E.Jim Shannon

12:18am So, now it’s my annual top 10 predictions for 2006.
#1-A political G-8 figure will be assassinated.
#2-A Nuclear bomb will go off as a terrorist attack.
#3-There will be a “Next Big thing” like the Internet TV etc.
#4-A cure for a major disease will be found through Nano tech.
#5-I will be published for this year.
#6-My family will contact me.
#7-UFO disclosure will happen.
#8-I will have a better paying pt time job.
#9-I will lose major weight.
#10-I will have major dental work in this year.
There you have it. A mix of personal and international goals this year.

12:58pm Well. I tried to look for Quantum muse but the link was broken. But last night I discovered Sam’s dot publishing and they have a few good webzines to submit to. I went and sent a submission as suggested in their guidelines and fired Crosshairs off to “Fifth DI” They pay small but all I want is the paying market credit. See prediction above.

Anyway, I crawled back into bed at around 5am and slept good right up until the numerous times I had to pee. Then around 10 am some a--holes began hammering something on the walls and it was hard to sleep after that. I think I got maybe 5hrs. If that.


Anyway. Not much on my plate today. I sent out “Crosshairs” so that was okay. I’ll probably hear from them hopefully before April. This means I have this year, one rejection letter and three submissions and 2 stories, out there.

I like this Works program because it like Word and most Word Processors have the ability to email right from the document. With Crosshairs, when it went out to Sam dot publishing or sdp, I sent it as a Rich Text document and other formats. I like this because when anything is sent out as an attachment it preserves the page numbering. Sdp however never specified font formatting so I sent it out as is. I use Comic Sans, 14.

Today on my plate, I’m going to watch the Oiler/Flames game and right after that Anne and I are going to go downtown and watch the fireworks for First Night so that will be good. We should be back before 1am and have something alcoholic and pass out. Other then that, I’m going to work on my Internet stuff etc. Anne is still sleeping. More later on. Possibly.

e.Jim

10:26pm work went slow for the first hour but sales kept coming in later. I ended up closing with a $100 sale and a $10 bonus. Can’t complain about that. Also, I met Anne on the train at Churchill station of all places. She had a pit stop to do so I took her bag home and watched the Oilers skate to beat Nashville 4-2 and a breakaway goal by Ryan Smyth. Excellent stuff. Now the Oilers play Calgary tomorrow night and if they can beat them, they are back in the running for 1st place in the Division and the Conference again.

Seeing as how tomorrow is New Years eve, I’m going to work on the finale touches of CH and get it out the door before the Oiler/Flames game and we go down to first night to watch the fire works. What a great way to round out the year.

I’ve also got to figure out how that 3 month calendar works. I haven’t been able to find out how to add events to the calendar. As I said, Jan, Feb, March are going to be action packed filled months. That’s all for now. More later.

e. Jim

6:17am Well I woke up just after 6am. That was where I wanted to be, because that gave me 2.5hrs sleep. That’s okay by me. I think it was the wine Anne gave me. It has some sleep inducing qualities but not always.

1:03pm I had trouble sleeping when I went back to bed and dozed off. One of the teens iat work s trying to scam $2 off me by claiming I owe her money. I know for a fact I never, rarely borrow money. Except from Greg, I think I borrowed $1 for a candy bar a couple of times but that’s been it when I was without cash. My blood sugar was down at the time. I usually give him my left over sanwhiches anyway. She thinks I “owe” this from her empty cans and bottles she gave me since I’ve known her at work and she’s been bugging me about it lately. I take home a lot of empty cans and bottles every night. I think that trivial had gotten inside my head before I climbed back into bed this a.m some how and I couldn’t sleep from there. But it bothered me. I take some pride in the fact I don’t owe anyone. It’s amazing what can creep into your head if you let it. I did manage the sleep though I needed. Stupid thing to worry over.

That and this recent “social fund” scam where the boss is taking $2 off my pay check each week. This “company social fund” was very un popular when it was first introduced when I started 5 years ago. No doubt it’s being used for our bonuses. Now this so called csf, is costing me, or will end up costing me $104/year. That translates into 2.5 pkgs of insulin. Also, there is this movement started by 2 of the staff that work Saturdays, to try and get more people to work Saturdays to have pizza every Saturday. Now personally Pizza every week doesn’t do anything for me. But what does, is this taking csf money and trying to entice people into working Saturday. So, now your putting restrictions on my csf contributions by restricting my access to it? I think they better rethink that. If they don’t and start doing this when we move into the new office after next weekend then I will opt out for sure.

Anyway, Anne went up to the bank to cash my check. Great weather lately. I think I need a new job. Or at least another job I can do in the afternoons aside from where I work now. But then, this will take time away from my writing and I can’t afford that either. So, I need to strike a balance somehow, between the job, writing, family, and exercise and sleep. Oh yea, this weekend I will get Crosshairs out the door and begin work on "Lodge brothers."

Oh I also responded to a post on my impresions of begining a daily diary and how I got started with mine. It's something I tossed together. Also, I ended up responding to Robert Bruce Barid again on the "Occult" thread. You can read about the sillyness from the link. It's not much but I was kind of wiped out when I wrote it and I answered him on his accusations that Masonry is a religion. There are many types of religious people in masonry but that doesn't mean it's a religion.

e.Jim

12:03am I was reading Tam’s Blog earlier and it’s interesting that she doesn’t use an outline and from what I’ve been reading she just jumps right in to her concept. I don’t really like to go in for long convoluted outlines myself because there’s something anti climatic about them. Well for me at least. I find that I burn out with outlines and find it difficult to jump back into the work after I invested all the time and energy into the outline itself. I’m left drained.
Anne discovered video on demand from Shaw and I have a night off from back rub break tonight so she can watch the movie and 3 days off beginning tomorrow night. Plus I got my pay check as well.

I sent mark a PM and asked if I can have multiple cms’s under one domain name. I don’t think that works though because of the address unique to that site. I would probably need a new domain name for that new site. I think that’s what he’s going to tell me. I still owe him $12 for ejimshannon.com. I don’t mind paying out $24/year.

Anne hasn’t called yet about any fitness club services. I’m thinking about Grant McEwen college. So I went to their website and they have different types of plans and a pool for $38 bucks a month and fitness and nutritionist staff on hand plus pool facilities, hot tub and steam baths etc. I think this is a great idea. Anne’s all in favor for it.

I also just scanned the new posts from Pocket full of words and I posted on this at FM. You have to scroll down a bit to read the message.

Well, I'm about done for now. More latter on.

e. Jim

3:26am I’m awake. I just can’t seem to get any sleep from after the time I spend with my wife, from 1am-1:30am. I usually like to give her a back rub at that time of night and I’m yawning and tired drowsing off listening to Coast. And after that she likes to retire to the couch and watch some tv. She crawls back into bed around 2:45-3am and I’m all wired up. We feel it’s because of my lack of me getting enough exercise. So this upcoming year I would like to go, to a “health club” even if it’s just 3 days a week. Say, Friday, Sat, Sunday even if it’s only for an hour a day. The thing with this office job is I’m not getting enough exercise. Yet I need my sleep at the same time and to spend time writing as well. I also, need to put some extra hrs in on the job and I’ve been meaning to do that this week, but I’ll be lucky if I can even get Friday afternoon in. Right now we are doing Old Timer Hockey Challenge. And it’s a charity hockey game but the campaign is reduced to semies and cold. We've been milking this thing for quite a while now and it's done. I was lucky to pull off $170, while the guy next to me did $500 something and most of us were struggling around the same. The campaign is boring and tiring and pooched.

I’ve got this bit of a headache as well and that’s causing me to lose some sleep. I know though when I go back to bed around 5am, I’ll be tired enough to pass out.

I managed to get at the mess the cats made for me a couple of days ago and more or less straitened up those papers and things.

I think I’m going to add several more categories to my Blog: Politics and Religion (AGF) When I don’t know. Lets check my email and see if the Stand Up Alberta people have emailed me back. Nope. Nothing back yet.

12:52pm yikes, I just got up 10 min ago and I’m a bit blurry eyed. I went back to bed around 5am and had the longest un interrupted sleep I’ve had in a long time. I still got a soar neck though in the bargain. Figures.

Last night I checked on my add sense account. I haven’t been there in ages and I don’t even know if you have to have a Google add on the site for them to start paying you. I was investigating that last night but I couldn’t find the Google adds. I’ll play around with it again on the weekend and get CH out the door. To somebody. Oh and if I do put adds on my Blog, they willl be in the bottom end of the sidebar

So the Oilers lost again last night in Rexall place yet and to The Wild. Even though they were last in the Division, they play a trap style of a game and blog up middle ice. But we have Nashville in here on Friday night and the Flames on Sat. In Calgary. Uggh. Nashville has lots Calgary lost to the Predictors Tues and the Flames Play the Wild tonight. Come on Wild. It’s quite a ride out here in our Division. With any Divisions in the NHL.

The red time notes means this is taken right out from my regular diary. But I need to make them bold font. Update. Bold may not work but enlarging the font does.

Just a note here, The first post isn't the last post. By that i mean it goes through several reads and changes, so even though you have read the post moments before it was posted and think that's it. No because I go back re read everything and edit. Usually, I'm done and out of here by 2:30pm anyway. Unless there is something else I want to add when I come back from work after 9pm.

That's all for now.

e. Jim

I went back to bed around 5am and I slept good from there until about 11:35ish or so. I can't believe the weather we've been getting here lately. Tempatures have been hovering around 0 and above for quite awhile now. Sure we've had a few -15c* days but nothing -20c* or anything like that yet, except a few times overnight low temps and the long range looks like its going to be more of the same as well, until mid January. I think the last real winter we've had here in Northern Alberta was back in 1996. I recall coming home from that AVC upgrading course over there in the idustrial park and for almost a week we've had -25-30c* weather and lots of snow piled up. I recall as well, many -29c* and that wsn't factoring in a wind chill.

