The writing community

I love the writing community. It's so supportive. You have a bad day, you get virtual hugs. You have a good day, you get virtual high-fives. It's super awesome. You can find blogs from those like mine about the everday struggle of juggling my responsibilities of wife, mother, and part time work while still trying to make a writing career, to those that have numerous self-help and writing tips like Jami Gold's. http://jamigold.com/ to plain fun like @M__Mitchell http://www.badboyscanbefun.com/ that makes you think and your writing improve.

Whatever part of the writing process you need themost support in (finding time--look to blogs like mine, issues--blogs like Jami's, technical--blogs like edittorrent http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ (grammar geeks unite!) you will find it in the writing community.

Recently, @briquinlan and @Mgbuehrlen, who run the Writer's Yardsale store http://www.cafepress.com/writersyardsale/7204306(awesome support story there as well) to help sponsor their writing careers, started a design contest. Basically, they are looking for designs for their T shirts and mugs.

I did a design based on my new Gal Friday Noir series I'm writing. But I can't get the background to be transparent. (grrr. anyone knows how to do that, I'll kiss them, or not as their preference may be!) I asked for help on twitter. @Wulfie_ (whom I met through the #zombiesurvivalcrew @Jtzerzieff and chat w/ through @Jinxie_G and @PatriciaIVicens) gave me couple hints and also told me to download Picasa. So, I did. It hasn't worked on the transparency issue, yet, but it did something else totally amazing. (@grae42 and new to me peeps @joelandmandy also told me to download program paint.NET to help since it's the paint program that I originally used. Lots of good help!)

Back story. Any y'all remember my computer crashed? To say I was devastated is understatement. My brother died less than 2 years ago and I had the pictures from the last time I saw him, he was holding my baby and his baby before he moved to Georgia. Also, my baby has Down Syndrome, was born three weeks early and spent first week in ICU and then few more days in hospital (recovered MUCH quicker than doc's expected!) and all those pics were lost. I was told by guy at Best Buy (where I bought my computer and have 3 year warranty that it was gone. I decided to not believe him and haven't taken my computer in yet cuz I have friend who does information recovery.

Well, I download this program and as it's finishing installing it asks, "do you want only pics from picture and document folder or from all over whole computer" or something like that. A little piece of hope lit up in me. Could it? Would it find my old pics despite the new wall??? I put all over the whole computer. And yes, as I'm sure you've guessed now, all my pics are back! I cried and cried and cried happy tears! So many important pics, my daughters graduation, a family reunion, birthdays, fourth of july, and everyday things like my baby's face full of spaghetti in his high chair, or our family's experience at the Pizza Hut in Texas next to my husband's college/work place. So much was lost and has been found.

And it is the perfect timing. My brother's birthday is next week. Last Year. I was pretty much depressed from now until about a week after the anniversary of his death. Having these pictures may make the difference between me being able to cope and continue writing and supporting my family or not.

So thank you writing community. Thank you for all your support, love, encouragement and well wishes. I love all of you. I haven't even mentioned all my favorites here! You have been my life line since my brother died. Literally. The blogs, the community support when I'm feeling down, helping me improve my craft so that I can more effectively channel my emotions into my work, all has been of immeasurable importance to me.

Back up

Recently, I have had a rash of bad juju regarding my files and things getting lost/stolen. So, I have endeavored to make sure I have back ups. Well, it was not enough. I had some sort of virus that would not let me access restore points or anti-virus.

I also found that my anti-virus was off. I don't know if that was me with a download that I forgot to turn back on, or if that was the virus. But any time I tried to access any of that, I was blue screened. It kept telling me to uninstall last thing I installed. I had not installed anything. I had TRIED to update my adobe last. But it had not started yet.

I spent HOURS yesterday, trying to make it recover somehow. It did not. Long and short of it is that I lost all my pictures and my research.

I had started moving files to dropbox so I have my 3 complete novels still saved. I also have some of my research in email boxes that I will have to track down now. (I send to my alternate email and myhusbands email, so between them, i hopefully have SOMETHING. I have a joint venture book published which I had on my computer. The sequel is gone. Unless I managed to send it a while back.

At one point, my back up files on this OS went blank. My whole back up drive just wiped out. I had already had plans for buying a seperate harddrive for back ups. My husband and I have even priced some. However, we have not had the money. This last check my husband only had five days of work because of the weather.

He was unable to get into work the day before Thanksgiving (turned out to be good thing since mypipes were frozen!) so he lost his two days of holiday pay as well. One twelve hour shift and two 8 hour paid days down the tubes. Sigh.

My dropbox used to have more on it, but I cleared it out to help my son back up his itunes before reinstalling. Something was not working right with quick time or something, so he gave up. I took out the music and started refilling my dropbox, starting with my MS.

Mostly, I'm bummed at loss of my pics. The ironic thing is that most of my pics that I don't yet have on disc/jump drive are on FB which was the culprit in the first place. One of my friends was hacked and her site used to send infected messages to the lot of us :(

I probably would have been fine, but like I said, my defenses were down. I am really bummed. This week, I've lost my pics, and discovered the loss of my and my children's childhood ornaments. Trying hard to not be a downer to everyone I talk to, but it gets harder with each thing that happens.

HOWEVER, I do have my completed manuscripts. With all the interest I have in my romance thrillers and paranormal romance, I think I'm going to relegate my sci-fi and fantasy series to smashwords for my small cult following. I will put them cheaply available like $1-2 dollars and will link the sites here for you.

I have to go back through and fix dialogue. I went and took out contractions, but on the reread, it does not sound good. I had this confirmed with a beta reader (without pointing it out), so I am going to fix it before I release it to the stratosphere :)

I have my thriller out with an editor. Keep those fingers/toes/hair/eyes, whatever you have crossed for me:)

And keep the happy juju thoughts coming so I can go back to being my cheerful self! I really am an optimist at heart...

Picture test

If all goes well, You will see a lovely picture of a bridge in the fall. It's near the falls in OR along the Interstate. A lovely peaceful picture to show the mood I'm currently looking for and trying to attain in my household :) We are all doing much better than we have been in a long time.