time and time again, I input a new item on my blog, and all too often it is then announced that there has been a server error and I should tell someone. It does this now and again when I access and delete spam, when I check on others of my posts, and then I want to look at settings. It seems to have a ‘thing’ about it, and I’m getting irked. Frankly, I don’t care if the site has a hangup on server errors, I just wish it would stop telling me or having them on my site!!!
My Musings on Old Age 37
sigh, it seems that I am a bit busy these days. At the start of the year I signed five contracts for books already written – and assumed that I could now get on with writing more. What I’d overlooked was revision. Six months later I’d completed the revision, and am now up to my eyebrows in writing the ‘more’ I’d planned. However either because of age, or sheer busyness, I keep forgetting to blog. For anyone regularly accessing this blog, please forgive me. But there are only so many hours in the day.
Something that has NOT been helped by problems with my new computer – which resisted the attempts of three different technicians to get me either onto dial-up again, or, when that consistently failed, to get me on to broadband. In fact things are still not quite sorted with the latter, but may be so in another few days. However there are times when I long for simpler days of word processing. (Of course, in those days the alternative problem was editors or the PO losing mss, so nothing is perfect) however I still think that computer technology could be made more user-friendly, and what I’d like to know is – why isn’t it? Because this user doesn’t find it all that ‘friendly.’
My Musings on Old Age 37
when I was a teenager, the people I knew who died, did so mostly from accidents or the occasional suicide. In my 30s to 50s, it wa smostly from cancer. But this past twelve months it’s been heart attacks that are starting to thin the ranks of those I know. First there was that massive 7.8 quake last November, which gave my oldest friend (of fifty+ years) a heart attack – which, very happily, she survived.
But then a relative whom I’ve known for the last forty years had a heart attack and died virtually as he hit the ground. I have to say I’m not heartbroken, I knew him because we’re related but he wasn’t a friend.
And then, this week I had the news that a fan friend I’d known for close to 3o years had died in Canada. I don’t think there was a lot of hope from the start, but some prayed, some just hopeed or held good tbhoughts, but it was no use and now he’s gone. He was a crusty, contumacious, said-what-he-was-thinking no matter how much it offended some, sort of guy, but we liked him anyway, and I’ll miss him. He was a mainstay of fanzine fandom for many years, that was how I came to know him, back in the days when I pubbed my ish.
So ave atque vale, Rodney, may there be fans in heaven and a good fanzine system. And I know that at least, if there isn’t one of those there yet, there will be as soon as you’ve settled in and looked around. (As well as a lot of angels looking horrified.) We’ll miss you down here.
COMPAQ and ACER =Frustration!
So my old computer began to die slowly. It’s a Comnpaq Presario and after only 6 years I’m not at all happy about that. If I pay what I did for that as a fridge or stove, I’d expect it to last 10-15 years, NOT SIX!
I get a new computer, an Acer, and after almost two months, NO ONE appears able to get it connected on-line. It has now been to THREE technical firms, the final one swore to me that they’d done it and it was now on-line, and guess what? It isn’t!!!
So, reluctently and with rage, I’m having to go from dail-up wbhich suited me fine, to broadband – which I didn’t want – and hope that will fix the problem, not that I’m holding my breath on that either. But what is it with computer companies. can’t they produce a computer that actually works off the shelf the way it should. Why am I buying the nmechine then havving to spend weeks and dollars to get it working? If that happened with almost any other technology there’s be a massive outcry, so why do we accept it with computers? And all I can say is, that’s two more brands I’m crossing off my list to ever buy again.
New Holmes out – and a possibility of Tuckerisation…
Yes, SHERLOCK HOLMES; FAMILIAR CRIMES is out with Wildside. And for those who may not have run into my system yet, I write doubles. That is two 50,000+ word books in one volume. So Familiar Crimes has two books, each with its own title within that overall title for the volume.
I enjoy doing shorter books, they feel more ‘right’ to me with Holmes as the subject. I do know that I don’t usually like reading the full-length books, once they get up past 60,000 or so I find myself wondering why he hasn’t solved the mystery yet. So when I started with Beastly Mysteries, I was more confortable doing two shorter books per volume. And then there are the ‘Mandalay’ books, CATALYST was out December last year and I’ve signed contracts for CATACLYSM. Their natural length seems to be writing about 25,000+, so three of them and a short story, still add up to a reasonable book length, and are fun to do. So enjoy.