This morning I came across a couple of interesting websites and Blogs that promoted an Independent Alberta. I like that. One site showed a clock how much money Alberta sends to Ottawa, kind of like a debt clock. Or rather a donation clock is more like it, where we send money to Ottawa, in the tune of $11 billion/year. Very interesting. It seems we don't need Canada, they need Alberta. I went and emailed the "Stand Up Alberta" website to see if I can get logo code so I can place in my Template/sidebar. I'll see if I can get a response before I go off to work. I'm not suggesting we opt out of Canada total or just yet but I think we need a better deal for Albertans then we're getting now.

I got a PM at FM to include Bonnnies weblog. If I can, I always like to ask first before I place peoples Blogs on my sitcourtesy a curtosy. If anyone wants to link here, no problem.

Still looking at that mess of paper I need to clean up but I don't have time right now. Maybe when I come back from work latter. BTW, CH is ready to ship. I just need to format the story is all to the market I want to send to. Most of these webzines want the story in rti format, which is easy enough to do and I still haven't ruled out traditional print media as well.

Otherwise, nothing new yet as for "Lodge brothers." I have a cast of characters of course and the novel I envision will be about 80-100k. In the short story format usually the 7 point plot outline inspires a plot all it's own. I have a few ideas for Lb of course and over this long weekend I'll have more.

Beginning the new year though I plan on writing a min of 1000 words/day of new fiction and it's still my goal to publish in the short story format first.

Other then the Stand Up Alberta logo I want an Edmonton Oilers logo on my web page. It is a Personal Blog with the emphasis on my sf/f writing. More later.

BTW, Don't shy from signing my guest book. It's very user friendly. See the link in the sidbar

e.Jim

yup I’m up again. Sigh. That’s okay, I have a couple of hours to myself and do some Internet work and maybe see what I can come up with at the moment for Lodge brothers.

Oh, when I was downtown at Audrey’s books in the basement looking for Holly Leslie and all they had was her Dancing with Wolves book. I’m sure it’s pretty good and all but I wasn’t in the mood for a long series or anything like that and that was the only book of hers on the shelf. I was looking for something more recent. I left empty handed but caught my bus into work and was there at 4:45pm. I got my cans and stuff and couldn’t help noticing how short staffed we were. We were doing ADD taps and I had a slow start but ended up with $810 I think according to Greg. Also, we were let out earlier, which was okay by me but I still didn’t get home any earlier and met Anne outside of the apartment building as she was coming in as well. I had a bit of “lunch” and watched the news, did some Internet stuff and spent some time with my wife for half an hour.

I tried to listen to Coast, which was a pretty good program with Dr. Paul LaViolette. I listened to that for awhile dozing in and out of sleep but I got nothing for that effort. It was, from what I heard a decent show tonight.

One thing I want to get this year is a digital camera so I can start posting images to my blog. My website is still pretty crude but at least I’ve got something going. I think. The website can be accessed from the links in the sidebar.

I think what I’m going to do while I still have the toner is to get a copy of Ace Valorous #1, AV#2, and Rouge behavior onto hard copy and start editing them. I still haven’t given up on CH just yet but my cat made a big mess for me spilling all my papers and story folders, including CH. Now I’ve got to go through that mess. It’s not much but there’s enough where I don’t want to do it right now.

More later

e.Jim

I had some fun sparring with RBB over there at AGF. he has some interesting things to say if you can wade through the conspiracy mud.

That's all for now.

e.Jim

I'm in a discussion with Robert Bruce Baird again over there at AGF. My response to him is a bit on the choppy side but I'm not that good at this message board thing. If anything, you might have a bit of a laugh. Check it out in AGF, see the link in the sidebar. The disscusion is called "The occult" I'm the Sebek guy. The post was a bit rushed as I'm about ready to head into work sorry about that.

e. Jim

This is getting ridiculous now. I mean I try and go to bed after Adam-12 and I can't sleep. I don't think that has anything to do with it. My diabetes however might. It's 3:52am and I'll be up for an hour and then have my cereal. take my insulin etc. and go back to bed.

Anyway, my goal for 2006 is to get published. Either a short story or a novel. Either way. I also want to write 1,000 words of new fiction every day. Just to get into the habit of doing that and producing something new.

Damn I wish Blogger had smiley's. A bit of a revelation this weekend when Anne called her father in a nursing home in NS. He's 83yrs old and born the same year my father was. Yet dad passed away in 1994. He got hit while crossing the street and was in a coma on the way home. He died March 1994. If he would be alive today he'd be the same age as my wife's father. It got me to think what's going to happen to Anne and I when we get that age? If we do. The thing we have going for us is we are non smokers but I'm also diabetic. Anne's mother was also diabetic and lived until she was 81. It was the diabetes that eventually killed her.

So what are Anne and I going to do? We have absolutely nothing. We have no savings. All we have is our jobs and that's all. It's a sobering piece of reality we will have to face soon. Who's going to take care of ourselves when we can't? We have people at work who are mid 70's still working away and living in their own homes. The only chance for us is if we win a lottery or I publish a novel and make money from my writing. May as well be the same things as winning the lottery. There are lots of long term senior care facilities and us baby boomers are getting older. my wife said that it took most of their savings to stay in the place they were staying, which was Cadillac service. The thing is we have no children to take care of us when we become that age. I'll be pushing 60 in another 5 years.We need to plan for the future.

Okay, lets get away from that depressing thought.

I began to realize in my diary last month or so, that if I can produce 10k/week worth of fiction that would be 520,000 words/year. In 25 years if I live that long which will take me to 80, will give me 130,000,000 words. Or about 130 novels. Wow!. Anne's father is 83 and still has all his faculties together. If I can keep my health and all and live until I'm 85, well it's a bonus.

Earlier I went and removed Drupal and installed it again but I'm still a user although I still have full admin privilege. I think it's because I need to register and that will log me into as Admin. I hope. I don't know. I played with some of the modules earlier and I've got the bare bones of Drupal going but I can't seem to get into the Template. I have no idea where the Drupal Template is. I can view the Template source code and eve nedit the Template's source code but, beyond that, I can't find the bloody thing.

Anyway,I'll be doing the spell check on this things and do my stuff and then, hopefully be in before 5am.

e.Jim

Well, the Oilers lost tonight against the Wild, 4-1. Uggh. Calgary won which means the Oilers are still in first place in our Div. We got another chance against the Wild on Wednesday. Hopefully w can maintain the position we enjoy.

I had some intersting memories from this time back in 1979 when I was living at the Meyers place. Christmas and Boxing day was on a Tues and a Wen, which gave us a nice mid week break. I recall how we got our paychecks on the Tues. Normally we'd have got them on a Wed. But I had some pleasent experiences with my girlfriend Ellen at the time. This was before Richard came in on the scene. He would arrive about 3 months later. So from Oct 1978 when I had first met her, until March 1980, I had her all to myself. So for 17 months. But durring that time it was special. I recall how we broke up breiefly in 1979 but we got back together. The winter of 1979/80 was special as I would walk all the way from my place 95thAve-to where she lived with her and just her mother to watch Battlestar Galactica. I'd stay for as long as I could and walk back home in fridged cold weather. What a night and what times. More on this later.

e.Jim

Anne discovered something rather alarming in the building lst night, just down the hall before the twin fire doors. Burn marks on the carpet and an open wooden patch over damaed drywall. What’s more it looks like someone wanted to a fire because Anne found rolled up newspaper inside the gyprock. An arson attempt in progress? I should have asked Anne if she heard anything when she came out like kids rushing out. It could have been dopers as well wanting to punish someone in the building for not paying up a debt or something like that. This is why, in the new Year, I plan on obtaining fire insurance for this apartment. We already had one fire across from us in 2004, last thing we need is another one here. So it’s kind of scary especially in the wake of the apartment fire that went down a month ago in St. Albert.

Anyway, I took my insulin and it’s time to check on my bsl. Yikes. 10.9. It’s been high all day on Sunday. Well, xmas treats and those rack of ribs I had earlier didn’t help.For almost a week my bsl has been 8 and above. Not good.

Eleven hours later:
I watched The Court Jester with Danny Kay. I haven’t seen it in years and it’s still as clever as the first time I’ve seen it way back when.

Okay, I’ve decided to continue on with Ace Valorous and including book2, Rouge behavior, Underworld. All of which have been written and in the rough draft. Add Lodge brothers and Cross hairs, this will make 6 books, I’ve written within the last 2 years. Well, Ace#1 and #2, Rouge behavior, Underworld counts for 4 books. Upcoming will be Lodge brothers and Cross hairs. I hope to start “Lodge brothers” Feb 1st. At 1,000k/week, not including 2k/week during the weekends, that should be 9k/week or > up to 10k. Lodge brothers will be 80K, so by the end of March 2006, allowing for any off days. I also hope to have Cross hairs the novel start date, April first.100k and the rough draft should be done by June 15th.

As for Ace #1 & #2 and Rouge behavior, or RB, They should take 9 months to complete at three months each. Rti’s take 1 month. Well that’s the plan. I have not forgotten Underworld either. I’m going to finish the first read for that by the end of the week. Also, CH the story. All it needs now is just a proofread, set up some minor formatting changes and it will go out before the end of the year. Put it this way, by this time next year, all 4 books will be done and I will be in position to have the agent search underway.

Anyway, tonight it’s the Oiler game and then wrestling to round out my Christmas weekend. Other then lack of sleep, I had a great Christmas.

At the moment I am still preparing my website, where I plan on posting snippes of my work online for anyone that wants to have a good chuckle or maybe offer advice through polls. It’s here I might solicit bete test readers as well but I don’t know yet.

e. Jim

I got the okay to publish a link to Lazette Gifford's Blog, which is well worth your time to check out.

