I didn't record it here, but I did reach my March goal. A day ahead of schedule too. I finished my teen caving book. Score! Now comes the major revision. A week into April and I've done major revision on four chapters of 26. I hope to complete the first draft come April 30.

I've taken time away from my free writing to work for ssdc.com, a scifi roleplaying company. It's great fun. (comment self-editted to avoid embarassing incrimination)

By the way, TEN, count them TEN challenge submissions. Holy cow! I'm amazed. Nice to see a sudden surge in group activity, even if only temporary.

After two years away, I have taken a new Seasonal Lead Ranger position at my old stomping grounds, Wind Cave NP, SD. It's a higher government pay grade (which means they'll pay me more) and it's a "lead" position which means I'll be in charge of 20+ rangers along with 4 other leads. I'm looking forward to change of pace. I'll be starting in early April and finishing my season after labor day. Then I'll return to MI for writing and warehouse work, which isn't as bad as it sounds. Oh, and my symphony gig, which I love, and pays! Isn't that a coup if you love making music? For those that may not know. I play the violin. Have done so since the age of 3, and after a semi-three year hiatus, have returned to a symphonic setting with excessive jubilation.

This week I'm spending the weekend snoeshowing in the UP of MI. Next weekend I have a symphony gig Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The weekend after that I have a regional "Networks" Day for local Children's Book writers from across Northern Michigan. Fortunately (and unfortunately) I will finish my winter job in a week or two and that will provide more writing time at the expense of income. So be it.

I've set myself the goal of finishing my Caving novel by the end of March. Unfortunately. it has no affiliation with science fiction, fantasy, or horror (unless you consider reading about teenage boys horror). I don't know when I'll officialy hop back into the SFWW mix (though I do miss it), but it's back on my radar screen.

Hey, I think I finally figured out how to work this blog thingy! Neato!

Now all I have to do is come up with things to write about. That should be easy for a writer, right?

OK, I guess I'll start with a confession: I'm not really a beer drinker; I prefer wine coolers.

There, I said it. Do you hate me because I'm a liar? I didn't really mean to be deceitful. It's just that I'm a lazy typer, and "beer" is easier to type than "wine cooler."

So concludes this blog entry. See ya next time!

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I haven't submitted a manuscript in ages. So long, in fact, that I can't even remember when. I've been writing, but never finishing anything. So this is my year to complete work and get it on the market. My goal is 50 submissions. Do I have that many stories ready to go out? Not at all. I might have half a dozen, though, that I feel comfortable polishing for publication. Beyond that, dozens and dozens of ideas crying to be written into stories. So I'm not worried about my lack of material. I do have to get going, though. It's February and all I've done is polish up one story.

Well, a couple of weeks late, but here it is. Other than what I've inadvertantly broken, here are the main changes:

• tiny-MCE text editor (including Google spell checker)
  turn this one one by clicking the enable rich-text link beneath any text box.
• new permissions system (yes, another one!). If there are pages that you feel are/are not set correctly, please let me know. Essentially, blogs and forums should be visible to the general public, anything in the projects section (other than a few pages) should not.
• Chatbox is gone. We're now using the Chatroom. Get there by either clicking the chat link (beneath the planet) or by clicking the Orion Lounge link in the left column. The chatrooms are only accessible (I hope), if you are logged in.
• There's surely more, but I can't think of it right now :(

I found a replace for our sometimes less than stellar performing chatbox. No link at top yet, but once logged in, you'll find an entry for Chatrooms show up under the chat link below your user name.

The chatroom works differently than the chatbox. For one thing, it supports multiple chatrooms. It's a little odd looking at first, because uses a forum-like threaded organization. In other words, when you choose the chatroom I've created: Orion Lounge, you'll be presented with topic threads, or you can create your own. I created one called General Chat. Since I haven't yet tested this with anyone else, I don't know what happens if everyone creates their own chat topic. I kind of suspect that you'll be mumbling in a corner by yourself ;)

Moving, Job Applications, Unappreciated Work, Running critique group, running quartet. All the usual mundane stuff. Then squeeze in hiking 35 miles of National Lakeshore coastline in three days and a 3 day SCBWI writing conference, and I'm flailing for time. Oh, and my knee really hurts. Plus there are legislative decisions I simply must protest. Repealing Habeas Corpus is never a good sign of things to come. Perhaps I'll think of the lakeshore right now, or caving. Must go caving. Going through a stage of "cave yearning". My writing has suffered of late. Only a few stories pushed back onto the market.

I went to a NP?NP! get-together this evening with the Northern Connecticut NaNoWriMo regional group. It was the first time that I every actually caught up with fellow NaNo folks at an in-person meeting and it was definately worth it. In spite of navigational issues, about a dozen writers crowded around a cluster of tiny tables in the Manchester Barns and Noble bookstore.

NP?NP! stands for No Plot? No Problem!, the book by Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month). Meeting at the local Barnes and Noble bookstore was a natural location for a quick NP?NP! exercise: We were each given 2 minutes to walk through the bookstore and pick up two or three books that were of interest to us. Then, we had about 5 minutes to come up with a character using one of our selected books, and a situation using the remaining book(s). Next, we had to title our work and identify the genre. Finally, we had to count the number of words written for the exercise. That was stage 1. For stage two, we handed our books to the second person on our left and repeated the exercise, but with the constraint of doing it in half the number of words used in the first stage. For stage three, we were to write the plot synopsis for our favorite book, again trying to reduce the word count by half. After the exercise, we each shared the results of the exercise and looked for similarities in each of the three segments (a key to finding your voice in your writing). If there is a way to translate this into a chatroom event, I think it might be fun.

OK, so my first intention was simply to fix what still remained broken from the last update, specifically, the wiki formatting used by GenE. Well...

There was another update. This time from 4.7.0 to 4.7.3. So I updated. And lost all the add-ons yet again. I think I have them mostly installed, but if you notice anything missing, please let me know :)