I’m still working my way through Talyn, by Holly Lisle. If you recall, I did teasers for it twice before: here and here. I’m now about 7/16 through, and still singing its praises. A reading session with this story always leaves me that “Wow!” sensation that I love. Frankly, Holly has ruined every other book for me. I should be angry with her, but for some reason I’m not. Maybe she’s bewitched me, as her character Talyn has— Uh. But you’ll have to read the book for that. (Wouldn’t want to give it away, would I?)

As an author myself, I’ve noticed several typos in this printing of Talyn. However, that makes me feel a little better about the first time I saw a copy of From the Ashes of Courage. I flipped through to a random page and suddenly found the word “officialdate” staring back at me. How did that get in there?! I immediately went back to earlier proofreader copies, sought out that page… Yup. Even the earliest manuscript had that typo, every version right back to the beginning, and with all the reviews, every single one of us missed it before the thing went to press. Ugh.

Speaking of which, there’s only one day left to enter the two free giveaways of copies of From the Ashes of Courage, on Neil Shurley’s blog and Missy Frye’s “Incurable Disease of Writing” blog.

Today’s teaser, from page 474 (randomly selected by Random.org) of Talyn—and I struggled to find a good teaser from this page that did not give away the earlier story; I think this one works, but in the process, I spoiled some of the story for myself; I guess that’s one of the risks of doing this teasers:

“We’re here to ask for your help,” I said, looking up at the faces that stared down at us…

My eyes filled with unexpected tears and I had to swallow hard and wipe at my eyes with the back of my hand to fight them back.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just follow the directions at the “Teaser Tuesdays” post.

-TimK

Two giveaways this week of From the Ashes of Courage:

That Great Neil Guy

Neil Shurley, a fellow writer (whose stories I love), fellow science-fiction fan, fellow Star Trek nerd, and the guy who tipped me off about the new Columbo book, he’s graciously giving away a copy of From the Ashes of Courage. Check out his blog, browse through Neil’s stories, and enter the book giveaway before September 8.

Fellow Writers, Check This Out

Missy Frye, who with last week’s Just Write Blog Carnival gave away a copy of Love through the Eyes of an Idiot, is this week repeating the process with a copy of From the Ashes of Courage. Check out the posts at this week’s Just Write Blog Carnival, enter the giveaway, and browse through the other great posts at Missy’s blog, Incurable Disease of Writing.

-TimK

Missy Frye has graciously allowed me to give away a copy of the Love-Idiot book in order to support the “Just Write Blog Carnival,” which has published numerous links to my own articles and stories.

This is just the first in a large number of giveaways happening across the Internet over the coming weeks. I’ll post more later.

-TimK

P.S. If you’d like to give away a copy of one of my books, please contact me and let me know. There are still some as of yet unallocated.

Driving up the Maine Turnpike this weekend, I took pause from, of all things, the landscape. Not just from the beauty of it, but I got a feeling that it was distinctly American. In Maine, the culture still retains some of the human community values that I often associate with the original Americans. And for just a moment, I could imagine myself dwelling on the unpaved American landscape, with pride.

I wondered what would have happened, had those of our progenitors not been decimated by disease in the 18′th century, how different might our history have turned out. And I promised myself I’d think about writing an epic fantasy or SF story about it, with a fictional people locked in the same conflict, facing the same issues. And then I discovered that Holly Lisle had written than story.

Actually, I don’t know yet that Holly has written the same story I wanted to write. I only know that over the weekend, I had a great deal of time to read. I picked up Talyn, which I had just started. And I found as the story developed that Holly was exploring many of the same issues I wanted to explore, and from a similar perspective. And I found that she had done so by creating a fictional world rich in history, culture, and human need.

And magic. In the world of Korre, where Talyn lives, people use magic as technology. Talyn herself is one of the Magics, a person who has a talent for magic, and in her job as a Shielder, she protects her tāak and her country from the magic attacks of the Eastils.

