And there aren’t too many more this year. Naughty-Eight is flying by like a Penguin with a rocket pack and it doesn’t seem like anything will slow it down. Not even Batman.

At around this time every month, I’ve come on hear and written about how this coming month will be the month where everything begins clicking into place like clockwork. This coming month will be the one where I get into a routine and stick with it. This coming month will be the one where I get so much work done I’ll have sentences coming out of my ears.

And yet…

Some days I put it of until ‘later’, some days I get a little done and then take a break that lasts the rest of the day, some days I stare at the screen and say ‘….’ for a while before giving up.

BUT

This month will be the one where I get things done, Where I’ll get into a routine and everything will click into place.

I swear.

Maybe.

Lately I’ve been reading comics. I haven’t read that many comics in the past. I read spiderman and Xmen when I was a kid but I never really stuck with them.

I grew up in an area without comic book shops, and for that matter limited book shops, so I didn’t really have access to anything that wasn’t sold in newsagents.

It’s one of the things I love about this internet hooey. Access to things I’d otherwise not have access to, or even know about.

My first comic book that I actually loved was Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. I came across it in a strange way. I was searching for tattoo designs when I came across a tattoo of Nny. I searched for the title and found out it was a comic book. I downloaded all the comics and CDisplay to read them through and that was it. I had to buy them all.

Then came Y: The Last Man. I can’t remember how I came across the series but I found it around issue 20 and followed it all the way through to the end. It was a great series and, as you know, I love post-apocalypse stuff.

It’s been a year or so now since that ended, (around about, not sure of actual time though), and I haven’t read any other comics but I have been looking for other stuff I might like.

Then a few weeks ago, in much the same way as I came across JTHM, I came across a tattoo of a cool looking key. It was the key to hell that Lucifer gives to Dream in Sandman.

I thought about checking it out but I didn’t get around to it for a while

Not until, a week or so ago when I came across the trailer for the Watchmen movie and thought it looked awesome. I decided I wanted to read the comic.

So I downloaded it, and at the same time I remembered Sandman and downloaded that as well.

The first Issue of each had me hooked.

I read Watchmen right through to the end and it was great. It was also interesting coming back and watching the trailer again too. Everything made more sense and I was able to see where everything shown in the clip fit into the comic book, and made it that much better to see.

I’m still reading Sandman, I’m up to issue #39 now. It’s been awesome so far and I’ve been loving all the intertwining stories and the off shoots and the shorts between the stories as well.

Well, that’s what I’ve been doing with my time for the last couple of days anyway.

How about you?

I think I really went off topic there for a while. I was going to simply write about how I’m going to throw my all into work starting tomorrow - the 1st of August.

(interesting coincidence, kinda, One issue of Sandman that I read today was about Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus… otherwise known as Augustus…)

I think that’s all I wanted to say. Anyway, you’re boring me. Leave me alone. Go on! Git!

Until next time….

A Computer that broke down… Again.

Organisation, Procrastination, and Illumination.

And learning to leave well enough alone.

It begins with a blog entry I was reading about workspace organisation and productivity. The writer talked about how they organise their workspace in order to avoid cleaning it to get out of work. I have a neat workspace, but I rarely use it anymore. Not since I bought my laptop.

Since buying my laptop, I’ve spent most of the time with it sitting on my couch in front of the television and avoiding work by clicking through my favourite sites and reading others blogs (and so on…), Ignoring my workplace for various reasons - The latest being that since I updated it to Vista it’s been having problems with the dual monitor display, Often the second display was fuzzy and unreadable. Obviously a second display isn’t necessary, but how many excuses stand up to argument?

Well?

So, after finally getting around to checking all the cables and plugs and what-nots, I realise it’s Vista and it’s lack of proper support for my card that is the problem. It came down to a choice between buying a new video card or downgrading my computer. Buying a new video card costs money, so guess which choice I went for?

So, I’m installing XP back onto my computer. Everything it going fine until it comes to installing all of my programs and drivers and everything else. All of these things were kept on my 400gb external hard drive/media player. This cool little box I could use as a second hard drive or plug it into my tv to play all my media files, at least I could until about six months ago when the Tv part of the box broke down.

And then, finally, when I needed it, the rest of it broke down. I could not access my drive no matter what I tried.

Ever since the tv part broke down, I had considered installing it into my computer as a second hard drive but… well, I didn’t get around to it. And now seemed like the appropriate time.

