Even closer...

...got the book back from my editor/wife. She doesn't normally read that slowly, but was taking time to give me a thorough ass-kicking from an editorial standpoint. Some stuff she loved, some stuff she hated, and I am now poring through her notes and making minor adjustments in preparation for submitting the manuscript to Lulu to get the thing printed.

The manuscript, now, is at 260 pages, but that will likely increase a little.

I had a very minimalist cover in mind that was simply a black & white photo of a building (central to this particular book) for the front and back of the book, but have decided that I'd rather have plain white w/ black courier font for the covers & spine. Just seems cleaner and less pretentious. I dunno. I just like the way it looks in my head. We'll see. I'd like to have each book in the series be kinda uniform in that respect.

I've confirmed the book will be available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as the Lulu site.

There will be an e-book version available at some point, but I don't know if it will be day & date with the print version.

There will NOT be a Kindle version, as I've pulled my support for the device after the 1984 fiasco.

I don't yet have a release date. I have a feeling it'll be this month, but it could slip to September. I may push it to September just so I have time to actually build up some anticipation for it. Again, we'll see.

I've made some cost-related decisions, as well. Any additional content that's included will likely be downloadable, to reduce the cost of the book. The more the book costs to make, the more I have to charge. Also, I will be taking a dollar or less per book, in an effort to further reduce cost.

I've started the second book, and it was refreshing to really bang out some new material with these characters for the first time in years. If the first book was dark, this one is cold. With any luck, it won't be another 10 years between books, and I can put out a couple a year. I feel great about the second book thus far.

I'm also thinking about doing a free online-only prequel series of shorts to help flesh out the worlds that appear in these books. I've got the first one in the bag, and am kinda sitting on it while I decide what to do with it.

There have been two very rough things in this process: nightmares and lost companions.

Writing the book gave me nightmares, and editing it has had the same effect. There's some really twisted, deeply personal shit in this volume, and writing/editing it forces me to confront a lot of this shit, at least on some level, and the result is nightmares. Not the kind ya laugh and tell your wife about the next day, either.

My Linux netbook is down at the moment, at least until I either diagnose it or send it in to the manufacturer. It's covered under warranty, but I have a feeling that the HDD is on its last legs. I'm going to try and grab an image of it this week, before I send it in, but I worry that I can't keep it running long enough to grab said image. We shall see.

Either way, that netbook was HUGE in getting this thing edited. It's only 8.9 inches across and weighs 2 pounds, so it was a delight to just lie in bed, read, and edit. It's also my only portable option for Linux at the moment, and Linux is ideal for writers.

With Linux and a little know-how, a writer can pick up a cheap-ass Linux netbook, and customize the shit out of it, thus creating his/her ideal writing/editing setup. Ask any serious writer, and they'll tell you that they are very particular about their rituals, spaces, setups, etc. for when they write. I'm not as overly sensitive as most writers and don't like to cripple myself by limiting the conditions under which I can write.

That reminds me, some day I'd like to post about my dealings with other writers, and how most of them hate me, and how musicians are actually 'my people.' Just know that most writers are amazingly pretentious douchebags who want nothing more than to masturbate to ten-cent words.

Anyway, the netbook will be up and running again soon, but since I back everything up every day in quadruplicate, it's not too big an issue. That thing is just my favorite object in the world, and my most useful tool (other than my penis.)

I'll be back soon. The breaks between posts will be shorter from here on out, since there will be more to talk about the closer we get to release day.

Real quick, I've been reading my first ebook. I wasn't sure if I wanted to publish in that format, so I decided to test-drive a book. I've been reading the first Song of Ice and Fire book in this format, and so far, I really like it. I've been using eReader (running via Wine) on my Ubuntu netbook (which is perfect as an ebook reader, another reason I already miss it.) The netbook is so light and small, one can hold it easily in one hand and lie on his/her back, or lie in any preferred reading position. The nicest thing is that the backgrounds and font are totally customizable, so you can adjust everything until it's nice and easy on your eyes. I think I like it.

In the meantime, let's talk books. What are your favorites? Who are your favorite authors? Favorite genres? Do you like ebooks? What do you think of the Kindle? Anything!

Alright, let's get this hype machine going! HOOWAH!

-Blaine

Installing and Wine-ing and Random Shite

First, check this out if you didn't last night. Very education, no matter which side of the political fence you sit on. Whether you be a citizen of Gondor or Mordor, you will get something out of this.



I'd advise just to let that run while you read on or open a new tab and surf the net. Seriously, it's good stuff.

Random Gaming Musings
Here's some of the stuff that's come out over the past few days that I thought was note-worthy..

- the PSP's got some exciting stuff going on; I like the redesign, mostly. I wish the internal storage was upgradeable, and I have concerns about them being able to provide their entire library for download. Otherwise, if Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics, and FFVII: Crisis Core are available for download, count me in.