That’s really just an ice cube off this iceberg. I’m already finding, however, that I’m becoming immersed in this culture and with these people. As an author, I read a lot of crap, and even some stuff that longs to be as good as crap. And to delve into a story as enchanting and engrossing as this brings sheer Wow!

Today’s teaser, from page 251 (randomly selected by Random.org) of Talyn:

Skirmig stared into Talyn’s darkened room where she lay, a coiled shadow-shape beneath the covers. She slept deeply, and if he had done his work well enough, she would sleep for a handful of days, and wake refreshed and remembering only the version of events that he had planted in her mind.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just follow the directions at the “Teaser Tuesdays” post.

-TimK

Scene from Star Trek: The Next Generation, "A Fistful of Datas"

Now that I have some money coming in, one of my top items to get is an ebook reader. And in my typical style, I began thinking of all the ways I’d love to use such a device to help me in my work. Unfortunately, in my typical style, no reader out there does most of what I would want to do.

I realized that what I really wanted was one of those PADDs they have on Star Trek. It can work as an independent device that you can use to read or write content. But it also seamlessly integrates with the main computer system, to retrieve and store data and to share content with others.

For example, in the episode “A Fistful of Datas,” the Enterprise computer’s directories become corrupted, such that when you try to access a file, it turns up with the wrong data. Picard tries to listen to his Mozart trio, and the computer instead plays a selection from Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances. And when some crew members try to rehearse Beverley’s play, their PADDs instead show the lines from Data’s poetry. The PADDs are obviously pulling data directly from the Enterprise’s computer memory, as needed.

In other episodes, we see characters do the converse, select something on a PADD and then seamlessly shift to a computer console to complete a task. That’s the sort of thing that would be useful for me.

• Use the tablet to view reference material as I write code or use programs. When I read about a command I need to enter, I highlight it on the tablet, then I switch to my laptop, pull down a menu, and seamlessly paste the command into the application.

• In my computer’s browser, bookmark web pages I want to read. (For example, #FridayFlash stories.) Then read them on my tablet.

• While reading a novel on the tablet, keep notes on my reading experience. Then later, on my computer, use those notes a seeds for writing a book review.

• Proofread on the tablet, keeping notes of my corrections. Then on the computer, make those corrections in the original document, copying corrections and pasting them in when I need to.

None of these involve rocket science or brain surgery. I might even be able to make them work with a little creative scripting, if I can get access to the underlying data and services. I know I can on my Mac, but I don’t know whether any given tablet device will let me do it.

So for now, I’m only counting on finding a simple generic ereader, maybe with ability to keep notes. Anything else I’m able to pull out of it will simply be a bonus.

-TimK

I’ve been absent, as you may know, because my computer’s mainboard died, and I’ve been busy with a new software contract, and our only working car stopped working, and then my computer’s hard drive died. (Yes, I’m getting tired of it all.) As a result, I hadn’t had have much time to write over part of June and the whole of July, and I truly missed writing. (But that’s another blog post.) I also didn’t have time to read, and I missed it, too. Now that life is returning to kinda-normal, I’ve finished reading Truffles by the Sea, which I loved, and A Time to Tell.

One of the beneficial side-effects of the software contract, of course, is that I have the money to do something I’ve wanted to for some time: an Internet-wide book give-away. I’m in the process of contacting numerous book bloggers, asking each if she’d like to give away a copy of one of my books. I can mail the books to the winners, but I need bloggers to host the giveaways and choose the winners. I don’t know that I’ll ever do a giveaway of this scale ever again. If you’d like to be included, please contact me and let me know.

For my next read, I long for a story that I’ll adore. That means something by Holly Lisle. Specifically, Talyn. I’ve left this book of hers sitting on my shelf for far too long, just because I haven’t gotten around to reading it. “Not your average fantasy book,” according to Robin Hobb. This book should’ve been an order of magnitude more popular than Twilight, were it not for Sturgeon’s Law. A book with as rough a birth as any book gets. An epic story born of an epic concept that was years in the making. According to Holly, “the best world I’d ever built, with the best cultures, the best people, and the best stories in my career.” I’ve just begun reading Talyn, but from the very first pages, this book effuses inspiration.

