Now online.

I hate this time of year. Not the holidays, they're the only bright spot in this dreary time of year. The short days, long nights, cold... and damn but it was cold last week.

I'm never much good this time of year, mentally, physically, or emotionally. It lasts from the middle of December to the middle of January when the days start getting a little longer. I haven't done much about the books except piddle around with the Paxil Diaries; it takes all I have to get out of bed and go to work. I believe I have a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder. I suspect that everyone has at least a little, considering how surly everyone gets.

Fridays are especially nice this time of year. Two days of freedom coming! So yesterday they were predicting rain, sleet, and snow. I looked out the window about three and the snow had started. By the time I got off work the streets and sidewalks were slicker than snake snot.

When I looked out the window this morning, Springfield looked like a Christmas card. It was still dark outside. There must be six inches of snow. And damn it, I have to go out in it, because I need to cash a check to pay the cleaning lady with.

Damn but I'll be glad when Spring gets here.

Online now.

Damn but it's been cold this week, I feel like I'm stuck on McMurdo. Hey, it's summer there, isn't it? Probably not much colder than here. January seems to be a month early this year, our high temperatures are our normal lows. It's supposed to be zero tomorrow morning -- that's about minus 17 C. Damned cold.

Amy called Monday and said she read a little of Nobots when she was at Felbers. "It's certainly, uh, different," she said.

Well, yeah, I sure hope so!

Those of you who have copies or get them soon may have something valuable in the future. So far there are only 16 copies in the format you have, and I'm not quite satisfied with the size; 6x9 is too big. I've been reformatting it to 5x8, and after I submit it and get a copy to review, the 6x9s will be gone.

I told Amy I'd be lucky to break even on my book. "Yeah," she said, "Uncle Richard barely made his back." I knew Richard twenty years ago when he was writing it. His sister had won the lottery, and bought him a computer. Twenty years ago computers were damned expensive.

He worked in the same building as me, and they moved my unit before he got it published and I lost track of him. He died about five years ago. A Vietnam combat veteran, he'd written the book, Letters from Home, about his wartime experience. I read the copy they have in the library, it wasn't bad.

Amy had wanted a copy but it had been long out of print. She'd looked for used copies at the Elf Shelf, and they told her that they'd had an almost ruined, rain-soaked copy a week earlier that had sold for two hundred bucks! It seems rare books are expensive.

You have a rare book -- or will have when the 5x8 is out.

Online now.

Not a whole lot has been happening. I took Wednesday off because they forecasted sixty degrees, probably the last time I'll see weather that warm before I retire.

I got stoned and wasted the day working on my books. I have the paperback version of Nobots formatted to the smaller page size and typeface up to chapter 31. I got a postcard from a printer in St Louis that probably spams everyone who buys and ISBN, and their prices are more reasonable than Lulu's, but you have to buy in bulk and I'll have to call or email to find out if they do 4.5x7 inch newsprint paperbacks.

I got The Paxil Diaries mostly formatted, but converting the dumb quotes to smart quotes may be problematic, since "replace" in Open Office replaces a dumb quote with another dumb quote, even when you paste a smart quote into the "replace" field. There's surely an easy way, I'd hate to have to do it by hand. And it's twice as long as Nobots.

I haven't touched Mars, Ho!. I'll have to re-read what I've written to write more of it. I may try to stretch it to 100,000 words (20,000 more than Paxil) and see if I can get Baen to publish it when it's finished. 100,000 words is their minimum book size.

I worry that making it that long may make it boring. I don't want to write an All the Lives He Led, I returned that book to the library when I was only half finished with it. Was Pohl getting paid by the word, or was he trying to write a futuristic Lord of the Rings?

My new cleaning lady is supposed to show up in an hour, but I won't blame her if she doesn't show. It's only nine degrees out there, that's roughly -13 C.

I sure don't want to leave the house. I think I'll watch Christmas movies this afternoon -- Die Hard, Die Hard Two, Lethal Weapon, Lethal Weapon Two...

Nah, I'll work on the books.

Online now

"I brought a copy of my book with me," I told Mom, "But Mike bought it."

"What book?" she asked, puzzled.

"I told you last time I was here. I wrote a book."

"No you didn't."

"Yes I did." Mom's eighty four years old. She frowned, a kind of puzzled look on her face... like maybe I did tell her but she forgot. She's still young for her age, goes bowling every week.

"What kind of book?"

"Science fiction. You wouldn't like it, there's some harsh language."

