I remember reading some of yer stuff I printed out, I liked it

I have been playing with a puter I found at the dump  see in general hardware

Ive read it already, nice little find, except I have a 1.3 Athlon job that Im not using at all now. Intermittently using a 2500+ for writing and internet, an Asus EEE (purely for writing), and an E2180 for games. The EEE does give me some mobility when writing but it isnt really big enough for editing. If I actually get published I will buy a new lappy.

Yes IBM makes small expensive ones

What is nice with my find is the size, about a foot high with an mATX mobo built in NIC and sound and shared memory VGA so for a machine just used with freeBSD ipCop it will be nice was going to use a fast PII running a 133 FSB at 533 Mhz which is good for a PII but this is a nice small machine using less power

and if I can find my 1000Mhz Tualatin celery I could run it on 133 Mhz bus doing 1300 Mhz

ooh nda ooooh, lol

Quote from: neXusooh nda ooooh, lol

What time of day do you have in NZ ?

Still up I hate coming off Night Shifts Im working over time in 2hours! My body is going to be minced, going to make some coffee! Meh!

Quote from: SeriousJust passed 70,000 words in the latest book. Looking good for 100K before editing. Ive managed to shove a nice big spanner into the works and now all I have to do is pull everything back out of the fire again.

Now up to 80,000 words, although Ive nearly broken my hands again doing that much.

Monday morning Im off to the hospital for a pain management appointment, hopefully I can come to some agreement so the pain only affects me on certain days .

Quote from: bearI remember reading some of yer stuff I printed out, I liked it

Most of them go at a reasonable pace, the aim isnt to keep it exciting all the time, you just cant do that for 100,000 words, the thing to do is to keep it interesting. The best things I have written are usually character interactions. Most of the time Ive managed to keep the threads from a story down, this time I have six live threads going at the same time. Unfortunately its unavoidable despite my preference. Normally I would try to limit to a maximum of four and close one down before opening another up.

Then again I find that I quite often I find myself having to decide history on the spot, because I have never considered that bit before. Keeping the storyline coherent and believable can take some work, especially when what you are working with can amount to as little as a list of characters and an events list like I do.

Just put a snippet in to illustrate, this is a full scene I wrote yesterday. Some bits ended up rather frenetic. Oh, you would need to know that Laguna Phelps and EXI Wallis are identical clones, everything else that happens should be clear enough.

QuoteEllis made the call through an increasing air of despair, "update from Admiral Takahashi, fleets are twenty eight minutes from energy weapon range."

"We are nearly at the palace, another few minutes and we will be there." Robinson replied, then looked at the rest of the people surrounding her on the shuttle. "We will do the best we can. Hear that pilot? Weve run out of time."

"yes, Sir," the pilot responded, "there is only one thing I can do that will get us there faster."

"Whats that?"

"The dome is empty, and anyone left is inside the palace or other sealed building. A hole in the dome would allow us to go straight in and land, if you catch my drift?"

"Do it!" Slade ordered, "if we dont manage this it wont matter anyway as the Mechs will own the place."

"Paydirt to escort, you have clearance for alpha one."

"Orders recieved, paydirt," the message came back, "alpha one it is. locking on dome, firing. Fox one, fox two!"

Missiles spewed from the escorting fighters and raced away through the gloom. The pilot of the fast shuttle radioed ahead in the meantime, just to make sure that the dome was indeed clear of people. Inside the alarms went off to signal an emergency seal breach.

The missiles smashed into the carbon dome in a ring of six, carbon and atmosphere reacted under the huge heat and burned. Cracks spread, even diamond would break if you treated it in the right way. A huge, almost hexagonal section of the dome fell away into the interrior, letting the outside and unbreathable atmosphere mix with the internal, life sustaining one.

"You are on your own, paydirt," The fighter pilot called, "good luck and I hope you make it."

Paydirts pilot watched the synthetic representation of the fighters peeling off and heading away. It wouldnt have been possible for them to have landed inside the dome anyway, which left actually getting through that hole, barely bigger than the wingspan of the shuttle.

"Pilot Robinson," he asked, "would you like to handle this part?"

"Last time I handled that sort of thing all I got was a load of complaints from the Ambassador here."

"Me too," EXI added for emphasis, "I mean I even missed the train for him. No matter what you do you dont get any thanks. You will do just fine, probably."

The pilot lined up and just went for it, taking off half a metre off his left wing in the process. The shuttle rotated wildly, rolled completely over twice, and then recovered before slamming into the ground just outside the entrance to the Palace. The undercarriage collapsed in a barrage of sparks as what was left slid into the building.

"Well, weve arrived," EXI announced. "Seems Im still in one piece and thats all that really matters."

