One Step Forward

I finished writing We Dare – Ghost Squadron No. 1 late last week, and after a weekend hiatus during which I replaced my old desktop PC with a new model, I’ll start the revision process later this morning.

The old PC, a refurbished Windows 7 box, gave me good service.  I wrote each one of my books with it; I did my graphic design on it, and I was running my business with it.  I can’t quite remember how ancient that HP Compaq is, but they stopped producing the CPU chip in 2009, which should tell you something.  It was giving me signals of impending motherboard failure for the last week or two, and I finally conceded it was best if I replaced the machine before everything crashed and my ability to work with it.

And so, I went out to our local Canada Computer store on Saturday and walked out ten minutes later with a new desktop PC.  Nothing fancy, but oh so much faster and more stable than the old one.  No more hiccups, no hesitation, no ‘not responding’ messages, no stuttering mouse pointer.  Yes, it runs Windows 10, which I dislike for its intrusiveness and bloat, but with Windows 7 support ending in the next few weeks, the writing was on the wall.

It took me a day to set the new PC up so that it runs like the old machine did, with every single one of the tools I need to ply my trade, especially my editing programs.  But to make sure they would work properly, I broke down and replaced my old MS Office version with Office 365.  I’m philosophically opposed to subscription-based software and privately believe whoever invented the concept should be drawn and quartered, but it seems to be the way of the future.  And because I’m in the writing and publishing business, I have no choice since none of my editing software works with OpenOffice or LibreOffice.  Ah, well.  At least my old version of Adobe Creative Suite (CS3, if you can believe it) still works fine.  The subscription on the newest version, CS6, is ruinously expensive.

On the truly bright side, I was able to transfer my web browser data from the old machine to the new machine – cookies, passwords, history, bookmarks, and all – via sync.  That meant I was up and running by suppertime Sunday without a hitch.  Now to revise We Dare.  My editor is expecting it in early December.

An Act of Remembrance

Friday Update

I’m at the 85% completion mark for We Dare – Ghost Squadron No. 1 so barring any unforeseen events, I will be done some time next week.  My editor should get it by the end of the month, which means I may well publish before taking a well-deserved rest over Christmas and the New Year.  Concurrently, I’ve also begun the high level outline of Ashes of Empire: Imperial Night and I’ll be plunging into that story in January.

As those of you who read When the Guns Roar (Siobhan Dunmoore Book 6) will have realized, that book finishes her story arc at least where the Shrehari War is concerned.  Will there be more tales of her life and times?  I can’t say.  All I know is that Dunmoore still has a long and storied career ahead of her, but her battles will mainly be fought in the realm of politics as the Commonwealth faces one crisis after another.  If you read Decker’s War, you’ll have an inkling of what I mean.  Should I come up with a good story line, one that’ll keep readers from putting down the book because it’s past midnight, then there might be another Dunmoore, or perhaps even several more.  But no promises.