"Oh, that's normal these days," she said.

"I should read some James Patterson," I said. "Almost every time I see a woman with a book, it's one of his. I need to find out what it is about his writing that women like so much. That guy must be a gillionaire."

"There's a James Patterson book by the door you might like," she said."It's his only science fiction book. I didn't care too much for that one."

"What does he usually write?" I'm thinking it's probably romance novels, fifty shades of green paper and the like.

"Murder mysteries."

Mom loves murder mysteries, always has. I never cared much for them, I guess it's a woman thing and why Patterson is so popular among women. Although I did enjoy Asimov's "Baily" trilogy, but I don't think I ever read anything by Asimov I didn't like.

I've been reading the book she gave me, When the Wind Blows.

Maybe it's hubris, but I think I write better than he does, especially since he has editors and proofreaders and typesetters. The story's pretty good so far, though. He's readable.

I did find a problem with my own writing Saturday. Betty came by with a friend who cleaned houses, and mine's filthy, so she brought her over to meet me. I'm going to pay her fifteen dollars for an hour's work Saturday mornings.

"I love your book," Betty said. "I'm on chapter three, I think. Except... some of those big words... are they real words I can look up in a dictionary?" She took a hit off the doobie and passed it to her friend, whose name I've forgotten.

"Most of them," I said. "Some are made up, like 'Stratodoober'."

I thought of the character in Mars, Ho!, the book I'be been working on but neglecting. "I ain't never went to college," the character says.

Betty's friend grinned and looked at me. "Yeah," I said. "It's something you get high with.

"Damn," Betty said. "I'm zombified. We have to go and I just want to sit here!"

They left and I got back to work on The Paxil Diaries. To use an old blacksmithing cliche, I have too many irons in the fire. I'm getting "Paxil" in printable form because people keep requesting it, getting Nobots into paperback form, working on the Mars book, and I've started one about my old Quake site. The computer's aging battery died, so I plugged it in and picked up the Patterson book.

He doesn't write bad, I'm sure I'll finish it. Nowhere near as bad as Stephen King says he is. King says Patterson "is a terrible writer, but very successful."

Marketing beats quality every time. That's a skill I wish I had.

Half a dozen people at Felbers have said they want to read Nobots, so I left a copy there yesterday. I guess I need to order some more...

From 1997 to 2003 I had a Quake web site, The Springfield Fragfest. Every December it sported presents: skins, maps, MP3s, Quake Christmas Carols. It's been fifteen years since it's been up.

Alas, it's not quite as good as it was -- it's been at least ten years since I've done any programming and I can't seem to get the javascript to work. On the original page when the javascript worked, if you moused over the Strogg on the right, Sonic the Hedgehog came out and did battle with it.

I also can't find the "binary wallpaper". It was a small animated GIF of green ones and zeros on a black background that changed from zero to one seemingly randomly until they disappeared maybe thirty seconds later when the images at the top finished loading at 56k.

However, the MP3s of a twelve year old Patty singing "Rudolph the Four Legged Stroggie" and "I Saw Mommie Killing Santa Clause" are there.

Probably half the site is still up at archive.org.

Since I have a site again to p1mp my books with, I thought I'd re-post it this year, just click the link at the beginning of this JE. Enjoy!

Spies is online.

Thursday was the first time in 125 years that Thanksgiving and Hanukkah fell on the same dates. According to the news reports, it won't happen again for another 70,000 years.

I picked Leila up about eight for the journey down to the St. Louis area. It was only 22 degrees F and the cold wind was blowing hard. It was almost as cold as Leila's mom's heart.

Leila has a habit of bringing most her electronic toys with her, even when they're redundant. I'd had a hard time returning the extra phone they'd sent, and since Leila had said she wanted it I'd given it to her as an early Christmas present. She brought it for the camera, her tablet for music, her CD player for more music, and a big bag of snacks. I'd talked her out of bringing her notebook; she had the tablet.

All I took was what's always in my pockets, a copy of Nobots (three were delivered Wednesday) and two bags of frozen Brussels' sprouts that I was going to cook at my mom's and take to my sister's.

We stopped off at Mike's place in Columbia on the way to Mom's. He'd asked me to drop by and look at his teenaged grandkids' XBoxes to see if I could fix the CDs. I hadn't looked inside an XBox but figured I might be able to replace them with CD players from old computers.

I've known Mike for forty years. He's probably my best friend.