I still haven't decided yet what to do with Lodge Brothers But I've got an inkling of an idea for a story. I think it's a novel and will be about 80k and a small thought expressed in a few lines. I'm pretty good at brainstorming and I think this afternoon I plan on putting something more substantial together. But those are my two novel projects for 2006 plus a whack of short stories including "WWW" and "AON"

Another thing I've been wanting to do is to make a list of all the short stories I've done and date when they were written type thing. More on this stuff later on.

e. Jim

Two projects I want to do for this blog. 1) work with the three month calendar. 2) Get Google adsense to work and possibly get a tag board going on another page in this site. Off the main page, so that's 3 projects actually.

One more day off. That's all for now.

e.Jim

Anne made us a nice brunch and I got a reply back from Mark and removed my Drupal account and installed a new one. I think. What I think I did was install it to a new user that has access dennied. I need to get back my original user name and password. Then I’ll be back in business. I also replied to one of the posters on the jfk assasination forum I’m on. So lets see what’s going on over there at AGF.

e. Jim

I went and added a new type of calendar in my sidebar last night. It has a few features the Bravenet one doesn't have, so I think I'll be removing the Bravenet calendar soon.

I don't know if Lodge brothers should be a short story or a novel. I don't have any ideas brewing in my head for a novel right now other then a fragment of an idea for CH.

Holly Lislie has recently put together a book on character creation she calls her Character Creation Clinic. I'm week on character development in my stories. Hell, I admit I'm week on just about everything writing wise but I think this book is a growing concern and something I wouldn't mind picking up at a book store or even in an ebook format. I don't know how much the book would go for yet but I wouldn't mind picking something like that up.

I'm trying to get a hold of Mark so he can uninstall Drupal for me so I can reinstall it again hopefully under my domain name. I have an account on my site but I'm under user and not admin. I need to get back to admin and close everything off to users other then email. I think I did that already. I hope, but not to many people are doing any business this weekend. Not that I blame them.

I'm a light sleeper.Being diabetic doesn't help me at all either. Shortly after I put my last post to bed, I'm tired enough to fall asleep but I'm wide awake. I know I didn't have much coffee yesterday. Just as when I thought sleep would come up gets my wife to pee and the two dresser touch lamps on her side of the bed come on when she passes by. Then just as I'm ready to fall asleep again, the cat jumps on my feet into bed. Then, just as I'm ready to fall asleep for the 3rd time, my wife has to get up and do a dump. Geez. So I decided, well what else is going to get me now? What else could possibly go wrong?

What I like about MS word though as to MS Works word Processor is that I can view a page as a web document and I've done this several times when I had a copy of word on my old W98 system. What I didn't check for was to see if it came with a Url. But because it wasn't hosted on a website, probably not.

It seems my Blog is taking over my diary. Since I had gotten into Bloging and "publishing" my poor diary has seen less activity each day. But there are things I can talk about in my diary I can't here for obvious reasons. I used to go from Diary to blog but now it seems I'll be going the other way around now.

e.Jim

I bet right now at this time Christmas morning parents with children are in the middle, if they haven't yet begun too by now, are unwrapping their presents. I remember when we were kids we were up all night Christmas eve. We couldn't sleep we were so excited. The first thing we did when we woke up Christmas morning was rush for the red xmas stockings with our names etched in white lettering. There were oranges nuts and treats of all kinds in them. It must be gratifying for parents when they see their kids receive their presents from Santa dad or mom when their children open up presents under the treee Xmas morning. Like right now. It must also be pretty tough as well especially this day and age to buy for kids because kids want everything. It's also easy because there is more choice and toys are more accessible. Like adults though, kids too want the latest and greatest. So right now every kid with parents here in Edmonton is under the tree tearing open the xmas wraping. The collective excitement level is felt no where else in time then it is right now.

This is why Christmas used to be so special for me. Anne and I agreed that because of the most recent death of her mother only a few 6 weeks ago, that we were not going to exchange gifts this year but tonight each of us are going to have a special meal. I'm having a nice rack of baby back spare-rib dinner. Anne had turkey a few weeks ago. Last night though we had our xmas platter and watched Rockford files and Knight Rider reruns. There was no Coast on our local radio because of the holidays. Probably not to night as well.

But later on we're supposed to get our $400 resource checks from Santa Ralph coming in up next month, so I'll buy myself a late Christmas present. When we move our office in January to the Baker clinic (that's where my optomologist's office is), I can go see Dr. Morgan on the 7th floor because we'll be on the 2nd floor. Since Dr Morgan did my cataract operation August 2004,I'm going to go to him for an eye examination and then go get myself a nice pair of glasses.

Anyway, that's about all for me this morning as I put his baby to bed. Sorry about the typos.

Merry Christmas everyone.

e. Jim

Drupal issues are not resolved. I'm not able to get into my admin, where all the blocks and the modules are located. That's why I like Blogger. It's very easy to use and Template based. But I need a website to post material that I can control differently then Blogger. Blogger isn't a True CMS, like Drupal or Nuke. The other CMS I was looking at is Ruby on Rails but Marks Fantastico doesn't host it. What I don't like about Drupal is that it's pages are not real screen size pages like a text document. They are more blog size entries and not full featured pages. I'm wondering if I should go with Front page or Dream weaver? I'm not giving up on Drupal just yet. It has a very good forum.

e.Jim

having huge issues with my Drupal account today. I had to pass a pm to mark to see if he could help purge my original account for a new one. I seem to recal l I set Drupal up on my own from Fantastico at his site. He's got the main cms there. I like Drupal. It seems to be easier to use then nuke. Except for this problem I'm having. and I hope it doesn't compromise Marks server.
It shouldn't if Drupal is installed on my machine as I suspect it is. I don't expect any answer from Mark this weekend. If I get a response back from him today, I'll be surprsed.

Anyway, I did the finale type-ins for CH and Ii think I finally have it down to how I want the story to go. This was the hardest story I ever had to write. Almost 10 revisions and it's not quite there yet. I'm still striving to get it out for this month. I hope I'm not going to have the same kind of trouble as I am with Underworld as I did with CH.

Also, I still don't know what I'm going to do with "All or Nothing." or WWW. I just had a cute idea for a title of a novel, called "Lodge brothers"

e.Jim

having some website issues right now. I’d love an off on switch. Annyway, I stayed up for an hour and fooled around on my website. That was fun but I lost all my navigation. I’m just going to have to keep things fresh and start again, since I have no idea what I’m doing. At least Blogger is consistant and easy to use but it needs some smilies in the compose window. No wonder there were 2 people on my website the other day. I opened everything up, somehow. In the permissions I believe. I’m in communication with someone named “Paddy” I don’t expect much response this weekend what with it being xmas eve right now and tomoorw, I don’t think there’s much Drupal, Blogger or other business going on right now. But I have 3 days off including today. Back to work for me on Tuesday and I want to go in and put in a full 7hrs in.

Temp wise were supposed to climb to +11C today, which is very surprising.
Anyway, I got to bed shortly after 6am and had no trouble sleeping from 6-12:15pm when I woke up and I had about 1.5hrs of sleep before, so I believe I had a full 7.5hrs sleep. I’m all slept out.

I went through the Underworld manuscript yesterday and it seems that I read the story already and made copious amounts of notes. A second read through wont hurt at all.

Emergency vehicles are out there with sirens blazing full force this afternoon. People go nuts on the last shopping day before xmas. I’m glad I’m not out there. Boxing day gets even worse because of all the returns and the reduced specials. I’ll be glad when things get back to more or less normal in the early new year.

e.Jim

I thought I'd mention I posted a list of my top 10 books of all time. You can read it here. Later I will include my top movies and tv shows of all time.

e. Jim

I went to my website and I found under popular content I have hyperlinks in the right sidebar. Very interesting. I don’t know how they got there, or what I did to get them there but, I must have done something right.

Also, my Pixie bar has changed and I don’t get a pixie boy but a Canadian flag. Strange.

Anyway, Anne’s off tonight and is home,but as for me, well, I’ve got to go into the job. But I’m okay with that. I had a great total last night and no one can say anything especially the year I’ve had for the hours I put in. I've been averaging at least 15.5 hrs/week. I want to put more hours in after the New Year. At least 3 aftrenoons. Especially 3 afternoons when it's on a Lodge night.

e. Jim

I got woken up by a thump beside me on the bed. Silky leeping off the dresser. It was about 5:15am and I had to get up anyway. I wanted to try out that new novelin pen, which works great. One of the few free things diabetics have.

Work goes slowly on Underworld but I like to bring the type ins to the job because quite often the calls come in slow, and it’s nice to have something to do in between the calls. I can usually read about 4 pages a night at work and at least 10 pages/day. I was catching a lot of repititon as well which I’m going to need to go back on and hack and slash. I also need a sentence or two to summarize what the scene is about and what’s going on. I’ll be doing that in Chapter 8. That way I can have a quick glance at each summary. I’m going to do a page by page summary, I think that’s better. And at 691 pages long (so far) I’ll be able to hae a good idea of what’s going on in each page. Roughly 346 single pages. More or less.


e.Jim

anyway Anne did not return so I went and walked down to the Clairview LRT and I bought a diet Coke, taking my insulin pen with me. I went inot work, which was uneventfull and I began the 1:30pm shift. I ended up with $135. Rob got everybody together and we got a number and a draw number. Then I got a couple of slices of pizza and some chicken and a diet pop, took my insulin and we began the 5pm shift and I was on a tear. I ended up doing $1,100 for the night. What a great time. I went to Shoppers to get some change and my bus came by right away and an uneventful lrt ride to Clairview and home and Anne was waiting for me. Oh the number matched an envelope and inside was a voucher for something nice. I got a $25 Walmart card. Others got vouchers for restaurants etc. Plus I got 7hrs on the day, my pay check a $10 bonus and a good time.

The only downsidesof this evening was my cheap dollar store headphones broke on me and I left my novelin pen at work with no way to deliver insulin in my system, so Anne went out just at the last min after making a call to Superstore to make sure they had the novelin pens in stock. Whew, yes they did.