Enough gushing. Now onto the teaser. Today’s teaser, from page 49 (randomly selected by Random.org) of Talyn:

“Next time, flip him on his back, jump on top of him, ride him like a good horse…”

“Me lead him?” Pada was scandalized; her reply was bright orange, sharp as hedgehog quills.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just follow the directions at the “Teaser Tuesdays” post.

-TimK

Photo © 2010 Mike Cohen CC 2.0 BY NC ND

I apologize for the delay. It’s been over two weeks since my last post, and I haven’t replied to anyone’s comments or emails. Part of the reason is that I billed over 30 hours last week on this new software-development job, a heavy week for an off-site contractor. (I’ll have to explain to you the math of billed contractor hours versus employee hours sometime.) And I’ll probably bill about 30 hours this week, too. In between those hours—at least last week—I spent numerous hours taxiing the family around, my Beloved to and from work, my daughter C to and from school. I would get up in the morning, drive around, and get home just in time to start working with the guys at Client Z, out on the west coast.

That’s because we had one working car, and it wasn’t even ours.

As you may recall, July 7, our one working car, the Saturn, died. The transmission got stuck in first gear, and the shifter was kinda just loose in the console. In fact, it wasn’t completely loose, but it also wasn’t attached to the transmission. I drove the car down the street—in first gear all the way—to Mike and his crew at Long Life Auto Repair, my favorite mechanic and also the favorite of my brother and several of our friends. Mike is always busy like you wouldn’t believe. Apparently, the recession has not diminished his business too much. (Possibly the reverse.)

Mike finally got back to me, told me the cable connecting the shifter to the transmission had broken, and to replace it would cost over $400. We had also asked them to look into why the car tended to overheat in stop-and-go traffic; new radiator fan, over $200. The final bill came to $655 and change, money we didn’t have.

Fortunately, I have a better relationship with my parents than Lorelai Gilmore has with hers, and I wasn’t too embarrassed to ask them for a loan. If this had happened next month, after my first invoice had been paid on the software-development contract, I would have had plenty of cash. But writing doesn’t pay as well as you might imagine (in your dreams), and money has been tight. Mom and Dad opened up their checkbook, and we were able to get the Saturn fixed. Kinda. Sorta.

Skipping ahead in the story, it took several days for them to get the parts in for the shifter repair. And then it still didn’t quite work right. It still gets stuck in gear, and sometimes out-of-gear, too. Truthfully, shifting has been hit-and-miss for a while, but it’s always seemed manageable to me. (Maybe it’s the way I drive.) We imagine that it got stuck in gear, and when my Beloved tried to shift, the cable broke. I finally got the car back, a week and a half after it broke down. And while the shifter does work, I can also reliably make it stick in gear. I also know how to get it unstuck.

(Short description, if your curious: Put the car in first gear or reverse, travel in that gear, then come to a complete stop. The transmission will be stuck in gear. To get it unstuck, put it in neutral while the car is rolling. Or alternatively, turn off the engine; that will also unstick it. Similarly, from other gears, shift into neutral while the car is still rolling, or else you may not be able to get it into first. For example, if you’re driving in fourth gear, after you come to a stop you’ll be able to shift into neutral, but then the car will be stuck in neutral. You’ll need to double-clutch or maybe even turn off the engine in order to unstick it.)

The gang at Long Life Auto thinks it may be the transmission, the clutch, or maybe one of the hydraulic cylinders controlling the clutch (preventing the clutch from fully disengaging). I don’t know yet how much it would cost to replace the cylinder, but anything else on that list would surely be a pricey bill for a 12-year-old car.

For now, I alone am using the car, and only for occasional, local driving, which is all I needed it for anyhow.

