Scepter of the Fire Cat: The Lost One (Book 2)

 Working on cleaning it up aka editing on this one. Hoping to finish it soon. The delay has been creating scenes and portraits. I want to release this book in COLOR and have lots and lots of pictures.

What kind? This is Lynsa; Prince Linnell's love interest.

And this one; Lady Teloive (woodland witch) creating a transmutation spell using fire runes.

I'm creating portraits of this book's important characters. 

IF... IF I can do it in color and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg, I'll re-do book 1 which has a "few" black and white images. Eh. They were okay, but color does the images so much better.

Will it help sell books? I certainly hope so. I have discovered today's youth are image-oriented, and especially with color images. Yes, I know, animation is even better, but have you attempted to place animation in a book? Hm? Something to think about down the road. For e-books, it would work, paperbacks will take a little more evaluation.

Okay, just three more characters and this blog post is done. I'm not showing the main characters of the novel - Trel and Nori... although if you look at the image of Lady Teloive, Trel is sitting at the table.

This is Guardsman Senior Ahsey of the Royal House of King Ariello.

This is King Ariello, ruler of Yorela, the surviving seaside kingdom of the legendary Adavinya.

What fantasy world can exist without an evil wizard? I give you, Zalran, Royal Wizard.

Trust me, you haven't even seen the tip of the iceberg of characters...

Trel - groomsman and guardian/mentor of Prince Linnell.

Linnell - obviously the prince, son of King Ariello

Nori - the half-breed albino engaged to Trel

Luap - good wizard from the legendary west edge of Adavinya

Arual - Luap's daughter

Rizell - thief, sort of a Robin Hood type

Bringel - Rizell's #1 right-hand man

Asena - princess, daughter of King Ariello

... and so many more.

Until next I ramble on...

How To Stop A Mistake

 For those of us who own a PC... let me put you in on a secret. If you have two drives; like "C" and "D" and the company gives you like a whopping 235 gigabytes of space on "C." Yeah, I know. It sounds like a lot of space.

IT's NOT!!

You start adding programs and ALL of them want to install on the "C" drive and store all your work data of the program on the "C" drive, too.

Even 'downloads' go to the "C" drive.

That's when I discovered the problem. I was attempting to download a new program and well, I'd run out of space on "C" and it wouldn't download to completion.

Are you ready? My "D" drive had over 900G of free space. I'd only used, in all those years, only a measly 82G on the "D" drive. 

I had to go through the "C" drive and purge what I thought I could afford to lose.

All of this didn't happen overnight. I've had my laptop for about four years; maybe five. Okay, six years.

Going through all those old files was a nightmare. I had copies of copies. I decided to use the most logical method of deleting files. List them from largest to smallest. Get rid of the BIG files first. That seemed the best method.

I had a whole 683 megs of free space. Deleting files, starting in the Download directory, biggest first, I quickly was up to 1.2G of free space.  Whoo-hoo!! UGH! So much work, so little gained.

But, I kept at it. Then I realized, I was deleting files but the programs would just put more files back and fill up what little gain I had.

Move the programs to the "D" drive was my inspiration.

I created two directories on "D" named "Applications" and "App Data" which I would use to reload the programs from "C" to "D."

I made sure I had my data saved to another temporary area, made sure I had the registration key, and then I deleted the program. Once that was done, I reloaded the program but rather than allowing everything to go to default locations, I put the applications in the "Applications" directory, and if they wanted a storage or temporary work directory, I forced it to the "App Data" directory.

After a "delightful" day of moving programs to the "D" drive... all SIX of them so far, I had gained a little over 13G on the "C" drive.

I still have about another ten programs I hope to move. 

My future is simple.

Any new programs will be loaded to the "D" drive.

With any luck, when I get all the files moved to "D" as I hope, perhaps I'll have maybe 50G of free space on the "C" drive.

Of course, one good thing, with much of the "C" drive being emptied, perhaps my laptop will once again run quickly. Wouldn't that be nice?

So, what and why this blog entry?

If your computer is running slow, it might be running out of work space.

If you get a new computer, check and see how the manufacturer set it up - 1 HUGE drive, or 2 or more drives.

If ONE drive, enjoy. If two drives - remember, install as much software on the SECOND drive, not the "C" drive.

Trust me, "C" will fill up fast enough.

Okay, I've warned you, do as you wish.

Until next I ramble on...

UPDATE: I now have 30Gig of free space on my "C" drive. My laptop is flying in speed. I haven't seen this fast of reaction for almost two years. CLEAN OUT YOUR "C" drive.

 Almost a year since my last post. I really thought I'd attempt to be more regular than that, but Life keeps throwing curves at me.

Personal update. I'm on dialysis 3X weekly which basically messes up the whole day with four hours in the chair, plus hookup and unhook time - depending on whether they are using the chest port (fast) or the dual needles (much slower, 10 min per needle when removed) then you need to include the drive time there and back. I was able to cut my drive time down from 40 min each way to about 10 min. Yay!

Writing Update. With the above, obviously not a lot of writing time available, but I've been able to squeeze some in. I finished the Amish Singer series - six books. I've been getting a lot of good reviews on the series. At the last show, I had two customers come up, all excited, hoping they'd find me there, they wanted the last two books - five and six. A customer I was talking with when the one rushed up and cut in, she listened and decided to buy the full six-book set. 

I decided to leave the Amish world and work on some fantasy. My granddaughter suggested I do the cat series I'd written many years ago. Following her advice, I released book 1 of Scepter of the Fire Cat, book 1, The Legend. I'm now finishing up book 2, The Lost One. And, with any luck, I hope to have book 3, The Return, finished by the end of the year or early next year. 

So, what's in the wings of my writing? I want to finish book 2, The Topaz, of my Shiyula series. Also, book 4, Missing Mommy, with my Barry Hargrove detective series. Also, I have an epic I've been working on with the working title of The Azores which deals with Atlantis. And, I have my Viking/Native American tale, Sky Eyes, which I'd like to finish.

But, I've not forgotten my Amish fans, I have another story, hopefully, just a single book, Amish 9//11 which deals with the Twin Towers and September 11, 2001. I'm figuring it will entail a nephew of Jacob Longenfelter to tie in with my Amish Singer series, but be a stand-alone. 

Also, for my horror fans, I hope to get The Amish Hunter (working title) which involves the Amish and vampires. I have a twist I hope to throw out there to make it interesting.

I won't mention the other 15-plus books I've got started and need to finish. What I really need to do is to put the outlines I have in my head into the Scrivener project for each novel so IF, in my demise, perhaps somebody would want to pick up my work and finish it. I know my #3 son enjoys writing and he might be the one to do it. Otherwise, some of those stories will never see the light of day.

Now, for a different topic. AI - Artificial Intelligence. Some authors are using it to write their novels which allows them to slap out a story in no time. Keep word, I feel, is "slap out" because they aren't really writing it, they're allowing some vague ... I hate to say intelligence ... knowledge base might be a better choice ... to create the story for them. I'm not against AI, I think it is useful to help a writer enhance their writing ability. Call it a "Muse" if you want, but allow it to give your imagination a new shot of adrenaline, a new view aspect. In my novel, Missing Mommy (mentioned earlier) I was stumped as to what would be the cause for her to be missing. I mean, a lab technician by day, an exotic dancer by night, with a young boy at home. Why would she come up amiss? AI gave me the suggestions and I was able to create my story. I AM WRITING THE STORY!!! Not using AI. 

So, what are your thoughts on AI?

Until I ramble on again...