Anyway, what a happy day. Also, another bummer Smackdown was a best of the year so nothing new or live. That’s okay, gives me a chance to do some Bloging etc. Anyway, Anne’s making me some dinner to have while I watch the news and then back to do some work on my website etc. Oh, and I also managed to work on Underworld some more. I still plan on getting CH out the door by the end of the month.

They even had some door prizes at work. An Xbox was the main prize. Dave Sullavin won a Ghetto blaster there was a toaster and a blender as well. I came within 3 numbers of John who won the Xbox. Anyway,that’s all for now.

e.Jim

I got the ok to include Tam's Blog into my list of sidebar links. She's a published author of numerous fantasy and a great contributer over there at Forward Motion. See Sidebar. I highly recomend her Blog, great reading and well worth your time. See the link in sidebar called tamboblog.

I’m determined to go into work for this aftrnoon. Anne must have got up maybe an hour ago and let me sleep by closing the door.I didn’t even hear her leave. Of course though, it’s her pay week and all. Now, because it’s our staff xmas party tonight, I don’t think there’s going to be much work if any for tonight, which is why I want to go in early. At least if anything this is a good introduction for going in on the afternoons.

I didn’t get much sleep after I turned in around 5am and even less around when I tried to get to sleep after Letterman and listening to a bit of Coast. When 2am rolled around I figured I’d get up anyway and putter around on the computer until I got sufficiently tired enough to pass out. I took my insulin and fed the cats but sleep was hard to come by and I don’t think I fell asleep until about 6amish. I might have got all of about 5hrs, if that.

Before bed though I found the Drupal downloads section and tons of modules. Most of these modules have been written by others. Some interesting stuff and I’m going to play around with some of those before I head in. OSD has a WYSIWYG editor but it’s just a trial version in the file manager but there is a program called tinyMice, which is similar to the WYSIWYG editor. I’m expecting Anne home in about half an hour so, maybe I’ll see if I can install one of these moduels. That’s all for now.

e.Jim

I'm closing in on the last of Chapter 7. Lots of ideas here that need tightening up.

Anyway, The Oilers won a huge game against Vancouver last night. I was able to listen to the last period and it was tied at 5. The Oilers were just buzzing the Canuck goal tender all night and Ryan Smyth scored making it 6-5 and then I think Peca scored 7-5. The Canucks during the finale 30 seconds or so ended up with a 2 man advantage for Vancouver and they scored making it 7-6 but time was running out on them. Also, what made the game special was Calgary played tonight and they lost and now the Oilers are tied for first place in our Div at 44 points. Here's the fly in the Ointment, Vancouver is hosting Calgary on Friday. We've got LA Kings on Friday. I'd rather us still share first place on Friday if we can make it 5 in arow against LA and have the Flames lose Friday in Vancouver. It's getting really interesting now. Here is an interesting stat the announcers said: This is the first time ssince 1989 that the Oilers have won 20 games before Christmas. The following year the Oilers won their 5th Stanley Cup. I believe they can win their 6th, what with these new rules and all.

So why am I up and awake? Well, I want to go into work for today at 1:30pm for the afternoon shift. Not only because of the party but in case we're not getting paid for this. I want at least 3 hrs in. Also, I plan on going in again for Friday afternoon. This way, it will get me 25.5hrs. Begining in the New Year, I will be going in Monday's 1:30-9pm and same thing with Tues and keep my 25.5hrs in. If I can still do this and say Rob pulls me off my dialer at 3pm for having a low total, then I'll have a chance to go in again and get the hours another shift later durring the week. if I can keep this up for a whole year, I'll be inqualifying position to get on the company medical plan. This means I'll be able to cover my dental and optical. More especialy It'll cover my dieabetic supplies. Also I'll be able to test 4 times/day and I won't have to cover out of pocket for insulin and use the same needle for each vile of insulin or the same lancet. Insulin alone out of pocket is $505/year. Sure Alberta monitoring is paying for the test strips but that's only allowing me to test once/day. This is why I need the hours to get on the medical plan.

I'm starting to get glassy eyed here but I'm not really tired enough yet to go to bed.

Anyway tonights Coast show is a rebroadcast of a previous program. It being the holidays and such. Firday's show looks great.

That's about all for now, I'll fix the typos later.

e. Jim

ugg. I slept good from 2:30am until 7am. I had 4.5 hrs. Then I got in after I did the usual and had some trouble sleeping so, I think I got 1.5hrs in. Then the cell phone rang off the hook and that was shortly before 10am. I had to get up to pee multiple times. I got up for good when the last cell phone (wrong number) woke me. I don't know much about cell phones but I hate the buggers. I have to agree with Holly that they are life savers. I should know because I had to use one once to save a cabbies life back in 1998.

basically, I was doing a paper route for the Edmonton Sun at the time Saturday Dec 12th 1998. I had started this paper route in October the year before and for the first year the driver dropped my papers off out at some guys house, out in the cold. I had to fight like hell to get the driver to drop a bundle of 50 papers in my apartment lobby. Finally they did this and rang to wake me up at 5:30 that Saturday morning. I lived on the main drag of 156th st at the time and my route was from 99th Ave to 95th Ave. I loaded up my papers half awake and as I set out I tried to think of the best way to work this. I walked East to 155th and then North and did the route like that, the down 154th and 153rd doing a zig-zag kind of a route. But as soon as I got to 155th I heard a lot of banging and yelling coming from one of the houses nearby. It was that ruckus that prompted me to avoid going that direction. I thought it was just a family dispute or something. So I continued to work the route and it went fine. I made a circut and I had a few papers left including my own copy and as I was coming up North on the back end of 155th and 95th heading up to 97th ave. What? The domestic dispute was still going on? I don't want no trouble. I began to had two more houses but as I got to the McDermot place the noise became louder. I saw a Yellow cab up ahead parked on the side. As I got closer, the noise was coming from the cab. More specificly from the back trunk. Some one was yelling from within the trunk? I could see Joe's truck from the Edmonton Journal several blocks from up ahead where I had been an hour before. I said hello into the trunk and a frantic voice of east Indian persuasion had pleaded with me to find his cell phone in the front seat of the cab and call 911. I did and the police asked me to oput the cell phone near the tunk as I knew nothing about trunk releases or anything like that at the time. So within minutes fire and ambulance came by and opened the cab trunk and released the driver. The guy must have been in there for some time. Well, at least an hour. But it wasn't cold out or anything like that. Even for mid December here in Edmonton. Anyway, I gave my statemnt to police and figured that was the end of that. My neigbor Bridget knocked on my door around 6pm as I was getting ready to watch the hockey game and said the Eedmonton Sun Offices and local media was searching for this so called hero that had saved this cabbie. It took them long enough to trace me but my neigbor Bridget had said the Edmonton Sun is on the phone and they want to interview me. So I talked with some guy on the phone and they sent one of their photographer over to my place and took my picture. I would be on the front cover of the next Sunday edition of the Edmonton Sun. Sure enough the following morning when I opened the bundles of papers, there was my picture on the front page. I saved more then a few copies. My experience saving lives with a cellphone.

It looks like a nice looking day out there about -4 or something. Should go up to +4 later today.

I'm not usually up at this hour, no thanks to that cell phone going off.

Oh yeah, in the article they wrote about my saving the cabby expierince, the Edmonton Sun said that they would recognize me in some way. Durring all the years that the City has had these local hero awards, not once has anyone come up to me and offred me any recognition. How's that for an "unsung hero."Hehehe. Oh incidently the cabby was robbed at gunpoint. Not even the cab company or the drive came forward. My fifteen minutes of fame ;-)

e.Jim

I don't feel like watching Adam-12 tonight or listening to Coast. Coast has kind of a boring topic tonight: Angelic Intervention. Zzzzz. but I left it on for Anne to listen to. Friday nightis Hilly Rose and crop cirlces. That'll be good.

The only thing I don't like about Blogger is it's lack of decent smilies. MSN still makes the best but they don't show up here.

Previously I mentioned Adventure gamming supplies (AGS) What a great store that was. I used to hang out there a lot in the early 1990's. They went under in 1995, the year I was kicked out of my cozy little bachalor pad. They did something a bit revolutionary: In store gaming. Also they had these coupons called Adventure bucks. The two owner were Brian and I can't recall the other guys name at the moment. But they were big on Star Fleet battles and ww2 minitures and even some Advanced Squad leader tourney's as well. I had a lot of good times there.

more later.

e.Jim

One thing I've been meaning to do is to link a site that shares my magical and politcal philosophy here at as it sums up very nicely what I mean by Conservative Paganisim. Or Thelema

e.Jim

I had a pretty fair night at work. Lot's of people were not home. Many out shopping no doubt.

I had a good night though at work and in between calls I read 8 pages from Chapter 7 of Underworld. Not a bad night. I even corrected a few plot mechanics that seemed silly and tightened them up a bit. I'm on pace to have the first read done by Xmas weekend and hopefully the type ins as well, but I wont hold my breath.

That's about all for now though.

e. Jim

This morning shortly after the last entry I began working on my website a bit more. It's still a work in progress of course. Anyway, I noticed at first aound 10 guests online, as I was jumping around the Drupal help file that "People on line" block began to climb. Before I shut everything off to feed the cats and take my insulin, I had 28 guests on at any one time. I need a visitors online counter for that project, if ever I need one, it's now. That site is getting a surprising amount of traffic and there's nothing there! I had to do some emergency damage control and put a note under my Top 10 movies to see this Blog for anything current. When I come back from work tonight I'll tinker with it a bit more.

Holy's Blog Pocket Full of Words has been absent for a few days, which is strange because she usually contributes to it daily.