- I don't think it's a smart move for Squenix to limit Final Fantasy IV: the After Years to WiiWare. That's not their target demographic for the game, and never has been. Final Fantasy IV came out in 1991, which was before most Wii players were born. I think the smart money would be on releasing it on PSN for play on both PS3 and PSP, and making it so the two systems could share a save. An XBLA version definitely wouldn't hurt, either. I think that quite a few Final Fantasy fans happen to also own a Wii, in addition to their actual gaming consoles, and thus there will definitely be takers on this potential purchase, but not nearly as many as if it were spread across multiple consoles.

- A Mass Effect shooter on iPhone? Pfft. Yuck. Way to start sullying the franchise, guys.

- I gotta say, I am really looking forward to Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny on PSP. However, I guess I'm gonna hold off on buying it until it's available for download on PSP, since I don't wanna buy it twice. Regardless, I've always really enjoyed Soul Calibur, and the PSP actually seems like a good platform for the franchise. I was thinking about the controls for past entries, and this seems like it would translate well, and there wouldn't be the option for the cheesedick button-mapping of throws.

- my favorite NCAA Football feature finally returns in NCAA Football '10: school/team creation. A bunch of my friends and I all went to Columbia College Chicago (an art school) for our undergrad, and I used to always make us as a school/team in NCAA, and then go on to make a horribly obscene stadium, uniforms, players, and on and on. I'd drop us in the Big 10, since no one gives a shit about that conference (as opposed to the Big 12), and then I'd bump someone bullshit (like Northwestern) from the conference to make room for the Columbia College Chicago Killa Beez (no shit, that was the school "mascot" at the time.) Anyway, this feature was stripped from the PS360 versions, for whatever reason, but is returning this year. However, what's cool is that it's all PC-based, so you'll be able to work on your school/team whenever, and then upload it to your actual game. The team editor is supposed to be available starting in June, so that your team will be ready to humiliate the rest of the NCAA when the game ships in July. I am super, super pumped, as I used to go wild with this feature, and having it as an online app could, if properly implemented, open up all kindsa possibilities. Read about it here.

New Games
I've got a bad feeling about this year, guys n' gals. It's gonne be another crazy back-loaded year for releases. This year, I've gotten a handful of games, like Resident Evil 5, MLB09, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, but almost all that was in February and March. Looking ahead, I know I'm getting NCAA Football 10 and Madden NFL 10 this summer. This fall and winter, though, will feature BioShock 2, Disgaea 2 (PSP), Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, as well as whatever else is coming out that we don't know about yet. I know early 2010 will also see Final Fantasy XIII, Mass Effect 2, and Star Trek Online. Additionally, there are titles like Star Wars: the Old Republic, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Final Fanatasy Agito XIII, Parasite Eve: the 3rd Birthday, Again: Eye of Providence, Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, and Guild Wars 2 that just don't have release dates yet, but could drop in the next year or so.

The point is that, once again, despite a few publishers pledging to break the cycle, we're gonna get 80% of this year's games that are worth owning all within a 4-month span. Bad. Just bad. August through November is gonna be crammed full of games, and some really worthwhile titles are gonna get crushed underfoot, especially since the Dubya Depression is really gonna limit how much cash we all have to spend on games.

This is stupid. Why not release some of these over the summer, or next summer? It seems like this time of year is totally barren of releases, and would be a great time to position a game for success. Actually, this time last year, GTA4 dropped, and I heard it did okay.

Lame. Just lame.

Open Source FTW
I reinstalled Ubuntu on my main desktop again, and as usual, it went all nice and smooth. I've been an Ubuntu user for about 3 years now, and I really gotta give 'em props and how nicely Ubuntu 9.04 handles drivers now. It used to be a bit of a challenge, at times, getting everything to work drivers-wise, but now ya just boot from a disc or a flash drive, and BAM! Everything installs, and you're ready to rock n' roll.

During that install, I was trying to install OpenSolaris on my second desktop, which has been stuck on Ubuntu 8.04 for what seems like ages. Every time I've tried to upgrade from that release, it's refused to boot afterwards. Every time I've booted it into another OS with a disc, it's started to install, then just hung. The OpenSolaris install was no different, which is unfortunate. I've been a big fan of Sun Microsystems for a long time now (OpenOffice.org and Netbeans FTW), and I like playing with Unix, and I really want to learn more about maintaining a Unix server, but the fucking machine refuses to let me install anything else on it. This is the weirdest issue I think I've seen in ages. I'm gonna play around with it a bit, and see if I get any different results when I boot from a flash drive.

Gaming on a Linux Machine
After installing Ubuntu, I proceeded to blow out a lot of the Ubuntu-provided software (I hate waiting on Ubuntu to get my updates for Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.), and then install the non-Ubuntu versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Netbeans, Wine, etc.

After I added the Wine repository, I installed Steam and XFire, then initiated the download for Quake Wars and Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II.

I haven't tried Dawn of War II yet, since I can already predict some problems getting that to run on Linux. x

I fired up Quake Wars this morning, and it actually managed to not crash during the DirectX install. It made it all the way through the install, which was shocking, then actually started to load the game, when it seized up during the UI loading process.

So, yeah, I'm back to messing with Linux gaming, since everything runs beauuutifully on the new laptop.

Anyway, I'll be back tomorrow with more foolishness.

What's up with you guys? Anything new? Anything ya wanna comment on?

-Blaine