The beast is dying, will it live? Time will tell.

Multi-tasking with precision is something I’ve always been able to do well . . . in my own sort of way.

I mean, sure . . . there was that time I was told to run stats at the same time I was re-routing a bunch of telecom traffic so that they’d be distributed more evenly among the various call centres, and I accidentally sent 90% of the entire province’s calls to a small-town call centre that employed 5 people, 3 of which were working that day. And then there was that time when I was attempting to cross the street while simultaneously figuring out the deal behind this whole ‘dark matter’ thing, and I got hit by a car. (I still maintain that if the car hadn’t hit me, I’d have figured it out . . .)  Yes, aside from those trifling examples, I’m a rock when it comes to precision and multi-tasking. Why, even now, as I’m writing this, I’m playing in an online poker tournament, and-  . . . re-raise on 3-5 OFF-SUIT?!? Wait! I didn’t mean to do that!! Sonofa!

Okay, now that I’ve washed out of that tournament . . . on with the post.

So, like I said, I’m good at multi-tasking. Some people are just made for that sort of thing. Some of us can be biking to work, dreaming up new and interesting book ideas, perfectly safe for the entire trip. Others must give what they’re doing their full attention at all times, having thoughts like, “Okay, left-right, left-right, watch out for that pebble. Okay . . . up a hill now. I’m going to have to peddle harder now, so wait until just the right moment to . . . what was that? Oh, just a bottlecap. Steady. Steady . . . good! Aaaand we’re going up the hill. Left-right, left-right,” etc etc . . .  They do this because they have to – trust me. I’ve seen what happens to people like this when they’re not focusing, and let’s just say that I’m glad the person in this story is only driving a bicycle.

But it’s a real time-saver, this multi-tasking. When I’m at work and doing something mundane like testing new models for accuracy through the GUI, I’m usually also listening to an audiobook. My brain is following the story, and on another completely different channel it’s making certain that everything I’m testing is coming back the way it should be. Once back at home, I have several books that are bookmarked at a certain place, any one of which I can pick up and begin reading and remember exactly where I was in that story. Some people can’t operate like this, whereas I can’t understand not being able to operate like this.

So now, ever since finishing the Scottish Play, I’ve been working on three things at once. Someone asks me “Hey, how’s the writing going?” and I’m forced to say something like, “It’s killing, and it’s doing okay, and I’ve barely started anything new! Thanks for asking!” which is more than likely going to cause some confusion.

My point? No point, really. I just . . . hey! I won that hand! I didn’t wash out after all! Full-house on a 3-5 off-suit! Woo-hoo! All hail king donk!

Update: Pride – Section 2 officially done

I even went out on the note I wanted . . . it was hard, because I wanted enough menace in there to be obvious, but not enough to be corny. The last line, it’s like a “Ooooo . . . bad stuff is gonna happen!” line, and those are so easy to mess up.

Next is brand-new territory, with fresh outlines and everything. I haven’t even done a word-count on sections 1 and 2 yet.

Ooooo, now that’s gonna bug me. Sonofa!

Update: Hamlet – 3% done

Because with the completion of Section 2, something I had until Friday to do, I find myself with free time . . . and what better way to mess with free time than vandalize Shakespeare? Can you think of one? Nope, me neither!

It’s actually looking pretty funny, and is so much easier than it sounds once you get rolling. I mean, it’s still the first scene, and the ghost just left, and everyone’s like, “Horatio, you dick! Why’d you have to scare off the ghost like that?!” ‘n stuff. I can’t wait to see what happens next. (Well, it’s Shakespeare, so I would guess that someone dies)

Update: Jade Mouse – Featured on Scribd.com

Yeah, weird to have an update on a book that’s already been published, but here we are. Jade Mouse, the second novel in the Tucat series, was a featured document on Scribd as of about 6 hours ago. Doubly weird, considering that the first book in the series is sitting right there, and wasn’t featured at all. What are these guys trying to tell me? “Honestly, we hated your first book . . . and to prove it, we’re gonna focus all our attention on your second! Ahahahaaaaa . . . look at him crying, ahahaha!”

Nah, they love me. I can tell.  :)

Bit of a time-out.

I found out recently that the wife of one of my favorite authors, Spider Robinson, had passed away. It was scary how fast it happened. I listen to the Spider Robinson podcast often, and it seems like only a couple of months ago he brought the whole thing up. People rallied on their behalf, held charity auctions, benefits, all sorts of things like that . . . and unfortunately, it wasn’t enough.

As Spider himself would say, Jeanne Robinson left the party on May 30th of this year. She was in no pain, and was surrounded by loved ones. I can’t really say anything that tops how well Spider himself put it.