I'm vey happy I watched last nights Oiler game. We're tied for 2nd place with Calgary, and 2 points behind Vancouver for first. The Oilers are playing in Vancouver on Wednesday and Home at Rexall place to meet the LA Kings. With Calgary it's just the opposite. They have the Kings on Wed at home and plsy Vancouver Friday.Right now the Oilers are on a bit of a role and if they can win both of these next games and Calgary loses, (I know wishful thinking) The Oliers could find themselves in posetion of first place. There are only 12 teams in the league that are in the 40 point range. If all works out our way and we can win those next 2 games, the Oilers could even find themselves flirting with Detroit for first in the Western conference. Scary. Edmonton
in the finale? Well, it's possible. Especially under the new rules now that the NHL opened up the game a little more.

Anyway, I'm having my first coffee and in an hour I'll be in the shower getting dressed and ready for lunch take my insulin and go into work with Anne.

I'll be glad when we move into the new building because I wont need to take that connecting bus to Carona station. I just walk through the parking lot behind the office tower (can't remember the name of the building) and onto the sidewalk and into the lrt station or even just walk down the block to the station from there. It's closer then it is from Jasper and 115thst to Jasper and 106th st. As coincidence would have it, our office is across the street from the old Hobbit's fantasy shop location. Good ol carmine Nadu and Bruce Thompson. I haven't seen them in years. Since at least the mid 80's.

Hobbits Fantasy Shop (HFS) was a great place to hang out. They had a great selection of anything related to sf and fantasy. Originally it was supposed to be a comic book shop but they expanded before I got into the city. This was back in 1978. Then they opened up "Little Wars", which was a small shop a door down catering to wargames and supplies. Later on Hobbits began to get into the VCR craze and sold those as well. My first VCR that I ever saw was at Hobbit's. It was in the fall of 1980 when we got the word that hobbit's had to move because of the Office building was going up and the Hobbit's building was being sacrificed for a parking lot. But that wasn't the end of Hobbit's Fantasy shop. The Edmonton City downtown core landscape was changing. Hobbit's had another location in mind anyway and they ended up moving to the lower level of the Boardwalk over there on 104th and 102nd st. Near the Grand Hotel where the story "Cross Hairs" takes place. Anyway, when I was working at Cobogo warehouse Army and Navy Dept store 1982, Hobbit's was thriving. I recall calling from HFS looking at the house keeping room in the Sun paper and making the call to Trudy and going over there. I had some hassle getting the place because I wanted out of King Edward Park on the South Side and back over to the West end. Hobbit's Fantasy Shop played a large part of my life in the early 80's. in 1984 Hobbit's was on the move again and they moved into a smaller store in the Manulife building and that didn't last very long. I recall buying my first Advanced Squad Leader game Rule book from there in 1985. By that time I was in my first real apartment on 156th st and 97th Ave in the west end just blocks away from Trudy's place. By 1986 Hobbit's was gone. But to take it's place a few blocks away from me was Adventure gaming supplies, but that's another story.

I'll do the spell check later.

e. Jim

I couldn't sleep what with my wife coughing with her cold and such, so I got up to head to the office and do some reading. I've just about got Chapter 6 of Underworld done and I hope to do Chapter 7 later today. I should have the first reading done over this xmas weekend. If all goes well.

We've been having some unusual weather over the past few months. Temperature above 0. I don't know what the weather pixie says right now but I don't think it's over -10 right now. If that.

Also, I will still do the type ins for CH and the goal is to still get that out before the end of the month. I'm still going to do short stories, at least one per month but I'm back to focus on my novels but I'm going to work with the stories I have "in the vault" before I work on any new ones. After WWW of course.

e.Jim

I got up at noon after a pretty good sleep and I'm enjoying a coffee here. Looks like we could be in for a "brown" Christmas. Hey above 0 over the holidays works for me.

I have a list of what I consider are my Top SF movies of all time and I might have to include fantasy in there as well because I enjoyed like most of us the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Sadly most fantasy in the D&D tradition is made for the younger set although I'm waiting for an EverQuest movie to come out. Yeah I know don't hold my breath.

I'm not into tv commercials, like who isn't but there has been one this month that I just love. It's by Telus the telephone provider here in western Canada. Anyway the add shows this hippopotamus along with some marching style music. "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas." I've got the tune in my head. Cursed meme's. Check the story here
http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2005/12/canadians_choos.html


I cruise about 100 blogs/week but the one I keep coming back to is "Holy Leslies Pocket full of Words." One of the best Blogs for writers out there. Actually it was her Blog that inspired me to create this Blog, even though I've had a daily diary since May12th 1980 and I continue write in it every day.

Even though a large part of my life is writing (if not most of it) an even equally large part of my life is the Occult. Or the Hermetic path as I prefer to call it. For me this is a study of Tarot, the Qabalah and other Hermetic sciences as I like to call them. I started the occult path in the Spring of 1980 shortly before my diary was formed. The diary was supposed to be a magical record or as they say in Wicca a Book of Shadows. The occult and romance is a large part of my science fiction writing.
But one of my most fascinating aspects of the occult is the study magick as taught by Aleister Crowley. Now a disclaimer here. I am not a fan of AC. I don't collect AC books or emulate him in anyway. I am not a wannabe Aleister Crowley. I think I have his Book of the Law (blue oto copy) and the Book of Thoth Tarot and the deck as well. At one time I had quite a few Crowley books. I am however part of the t93 e-group and I subscribe heavily to what is commonly referred to as Thelema. Even though I am a Conservative Pagan, I am strongly influenced by the concepts found in AC's The Book of the Law. I won't get into too much of my beliefs here although I will have a more in depth page about my beliefs on my website forth coming. I made add as well, these days my "occult path" is taking me down the Masonic road where I am more comfortable. One of the main conditions for becoming a Mason is one's belief in a higher power. What is often referred to as God.


Alright, onto other things.

e. Jim

Very busy day yesterday online and trying to get my other work done. I managed to read Chapter 5 of Underworld and I have Chapter 6 out as I hope to get reading that this afternoon. There's also another Oiler game on tonight. Calgary at Rexall Place I believe. Excellent.

I didn't even get to do the type-ins for CH yesterday but the story will get done and out this week. I haven't done any actual writing this month at all but I'm going to prepare CH for a novel treatment and work on Underworld. If I can get the first read/edit. or rit this month for Underworld, then excellent. I should be on pace for Agent Quest April 1st. I'm determined to get this book published this year.

that's all for now.

e. Jim

Yes, the new website is looking better. I'm figuring out how this Drupal thing works. My current project is trying to establish links to blocks to the content I created.

I made a block titled My Top ten sci-fi movies and I'm trying to have that linked to a page that I can edit as I go along. Of course the #1 sf movie of all time is Star Wars (1977) and of course the other movies in the franchise. I think Tron is #8 or something. Check the website for the full list (when I can get a link up and running.)

I also have a block for TV and Print SF.

This evening I'm going to do those CH type ins and give the story the once over before sending it off to Quantum muse. I haven't anything yet from Anti muse about "Lift Off."

e.Jim

A very exciting Oiler at Vancouver hockey game. The Canucks took the lead for most of the game. The Oilers tied it 4-4 late in the 3rd period and scored in OT. Very exciting.

Some great stats today. My best Blog day ever. 87 page loads, 52 unique visitors, and 11 returning visitors. Three longer then an hour stayed and read my Blog and 1 for at least an hour. Very happy.

Coast should be interesting tonight. Ancient manuscripts and Prophecy. Even though, I didn't get out to go do any shopping today (I hate shopping) I had fun here and I even managed to read some more Underworld. Tomorrow I'll be doing the type ins for CH and shipping the story out.

Other then that, I'll be heading to bed about 1pm share a beer with my wife and listen to Coast and pass out. I'm up at about 5am anyway to take my insulin and feed the cats.

That's about it for now.

e.Jim

No need to panic. Things are back to normal. Well sort of.

Yeesh. okay so it's a learning process.

Anyway. folks I'm back.

I didn't get out today as I was hoping but there is tomorrow. I spent some time working on my website this afternoon and tinkering around with that. Lets see beyond that not much is going on. Anne went and bought me a whack of AAA batteries for my Mp3 player. I got one of those Phillips Rush players this past April. This package of batteries are standing upright in their plastic case and remind me of bullets. LOL. 48 batteries. one battery is worth about 2hrs of music. The Rush isn't a bad player and I've got a 512 SD media card slot in it now holding up to 70 songs plus 30 more songs on it's own memory. Lately I've been looking at those new iPod video players. But the thing can store up to 15K worth of songs, and I like that.

Well, that's about all for me for today. The Oiler game is starting in about 45 min and I want to do some more reading, Underworld.

e. Jim

No need to panic. Things are back to normal. Well sort of.

Yeesh. okay so it's a learning process.

Anyway. folks I'm back.

I didn't get out today as I was hoping but there is tomorrow. I spent some time working on my website this afternoon and tinkering around with that. Lets see beyond that not much is going on. Anne went and bought me a whack of AAA batteries for my Mp3 player. I got one of those Phillips Rush players this past April. This package of batteries are standing upright in their plastic case and remind me of bullets. LOL. 48 batteries. one battery is worth about 2hrs of music. The Rush isn't a bad player and I've got a 512 SD media card slot in it now holding up to 70 songs plus 30 more songs on it's own memory. Lately I've been looking at those new iPod video players. But the thing can store up to 15K worth of songs, and I like that.

Well, that's about all for me for today. The Oiler game is starting in about 45 min and I want to do some more reading, Underworld.

e. Jim

I don't know what I did but something here is screwy.

hmmm.

okay

didnt work

I had a great night at work for a Friday night. We were shut down for half an hour, trying to get the system online. That was a nice break. I might have it a grand though if we started at 5pm.

Also, I found that I can qualify for the company medical plan after 24hrs/week because part time is considered 20hrs/week. I figure if I can work say Thursday and Friday afternoons, then fine. That would get me 25.5hrs/week. I should actually try and get one week day in there, in case I'm not doing so good and I end up being taken off the dialer at 3pm. But I've got to be putting in a full 24hr/week, steady for one full year to qualify for the medical plan.

