foxfirestudios.net

I think I feel pretty much the lowest I’ve ever felt this morning. Just as I was about to get going on my second book when I got the word. Someone has hacked into my Wiki site and royally smucked it up. I’ll spare you the horrid details, but I’ll just say that it’s not safe for work, not safe for Disney, and not safe for human consumption. Let’s just say that it made the joke “The Aristocrats” tame in comparison.

And then I looked at the date of the changes: July 20.

I’ll say it again. July 20.

I just received word of the vandalism TODAY!

I don’t know whom I should be angry over worse: The Radio Edit who put this up, or ME! FOR LETTING IT STAY ON THIS LONG!!!!

…..I really need some support right now, because I’ve deleted the wiki, and I’m considering deleting the whole web site right now. I bust my tail off for over two years getting books written and published so I can, at the very least, earn something more than what I could earn flipping burgers. Right now . . . . it just seems too much for me to ask.

I’m happy to report that I’ve finished the Plot Deck for Blood and Metal.  Unfortunately, I knew that this deck would be a monster and I wasn’t disappointed:  193 Cards in this deck.  If I could make a 35K first draft with a deck of about 45, that means that this first draft might reach . . . 150K Words!  That’s one major project.  I might have to set this first draft to a 90 day schedule, maybe 100.

Not that I mind that much, tho.  That’s a hundred days which I have a reason to live.  Doesn’t bother me one bit.

I also have reached a point where I can set this project aside and return to other projects.  Such as the return of the Scarlet PI strip.  I’ll be making the cover pic for the Second Volume of the strip ready to send tomorrow, Saturday at the latest.  This will go alongside my read over of the first draft of Mim Su Sa, which I got everything prepared to do last week.

And I’ve haven’t forgotten Adam and company along the way too.  I’m working on some graphic pics for a My Space page on Adam-kun which should give Lost Boy Found some needed publicity.

Ever had the feeling that the last part of something takes longer than the rest of the item in question.  Like slowing down at the last ten cents of a $50 fill-up of gas, just so you can get at the exact amount.

It’s the same thing for Mim Su Sa as well.  It took me a while for me to get the last plot card worked on, but I managed.  I can say now that I have finished the first draft of ‘Murder in Main Street USA,” way before even the unadjusted deadline of July 3rd.

The length of the file is 38.25K in characters, and it took me 41 Days.  Not bad for my first major attempt to NaNoWriMo (and my second book.)  Yeah, yeah, I know.  A NaNoWriMo goal is 50K in 31 days.  Let me work toward that, okay?

I’ll be stashing the first draft for a while so I can rest up for a bit.  After that I’ll start on the plot cards for my third book.  Either Blood and Metal or maybe my next NaNoWriMo attempt, an Adam Packbell book.  Probably BaM, since I can squeeze a NaNoWriMo between drafts in BaM.

But anyway, this is a major event.  Even with the setback I had, I succeeded in my goal.

You want to know why I do not trust myself with a 50K word novel in under 30 days right now? It’s because of the chance of disasters like what I had to suffer this week. It’s Murphy’s Law being an absolute and, when you promise yourself to write that book “Come Hell or High Water?” Well, guess what? Hell _and_ High Water comes.

And when you have to trust a Vista machine to write your book, well? Just who decided to flick me the middle finger?

Yep. Vista can be as bitchy as ME at times.

It took me a total of four–yes, you heard that correctly–reinstalls of Vista just to get all of my programs up and running properly. It’s a good thing I decided long ago to save my files on a jump drive, or I would be pissed.

Be that as it may, I finally weathered the storm, but that means that I lost a lot of precious time to write a book. But that’s when I gave myself this stress-relieving permission: In the event of a computer related disaster, you are allowed to add up to 7 days in your deadline.

Which is what I did. I moved the deadline for Mim Su Sa from July 3 to July 10th. That should compensate for the time I lost.

Otherwise, progress has been good, and I’ve been developing a lot of scenes and characters. I won’t drop all the details right away, but I will state that the developing as I go might add some extra cards to the stack I have with me. This is a good thing, that means that the story is developing as I go along, and that’s what I wanted.

So with the corrections, I set my status at, as of 9PM June 7th, 15.6K words, 31 Cards to go, and 33 Days remaining.
Barring any more disasters.

I’ve just found out earlier today that my mother has breast cancer.  I heard it’s not too serious and she’s really optimistic about getting through this, but even with my Asperger’s riddled mind I know it’s gotta be bothering her.

But I have to go on record with this statement:  Anyone who openly declares their jollies over my mother’s illness will be hunted down.  I know you’re out there.  If it happened to Tony Snow and Jerry Farwell, it will certainly happen to my mother.  Maybe it’s that shell shock I have since the ninties.  Maybe I know the Troll sites too well, but when I heard the news over my mother, the first thought was for my mother’s well being.  The second thought was about what the trolls would say.

Sad isn’t it?  Thank you Radical Left Wing.

