I’m still at it. Still writing my next novel. Being a sequel, there will be more similarities than not, but everything will be different to me. I have different objectives. I had two goals with the first book, discovering if I could tell a story, and learning the process of writing and publishing. I’m satisfied I succeeded at both. Enough people have given me positive feedback that I told a good story, and having completed the publishing process is inherent evidence of achieving my second objective. This second book will be an effort to improve in everything I sucked at with the first.
I won’t rush it like the last. I’d finish it again in six months if I could but this year is different. I’m learning a new job and I don’t care to ignore my running habit as much this time around. Not that I couldn’t use a few pounds but I gained ten last year. Taking more time though should lead to a better book. Cyber War I had enough typos that I’ve only recently fixed them all. I think.
Going slower should lead to higher quality but I’ll also use better tools and perform more editing. Using Evernote for the first book worked well but the font was so small I couldn’t see the errors. I’m now using Scrivener, which contains the notebook-like features of Evernote but has a thousand times more benefits. It’s the ultimate writer’s toolkit.
I was happy with the editing I received on Cyber War I but it was limited due to the money I put into it. I intend to spend perhaps double this time. And of course I’ll take more time to review and respond to the suggested edits. My step sister Shirley visited me this last week and told me in so many words I could benefit greatly from more editing. Point taken.
I’m doing other things differently as well. I have much more of an outline prepared for the sequel. It’s not complete, like the first I don’t yet know my ending. I didn’t have an ending for Cyber War I until I was nearly half way through. My climax came to me during a run and I immediately wrote it before filling in the second half of the story. That much is true for this book. I don’t write my chapters serially. Like Schrödinger’s cat, I write three or four chapters simultaneously, I even move them around before determining a final position of events at closing time.
I can say, and this is probably why I’m blogging on this topic, that I’ve picked up the pace the last couple of weeks on my writing. It’s not easy with so many other priorities. Between binge-watching Thirteen Reasons Why, reading three books at once, learning the new job, and hiding from Karen while she’s on a home improvement surge, it’s hard to do it all.
Trails will kill you if you’re not careful. In this photo, biologist Bob examines the skeletal remains of a deer that we ran by just short of two miles on the Picture Rock Trail this morning. Keith, Joey and I didn’t wait around for the lecture to finish before we screamed up the mountain at a strong pace, that is until Joey stumbled over a rock near four miles and landed hard. We took the final mile up a bit more conservative. I should mention that Joey is only in Middle School. Don’t think I ran more than three miles until my sophomore year of high school.
My strategic delay in planting this year looks brilliant given last week’s heavy spring snowfall. The wine I drank this weekend was in celebration of my gorgeous tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, kale, spinach, leeks, lettuces, chard, strawberries, melon, and a mix of florals to bring the bees; not the pity party so many of my fellow growers wallowed in as they assessed the damage to their crops. Sorry guys but second mouse gets the cheese.
What did I do on my one day off, the start to my three day weekend, in between jobs? Seriously? You have to ask? I went on a trail run. Six miles up and down the 
Momentos from twenty-three years at IBM sit on my bookshelf. Maybe more are hiding in my desk drawers. I might have lifted my stapler from the office. My history with IBM began when I drove a forklift working on their packaging line the summer of 1981, as part of the production of word processors manufactured in their Austin, Texas facility. I later worked as a computer operator as an intern in 1990 while obtaining my masters from CU in Boulder. I then started my 23 year run in 1994 with their wholly-owned subsidiary ISSC. I forget what that stands for now.