Tomorrow I want to go shopping over to the Army&Navy dept store over there at Londonderry mall and shop for some cloths. I need a good pair of pants. I also want to check on that printer ink refill kiosk and see how much toner refill is going to cost and then get bite to eat and take the bus back home and maybe even visit future shop and take a look around, I don't know.

I do know though, I'll be working on my Blogg some more and my website and do the finale type ins for CH and ship that out, possibly on Sunday.

Also, Sat night is the Oiler game. I think they are in Vancouver. Yes I just confirmed. I'll be watching that tomorrow night, checking on my usual sites and having a nice weekend.

Also, I will be reading the rest of Chapter4 and possibly 5 for tomorrow and Chapter6-7 for Sunday and blogging, surfing and writing.

e.Jim

found some interesting sci-fi blogs out there and I'm going to try and add them to my sidebar for future refrence and a few other things. I made another post to Blogger forum about adding xml and rss buttons but for now, it's time to get ready for work. That's all for now.

e.Jim

I have one primary goal in life and that is to get a book published before I turn 60. I have 6 years to accomplish this goal. It doesn't mean I stop writing.

I was thinking about Ellen recently. The last time I saw her was when she was getting on the #120 bus by the 2nd Cup a few blocks away from where I work. As I recall this was on a Wednesday about 4:35pm. I was wondering why she was down at my end of town and where was her car? She was 16 when we were seeing each other at the time and that was in 1980. That would make her 41 now and closing in on 42 Sept 10th 2006. Hard to believe. She hadn't changed much when I saw her and she noticed me but the bus was crowded and I was sitting in the center on the side seat. I think she recognized me and smiled but I turned away and never looked back. Ellen was an Amway junkie and for all I know still is. When I get my Rants page up and running on my website I'll have a few things to say about Amway and my experiences in that column in the near future. No doubt though Ellen is off some where tomorrow showing the plan or ready to go out to a major Amway function. They have Dream night which is in Calgary. I tried looking on the web for some info but nothing is posted. I think this even is in January anyway. But with all the trouble the bww organization has been experiencing recently Is it any wonder if the organization has collapsed. Actually I found an anti Quixtar blog and it seems there is no bww Dream night in Alberta. The only one seems to be in Hamilton On. Lol.

more on this later

e.Jim

I had a great night on the job and a couple of credit cards.

Mark gave me access into my Drupal files so I hope to be working on my website a bit more and this Blog on the weekend.

Also, like I said, I'm going to be doing the finale type ins for CH and submit that story out this weekend and well and continue the reading on Underworld. If all goes well I should have the first read done Christmas day or slightly before. but this novel is going to be tight. So tight of course my target date to have the third and finale rti will be completed March 31st. This is just the initial read. The type-ins will be instead of course but the second rti will be in January, the third will be done in Feb and the proofread and query letter in March. The first agent search goes out March 31st 2006. I have an agent search plan but that's in my personal diary.

If all goes well, I hope to have an agent and a publisher this year. Famous last words.

A lot of soft topics coming up this week on Coast, nothing I find interesting at all.

Our staff Christmas party is coming up Dec 22nd and I want to be working the afternoon's next week because there's "free food." Well, it's not really free because it's coming out of the "Social club" that pays for it. Free my ass.

e. Jim

Oh, I forgot to mention that the Blogs I visit is also a work in progress. I'll be working on that as well. So much to do. So little time.

e. Jim

I slodging my way through Underworld bit by bit. Some of it's not bad but most of it's crap.There are a lot of fragmented sentences and too many pov shifts between dialog tags. What I'd like to do is take a sentence by sentence breakdown of these pov shifts and tidy them up if just downright cut them out all together.

This upcoming weekend though I'm going to fix up CH and do the finale finishing touches on the story and a finale read and ship it out this weekend.

on the website, I want to post snippits of my stories. If anything people can read them and make comments if they want. Also now that I have access to my Drupal files (thanks to Marks PM late last night/early this am.) I can add modules and begin to format my website. I want to be able to add individual pages where you can log in and read portions of my stories. I'm not sure yet if I want to have the stories full public access, or a kind of membership access. In any case this wll only give the reader limited access to a small amount of the story. Of course the story will be deleted once the story finds publication until I resume back the rights of any of said stories. Where possible.

I'm even going to post some pages of "Underworld" once I go through the three rti steps. So viewers of this site should be able to receive. I might do it through a trade link approach. I don't know. "Want to read the story? Lets trade links and upon confirmation of the link a password will be sent to access the story." Something like that. hard to say yet. I'm just thinking out loud.

I did a ping rank of this blog over there at Technorati and I discovered my blog rank: I can't find it now but I think it was like 1,000,000,+ something. Whatever it was it was low. :-)

Anyway, that's all for now.

e. Jim

I added a Blogorama button in the sidebar earlier and learned more about RSS. Interesting stuff.

Not much going on right now and I'm not really tired but I'll be heading into bed soon to listen to Coast.

I had a great night at work last night as we began "Old timer Hockey Challenge." I wrote over $1000 bucks tonight. Another milestone for me work wise: First ever $1000+ day of the first day of a new campaign. I've never done that before.

I'm not sure what my next novel project is going to be. I kind of like "Cross hairs" but I don't think there is enough in there for a novel but an extended short story..Sure.

Also for fantasy (D&D style) I'm going to get involved in something like Everquest again. Right now it's just for the psp system but I don't have the Ram nor the graphics capability to run the game on this. Now I know I can run EQ on a psp system and I might still get a psp system and hook it up to this monitor so I can play EQ in here. I like fantasy and all like D&D, I'm not that good at writing it. Even though I've written a few fantasy short stories. But for the most part my "Worlds of science fiction and (D&D) fantasy," will be regulated to an online presence. EverQuest will be my game of choice and I'll probably get a psp system with Ralph's resource checks when we get them next month. I might end up getting into a guild of some kind or start my own. We'll see.

That's all for now.

e. Jim

Hollywood said it’s having one of the worst years it’s had in over a decade. Well, duh maybe the movies suck and also it could be the overal price of a movie. With flops like Stealth and The Island is it any wonder? Also, why bother when you can see the movie at the “dollar theater”. Now the dollar theater is something like $3 bucks. Still that’s more affordable then going to “Silver City” theaters and spending $12 bucks.Also, the movies come out on DVD ( not that we own a DVD player or anything) but when a new release comes out 6-9 months later, who cares? A typical trip at the first one movies for Anne and I would be $24 (including tax) and then you have to buy their popcorn, which is about $2 bucks+ and Anne likes her candy treats, there’s another $5 bucks. I bring my own pop in (not allowed) We figure about $30 bucks. But we like to make an afternoon of it. We haven’t done this since the First Rock movie (Scorpian King) when we had the car in 2002. But we like to go out get some Chinese food at the mall and take a look around in Chapters, that type of thing. Last book I bought from West Edmonton Mall (WEM) was that Everquest book and that was $40. That was when I was playing Everquest at the time. So maybe Hollywood needs a major motion picture release. They are banking on Kong and I think Mission Impossible 3 and some others. I see a time say twenty years don the road the movie theater will be a thing of the past and Hollywood will be delivering content in different ways.

Coast was pretty good last night. George had guest Lloyed Pye talking about Starchild etc. Tonight, Peter Gersten will be talking about the current state of urology and winter solstice 2012 and project Serpo. Should be another great show. Then a softy show, Xmas miracles. Gag.
Anyway work goes slowly on CH but I’m going to do the last type ins and get the story out there on the weekend. That’s something I can do and get ready for my next writing project, which will probably be WWW and read AON and revise that. AON is going out in Jan. WWW out in Feb and so on. Lift off if it comes back from Antimuse will go out to another market. I want to hit the webzines first because Webzines have more (under such a scenario) uss, accessible readership.

e.Jim

I have to admit that Blogger is one of the most friendly and robust Blog services out there. Not only is the help and support top notch but also the vollunteers there at the Newbies Forum are excellent. Hey Google, put them on the payrol.

Anyhow, my Drupal website is progressing slowly. I wish Drupal was as user friendly as Blogger. But the help and support at Drupal is wonderfull. For Bloggs, get Blogger. For Drupal get Drupal.

that's all for now

e.Jim

I almost forgot. Yesterday Telus, the phone company>Internet provider, now wants to deliver cable style television content through the phone lines. This is a good idea because now people in rual areas can get cable tv without the use of a satellite dish. Telus has been working on it for a long time now and since Shaw cable has just recently got into the telephone service, everyone is getting into the convergence act. Shaw and Telus have been trying to one-up-man ship each other recently. Telus is now offering free iPods to new customers that sign up for high speed Internet service. What's next?

e. Jim

that was a lousy sleep. I listened to Coast until 2:30am and that’s when Anne came in and I just laid there not able to sleep at all. When it was 3:45am I figured O’m just wasying my time here and having a bit of a cold going through my system wasn’t helping, I got up and worked on the computer for awhile.
When 5:30ish rolled around I figured it was time to turn off the computer and feed the cats, take my insulin and go to bed and try and get some sleep.

I don’t feel to bad except for this cold and my voice sounds awfull. Hopefully I can make it for the full shift. I got the runny nose and eyes in the bargain.Having a cold is no fun when you’re a call center agent. This cold won’t keep me away from work tonight. I still plan on going in and I hope I can put in a few afternoons as well.

Anyway, it’s overcast out there about +1* as a high temp today but it has that April look to it weather wise. Globasl was on location at a well lsite in the Atkins industrial park just West of
the City showing footage from a distance of a gas well leek, looking at the flames from a roadside from across a field and that field had no snow on the ground at all and this was in Drayton Valley at noon Dec. 13th 2005. And no snow. It’s all about climate change.