It took me a long time for me to get back into gear. It’s hard to get going when
you don’t have a good view of your destination, and for a few weeks I didn’t
have that. Especially when I don’t get much feedback over exasperated sighs
and a “Do. Whatever. You. Want. Damnit.” delivered at top lung. Sometimes
you just need to ask for directions when there’s multiple ways to go.
And now I found a decent goal to strive for: I have gathered all the cards I need
to write the rest of Scarlet’s first novel, “Murder in Main Street USA.” At this
moment, I have about 5.1 K of words typed in, a total of 53 ‘Pieces’ (Remember
with LBF I think of books as a puzzle with pieces that need to fit together,) and
I set a goal of a completed first draft within 45 days, which will last me til Mid-
July. There may be some additional notes to get, but I have enough for me to
NaNoWriMo all the way through. (I use ‘NaNoWriMo’ as a verb to signify
writing a book as fast as I can, with the eventual goal of writing a the first draft
within a month. I need to build my confidence up to that level.)
“Murder in Main Street USA,” which I’ll designate as either MiMSUSA or SPI01,
will be my second novel. It is also the reason why I’ve taken the comic strip to
the back burner. It was getting harder and harder for me to make the strips,
and if you’ve seen the meandering plotline, you’ll understand why. I hope that,
while I NaNoWriMo MiMSUSA . . . Mim Su Sa, at least it rolls off my toungue
right. My apologies for anyone who has that for a name . . . I think up a decent
chapter.
Meanwhile, I’m also happy to report that I’ve been getting some sales in the
book. It’s not much now, but not only is it still young and I’ve haven’t been
promoting it enough, it’s also the encouragement I needed.
And promoting it more is what I’ll be doing when I’m not typing up a storm. I’ll
be planning to make small promotional pieces I can pass around advertizing
the book, and I’ll be adding to the LBF site.
The biggest addition will be Adam’s return to the web site with his own blog.
I’ll put up a header graphic to announce his entries, and his first one will be a
catching up to speed with his readers. He also might tell of how he meets up
with Scarlet, as well as other stories.

Having heard all the suggestions on how I should keep people on track with the meandering comic strip, provide a better way to navigate through the page over at my home site, and to provide a room for an planned novel, I’ve created a brand new Scarlet PI site. I’ve even given it it’s own subdomain at this http://scarletpi.foxfirestudios.net . I hope this helps, especially as I add more content as suggestions come up.

In other news, I have a tentative cover ready to use for Lost Boy Found and, if all things go well, will be released next month. Well on my goal of a release date on my Birthday. With all the times I stay on schedule, I’m glad I picked Writer as a career choice.

What a difference a month makes for a college.

I have to say that what happened this week at Virgina Tech surprised me as well. Although to me the surprising part was that it happened in a high-class college and not at a hellhole public school, like the schools I’ve gone to.

As some of you know, I have a scathing report against the Public School system, for the one reason being that I was one of those people who, as Dennis Miller says, had a tick (as in ticking time bomb) that had an echo. I was driven into an inner world from sixth grade to well into my 20s because of the environment in Granite City School District #9. The combination of the pressures by the faculty and the hostilities from my peers caused me to suffer a break from reality. This was during the Eighties.

I’ll say this again: What I summarized in the above paragraph happened during the Eighties. There was a very good change that you’d be seeing my name on top of all the School Shooters you’d know today. I could, I very well could, become one of those monsters, just like Cho Seung-Hui.

It took me a while for me to get out of that darkness in my psyche, but I managed to with help and support. I have a more or less better adjusted lifestyle with my own apartment, a steady part time job, and a budding writing career with a lot of material to work with thanks to the time I spent in my own personal Wonderland. But every now and then I think back to what might have happened and shudder.

I could have been blowing up a real brick and mortar school, rather than write about a fictional school becoming the victim of a pair of Pier Six Brawls: Adam v Hook above it, Pan v Blackard inside it. Another teaser for Lost Boy Found. Let’s just say that the school never had a chance.

But that’s not saying that I don’t have any sympathy toward the tragedy in VT. I feel terrible for the loss; it shouldn’t be done to a college that good. And I’m convinced that nobody realized that there was a problem until that student actually arrived to the school. I don’t think that Cho’s family or even Cho himself knew about it until he enrolled. And that family’s Korean, I heard they’re more close knit than normal.

But I know that there are others who are just about to start ticking inside. Maybe they started to slip into that darkness that I know all so well, maybe even as young as I was. I got lucky, I was able to get back from that brink. But it would be even better for me if I was helped out from that darkness before I was a teenager. Before I slipped into my inner fairy tale world for over 15 years.

If Cho was showing signs of what he might become before he was a teenager, and he got help at that point, maybe things would have been different.

I’m happy to report that I’ve got this book set into a presentable form. I do hope that I got all the bugs ironed out. At least that’s what I’m thinking. But then again, for all those stray typo bunnies that the voice in the back of my head still claims is there, that’s what the Creative Commons file is for. That one error is bound to be found and put into a future Edition, (or version as I call them) I know it.I’ll be working on the Blood and Metal revision now, as well as some cover art for LBF, and maybe have Adam come back with his blog entries.

In other news

As you know, I’ve taken down my forum because of the overload of spam bots crowding the place. This form is about to be replaced with a better defense against those abominations of desolation. I’ll still have the strong arm against flamers, though. Remember that I can handle debate, but this ain’t the Portal of Evil or Encyclopedia Dramatica. Act like an asshole, you will get the punt.

Lost Boy Found

I’ve gotten through the final major edits of the story done, a week before the deadline, may I add, and the book is now with a pair of editors, where the jots and tittles of the book (the grammar and verb tenses and those Radio Edit typos that I know are there) will be taken care of before the Lulu Publishing in May. I’ve been given a report that it is indeed original enough not to be dismissed as a Fanfict, so I can use this book to launch my career over at Lulu.com.

Scarlet PI

Good News: I’m back at making SPI strips, and I’m using that strip as my experimenting lab for my drawing style. Bad News: Using a HP PSC 1401 to scan in strip work is the Bleep. I’m going to need a better flatbed. E-Bay Time.

Note: Anyone who wants to commission some artwork from me, feel free and do so now. Those who commissioned me before know I work a lot better when I get paid.

Blood and Metal

I’ve just now started on the revision, and believe me, you’ll find the story completely changed from the very first story I’ve posted on the net. I’m still looking around for suggestions and ideas to bat around, and there’s the wiki on my site for that purpose. Watch this space, as well as my site, for further progress.