"Come in," Rita responded to my knock. We did.

"Where's that old man?" I asked. Mike's ten years younger than me.

"He's still in bed. He was up until four drinking and bothering me while I was trying to cook. Go get his ass up!"

I went and turned on the light in his bedroom. "You're early," he said.

"No," I replied, "We're running late, stopped for breakfast on the way. It's ten thirty, get out of that bed!"

Mike Junior poured me a cup of coffee and Mike Senior came out. "Look what I have," I said, handing him the book.

"Cool! What do you get for these?"

"Twenty five bucks."

"What do they cost you?"

"Eighteen."

"I'll give you a twenty."

"Deal," I said. What's five bucks between old friends? Especially since he feeds me pot, beer, and food almost every time I visit.

"I still have that pocket knife your dad made," he said. After his retirement my dad made hand-crafted, very high quality pocket knives completely from scratch. Like I've mentioned, eye-hand coordination and creativity runs in the family -- his brother had gotten filthy rich making medical prosthetics. Fortunately for Uncle Dan his partner was an amputee and a born salesman, and salesmanship is something that doesn't run in the family. I couldn't sell a glass of water to a rich man dying of thirst.

Alas, the CD players in the XBoxes are entirely proprietary, with completely different form factors and electrical connectors than in a computer.

We stayed an hour or so. Mike gave me a couple of hits off his hitter. I asked him if Mike Jr. could get me one of the vaporizers he'd had the last time I'd come down and what they cost. "Ask Mike," Mike said.

It turns out the vaporizer was ninety nine bucks and the hash oil for it was hard to come by. "There's only one guy I can get it from," he said.

Pity, that thing was great -- I'd "smoked" out of it the last time I'd been down. Damned thing is one step closer to a stratodoober. Oh, well, when that new medical marijuana law they passed in Illinois comes into effect my insurance company will buy one for me and supply the oil. For my arthritis, of course.

I just uploaded Stratodoober Madness; it's online now.

I've changed the release schedule for the HTML. Instead of a chapter a week I'm doubling it. Chapter five and chapter six are online now.

I have a new working title for the new book: Mars, Ho! I've hardly looked at it lately. I've been working on the web site, reformatting Nobots for the paperback edition, and yes, working on getting a printed version of the Paxil Diaries. Ykant asked about that a couple of days ago but I was already working on it.

And I've been watching The Big Bang Theory. I'd downloaded season six at the end of the season but didn't have time to watch them. I thought I'd seen all of them, but MeTV has been showing syndicated reruns and I saw one I hadn't seen before. I saw the boxed set at the store and picked it up. I'd missed most of the season!

I've hardly been at Felbers at all. I've just had no time for drinking.

Yesterday they shipped the three copies of Nobots I ordered. I wonder when they'll get here?

Chapter 4 is online.

Betty dropped by Saturday night for a visit. I'd asked her before I published if she'd proofread it, as she found the two deliberate typos in The Paxil Diaries (which I should publish in book form). She'd been in the middle of two other books and didn't want to take on a third.

"Already published," I said, handing my copy to her. "And sold a few." She opened to the first page and started reading -- and grinning, a good sign.

"What's 'Ezekial'?" she asked.

"A book in the bible."

"There's no book of Ezekial!"

"Yes there is," I said, getting my bible. I showed her.

"How 'bout that?" She said. "I love what I read so far. Most books it takes a chapter or two before I get sucked in, three paragraphs and I have to finish this!"

Wait until she gets to "Stratodoober Madness".

She went home with my copy, signed with the inscription "To my friend with benefits."

Not only are people buying it, it got me laid! I imagine that she's fantasized about writers before...

Chapter Three is online as you read this, but not as I write it; tomorrow is Veteran's day, so I'll be at Felber's tomorrow with my fellow veterans. Probably this afternoon, too.

I got a piece of snail spam that may affect the book. There's an outfit in St Louis that wants to print copies in lots of 50. They're cheaper but that's a lot of cash for me to put up front. I think I'll get in touch and see what they want for 4.5x7 newsprint "pocket book" paperback.

It's today now. Robably commented that he got his copy yesterday, which is strange since he wasn't the first to buy a copy, and I ordered a copy to replace the one I gave Patty before anyone else. And he lives in the UK. My copy came today, so the rest should be delivered in a couple of days. Unless anybody else wants to buy one...

Chapter three adds quite a bit to the draft that was posted at slashdot. You're introduced to Angela Picard, who is an explanation for why the military and sports are so looked down on on Mars. He plays a part in later chapters in the life of one of the main characters.

