What the Hell Are You Doing, Crites?

Last Updated on Tuesday, 03 February 2009 15:49

Veinarmory-Blog - Miscellaneous Snorts

OK! I have been conspicuously absent of late. It’s not all due to insipid laziness, or alcoholic pickling, or hours scouring the used sailboat offerings. But some of it is.

Downloads of my rigamarole approaches 300,000 on itunes. Paid downloads continue to grow and for this I thank all of you. You know who you are.

The status of the final four chapters of Devlin Abnormal Investigations, Case File: Cleft Behind.

When I started recording, I had a finished novel. I had no reservations. No clue. I posted part one, a zip file containing chapters 1-16. And it was good.

I started recording chapters 17-32, and it was bad.

Somehow, I lost several chapters.

My hard drive contains hundreds of stories I’ve written, ten novels that are completed, six novels in various stages of completion, and a thousand inadequately named small files containing snippets of things that come to mind but don’t fit into a novel—so I save them.  In short, it’s a mess. What makes it a worse mess are the various copies I keep backed up on an external drive, dvd’s, an on-line medium I use,  and cd’s.

Toward the end of 2008 I decided to abandon my long-time writing software, Clarisworks, as it was no longer being upgraded or supported by Apple. I looked at several, eventually deciding on Bean, a free, no-frills word processor that is the opposite of MS Word Bloatware. (Note: I am now looking at some sort of writing software that acts somewhat like a database to enhance my ability to search for things within my own body of work) ANyway, I decided to start converting old clarisworks documents into Bean, and clean up the mess of files. That’s where I went wrong, apparently. It seems I backed up and converted a file of Devlin II that was incomplete, but somehow had been modified at a later date than the good one.

Short answer—I lost several chapters. basically the entire exciting conclusion. Even shorter answer—I am an idiot. HAR!

The good news; I rewrote it it. I am recording it now and will be done by Friday, january 23rd. I have not yet figured out how to deliver it to the hundreds of early buyers, but I will.

Anyway, this friggin’ nightmare has caused a resultant reduction in posting, site upgrades, new writing, recording, literary lugwrench episode production, and the likelihood of catching me smiling.

Oh, and here's a pic that illustrates how much I care about your less-than-perfect review of my work: