Last year my desktop system died, leaving me writing (and doing very limited 3D art) on my little windows 7 netbook.

Well today I was over at my brother's (celebrating a couple birthdays for this/last month), and the system rebooted itself. And now all I'm getting is the dreaded 'no boot device detected'.

While I have a backup from last week this week is on the 'missing' drive (just I should have updated my story to FA yesterday instead of waiting for tonight!)

I'm not without a way to write or access the internet, but word doesn't run worth a dang on a raspberry pi ...

More info (and maybe an update) after I tear the drive out of the netbook and see if I can make it play 'one more time' ...

Wish me luck!

For those of us on a budget, DAZ has made their Hexagon program free. Log in if you already have a DAZ account or create an account.

"Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for the money." Moliere ```

Yes, it took longer than it should have, but it's finally there.

Tales of the Folly
Book Two of The Curse
Parakit and Beyond

Will be up on Amazon in the next 12-72 hours depending on where you are ...

(and it's still on the chakat's den for those that just want to read it! )

And the Amazon.com bit is up!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0744WFWS9/

I'll be cleaning it up and trying to get it formatted before seeing if Goldie is up to trying to proofread the silly thing for me. At a bit over 130K words it's a bit over twice the size of the new chapter one.

Speaking of chapter one, I've dropped the price on Amazon to $2.99 (may take a day or three for it to kick in) and thinking of offering two at $4.95 (it will still be free to read here and on Goldie's website.)

I'll update two again when I've got it all formatted the same, errors/goofs welcome.

Has gotten a bit on the large size, too large for my readers and goof hunters to find the small updates I add every now and then.

So the next 'update' will be broken into two.

'Parakit', which is already 93K words or so.

And the rest of it, which is a meager 27K words or so (so far.)

Other than goof checks and fixing any plot holes/goofs, the first part is done and won't be updated unless someone finds something to fix. The other will be updated as this slow writer figures out what goes where and why.



We now return you to wasting time on the internet.

A few votes the other way and we might have been seeing this in the future.

Published: 12/1/2003

http://www.baen.com/a-state-of-disobedience.html

Yes, there's lots 'wrong', like Lackland AFB having a runway, but too much of it looks like the police state we seem to be heading for.

What can I say, I liked the silly thing, comments welcome.

It seems some want to continue to pitch a fit over who won the election, and can't stand the idea that others might disagree with them.

My remarks below are in answer to a person that seems to be living in fear of what may come because things didn't go the way they'd hoped. I and another answered his whines on living in fear only to have are comments removed and I at least blocked.

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8043495/

My reply (which I could not post there because of the fear they have of views not their own):

Some of us are not living in the fear the media continues to spew, but in the hope that they are as wrong as they were about who would be leading this country.

For example, the last prez wanted to remove handguns from those that have a right to bear arms. Yesterday we had a robbery in one of the malls in my town. As police/security was slow off the mark (they can't be everywhere) a citizen with a concealed-carry permit took one of the robbers down after they (the robber) killed a bystander.

As Hillery also wanted to ban us protecting ourselves I'd say things are looking up.

(Yes, I have now blocked them as well as what's good for the goose is good for the gander, as well as unwatched them as there's no need to follow someone if they fear debate yet feel the need to post. Besides, less drama is good for my blood pressure I'm told. )

"Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for the money." Moliere ```

Tales of the Folly
Book One: The Curse
Part 1: Departure from the Norm

Will be up on Amazon in the next 12-72 hours depending on where you are ...

(and it's still on the chakat's den for those that just want to read it! )

And it's up on Amazon.com, the others should follow in a bit (or a day or three) ...

http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Folly-Book-Curse-Departure-ebook/dp/B01E8DJ1QS/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1460645908&sr=1-2&keywords=chakat

My main system of many years has decided to ignore any monitors plugged into it after a reboot, so I'm limited to a little netbook that isn't as protected from the 'big bad virus rich internet' as I'd like.

No need to add comments, by the time I can see them I'll have at least gotten a display running on the desktop system again

and I was up an hour later ...


But now I be down yet again when the system stopped seeing any USB devices, so no keyboard or mouse to even do a clean shutdown on the dang thing ... and rebooting got us back to the no video out -- and not seeing the keyboard/mouse (keyboard has a LCD screen for cap lock and whatnot, and that info comes from the main board ...

Those (few) of you that have watched me try to write my folly of a tale over the last eight years may have noticed more 'side story' activity than main story chapters these last few years. The ones that are moving are those that deal with the main characters in my tale; while most of those that have hung are either me working with another writer, or working in cameos …

I've just about decided that the problem is as simple as the fact that I don't play nice with others (or at least others whose ways of writing/thinking are too different from my own …)

So for the next little while I'm going to try to get the main tale back on the main line. If this means leaving a few ideas/cameos on the sidelines, then so be it as the main tale seems to be stuck with all the current things adding drag. (Windsong/Tauna/Blackrose will continue - though they may be more in the background.)


He that teaches himself has a fool for a master. -- Benjamin Franklin

As some of you know, I've been trying to write a story which I kiddingly called 'Tales of the Folly - Book One: The Curse' which is still far from completion on the Chakat's Den ( http://chakat.com/FT-index.html ).
When I started writing it (and when head chakitten Goldfur said 'go for it!') I have planned for maybe six little chapters of this crazy human hauling cargo in space. I threw in some hitchhikers so it wouldn't be six chapters of this guy arguing with his ship's AI. Those that have read it know I wasn't able to stick to just six chapters, and only a couple of them might be considered 'little' (and after eight years I might be finally getting halfway there!)