He isn't all that was added to this chapter.

Chapter Two is online. Unlike chapter one, it was expanded quite a bit and changed quite a bit from the draft that was posted at slashdot.

As of now, there are four copies in existence; Patty has one, one is on its way to me, another is on its way to symbolset and the fourth should be on its way to robably by Monday, since he ordered his two days after I did and I got email notification it had been shipped this morning.

The copies you guys bought may be collector's items in the future, since the cover may not be right, I'll have to see when mine gets here (should be a week or so, probably next Friday or Saturday). Lulu's web site is a PITA but not near as bad as Bowker's.

There will be a chapter a week posted, I've put dates on the chapters in the site index. I may post all of them in April, I haven't made up my mind though.

And speaking of the site, since I have a site now I'm going to post something the beginning of next month that hasn't been on the internet for a decade: the Springfield Fragfest Christmas page in almost all its former glory. The MP3s of a then 11 year old Patty singing "I Saw Mommie Killing Santa Clause" and "Rudolph the Four Legged Stroggie"; various Quake II skins (Mr. and Mrs. Santa Clause, Kenny, Camper, NudeChick (you have to hunt for that one. Hint: very bottom of the page) and I think a few others; the Christmas tree made from weapons and armor; lyrics to the Quake Carols.

Unfortunately the javascript is broken, and since it's been ten years since I've done any programming I'm having trouble fixing it. All the javascript does is provide mouseovers on the navigation buttons, and more importantly provide the Squished Sonic animation -- if you hold your mouse over the Strogg on the left, Sonic the Hedgehog is supposed to run out and the Strogg is supposed to try and stomp on him. Unfortunately, I can no longer get it to work. Unfortunate, because folks loved that.

I'll post a link on December 1 and the page will be removed on Boxing Day.

Rather than converting to dumb quotes, I'll just give you a link to the smart quotes version at my web site.

This one is little if any changed from the first draft. Few other chapters are.

Patty was home over the weekend. I'd gotten my copy of Nobots on Halloween, and realized that this was yet another weird coincidence since there's a chapter named "Ghouls" and another one about ghosts. I was reading my book (such a cool feeling!) when she knocked.

I opened the door and she saw the book. "Your book came! Why didn't you tell me?" she said.

"I emailed you."

"I didn't get it."

"Well, I sent it."

"Wow," she said. "My dad wrote a book! And it'd a real book!" she said, holding it out. She looked at the copyright/ISBN page for a few minutes, then the acknowledgements.

"There's a typo."

"Yeah, I saw that as soon as I opened it, too." I'd left the H out of "who" in the mention of her sister, and it had already been corrected. "I found a few more mistakes," I said," the fonts are wrong in a few places, it's Times New Roman instead of Gentium Book Basic. I fixed those, too."

"Fonts?" she said. "I saw some cartoon font when I was flipping through."

"That one is on purpose," I said. "Here, let me find it. Ok," I said, start reading here." "Here" was a few paragraphs above the Venusian nursery rhyme that's changed a LOT from the draft.

She laughed harder than, well, I meant it to be funny but I didn't think it was that funny.

"This is yours," I said. "It's unique, it will be worth money some day. But pick it up tomorrow, I want to finish reading it again."

I'd gotten Into Darkness from Amazon but hadn't watched it. I emailed her when it came and asked if she'd seen it and she said "NO! I'VE BEEN WAITING TO WATCH IT WITH YOU!"

We'd watched the first one at the theater. We watched the second before she went to visit friends; she doesn't get home much. New Star Trek is opposite old Star Trek. Old Star Trek the odd numbered ones sucked. But it didn't suck that bad, it was OK.

She came by the next day and said her goodbyes and left, hugging the book. I fought with Lulu, gave up, and started it as a new project with the corrected PDF.

I didn't get the cover right and there seems no way to correct it. Screw it, I let it go live, ordered a new copy since Patty has mine and fought with Bowker's obstinate website some more. Buying ISBNs is easy, managing them is a pain in the ass.

Today I looked to see if anyone but me had bought any copies, and by George one of you guys did! Whoever you are, thank you very much. You're the first person to ever pay me for writing, and I'm flattered and redundantly thank you again.

You should get your copy about the time I get mine, as they were ordered on the same day. It took more than two weeks for the first one, they'll email you that it shipped and then it's maybe 5 days (that's how it was for me).