While the Saturn was in the shop, I was prepared to rent a car (using money we did not have). But my friend Tony (not his real name) had an extra vehicle, a small pickup truck he uses in his plastering business. Unfortunately, he had loaned the truck to his daughter, while her car was down at Mike’s. (Ah! So that’s why Mike couldn’t look at my car! <g>) However, Tony’s daughter’s husband loaned his car to Tony, so that Tony could loan his SUV to his wife, so that she could loan her car to my Beloved and me for a few days. Somehow, they managed to pull that together within 10 minutes of discussion without getting hopelessly confused. And after the daughter got her car back from the shop, they unwound the chain, and Tony loaned us his pickup over the weekend. So I doubly owe them.

Then Mom and Dad threw a curve ball at us. Apparently, they felt bad that they had bought two cars for my brother during his life, and also paid for his wedding rehearsal. And they helped my other brother and his wife buy a house. And all they had ever done for me and my Beloved was to patiently bear with my snotty teenage independence. Actually, they also helped me out after I had totalled my new Geo Prizm in the winter of 1990. And they’ve been incredibly supportive of my writing career, such as it is, even though they may not realize how important that support is to me.

(I promise this story is almost over.)

So Mom and Dad threw us a curve ball. Long story short: they bought us a car. It’s a 2010 Toyota Corolla LE with about 10,000 miles on it, probably a corporate lease before we got it. The car pictured above is not ours, but ours is indeed silver, so it was really easy to find an online photo that looks just like it. Yes, I am now officially part of the lowest common denominator.

I actually haven’t gotten around to taking a picture of our new Toyota yet, but I understand that it’s already gotten into an accident with an SUV, in the parking garage at the doctor’s office. I haven’t seen the damage (if any), but… I had my Geo Prizm only a few months before I totalled it on I-95, and if you recall, the Prizm was essentially a rebranded Toyota Corolla. In fact, today’s Corollas still remind me of my old Prizm.

That’s why I say, God sometimes has an ironic sense of balance.

-TimK

Photo © 2008 David J Laporte CC 2.0 BY

“Why does all this stuff happen to us? It can’t be bad karma. We never did anything.” Or so says the Little One. And I think she’s right. Sometimes shit just happens.

And if it could have waiting just another month or two, I wouldn’t even be in a jam. Incredible. It’s like, just when you think things are looking up and you can breathe easy and ends will finally meet without stretching, the universe is like, “Uh. Hold on a sec—” Or as Dad puts it sometimes, “Cheer up! Things are going to get worse.”

(My Little One is not so little any more, BTW. But I still call her that. She insists. I don’t think she wants to grow up.)

Since last week, I’ve started working this new software-development contract. Last night, I had my first real “Aha!” moment. The engineer I’m working with seems a capable guy and easy to work with. Blessings for a confirmed cynic. Money’s still a little tight, until I get paid on my first invoice, which should happen in about a month. That’s how it is in independent contract work. But we can make it. And in the meantime, I’m keeping track day by day of how much I’ve earned. Yeah, money is a poor motivator, which is something that people say who already have plenty of money. But as it turns out, this contract looks like it will be bearable anyhow, and maybe even enjoyable. I was actually feeling pretty good about my situation.

And then…

Then my Beloved is taking my daughter C to her summer-school class, and the stick shift on our Saturn SL1 stops shifting. (That’s a lot of S‘ssss.) It’s stuck in first gear, and the shifter feels like it’s just hanging loose in the console.

My first thought, of course, is “transmission,” and once you use the T-word, you’re potentially talking lots of money. And this car ain’t worth lots of money. But I wasn’t planning on buying a new car, and I can’t afford one. I wasn’t even planning on buying a new-for-me, used car, not even a cheap one.

A little Googling turned up others who have had what sounds like the same problem. So if it is the same problem, and if my mechanic can find a reasonably priced replacement for the plastic part that broke, maybe it is still worth fixing.