And here’s the thing – back in December, when they were still fighting the biliary cancer, their financial situation was dire. Hence the aforementioned fund-raisers and auctions. I don’t imagine that things have gotten any better since that time.

So, I’m passing the hat. And you know it’s serious when I’m passing the hat, folks – I don’t wear one.

This is the guy who gave us Callahan’s, folks. This is the guy who taught us that shared pain is lessened, and shared joy is increased. Help if you can.

Spider – My thoughts are with you. Take care of yourself. We need you.

You knew it had to happen sometime . . .

Proof approved, soon to appear on Amazon, among other places.

That is all. Update concluded.

(Runs off and does happy dance in the corner)

Yup, Monday’s going to be a holiday, bringing on the fabled May long weekend. And yet, I will probably still manage an update on Monday. See? That’s commitment, right there.

I’m having fun experiencing things like Holidays now, as opposed to the big bags of freakish misery they used to be. Nothing kills the idea of a holiday more than someone telling you that while everyone else is kicking back and relaxing, making travel plans, splashing on the beach, all that sort of stuff . . . while they’re doing that, you’ll be working 12 hours making sure that everything electronic that would have been behaving normally is treating that day as a holiday. And to top it all off, they make you carry around a big buzzing thing that will screech and shriek if someone notices even the tiniest problem, or suspects that not enough problems have been noticed and figures it’s suspicious.

Now, holidays come and I get to relax. See? (kicks feet up on desk) Relaxation. Aaaaaahhhhhhh.

. . .

Nope, my body’s not buying it either – it’s telling me to do more work. Gah, will I never be able to kick back and relax? Maybe rest on my laurels a bit?

Sonofa . . .

Update: Hamlet – Officially started. 1/130 done

That’s not precisely exact, the 1/130, because the page count is going to increase the more formatting I do. When I take the original play and paste it into my template, it tends to ignore little things like “Spacing” and “formatting” and “not looking like someone’s eaten the entire dictionary and then puked it out into several small, disorganized piles”. I’ve gone through and fixed the formatting on the original text for the first couple dozen pages, but when it comes to new content I’ve only finished the first page or so. Good page, though. Very amusing. Trust me.

Update: Pride – Re-edit up to section 2.10 done

Yup, now I’m just re-reading up to that point to get my head back in that story, and not so I can move a bunch of words around. Two of the best scenes I’ve ever imagined have already happened in it, and there’s about 3 more where that came from . . . the kind of scenes that might just make you blubber like a little girl. Especially if you already are a little girl – that would increase the chances of that happening dramatically.

Update: Black Glass – Chapter 23 80% done

Forty chapters in total, going at a good clip. Re-hashed the previous three chapters in a big bad way, which I think was part of the reason for me leaving it for such a long time. From 21-23, it seemed really forced, because of what I had to have the characters do. Two very different people declare a truce and talk about each others cultures for a while, and they didn’t really want to. Not in the story, but in my fingers . . . they didn’t want to talk about it. I ended up having to do all the talking for them, and in the process I used a whole bunch of words that I know they wouldn’t have. The whole thing sounded off, and I knew I’d have to ditch most of it, and now that I have, huzzah! I’ll still probably go back and do a ton more editing, but at least it’s feeling a little less forced at that section, which will allow me to go on with the rest of it. 35k words left to go. Who knows, this could be the quickest writing comeback ever! Woohoo!

Well here’s the thing – I’m starting to think that I’m stuck.

I mean, true . . . it’s only been a weekend so far, and also true is the fact that I’ve been needing a bit of a break. True as well is the fact that this isn’t exactly writer’s block I’m talking about here. Far from it, in fact. ‘Writer’s Deluge’, if you will.

I promised myself a little bit of time to think about what it was that I’d be doing next, sort of weigh the pros and cons of each of the projects that were lined up against the wall, waving madly at me and yelling “Oh, pick me! Pick me! MEeeeee! Over heeeerrrrreeee!”

After a good solid weekend of considering, I’m pretty certain that I’m going to have to resort to some sort of Survivor-esque reality show method of narrowing down the field. Maybe I’ll make them jump through hoops, have them fight each other or something.

Wait a second! Zomg! Fictional characters in yet-to-be-written novels fight in the author’s imagination for the right to get written, with the loser-

Grrrr! No! Bad imagination! No more new ideas!

(covertly writes that one down)

So, my update? The proof of Macb- . . . uh, of The Scottish Play is on its way, and will be gracing the shelves of Amazon soon, if that place even has shelves. I somehow doubt it.

