Update PHP and more...

Hey all, thought it might be time for an update. Sorry its so long between blog posts, with these online classes I write so much for class that I don't really feel like writing other things most of the time (though I did find time this summer for two short stories and a few chapters in my latest novel). I am going to do this bullet point style so I can cover more topics without wasting time on transitions.

• Pill Hill Press: If you want Pill Hill Press books you better buy them soon, they will be out of print shortly. The process has begun. Sorry to have dragged our feet for so long. We tried to take them out of print one at a time and had a few distractions. So we just decided to send an email asking that all our books be taken out print. Thanks for being so patient novelists.

• Superman movie: A good action film about a boy from Krypton but it is not Superman, at least not my Superman. Superman doesn't kill. He also tries to save people instead of just talking about saving people. I mean the whole town was burning and...I better stop there, don't want to include spoilers.

• Krypton from the above movie: Awesome! THEY HAVE DRAGONS!

• Having Children: The best.

• 1^st Father's Day: Really cool.

• Midterms for the first time in ten years: Not nearly as cool.

• Babies Learning to walk: AHHHHHHH!

• Babies still not sleeping: Whimper

• Game of Thrones: Whoa

• $30,000 firework shows: Not bad. I still like lighting them myself though.

• Summer Heat: Humph

• Six page papers on firewalls: More interesting than you would think

• Ipod Touch: More useful than I thought

• The Great and Powerful OZ: Pretty cool, and the only movie our babies have actually stopped playing to watch.

Okay that should do it for a little bit. I just noticed I have neglected to post "lots a pictures" of the kids. What a neglectful father. Here is one a couple of months old.

 Sorry for any typos etc. Its my turn on night time baby watch and I don't think I have enough time to go back through this post.

 

The Aftermath

Not a whole lot of writig getting done. I did edit my story for the pink elephant shoot out. But mostly I've been working on the house, but that is over for awhile. The windows are boarded up, we got as much glass as we could out of the carpets, and the insurance appraisers been here. We have to wait for the insurance company to get back to us. Which means soon we will start getting bids from contractors, and then the work will start. I bet it is October before it is all said and done. Here are a couple of storm pictures. These were posted on chadrad.com the local radio station's website. I might post some pics of the damage to our house but it is mostly windows and one broken window looks a lot like another.

It was a dark and stormy night...

Last night a major storm hit our little town. Thunderstorms are common through out the summer but this one was huge. Power poles were knocked down, trees were uprooted, and the police are advising no one enter the trail park. Apparently multiple trailers were knocked off thier foundation and one was actually picked up by the wind and dropped on top of another one.

The damage at our house seems minor in comparison to that. Our roof is leaking, some of the stucco was knocked off the outer walls, and nine windows were shattered by the baseball sized hail. We had a rough time sleeping last night, our bed was covered in broken glass and hail during the storm. We ended up pulling our old mattress out of the basement and sleeping in the living room (I knew there was a reason I didn't throw it away, I was not just being lazy, as Jessy keeps telling me)

We lost power, cable, and internet for most of the night. But all our services are back up and know I am starting to think about our reaction to the storm itself. I think remembering might help me when/if I ever write a disaster story. So I am going to write down what happened so that I can remember.

About 6:00pm I looked out the window to see the strangest rain storm I have ever seen in Nebraska. We get hard rain a lot, the kind that hurts you if it hits you, but this was different. There was the hard rain and a fine mist, like you see in the tropical storms on tv.

I called Jessy over to see it. She got to the door just as the first baseball sized hail stone smashed into our sidewalk. We both rushed to the living room, our house is old and to go into the basement you have to go outside and that wasn't an option. Jessy grabbed her cell phone off the table. Our living room only has one window and that one is fairly well protected by trees.

Her nurturing instinct took over and she started trying to calm our dogs down. I suddenly felt very protective. I yanked the couch away from the wall. And told Jessy and the dogs to get into the closet. It is a big closet and the only thing in it is our Christmas decorations.

I ushered them into the closet just as the first hail stone shattered the living room window. I closed the door behind us and began trying to calm our dogs. Tucker whimpered the whole time incredbly frightened. Snags our other dog, was fine. He has an incredible faith in me and is never scared of anything as long as I am around.

Jessy called her dad, who lives 30 miles away and told him a storm was coming. Then we sat in the dark(the power went out) until the storm passed.

We locked the dogs in the dinning room, so that they wouldn't step in glass, as we surveyd the damage. After we saw all the broken windows my guy genes kicked in and I had to fix it. I began cleaning up. Jessy called her dad (he lost power, but the had no damage, the hail was only pea sized by the time it made it his house) and then her mom in California, and the insurane company and her brother in Portland, then she called her parents back.

These very different male/female reactions are very interesting to me. When I have more time I am going to analyze the motivations a little more. But for now I have to go work.