So, that’s what I did. I installed it into my computer, the drive came up on the bios, it came up in the hardware list in the control panel. Everything was going smoothly but the drive didn’t appear on ‘My Computer’. I figured it may’ve had it’s own formatting that only the media player recognised and I would need to put a new partition on there to access it.

I downloaded Partition Magic, because I’d had success of making new partitions without any data loss with the program in the past.

The same could not be said this time.

I lost Two Hundred and Seventy Gigabytes of backups, photos and downloads. 270gb!!!

The downloads, I don’t mind so much in losing. Although it was A LOT. I can always download it again if need be. It was mostly just movies and tv shows I liked. Including a complete collection of The Outer Limits episodes, The Young Ones, Black Books, The Mighty Boosh, Doctor Who and old cartoons like Dungeons and Dragons, The Tick and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

The worst part was all my photos and backups. Most of the photos I don’t have anywhere else, and in the backups (amongst stuff I have on my main drive) was all my old short story attempts and other writing notes. Some of it I have on paper, but there is a lot of stuff I’ve lost there.

Over the last few days I’ve been trying with various programs to save as much as I can but a majority of the files are corrupted and unsalvageable.

I’m now almost ready to give up. I’m on my last attempt now and so far I’ve saved a little, but this has been a major loss.

But I’ve had worse things happen.

Soon I’ll clean up everything and get my workspace neat and tidy again. Then we’ll see who’s the productive one.

ME!

This just plain looks awesome.

I thought this was hilarious so I had to pass it along. It’s by Jim C. Hines, Check out his Livejournal - here

I am the Very Model of a Modern SF Novelist

I am the very model of a modern SF novelist,
I’ve manuscripts space opera, anime, and fantasist,
I know the kings of fandom and the best flamewars historical
From Andrew Burt to LiveJournal, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted too, with matters editorial,
I keep my cover letters brief and never too suctorial,
About rejection etiquette I’m teeming with propriety,
With many cheerful facts about your online notoriety,
I’m very good at worldbuilding and proper use of ansibles;
I know the hyphenated names of beings unpronounceable:
In short, in matters space opera, anime, and fantasist,
I am the very model of a modern SF novelist.

I know our genre history, from H. G. Wells to Arthur Clarke,
I’ve read so much time travel, I’ve a pretty taste for paradox,
I quote in panel talks the wise advice of Crispin and Miss Snark,
I study wormholes, galaxies and theories about matter dark;
I can tell a work professional from books Publish America,
I know the Eye of Argon from Conan of Cimmeria!
Then I can hum the melody from every last John Williams score,
And whistle all the airs from that infernal film Fantastic Four.
I’ll write you books of goblin war and princesses who won’t conform,
And tell show you every detail of a goblin warrior’s uniform:
In short, in matters space opera, anime, and fantasist,
I am the very model of a modern SF novelist.

In fact, when I know what is meant by “grok” and “droid” and “FTL”,
When I can tell at sight the sword Excalibur from Anduril,
When twists in stories I perceive by reading just one paragraph,
And when I know precisely how to pen a clever epigraph,
When I have followed breakthroughs yearly in e-book technology,
When I know more of grammar than my profs from University–
In short, when you run out and buy and read every last book by me–
You’ll say a better novelist has never writ a fantasy.
My works even appear in many dialects European,
Thanks to the perserverence of my agent JABberwockian;
In short, in matters space opera, anime, and fantasist,
I am the very model of a modern SF novelist.

Well, that’s says about all I was going to write in this post. Today, I began. I began writing ‘when the aliens left’ which I’ve changed working title to - Crater.

Almost immediately the characters began taking on a life of they’re own. (well, character… as I’ve only introduced one so far…) but already things are developing.

Please. No applause necessary… or heard.

But everything seems to be clicking into place for it.

Also, today… and yesterday for that matter (it’s been a fair pair of days.) Dr. Horrible came online. I enjoyed it… a couple of times. Doogie rocks as the twitchy Dr Horrible, (He has a Phd in horribleness) and Nathan Fillion is hilariously smug. Now I have to wait another two days for the last installment. DANG!!

Also yesterday, I finally got some books I ordered off amazon a couple of weeks ago. I got Steampunk, The anthology by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. I came across steampunk not too long ago, maybe six months or so. I knew of the concept though, in fact I have plans of a novel from a year or two ago that would have been a little steampunk, but I didn’t realise till recently that it actually had a name and a great following. I had been deciding whether or not to get it since before it came out and finally have. It looks awesome.