In the meantime, I’m scraping together the cash for a tow truck and a rental car. If this had happened a month later, I wouldn’t need to scrape together the cash. Instead, I have to take time to deal with this, which makes it harder for me to find time for the contract work that will be ultimately pay for the repair.

This sucks. I’m sick and tired of borrowing against my future to pay for today’s emergencies. I wish God would just give me a break, just a small one, just 30-60 days in which I can breathe easy and sit back and go through my daily routine and all my needs will be met without a huge amount of stress.

And on that note… I guess we’ll have to see whether I’m buying a car or not.

-TimK

Photo © 2005 thomas23 CC 2.0 BY NC SA

I’m sitting here in Dunkin’ Donuts, Wednesday morning, with nothing that I feel like writing about, eating a delicious breakfast sandwich that will probably set my cholesterol and blood pressure back six months, mentally preparing for my MRI, which will take place in about a half an hour. “Mentally preparing,” that’s the medical term for “working up anxiety that they actually might find something wrong with me, or that something might go wrong, like I’ll accidentally bring a steel nail file into the MRI room and the superconducting magnet will stab me to death with it, which I’m sure you agree would be not very pleasant.”

Why am I getting an MRI? The same reason I got a new BP prescription. (By “BP,” I mean “blood pressure,” and even though it does have to do with oil, not that kind of oil.) I’m getting an MRI, because over the past several months, I’ve been suffering from headaches, debilitating at times— migraines, we think, probably.

My father also suffered from migraines when he was about my age, and my brother and I were about the same age as my kids are now. Interestingly, as soon as we grew up and moved out of the house, my father’s migraines disappeared. So my headaches may be partially hereditary. The answer, in any case, seems clear: all I have to is wait until the kids grow up and move out, and then I can have nice things again.

In the meantime, my doctor recommended I try a different blood-pressure medication. I had been taking HCTZ/lisinopril, and my BP was about 140/80, on the border of hypertension. Last week, he gave me a prescription for atenolol, which partially blocks adrenaline (a β₁ blocker). Other beta-blockers are sometimes prescribed to treat migraines, and one of the side-effects of atenolol is that it sometimes relieves migraines.

So far, its effects on my headaches have been marginal at best. But give it another week.

One thing I did notice, however, is that about an hour after I took my first dose, my BP dropped to about 100/65, leading to another noted side-effect, dizziness. Since then, my BP has partially rebounded (120/75), but it’s still lower than it was before.

Aside from the new meds, my doctor also asked me to get an MRI. I guess it’s standard procedure when someone begins having headaches, even though 99 and some-large-number/100′ths percent of the time, they find absolutely nothing. (Find nothing wrong, that is.) They originally wanted me to have the procedure done, like, on the same day as my doctor’s appointment. (Ain’t US healthcare great?!) I had them push it off a week. Even so, I’m sure the MRI will make my Beloved happy, who worries about horrors like brain tumors.

It’s almost time for me to go check in at the MRI lab. So let me end this rambling post with one more thought. If I for some reason do not survive the procedure, would my heir please post this to my blog with a note that I told you so!

-TimK

P.S. I clearly made it through the procedure, without incident, which is how I was able to post this to my blog. Maybe I’ll be able to get some kewl pictures to show.

Photo © 2005 Jimmy Hilario CC 2.0 BY NC ND

Ain’t it fascinating how your life can be completely derailed by a few days of computer downtime (and an impending new job, and a birthday party, and Mario Kart)?

My MacBook Pro’s checkerboard-display crashing problem, which first hit back in January, suddenly reappeared about two and a half weeks ago. After several hours of persistence, I finally got the computer to boot again.

All that time, I was not writing.

It crashed then once or twice more during the week, and through persistence I goaded it back, limping along.

This time, the problem seemed worse than it had in January. I felt it was about time to take it in for service. And then it stopped booting at all. I couldn’t get the computer to come back. But I didn’t know how I was going to afford the repair bill.