Zero Gravity, Summer Reading, and... the weather?

Zero Gravity has closed and all the rejections and acceptances have been sent out. With over 500 submissions it was taking up a ton of my free time, but I have no doubt it will be worth every minute. The final product is going to be amazing. This is going to be one I am really proud of.

The Summer Reading Program is all but over. We still have to give out prizes and have the end of the year pool party, but after that things should calm down a bit. Of course next week is Fur Trade Days, a local summer celebration. So next week I will be giving a presentation on the history of the library, and I will proably have to ride on a float in the parade, something which I am not looking forward to. Spending a few hours exposed to the July sun, when you are basically allergic to sunlight, does not sound like a fun idea.

But I should be able to hunker down and get back into Godswar. This little break has given me a ton of ideas.

Finally, it has been really hot here. Super hot. How hot you ask?

Hot enough to make classy well to-do old ladies drop the F-bomb. Thats right today when I was leaving the store, there was a group of older ladies in front of me. They were in thier 80s and 90s. They were all made up, complete with dresses and pearls. They looked like they were going to church. When they walked out the door one of them exclaimed "F--- it's hot out here!"

I couldn't help myself, I burst out laughing. Which made me feel like I was immature kid. Oh well. I'll just blame it on the f---ing heat.

It's been awhile

I know I haven't blogged in awhile. I've been really busy with work and Pill Hill Press. I have also been busy with cover design, there are two more small presses that are having me design covers for them. That makes a total of five plus a few one time projects that are keeping me pretty busy.

So I haven't written a thing in weeks. But the summer reading program is ending soon. And today is the first day of summer, which means that the days will start getting shorter. This is awesome news for someone who is allergic to sunlight. I have to wear a jacket whenever I go outside, and its been in the low 90s. This is not fun.

I have not been totally idle in my break from writing. I have a whole word doc full of ideas, I just need to get time to write them. I am still waiting to hear back on three different novel submissions and ten or so short stories. I started subing everything to pro markets first and then working my way down, but it seems like the pro markets like to take thier time when responding. I have two stories I wrote in January that still have not gotten a response.

Well, that's about it. I didn't have much to say, just wanted to let everyone know I am still here.

Another Acceptance

My zombie story, A New Day, has been accepted by House of Horror. I was pretty excited about this acceptance. The story is almost a year old and has only been submited to two anthologies, one of which went out of business after holding the story for 200 days. The story has gotten two major edits and is nothing like the original.

This has reaffirmed my belief that every story can find a home. The summer reading program has started and the kick off party was a huge failure. Last year was the worst they ever had with only seventy kids showing up. This year we had twenty. It was a little depressing. I did everything to advertise that former children's librarians had. Including, articles in the newspaper, an apperance on the radio, vists to schools, a post on the local web news site, flyers and posters.

I think there was just too much going on on the day we picked to have the party. My boss seems to think I did not advertise it well enough, but I don't know what else I could have done.

So we are trying to "relaunch" the program with a whole new slew of advertising for the June 1st children's concert. I am also in the midst of plaining a "Prepare for the Eclipse" party for the teens. I am going to try to get licenseing to show Twilight, and New Moon a few days before Eclipse comes to the local theater.

So I think I am going to be really busy at work again. I did get another chapter in Godswar written, and I am almost done with my first short story in my novel about a place rather than characters. My working title for it is the Infinity Well. But I should proably google it to make sure it hasn't been used. It sounds like something from a comic book.

A Friday

I had the day off of work today, because I have to work tomorrow, on Saturday. Tomorrow is the Summer Reading Program Kick-off party. This my first year as children's librarian so I am not really sure how it will go. Stuff I do know: there will be around a hundred children and thier parents, we have free food, I had to come up with some games, I am scheduled for a 9 hour day with no breaks, I am responsible for the party so if anything goes wrong it will be my fault.

So while I enjoyed having a Friday off I spent wondering what tomorrow would bring. I did get some stuff done. I got the Kinberra Down cover finished, I worked on two covers for other presses, and I have been prepareing something special. I don't want to ruin the news or announce anything before it is final but there could be some big news from Pill Hill Press in the near future.

I haven't got much writing done, but I have been thinking about the newest project I am working on. It is the story of a place rather than people, it is told through a collection of shorts. It starts with nomadic cavemen and I am planning on following the place through time all the way to space travlers. As I skip through time I will write three or four chapters about each character and then move on.

For example in chapter one there a young "caveman" who is the one of the last members of his tribe, in chapter two he is much older and the king of his people. Chapter three will focus mostly on his teenage son. Then I will skip a few hundred years down the road.

I am doing this to practise starting and ending a story. I only have a few chapters to get people to care about the characters and setting, before I drasticly change it. When I mention in chapter five or six how the caveman from chapter one died I want people to care about it. It should be interesting, and I am hoping good.