Maybe I should just talk to Baen, maybe they'd like it. Self-publishing is a pain in the ass. I just want to write.

It's out and it's flawed. Maybe it will be a collector's item some day. But Nobots the flawed edition is available.

The cover is wrong, the bar code is wrong. But to hell with it, I want to publish this damned book.

The problem I need help with is the submission to the front page, what I have is lame. Help me out here! Here it is...

Slashdot's own "Nobots" is now in print

Nobots isn't a Dice Holdings book, it's a slashdot book. The first chapter written was a response to a comment in a slashdot story way back in 2009. Quite a few chapters were typed directly into slashdot's journal entry. A few were posted before a book became apparent and all of them garnered comments that improved the story, and it became a book. Your book.

Right now you can only get it here at Lulu, which I hope to change because of problems with the cover, the ISBN, and the bar code.

The crude first drafts of its chapters are here at slashdot already, and the final polished versions will be posted in my journal weekly starting next Saturday.

You may find earlier postings at my web site. It's a CC license, free to read. Enjoy!

My copy of Nobots came in the mail today and it looks good. I'd think it was done by a professional if I hadn't written it myself.

The only thing left is a matter of the ISBN. I bought ten of them, and there's nowhere to tell Lulu what the ISBN is. As soon as that matter is cleared up it will be ready to release, I hope in a week or so. I suspect they want to sell me an ISBN, if so I'll have to go with a different printer and it will be a while longer before I loose it.

I would have liked a heavier paper stock, because its 161 pages (42042 words) is only half an inch thick, but what the hell. I'm pricing it at $24.95 for the hardcover. I don't expect to make any best seller lists and in fact will be happy if I make my $350 investment back; I'll have to sell 35 copies for that to happen.

I don't know how long it will be before I release a paperback; I'll have to reformat it for the smaller paper size and will probably have someone else print that. Lulu wants a ridiculous $9 before profit for a paperback, but no sooner than I'd bought ISBNs than I got a snail spam from a printer in St. Louis who wants $3.50 per book in lots of fifty. I guess I should haunt a new book bookstore to see what paperbacks are retailing for these days as it's been a long long time since I've bought a paperback; most of my paperbacks are falling apart (well, they are older than most slashdotters) while my hardcovers are still in great shape. The last couple dozen books I've bought have all been hardcover.

When it is done (in a week, fingers, toes, and eyes crossed) I'll make a journal entry, and the next day will submit it as a /. front page story. After all, it is a slashdot book. I'll be asking you guys to vote it up in the firehose when I do. PLEASE!!!

I'll also start putting the finished version both at my new web site and my slashdot journal, a chapter per week. Most chapters are twice as long and ten times as polished as the draft version I've already posted, but the first chapter has very few, very minor changes. I hope one of you guys will buy a copy and write up a review and submit it to slashdot.

I guess tonight I'll have to go into my domain host's setup page and set up email forwarding to forward mail to my rocketmail address.

I'm excited. I think I'll take it with me to Felbers (leaving as soon as I finish this joint). Patty might be home this weekend, I think I'll give her that first copy that came today.

It's kind of cool having a book with my name on the cover, even though there is as yet only one copy in existence.

Getting Nobots actually in print is almost as much work as writing it was. I guess I'm a publishing company now.

First I had to register the copyright in case I decide to sue somebody. Thirty five bucks.

Then I need an ISBN. One for $125 or ten for $250. I bought ten, knowing I'd need at least three; one for Nobots, one for the Paxil Diaries, and one for the new book that I wish someone would suggest a title for, "Whores in Space" doesn't seem to work for me.

It turns out you need an ISBN for each version; one for hardcover, one for paperback, one for e-pub, one for PDF... sheesh.

And I spent another $25 for a bar code for the first book. I wonder if there's an open source bar code writer? Anybody know?

So they email the ISBNs to me, now I have to attach the title, contents, and cover to the ISBN... damn. Finished the front cover last night, but I still have to finish the copyright page and attach it and the table of contents to the book without changing page numbers, so I'll need to stitch two PDFs together. Damn, how do I do that without sending dead presidents to adobe? I've already blown over three hundred bucks.

So I'm looking at other books' copyright pages for examples, and hmmm... Public email address for someone wanting to rent it commercially... Fuck it, I spent another fifteen bucks to buy mcgrewbooks.com. I posted the cover of Nobots there with a "coming soon".

It really is. I hope...