In the meantime, I resolve to spend even more time figuring out what it is that I’m going to do next. I believe it’s going to be a pairing of Hamlet and something else, with Hamlet being done at about half the speed that Macbe- . . . that The Scottish Play was.

Where did this reluctance to say the dude’s name come from, anyway? It’s not like it’s cursed or something! Watch – Macbeth, Macbeth Macbe-

(A large anvil falls on Aaron’s head)

(Anvil takes a bow. The audience goes wild)

As I’m sure everybody knows, I’m a pretty modest and humble guy. In fact, I might go so far as to say I’m the most humble guy in the world, and I could literally go on for hours about how modest I am. I’m doing a thesis on it as a matter of fact, one which is sure to be published in the next month’s edition of “Awesome Humble Guys Monthly”

And then a funny thing happened, something as unexpected as a punch in the face. No, wait . . . I’ve done lots of things that deserve a good, solid punch to the face, and I’ve been waiting expectantly for these things to catch up to me, so a punch to the face should be no surprise. Hmm. How about ‘As unexpected as tiger in a floral print dress’?  There, much better.

Where was I? Oh yes. Unexpected.

So I finish my first ‘Shakespeare for Slackers‘ book (Romeo and Juliet) and start my second, which promises to be as awesome as the first, and should be done even quicker. I celebrate the appearance of the book on Amazon, and then decided to take a small sampling (the first twenty pages) and upload it to a neat little writing site I’m on called Scribd. I’ve got both Vincent Tucat novels up there for people to peruse, comment on, download, rate, all sorts of neat stuff. It’s a pretty sweet deal – you put your stuff up, categorize it, and people in the community can read it. You can subscribe to authors and other users, so when they put stuff up you’re notified of the fact. The ‘stuff’ can be anything from full-blown 500 page novels all the way down to a one-page recipe for mom’s chicken noodle soup. Way cool.

So I upload it. Usually I track my readership stats every morning as part of my routine. Usually I average about 4-5 reads a day, which is cool. I think, “Hey, someone checked my stuff out.” A ‘read’ can be anything from “I read your entire book cover to cover without even stopping to go to the bathroom” all the way to “Wha? No, this isn’t what I wanted to click on! Where’s the damn backspace key?”

The day after I uploaded it, I checked my stats. 25 reads for all my documents, and I said “Awesome!”  Went to work, had a good day, all good. Check the next day, 15 reads. And so on for about a week, where it would be up and down and up again. People were commenting on it, giving it ratings (5 stars, woohoo!) and all kinds of stuff. I’m averaging 15 reads a day, and that’s cool.

Then the Scribd people took a look at it, and they must have said “Hey, this is kind of neat!” because they featured it on their main page.

I looked at my stats last night just before going to bed, and it was at 245 reads.  I made this face:   o.O

This morning I looked at the document stats. I don’t have my ‘read’ stats for the day, but you can tell how many times a document has been read within the document stats itself, and it’s updated pretty often throughout the day.

Last count: 1661

The comments and the ratings for it have reinforced my notion that this is a very good idea.

And so, at the risk of sounding less than modest, I must point out the following at this time: I rock. There, I said it. If it means that I lose out on the “AHGM Modest Man of the Year” award, so be it. It had to be said.

There’s a few people with conflicting viewpoints regarding the act of writers ‘giving their stuff away’ online, much in the same way that there’s a ‘few’ drops of water in the ocean. Many writers see nothing wrong with it and do it as much as they possibly can, others start foaming at the mouth and use words like ‘Devaluation’ and ‘Second-rate’ and ‘Idiot’, swearing that those other people are killing the industry, ruining things for decent folk like themselves, and are little better than Nazis.

There are benefits to giving your stuff away, to be sure. Stephen King himself attempted that in 2000, providing an online serial e-book called “The Plant” that you could download for free and pay for using the ‘honor system’, just in order to find out how this whole strange intrawebbernet thing worked. Scott Sigler’s free audiobooks are legendary, and people could listen to his completed story long before anything was available for print. Some could argue that the whole reason his books sold as well as it did was because he’d built an audience for it prior to releasing it, and they’d probably be right.

On the other hand, you’re giving it away. “Are you crazy?” is one of the more common responses, even from writers who know and understand how things work. They’re the ones who look at the numbers, the downloads, all the information available to them and they think to themselves “Every time someone is able to read a copy of someone’s stuff, that’s a book sale that’s been lost. They don’t need to buy it then – they already have it!” They think of it in terms of their livelihood, money getting taken out of their pocket. Small surprise they don’t like the notion.