Her chair floated free and headed for the door, everyone else bailed out behind her before the thing exploded. Except it didnt, it just sat there in the yellow smog, tilted to an extreme angle and belching smoke into the pollution. The path was clear, they all cycled straight through the airlock and into the palace. "What the hell are you doing here?" EXI asked.

"Im waiting for a bus?" Emma responded. "I had nothing better to do but to see if you needed picking up again."

EXI looked like she was going to have something else to say but Slade forced himself between the two, "we now have just ten minutes, get going and do your stuff."

"What stuff?" EXI looked confused, "I need a crown and stuff to do anything."

"If you didnt already have what you needed already, or at least have it available here, then you wouldnt have brought us on a wild bird chase."

"I think hes learning something," EXI pouted, "but Im not sure what yet. Off we go to the throne and Ill see if I can save the day. I cant promise anything though. Umm, Laguna, dearest, you arent going to be playing me in the film of this, are you?"

"Arrgh!" Lomond screamed, "this isnt the time to worry about whos going to play you, and why not Laguna? She looks exactly the same as you do anyway."

Phelps sidled up to the agent and grabbed his arm, "I knew you loved me really."

"I... err. EXI, please, just get on with it."

"Okay, pick me up and hold me upside down over the throne, facing the chair back, so that I can put my palms on the rests."

Lomond, having removed Laguna from his arm, and Slade did as instructed. Nothing happened. Finally Slade asked, "now what?"

"Now you can put me down, sitting in the chair. I just wanted to find out if you would really do that." They did so, looking rather miffed. "Now I says, open sez me and."

There was a slight rustling, a scraping, and then the throne rose almost a metre.

"Theres another crown interface here in the throne!"

"Exactly, now crown me," EXI stopped talking then restarted, "just pass the bloody thing up and Ill do the rest."

Lomond did so, watching as the IKal placed the crown on its own head. "Can you control the defence systems now?"

"Some hope," EXI replied loudly, "I would need to be down in the bunker to do that, what I can do though is let Cloe in to do it."

Robinson shouted in desperation, "youve only two minutes before they start firing energy weapons at each other!" EXI closed her eyes and concentrated.

The crown lit up, glowing like a cheap bit of plastic tat, then the room followed suit. columns glowed gently from an internal light and stonework changed into a myriad of gentle colours. It didnt stop there, the throne continued to rise and the plinth became a stepped pyramid, illuminated in soft hues of red, green and blue. Far above them a deep but definitely feminine voice said, "system activated. First boot sequence complete. Access to IKal clone EXI Wallis granted," followed by a series of low but rising musical tones. Somewhere organ music started.

"I should have known it," Simone complained with a sigh, "damn IKals always did like overdoing this sort of thing out of all and any proportion."

Slade looked at her, "what do you mean?"

"They could have just made the crown light up, and perhaps a bit of tinkly music, but no. They had to make it go through the full, extremely overblown, puffed out to the nines, grand ceremony. Another example, have you heard Lagunas door bell? No? Thats because the staff make sure nobody presses it, ever. It gives a full rendition of your my rising star with full disco lighting effects in the hall. You cant stop it either, its got to play all the way through."

"Now we only have one minute to waste," Phelps pointed out, "would you like to do some more complaining?"

how many words in a typical book ?

Depends, something between a minimum of 80,000 words up to 130,000 would suit most publishers. They would need something exceptional for eighty K words though, 100-120,000 is probably the best balance as it allows some editing.

Most of mine fit into the 100-120K. They dont like shorter ones because readers think they are being short changed and longer ones mean higher printing costs for minimal or no price benefit. A few publish huge volumes though, mostly in things like fantasy writing such as the Harry Potter books.

Again up and about! Damn it!

The follow on to the above bit is something else, effectively I have to get one character to train another one in the use of the planetary defense system (something I dont understand myself except on a superficial basis).

The problem? Sixty two seconds left to actually do it...

Oh, I also have to fill 15,000 words in doing this      :0hnoes:  

I might be able to draw it out an extra couple of minutes as the fleets try to kick seven different coloured piles of excreta out of each other :/

Changed my mind about doing 15Kwords on the training bit, its ended up about ten K instead. Which leaves me another 10K to do the battle and finish off.

I could have put more in but it was doing my head in. Some concepts are just nasty getting your head around.

In order to solve the time issue I simply created two separate times, one real and one related to computers. Except now I have to start Integrating them together. This is going to be interesting.

Its been done before, people living at different time speeds, but its never sounded quite believable to me. This though is thinking at different speeds, and one is in a huge computer system where a second of real time is perceived to be more than an hour.

blap blap, gangstaaaaaaa

Jaimz

hopefully... sleep

Still here. Gave up on writing today after 2K words and had a go at my copy of The Orange Box.

Fingers feel broken.