On top of that, my daughter C’s MacBook, which I use as a backup, it was also out of service. I had been running a data-recovery program on it for months, trying to get every last bit of data I could off of its failing hard drive. Again, I didn’t know where I was going to find the money for a replacement hard drive. But I knew I needed to work something out, somehow.

At around the same time, Danny from Hungary also ran into a similar problem. He ended up buying a new MacBook Pro, and he disassembled the old one and reflowed (melted) the solder around the graphics chip with a hot-air gun. (He posted a cool video of the process on YouTube.)

As for me, through persistence, I managed to boot my MacBook Pro using the install DVD—just once; that’s all it took. And I backed up every single piece of data on the thing.

All this time, I was not writing. I was not blogging. I was not checking Twitter or Plurk or Facebook. I was not reading my email.

Then my parents graciously offered to take me to Microcenter to buy me a new hard drive for C’s MacBook.

After Microcenter, Dad and I swung by a nearby Apple Store to see what the guys at the Genius Bar thought of my old MacBook Pro. We fully expected to have to buy a new one, because we figured it would cost too much to have this one repaired. And that kind of sucked, because just last October, I had them replace almost everything in it. Really. Back then, the computer had suffered from having been dropped and having root beer spilled all over it. (No joke.) Beside that, the DVD drive wasn’t working so well. So I had had it refurbished, which involved a new everything except the LCD and hard drive.

We were pleasantly surprised at the Apple Store, however. First of all, the Apple Genius dude told me they offered a flat-rate $310 repair service on these older MBP’s, which is much cheaper than what I was expecting. And when I told him about the October refurbishing, even though it was technically out of warranty, he snuck in the repair for free.

So my MBP didn’t cost anything to fix, but it took several days. (They also replaced the keyboard and trackpad, which they said were broken; but I swear both were working perfectly when I dropped the computer off at the Apple Store. No charge, so I didn’t complain. But my trackpad does act funny now.)

In the meantime, I installed the new hard drive into C’s MacBook and restored all of my data onto it, temporarily.

This whole process took a couple days, between backing everything up, going shopping, and restoring my data onto the new hard drive. And all that time, I wasn’t writing. (Actually, I did post one blog post, using a very old, obsolete desktop computer in my basement. Not fun.) And once I got my MBP back, it took another day to transfer all the data back to it.

Gotta cut this story short.

Bottom line: I got little work done while I was wrestling with my computer.

And then Father’s Day came upon us, this year also my birthday. And so I took it easy and enjoyed my birthday party. And my brother, bless him, gave me a copy of Mario Kart Wii. And I’ve been spending so many hours playing it that I’m finally sick of it. But I still dream about it all night long. (Seriously.) I felt an intense, primal need to play Mario Kart, to enhance my kewl Mario Kart skilz. But that’s a different post.

In between all this, a colleague contacted me about working this summer on a contract software-development project. And I would really like to have some money to invest in my writing. So I said yes, even though I’m still wary from my last software-developer disaster.

(This time, I’m going to try to avoid Idiotic Decision #3, and try not to become personally invested. From what I understand, they just want a code jockey, anyhow, just someone to sit behind a computer and wrestle with the code, not valuable advice about how to get their code to submit without the services of El Grapadura. So if the code smells like shit, well, at least they’re paying me a mint to slog through it.)

Yeah, I know money is not a very good reason to do something… until you don’t have any. Even so, money is still the most shallow, least compelling reason you can come up with. But maybe it’s enough of a reason just to last me for a few lousy months.

In any case, with me actually earning a living for a change, my blog postings may be spotty and sporadic this summer.

I ran some numbers, and… It’ll be really nice to have some money to invest in my writing.

In fact, as a big thank-you to God and the universe, I’m thinking of holding a monster book giveaway. By “monster,” I mean, “way too big.” I’m thinking hundreds of books, all being given out on blogs all over the Internet. You know, the kind of thing big publishers sometimes do and indie authors usually can’t afford.

Yeah, it would be nice to have some money to invest in my writing.

-TimK