I also got The Call of Cthulhu and other Weird Stories and At the Mountains of Madness By H.P. Lovecraft. I’ve been wanting to read Lovecraft for a long time now, and I’m glad I got these. I’ll be reading one of them straight after I finish The Martian Chronicles.

I have to say At the Mountains of Madness is a very aesthetically beautiful book. It’s got a feel like an already old book. It’s thin at around 200 Soft pages and a beautiful picture on a matte cover that just has that feeling on your fingertips that adds to the reading experience. Be Gone Glossies!

Exactly how I’d want my books to be published.

Maybe, one day, you’ll pick up a copy of Crater and say the same thing. Cross fingers.

First things first - Check out my site now bitches!! Yes, Yes it does rock. - www.JeremyBoland.com

It took a lot of fiddling and code writing and screwing around, and a couple of days, but I finally have this new kick ass looking site up and going. My site and my blog, which were once two separate entities are now one and the same, and all my old pages are here too. I’m not sure if I’m going to leave it opening onto my blog or make a front page but that can all come later.

My old site still exists, at least for the moment, at www.jeremyboland.com/old/.

Doug of the Darkness has reached the 10,000 word mark, and it’s still going strong-ish. If your not up to date with Doug of the Darkness or haven’t even read Doug of the Darkness, you should head over to the Doug of the Darkness website and start reading Doug of the Darkness now. You won’t be borry.

What else, What else, what else? Isn’t it always like that. You go into writing a blog entry thinking ‘how will I fill it all in?’ and then halfway through you forget all the topics you wanted to go over.

The other day I came up with a completely new idea for a book. What I mean is - Most of the things I’ve worked on in the last (I don’t know how long) have been rewrites of old stuff, working on old ideas or it was based on two old ideas put together… so on and so forth in that fashion, you get the idea.

I mentioned it in passing in the last entry but that was only when it was an inkling of an instigating circumstance. But slowly it grew in my head and at the worst possible moment, while I was at work, more and more ideas hit me. Between customers and fixing a cupboard door that fell off it’s hinges I wrote a whole synopsis of a back story for the novel in my moleskine.

(I’m very excited about this)

I’m not sure if it’s going to be one persons stories (probably in first person) or a series of interrelated stories that encompass the whole events… I’m leaning toward the latter. Just know, I have some great ideas for it either way and I can’t wait to get started on it.

But first, my workspace could do with a bit of a tidy up…

Also excited about - Act One of Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is released today. I’m a big Whedon fan, Fillion fan and Doogie Fan, So this is just Awesome.

In other news, I just finished reading Hal Spacejock 4: No Free Lunch, and I recommend it to anyone who likes fun and light scifi about interesting characters with quite a few laugh out loud moments. Not only is this a great series, by the way, but they work as stand alone novels as well, There are references to previous novels but nothing that would confuse a new reader.

At the moment I’m reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and I’m loving it. My favourite section so far is ‘Night Meeting’… with ‘And the Moon be still as bright’ coming up second.

Anyway, I think that’s all for now. In the mean time check out this hilarious clip of Patrick Stewart in Extras

P.S. - Do people actually buy these things?

So ten days ago, all full of piss and vinegar, I might’ve said something along the lines of “I’m going to put my nose to the grindstone now and blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda”

I haven’t done a great lot, I tried opening paragraph after opening paragraph but could not find anything that worked. So I’m taking a different approach now. One of the main problems is that I know what I want this book to be but I don’t know how to write what I want. So I’ve listed out thirteen chapters (my lucky number) and I’ve began listing all the things that need to happen in each chaper.

After thinking about doing it starting at the end and using flashbacks, or using alternating chapters for present and past, I’ve decided on the more linear things begin, things get worse, things get worse again style.

I’ve also come up with a new novel idea. Or maybe short story. Nah, lets make it a novel. It’s working title is ‘When the aliens left’ - which gives you an idea of the instigating circumstances of the story. It’s something between futurism scifi and fantasy, with something of an Alice down the rabbit hole twist of lemon.

I know a great deal less about this story and so hopefully it’s be easier to write.

I was also looking back at my old first chapter of another project I was working on at the end of last year. This is a project I was working on for a while but couldn’t decide which way I was taking it. I may pick this up again soon and see how the second chapter turns out. (I’ve referred to it on here as either project surreal or Mal or something along those lines)

I should be finishing up another short story soon. I’ve been working on it for quite a while now, in between other projects, and want to get it completed so I can work on some other short stories I have plans for.

So, how about you?