Now, what this is all about. While I've read at least twice my not inconsiderable weight in paperback books, this was my first try at writing. While I'd like to think I'm getting better, those first chapters show how little I knew at the time - not that the later ones are without flaws. What I'm going to do is try to 'fix' them, at least a bit.

So I will be adding all of the chapters here. Those with names ending in 'org' are just as they are on the Den and on the Den they'll be linked together. Those that I've started to 'fix' will end with a date of last update (and most often new text will be in blue.)

While doing that, I'll also try to keep the story going (if I can ever catch my dang muse that is - she loves to give me what appear to be great ideas, but seldom how to get 'to' that idea or then how to move to the next ...)

(and please don't hold breath waiting for new stuff, you're reading the ravings of a very slow excuse for a writer here.

First the 'bad' news, I've once again joined the ranks of the unemployed, after more than five years at the same place - not quite a record for me, that would have been two weeks shy of seven years working at dell.

As with my fall from dell, I've got a few dollars socked away and everything's paid for, so don't worry about me, my head will be above water for a while.

The good news is other than job hunting and helping my aging parents, I 'should' have more time for writing - if my muse doesn't go into hiding when she finds out I'm being more careful of spending money on toys!

Second Chances is moving along, and I'll try to get the next main chapter of my Folly of a tale ready.

Ides of March is all but done, I’m going to let it sit for a couple weeks and then look it over again. Not much done on the other ‘in work’ stuff at this point. As per normal for me, got another nutty idea – and a few pages done on it (it ‘should’ be shorter than Ides, but I’ve been wrong before. )

Was playing with DAZ and some of the free stuff you can get online for it (no, I didn’t find a good chakitten figure, but fox/wolfs and cats seem doable.)

Just a couple tests using the free DAZ Studio 3.0 and Free SciFi Corridors and Little Dragons' FURRETTE & FURRALDO

http://www.daz3d.com/
http://www.sharecg.com/v/36522/Pose.....2260---Part-01
http://littledragon.francemi.net/furrette_01.htm

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5175975/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5175978/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5175997/

Comments (and any usable furry/taur figures!) welcome.

21 Questions: A meme for writers. from http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/817467/

1. When did you start writing?
2005

2. First drafts: Handwritten, typed, or some combination?
Into a computer. (the easier to change/spellcheck.) have netbook, will travel.

3. Do you keep any kind of notebook or writer's journal, and if so, what kinds of things go into it?
No.

4. Do you set any quotas for your work (number of words per day, number of hours per day, etc.)? Why or why not?
No. Because if the muse ain’t whispering in my ear, I’m not doing more than rewording stuff.

5. Are you most comfortable writing short stories, novels, or something else?
Trying both, both of which are works in progress. I am finding it harder to keep the momentum going in the longer works.

6. What's your favorite kind of story to write?
Only tried a little fan-fic in the chakat universe so far.

7. Talk about a story of yours that was easy to write and one that was difficult to write, and why.
First Flight was the easy one (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1989596/) it was the first Thursday Prompt I did. The hard one would be the tale that started my writing, (http://www.chakatsden.com/chakat/Stories/Folly-TheCurse-Collected.html is only the first eleven chapters!) coming up on four years and still a long way to go.

8. Which of your characters is closest to your sense of self? In other words, who do you most identify with in your own work to date?
The idiot captain in my tale!

9. What work are you most proud of right now?
That I’ve gotten this far.

10. What do you feel your strengths and weaknesses are as a writer?
That I’m too ignorant to know if I have no talent for this. Coming up with what feels like great ideas and then not being able to write it down in such a way that it doesn’t sound like crap.

11. Name a few writers who have influenced you or your work in some way.
Goldfur and the other writers on the chakat den. David Weber, Alan Dean Foster, C. J. Cherryh, Rick Cook, David Drake, Robert A. Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Moon, to name a very few.

12. Talk about something you've written that you later found embarrassing for some reason.
I had tried to start each of my first chapters with a prelude. They were removed before the third chapter, both due to ridicule and because I was starting to realize it wouldn’t fit with what I needed for the storyline. (The prelude was to have someone from this time end up three centuries later and dealing with the chakat universe. That wouldn’t work with his knowledge level, so I came up with a different way to bring him forward in time.)

13. Talk about the earliest stories you remember writing. What were they about?
As per above, I’m still writing my ‘first’.

14. If you knew you would be successful, what would you most like to write?
What I am doing now, only better.

15. What inspires you?
Other stories, movies, music, friends/foes, stray thoughts.

16. How many projects do you tend to work on at once?
6-10 chapters of my current tale in various states of disorganization, and 4 other side tales that won’t be in the main story.

17. Who reads your work before it's released to the public? Do you have beta readers, a critique group, etc.?
I post my in work stuff at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anthrolitarts/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theliteraryarthouse/
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups.....katheaven/info
as well as here on FA
there’s a handful of people that point out goofs or ask ‘what the heck were you thinking?’

18. When you're not writing, what do you do for fun?
Reading.

19. Advice to other writers?
Don’t let the nay say-ers get you down. There will always be those that didn’t like your work for some reason. (If everybody likes it, you must have done something wrong!

20. What are you currently working on?
Still on my ‘Tales of the Folly’, plus ‘Maverick’ and ‘Second Chances’

21. Share the first three sentences of a work in progress.
How about the first four?.
Eight weeks Earth time. Fifty-six days. Thirteen hundred and forty-four hours. Eighty thousand six hundred and forty minutes….

Ok, makes no sense, so here’s the next three….
Kicked off his own damn ship by the yard-dogs. Well, they did have their reasons. The last set of upgrades had taken far longer than planned due to a certain red-haired human’s meddling.

(Maverick)