Speaking of, which I have some opinions about climate change.I think climate change is a cyclic condition. Scientests are able to drill into the polar ice (even that’s declining at an alarming rate) and go back in time to see these changes made as a natural phenomenah of the planet. However global warming is also part of climate change and global warming (for the most part) is a man made condition of the planet. There are other culprits as well more notably underwater volcanoes that leak lava flow into the oceans. They contribute to the warming of the oceans and that contributes to global warming.

well were getting a bit of snow coming down out there and it seems to be staying. It’s not a heavy snowfall but it’s something coming down. Anyhow, onto other things. I’ve got an hour to try and get something done before I head into work.

I'm going to bring my writing into work with me tonight and the radio to listen to the game. That's all for now.

e.Jim

Can't sleep right now. I listened to Coast earlier. A great show. George had guest Charles Ostman talking about nanotechnology. Pretty good stuff.

I'm up for a few more minutes before I go fed the cats.

e.Jim

A Special Thanks goes out to Thur at the Blogger Forum for helping me with some sidebar issues. Great stuff. Thanks again Thur.

I'm glad I took the night off, even though, my mistake there was no Oiler hockey game on for tonight but I can listen to it on the job tomorrow at work but I still enjoyed wrestling and I even got some Chapter 4 reading of Underworld done earlier.

On my website forum at Drupal someone tried to point me in the direction to what's called menu on the fly,which is apparently a third party application but I needed an unzip app to open the file but I couldn't find one with Wxp. One of the things I want to do on my website is to have a gallery of photo's of me at work at home and the festive board and out and about that type of thing. More especially when I get myself a digital camera.

Some people might be asking me, If I'm a Pagan Conservative why would I be voting Liberal at the National election? Well, because the Liberals are the best thing going for Canada right now imo. It's kind of like a devil we know as to one we don't (Harper) and the ND's are to Left for me.
The Liberals would more or less maintain the status quo and at the moment Canada has the best economy we've had here since 1972.
Sure, what about add scandal? That wasn't under Paul Martin. Paul Martin is doing everything he can to settle the softwood lumber issue between Canada and the US. If Harper got elected all the work Martin did would have been wasted. Harper wants to put money back into the hands of parents for daycare whatever. Scott Reid, the PM's director of communications, Sunday made the off the cuff comment that if Hapers plan (if elected) to put day care money into the pockets of parents that the cash would go towards beer and popcorn instead. Personally I think the comment was rather reckless and I doubt any parent that received the cash would do that. But the money shouldn't go to all parents with kids. There are a lot of rich parents out there. I'm sure the money would go towards where it was intended. But I know lot's of mothers that would just as soon use the proposed money to go play on the VLT's and use the cash for smokes but I don't think that is the majority.

Okay, enough of that.

e.Jim

I got the sniffles and a scratchy throat today and Anne wants me to stay home. Okay but I'll make up for it this week and put some afternoons in.

I began to read Chapter 4 of Underworld last night and I'll finish reading the chapter this afternoon making subtle changes as I make the first pass. Also, I plan on fooling around with this blog some more. I want to get the Archives in the drop down menu among other things.

Late last night Anne gave me a gravel sleeping pill and I went to bed after watching "Smith and Smith" and I fell asleep then woke up around 5:45am fed the cats and took my insulin and went back to bed. Other then getting up to pee several times I slept pretty good. Those gravel pills work well on me. So, I'm just dosing in bed before noon and and the cat wakes me up but I gets up to make my first coffee. I like watching the noon hour news because I was prepared to go into the job tonight. I like waking up on the couch watching the news with my first coffee, to find out what's going on around in the world and the City. I also like to catch the markets as well. Especially the price of Oil, which I think is sitting around $59/barrel but I slept with my feet upon the coffee table letting my coffee go cold and I missed the whole markets portion of the news and most of the news as well. That gravel pill was pretty amazing.

Lets see now, CH goes out this month and the first read/revision of Underworld gets done and then the second rti's get done in January. The third rti gets done in February. March is the proofread and query letter. The target date for finding an agent gets underway in April. By then AON, WWW, and some of my other stories will get done and I'm going to work on another novel.

I still have that gravel in my system.

I like to go through the "Next Blog" button on top of the blog up there in the far right hand corner just to get an idea what other's are doing and I came upon this Free Alberta website. These folk speak my language and I like the idea of promoting Alberta Independence. http://www.freealberta.com/ and I believe in what their doing. I might even post a link to their site in my sidebar.

I label myself as a Pagan Conservative because of my occult roots that stretch over the last 25 years. When people ask me if I'm part of the religious right. Sure am but not the religion you think. People take an about face there and the Christian community doesn't even know we exist. Since this is mostly about my science fiction writing anyway I don't want to go there to much and promote my religious and political views. For that check out the sidebar links to AGF, one of my regular haunts where I'm known as Sebek over there but I haven't posted much over the last few years. I come in once a week or so make a comment and a contribution and that's about it.

Writing wise, I like to go ver to Forward Motion and I'll be doing that in a bit and I like to post there under my real name. I also like to go and visit the Gizmodo gadget page, the OTO Phenomena "What's new" to see what Peter Koenig is up to and of course Coast to Coast and the Drupal and Blogger Forums.

Tonight though there is an Oiler hockey game and I want to watch that and wrestling.

Speaking about TV, now TV is penetrating the cell phone market. Well, it's not quite there yet even though you can get a few channels but nothing local. Until "Sports Net" comes online and I can watch wrestling on my phone then I'll be a happy, right now, I'd like to have simple am radio in a cell phone. But there is satellite radio and I think this is the pre cursor to satellite TV in a cell phone. Now I wouldn't mind paying a small monthly fee to get local TV in a cell phone or even a small monthly fee to get am radio in a cell phone. I'd rather have am radio in a cell phone then TV.

Well, I think I'm about done with this today at least for now. Still slightly groggy. My appologies if this is put togetther a little choppy. That gravel is still in my system. More latter maybe.

e. Jim

I also added a blogroll me link but I wanted a blogroll me button.

I began reading Underworld Ch4-5. I can't concentrate with that TV going on so I'll be up around 5am and I'll read at least Chapter4.

My single most active day ever on this site. 9 visits. Some even reading in the yellow.

Mostly all afternoon I was fooling around with my Blog and such and going to my favorite sites. I still haven't been to AGF yet.

e.Jim

still working with "Underworld" and getting the Ms ready. It sucks right now big time but like the sculptor finding the finished stone in the block the finale cut is in there some place. All part of the revision process. Underworld might not even be the finished title of the book if it ever gets published but I'm having fun trying.

In listening to Coast last night the guest Riley Martin's accent or drawl was really grating on my nerves.

I'm not big on conspiracy theories and such but they are entertaining and some of the speakers on Coast are engaging and offer compelling suggestions especially people like Richard C Hoagland. Hoaglands focus as it seems to me is the face on Mars. Now I don't believe that is a face or an ancient artifact or anything else but Martian erosion. Now I am not a scientist or know much about erosion and weather on earth and even less on Mars but to suggest that the face on Cydonia is some kind of artifact, well, I don't know. The skeptic in me is leaning to the no way camp but we need a manned mission to Mars to set the record strait. At least as entertaining as Mr. Hoagland is, he is a lot better speaker then Mr. Martin was last night.

Speaking about conspiracy theories and such, no I don't believe there was a conspiracy behind 9/11. No I don't believe in a JFK conspiracy either. Do I believe Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy or Officer JD Tippet? No. But the President was shot by one sniper but not Oswald. Do I believe in the single bullet theory? Yes but I don't believe the bullet was the one labeled CE 399. Was there evidence tampering? Of course there was but not for the purposes of supporting the Warren commission. A lot of people just screwed up that day and in the confusion something like that was bound to happen. So who do I think shot JFK? I don't know but it wasn't Oswald. Does that suggest a conspiracy? No. Just that DPD had an ugly incident on their hands and they wanted to go with what they had at the time to get the incident out of the way and to create as much distance between Dallas and the assassination as possible.

Other fun conspiracies are the Holy Blood holy Grail books by Baignet, Leigh and Licoln and the series of books that came later and in a similar vein, later Dan Brown and the DaVince codes.

Another conspiracy theory is the Japanese invasion of Pearl harbor. Was Pearl harbor "allowed to happen" to get America into a war in Europe? On two fronts? I don't know but all these conspiracy theories are very compelling if not entertaining to say the least.

Another popular conspiracy theory is the moon landing hoax. That's another tough pill to swallow. What about UFO's Jim? I don't think UFO's are in the same camp as a conspiracy theory. There is just to much evidence seen by too many witnesses. The Phoenix lights encounter comes to mind in 1997. Then what about the Roswell incident? Do I believe in the official version? No. But I think there is a fine line between a cover up and a conspiracy. The Govt. mentality of 1947 is a lot different then the mentality of the Govt. of today. Other conspiracy theories are Project Bluebook, Area 51, the Masonic influence over the world and on it goes. So what's the real truth? I guess it depends on what your agenda is and what you believe in.

That's all for now

e. Jim

For some strange reason I have all these gaps in my sidebar. Time to post a question to the forum before bed.

I listened to Coast for a bit earlier and Ian had this strange character on. I can't recall his name at the moment but his voice was grating on the nerves.

Check out this interesting story about sending a probe to Neptune from the BBC :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4515752.stm
It's a strange story because the mission according to the Coast website should take 30 years from beginning to end to complete but if the mission ever gets off the drawing board it will be an investment in space exploration even if the returns are a long way off.

e.Jim

I read Chapter 2 and 3 of Underworld and I want to read 4-5 for today and one chapter/day during the week. I figure I should have the first reading done by the 21st As for CH, I just need to do the type-ins and a finale reading and maybe toe up one or two lose ends and then I send it out.

Still haven't heard back from my last story submission. They have "Lift-off" and soon I'll have CH out to somebody else.