To me, giving stuff away is fast becoming a way of breaking in, generating interest, even finding out if you’re any good. The notion that I can ‘devalue’ someone else’s work just because my work is out there for free is really only valid if I’ve got the same product as that someone else, or something equivalent. Really, if I’m crap, me giving something away for free doesn’t bother published authors, who are obviously not crap. Or maybe they are. Who knows? I’ve read enough terrible books in my day. Still, I would almost consider being told by an author that I’m “Killing the print industry” to be a compliment of sorts – I’m at least good enough to get them riled up over the fact that I’m giving my stuff away. If I were writing 2-paragraph fanfic about Indiana Jones brushing his teeth, doubtless I wouldn’t get that sort of reaction.

The point is that things are changing all the time, and the internet itself is such a massive change that we haven’t really figured out just how much of our lives have been changed as a result of it. I think most published authors are safe for the moment – being published has always been one of those things that the public interprets as meaning ‘this is not crap, you should buy it’, much like the Times Bestseller list does. A teenager writing his first novel and posting chapters on his blog for everyone to see is not responsible for John Grisham waking up in the dead of night in a cold sweat. Nobody reads the teenager’s stuff and thinks to themselves “Hey, this is good! This beats the John Grisham novel I was going to pick up today! I can just save my money and read this instead!” Or if they do think that, I’ve never been told about it.

Me? I’d rather be heard than paid, I suppose.

Anyways, in completely unrelated news, here’s a link to a free partial-something I’ve put together recently. Which brings us to:

Shakespeare Project – 99%

Just simply awaiting approval on the files, at which point I’ll get a proof and see what happens. Exciting, though it does remind me that I need to post a picture of the cover, and then I’m going to have to go over the details of the site and make sure that I’ve got all my links and images and promo stuff together, all pointing at the right places, stuff like that. Oy . . . the work never ends.

My incredibly motivated alter-ego is trying to kill me.

It occurred to me early this morning, as I was still blinking some of the sleep out of my eyes, that there was something I could do . . . something bold and daring, something that a wacky hero on a circa 1970 TV comedy show might hear about and say “You know something? That’s just crazy enough, it might actually work!”

Ah, how I miss those crazy circa 1970 TV comedy show days. You couldn’t be tired and cliché in those days . . . everything was fresh and new, and ideas were ripe and ready to pick, practically dying to get overused to the point of cliché.

Anyways . . . I’m just trying to delay the inevitable here, which is putting this out there for the world (3 people) to see. So, enough dilly-dallying and reminiscing about the checkered, striped, and lime-green past. Here goes . . .

Updates like the ones I’ve been doing aren’t hard. They’re born of the nagging sort of ‘Hey, I haven’t done this in a while, and I probably should’ kind of guilt that into my head from time to time, when I realize that I’ve actually spent the past hour googling for pictures of swiss cheese for no other reason than to count the bubbles. I mean, if I can spend an hour doing something like that, I can spend at least ten minutes coming up with a quick note about writing, what’s going on, and where I’m at, right?

And then this idea struck me. The implications terrify me.

I said to myself, “Self? You can spare ten minutes every day, can’t you? I mean, you’re writing, you’ve got projects on the go, you’ve got all sorts of things occupying your time and energy, but you can spend ten minutes a day putting together a brief something, right?”

So I replied to myself, “Uhm, yeah. Yeah, I guess,” not liking where this was going.

So then I said to myself, “Well, that’s settled then. We’re going to increase the frequency of posting. You know what? Just to make it easier on you, we’ll do updates every other day!”

“Uhm, thanks?” I said to myself. “I guess that’s . . . good? Hmm, what will I write about though?”

“Glad you asked – that’s actually the brilliant part! What you’ll do is you’ll identify each of the projects you’re working on and provide updates on progress made, so that people will get to see how much work you’re putting into stuff! And, of course, this’ll shame you into doing even more work, because you don’t ever want to post an update that just says ‘Hey, I did nothing these past 2 days. Sod off.’ Do you? Public shame as a motivator! It’ll be awesome!”

“Now hold on a second,” I shot back at myself heatedly, “I didn’t agree to that! Let’s just slow down here a second, figure this whole thing out!”

“Nope, sorry . . . done deal! Mwahahaha!” I laughed, running off before I could do or say anything to change my mind.

Stupid alter-ego.

So, there we are. I guess I’m stuck with it. Starting now, updates at least every other day, and in those updates I shall speak of the progress I’ve made since the last update I’ve done.

(deep breath) Okay, starting . . . (checks wristwatch, realizes he doesn’t wear one, and instead stares at his wrist for an appropriate amount of time so he doesn’t look silly) . . . Now!