I am also definitely planning – bar hell or high-water – to attend the Conclave III natcon in Auckland next year. (Run by old friends Keith and Jacqui Smith who always put on a great con,) and I am considering offering a tuckerisation at the auction there (for one of the Holmes books,) please let me know if anyone would be interested. If there is interest, then I will. (Oh, and for those that haven’t met THAT term, it’s from Bob Tucker’s habit of auctioning off the right to have your name as a character in a book.) It’s more usual for SF/F, but wouldn’t you enjoy hanging around with Holmes and Watson? If so, this could be your chance.
My Musings on Old Age 36
Back about forty years ago friends and I really enjoyed a TV series called FAME. It was great, good dialogue, characters, and plot and the singing and dancing was superb. I wished for years that it would come back. And then I accidently caught a TV programme, “Victorious,” this morning. It seems to be an updated version of Fame. Arrrggghhh. That has to be one of the most pathetic shows I’ve seen in a long time. Fame felt real, the characters felt real, this seems to be a frothy confection of all singing, all dancing, (all endlessly squealing) plastic robots. Every movement is phony and exaggerated, every speech is as if they’re reading it from a teleprompter. Makes me wonder who MADE this mess, and why they bothered – and why Prime wanted to show it. Wouldn’t it have just been far better – and a lot cheaper – to rerun the original?
Building an Ark
Not that I had to in the end, but incredibly April here saw 270 mms, or just under eleven inches of rain land on my farm. The hens – completly furious – all moulted and went off laying. And Mopsy, one of my ewes lay down and died. Not surprising since she was 17, but I’m mildly sad. On the other hand it isn’t as if she didn’t have a VERY long life for a sheep, and a good one. I’m only hoping now that May won’t be quite so wet, in fact it looks as if it may not be, but it also looks as if the weather is going to vary that by being colder instead. Sigh. Swings & roundabouts.
New Poem Out
Quite by accident too. A friend emailed me, partly to show me a new poem of hers. I emailed back, inspired by her poem, with a brief 10 line fantasy one of my own. She snagged that for ALTERED REALITY, the magazine she does. So, ON CONSIDERING ALICIA AUSTIN is out, Interesting how things happen.
My Musings on Old Age 35
A while back I was asked if I planned to retire any time soon and I said didn’t have time. Then earlier this month I turned 71, and another friend asked me if I felt older. No, I don’t have time for that either. Which makes me think that someone I read once who said that a real interest in something keeps you young, may have been right. Of course they were speaking metaphorically, a pity that. Bceause if it was literal I think my enthusiasm for my writing could keep me alive for a very long time indeed!
Excitement
26 June 2017
Trying to persuade my computers to cooperate while doing final revision was interrupted last week. I’d posted two blog items and was about to add a third, when my pal rocketed in from next door in to say “Peter’s on fire!” assuming (rightly, thank heavens) that she meant the neighbour’s place and not the chap himself, I shot out after her to find that, yes, yes indeed, Peter’s WAS on fire. In fact I have rarely seen a place so throughly on fire. The house, various sheds, and stacks of salvaged timber, polystyrene panels, and other flamables was ablaze, flames reaching to 30-40 feet, and as we collected together and moved cautiously closer, there was a hollow boom, and the front shed fireballed. (Propane/gas cylinders was my bet – firefighters later agreed.)
About then the house roof fell in, planking was falling from the walls and blazing up, and only a few studs remained, they followed soon after however leaving nothing but the old chimney. Luckily the beautiful fluffy tortoiseshell stray cat he’d been feeding, being a cat and not that stupid, had removed herself to the barn, where she was extracted by local cat carers and taken to a safe place. Luckier still, Peter was away visiting family for a couple of weeks, but it’s not going to be fun for him dealing with the aftermath.
But it certainly enlivened my morning. Just a pity that one of my last Holmes books used a ‘fire plot,’ or I could have pinched that,