If all goes well, Underworld will be ready in February and then comes the cover letter or query letter to agents. I'm going to send out 3 at a time and cover as much ground as possible. There is some pretty good discussion on this topic over there at Forward motion. See the new link I added in the sidebar.

e.Jim

Hey hey, I added my logo from old website to the new one but I had to change the theme to do it. You can link up to the new website from the main blog page under links. I'm getting some great advice and help from the Drupal forum. A great place for help and they are very responsive and respond within an hour or less. maybe it's a weekend thing.

I'm actually enjoying this Blog and will write in it every day or at least every other day. I've kept an "occult diary" going anyway from 1980 and I've kept that going on a daily basis. When I get a scanner I'll be able to scan everything in. The diary is in longhand so "historians" one day will be able to try and decipher my dribble. Yeah right.

Anyway, as I was on my way into work I met my wife at the lrt train. We both go in together. She was waiting for a discarded ticket so I decided to go up ahead of her and wait and there was somebody behind me and I was watching my step off the escalator and lo and behold I found a $20 dollar bill on the floor. My lucky day. Makes up for the one I lost on my birthday back in 1997. Everything evens itself out. There's more to this story but it'll have to keep until later today.

e.Jim

Odds and ends and all over the place:

I think I must have had 2.5 hrs sleep when I went back to bed at 2:30am and I woke up at 5:45 and went right back to bed. Since then I might have had 4.5hrs, so a total of maybe 7hrs but not all in one session. I don’t get that anymore since I became diabetic last year.
But because this is an election year the Canadian Diabetic association is pushing for a national diabetic plan. My fellow diabetic/co worker and I were talking about this on the bus last night. He’s in his early 60’s and figures the idea probably won’t get much attention. I agree because it’s not a sexy issue like child day care or other issues the big 3 keep coming up with all the time on the campaing trail. The election is Jan 23rd here in Canada. Right now the Libs have a lead in the public opinion polls of I think 39%, and the Conservatives 10 or 12% less then that with the ND’s around 16%. Political analysis are suggesting that the election could be a minority Government no matter which party gets elected.

Not only do we have the election this Jan but the provincial resource checks but my employer is folding up shop and moving down the street to the Baker Clinic into a much nicer building and also, this means no more waiting for a connecting bus to the LRT. I can walk right up from the train and through the parking lot to work. I could be in the new building from the train in 2 min. Also in Jan 2006 the south leg of the LRT extention is supposed to come online. It’s ready now but workers are doing the finishing touches on it and it’s slated to open Jan 1st So Jan is going to be an interesting month
Then, Feb we have Valentines day, Family day, and I hope to have my Mark Master initiation that month taking Masonry to another level. Feb is crowded but nice as well. Also, the weather begins to change and Spring is around the corner. March: Anne’s birthday. It’s going to be an interesting start to 2006.

Anne mentioned to me the other day that Kelsy’s in our area is closed down. That was the place where we had our anniversary dinner, Dec 6th 2000. Rather a sad historical note for me. Of other interest, it seems that in the City of London England they’ve are taking away the old double decker buses because they aren’t accommodating to the disabled. Another tradition changing due to this air of political correctness.

Our weather here today is a balmy +8 and the same for tomorrow. We’re warmer then Dallas but it’s unusual they get weather this cold down there. I like to study the jfk assassination as a bit of a hoby and I have the “Sniper’s window” webcam available and I look out onto Dealey plaza quite often. They usually get +20* weather and that’s normal for them for this time of year.

Anyway I’m going into Future Shop tomorrow to check on that laserjet printer to see what kind of toner it caries. I’d like to also go to Londonderry mall and more specifically go to the print refill place and see if they refill toner ink and I’m going to read Chapter 2-3 of Underworld as well this weekend and work on CH a bit more before it goes out the door.

That’s all for now.

e.Jim

Uggh. I managed some sleep and I don't feel to bad right now but I have less then an hour to do anything substantial on line.

Weather wise, what a change from just a few days ago.

I was trying to print off Chapter 1 from Underworld but my printer wouldn't let me print portions of the document so it remained in the printer. 698 pages worth. Something like that would take me an hour to print off and I don't have the paper anyway. I forgot to take the paper out of the printer tray as it was in mid print and one of the pages got stuck inside the printer. I had to pull it out manually. Kind of like stripping a coat zipper when it gets stuck in the fabric and now the printer will only let me print garbage, smearing the ink and now I'm getting only blank pages.

I think I'm going to get a new printer whenever we get "Ralph's" resouce check money anyway. That's $400 next month. So, I still have a single print copy of Underworld and I can work with that until we get "Ralph's money."

e.Jim

I had maybe an hour and a half of sleep but I plan on getting back to bed by 5:30am.

Monday night 25 yeas ago, I was at the “Riverdale Duplex” holding down the fort listening to the radio when I heard about the shooting of John Lennon. Richard Lord and Ray Barfette were out at the time. I think it must have been around 8pmish or so. I’ll never forget the feeling I got when I heard the news. I felt this was it now. My whole life defined by the Beatles music and everything that came out of Beatlemania was about to change forever. The whole incident left me feeling sick inside. How could he, this Mark Chapman do such a thing? He took music away. I was 29 years old. Looking back noe I think that the death of John Lennon was a symbol in some way of my youth. The 20’s coming to a close as the 30’s approached just around the corner. When John Lennon died little did I realize it now but the death of my 20’s was about to die with him. Kind of said realy. I wonder what it would be like if that incident hadn’t had happened. Sad
really.

I love the Inernet. I’ve never done this in all the 6+ yeas I’ve been online but I was able to get a 1952 Calendar and I checked on the day of my birth and I w as born on a Thursday. The only thing I don’t know is the time of my birth, because this would be important for doing an accurate birth chart.

Last nights Coast show, was excellent. It was about the premise of an artifical moon. The guests had this idea that time travlers came back in time to build the moon. But Richard C. Hogland came on and had a diferent theory and I like this one: He suggested that because the earth had been about some 3.8 billion years old or so already and that life even though it was biological had been around for as little as 600 million years old that the moon was transplanted here when life began in the advent that this newly discovered life on earth was forming the moon was placed here as an after thought. I might add that human life for example as we know, has this internal biological connection to the moon. Hogland suggested and his theory is very compelling, that
the moon was placed here because of life here long after the earth formed. However scientists have dated the moon rocks to be about 4.4 billion years old. So much for Richards theory. But I wonder if there is any algey in those moon rocks and or meteorites that have crashed into the moon that we haven’t found yet. Anyway, it’s back to bed.

e.Jim

I had another great evening as I ended up doing $1020 and a $25 credit card and I got another $10 bonus. Two nights with Rob there. If I can do another $1000 night tomorrow (I'm not going to hold my breath)then great.

Anyway some of the calls were coming in slow and I wish I had the chance to bring some writing in with me but I've got everything for Underworld except Chapter 1. So, I'm going to have to dig into that and make a hard copy tonight ready for tomorrow. If I can read one Chapter/day then I'll be able to have the initial book read in 15 days except for the type-ins. The first read and type-ins (rti) will be done this month. Second rti will be done in January. The third and finale rti in February and I should have a complete novel.

I've been reading some interesting things going on over there at http://www.fmwriters.com/community/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=17&topic_id=60593&mesg_id=60593&page=
and there seems to be a consensus that agents only want a query letter and forget the full MS. If the QL looks great and they want to read more about the book then the author and sales are made from there. But also, I want to get a look at the market success agents have had in getting books published and I haven't yet read the whole thread but I will after I post this. I find this thread very interesting. More latter.

e.Jim

My website is slowly pulling together as I learn more about the mechanics of Drupal terms.

Also, I imposed a deadline for CH: Dec.15th and that's when I send that story out. There are still a few issues I need to work over but at least I've got it narrowed down to a deadline. Then I can get to that WWW story in Jan. Is CH novel material? Maybe but I need more action scenes and to expand the scope more to make CH into a Novel. If CH ends up becoming a novel then it will be about 80k and that's reasonable.

I think what I might do this month is work on some more ideas for CH and get WWW ready to write for Jan. If CH gets the green light to write I figure I can write that in Feb/March and have the first draft done by May and work on "Underworld", which is a completed rough draft but sitting on the shelf since I finished it this last July and I think I'll work on that instead. Same kind of process as CH but I don't think it will need 8 versions to get it done. Maybe 3 and I think I'll begin reading Underworld this month and then work on the first revision in January and write WWW. Do the type-ins and second read in Feb. Read it again in March and make the changes and do the type ins in April. One more read and make changes in May and do the finale type-ins in June. Then I'll have a complete and ready Ms to market to agents.

Hopefully I would have published a short story this year. That's the goal for this year but I want to have my first novel published before I turn 60 and I have 5.5 years to do it in. After that once I've got my feet wet I'll be writing as long as I have my health and If I can write up until I'm 80 like some of the other great sf writers then fine. One book/year will give me 26 novels. Sure many writers today have started already and have a catalogue of books to their credit. Maybe I needed to wait until this stage of my life to get the book out. It may come as a surprise to some people but life isn't over because you turn 50.

But that's all for right now.

e.Jim

It's -21C out there but it doesn't feel like it. It's cold but not unbearable. When I was living on my own I would be able (and I've done it) walk to the corner store for my Cola at colder temps then this. But this was the real first blast of winter.

I actually had an excellent night on the job and no one said anything about me not being in last night and Rob the manager was there and I ended up getting a $350 sale as well. The highest sale I've had yet and by break I was at $955! I ended up with $1405 on the night and a $10 bonus to boot. I was happy about that.

Anne received a huge box of cloths and items from her sister. Her mothers cloths and other belongings. Everything she picks up and touches she cries. I love her so much. There are some pics of us at our wedding ceremony take place 5 years ago this evening over there at the AGF site under photo album. My nic name at the time was Baphomet

I know, I didn't get much done writing wise this evening. I was fooling around with my website and this Blog will merge with it. So I'm at ejimshannon.com where most of my interests are located but my main focus is my writing. There is a link in the sidebar.

That's all for now.

e.Jim