No time to write any more, and no energy to muster words. Signing off for a while. Not sure when I’ll be back.

I’m back, here at my author blog, and able to post again. Computer problems have prevented me from doing that for a while. It’s a combination of three things actually, or maybe four. I’ll chronicle them for you.

First, back sometime in the second half of 2013, our old laptop died. We’d had it since October 2004. It was a faithful friend, needing little attention. Whatever happened to it, it was gone. That left us with the other laptop and the desktop in The Dungeon. Lynda has her “office” on a card table in the living room, so I let her have the laptop. I have always done the bulk of my writing on the desktop, so I continued to do that. I just didn’t have a computer (excepting my Nook) to use upstairs.

I’ve been looking around towards replacing it. We’ve had Dells for years, so I’ll probably stick with them. We’ve been happy with their products, except for a certain shipping mistake that it took a couple of years to get right. That was in part my fault for abandoning the process rather than pressing the issue. Once I found the right person to talk with they made it right by the next FedEx shipment. But the need to research what’s available, the possibility of leasing rather than buying, and of using cloud-based software has caused me to hesitate. Those reasons, plus wanting to make sure finances are ok to make the purchase. So far I haven’t, but I think I’m getting closer to that time.

Then, shortly before we left for our May trip to Boston, I was suddenly unable to log in to this website and make changes. On the login page I got 17 error messages, all related to specific lines of code or needing to enable cookies. But cookies were enabled. Talking with a couple of people in an on-line writers group, I learned that it appeared that the theme I had selected, Erudite, had been abandoned by the creator. Some change in WordPress, perhaps, hadn’t been upgraded on the theme. I went to the theme message board and left a message. So far as I can tell there’s been no answer.

Finally, a Facebook acquaintance, John Doppler Schiff (that’s what he goes by), said he could go into the code and bypass the Erudite theme and get me up and running with a default theme, after which I could do business as normal and pick a new theme. That was delayed for the thing I’ll mention in a later paragraph, but now it’s done. He said it took him all of five minutes, perhaps less. Next week I’ll go about looking for and installing a new theme. I think that’s fairly easy to do.

Then, the day we left for Boston, I couldn’t get on a browser on the laptop. We were rushing to get things together and get on the road, so I didn’t worry about it, thinking it might be a temporary glitch. Alas, when we got home I found out it wasn’t. Still no browser. I could connect to the Internet, because I was able to save files to Dropbox.  I took it to the shop, and learned that the problem was related to the XP operating system, now no longer supported by Microsoft. But the computer was licensed for Vista, so they were able to upgrade with no software charge. That was great. The week they had it, not so much. Or the fact that the second monitor no longer works.

Then came the big one. On Tuesday, while I was speaking at a lunch meeting of a professional group, a text came in. When I was done speaking I saw it was from a nephew, who wrote, “You aren’t in Turkey, are you? Think your e-mail was hacked.” I got back to the office to find it was true. It’s happened twice before, and changing the password was sufficient to recover. But this time the hackers were malicious. They changed my password, deleted my stored e-mails, and changed the primary e-mail address so that security notifications would go to them. Then they set up a mimic e-mail account but with aol.com as the ending, and began firing off e-mails that looked like they came from me.

I’ll make this short. Over a period of five hours I was able to get it all changed back. That included an hour and a half on hold waiting to talk with Yahoo. An hour of that would have been unnecessary if a certain webpage of theirs worked. It didn’t, so I had to call them. But I’m not upset with Yahoo. They were able to restore the deleted e-mails (I may have lost two hour’s worth, at most). I alerted aol about the bad guys, though I don’t expect them to do anything. No harm done except to the nerves. If any security e-mails went out to the aol address, I suppose the bad guys might have more information than I’d like. I’ll have to see if anything happens.

So, except for replacing the second laptop, I’m up and running again. For the last month or two I’d been pretty regular in my posts to this blog, on Tuesdays and Fridays. Hopefully I’ll return to that with no problem.

I have been extra busy this week, mainly with workplace related issues and at-home things to do. I’m working on a post for later today, and if I can find enough time on breaks/lunch I’ll have something posted before the workday is over.

Yesterday, driving home on my evening commute, traffic was awful. Not awful in the sense of heavy, but in the sense of drivers doing extremely stupid things. Cutting people off. Crossing a five lane highway with a car length to spare. Running red lights. Failing to take a turn when it was safe. Driving at excessive speed, even more so than normal. Zooming in and out between cars just to be one car ahead when stopping at the next traffic signal.

I wanted to say, “Suppose they learned to drive in Bentonville Arkansas, and suppose they were idiots. But I repeat myself.”

Now, today, the craziness seems to be in the on-line writing sites I look at. A literary agent has made a post, “I Don’t Need No Stinking Agent,” a push-back against various self-publishing, anti-agent gurus. Then, in the Indie Author Group on Facebook a fight has broken out over negative posts. Yesterday, at the agent blog I read most a guest post was a blatant sales pitch for a writer development service costing $37 or $55 per month. About half the comments were negative. This morning that post had been pulled.

What’s going on? Is there something in the air that is causing normally sane people to do crazy things? Are the stars aligned in Vertigo, or whatever crazy scheme people think controls their destiny?

Today is primary election day in Arkansas. That could be the reason for the Bentonville traffic nitwits but not the on-line stressors. I just know I’ll be driving home very carefully tonight.

I haven’t posted anything here for a while. I’ve been writing, just not here.

Last week, May 3-4, I attended the Story Weaver’s conference of the Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc. This was my first time to go to this conference and my first general market conference. I spent several days preparing material. I figured this was my last big hurrah as far as pitching In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People goes.

Since coming back from Oklahoma City on Sunday, after family activities for several days, I’ve been busy with two projects. One is preparing two submittals requested at the conference. I got the second one in just before 10 p.m., so that is over. The second is proofreading and final editing of FTSP. That’s going fairly well. I’ve read 138 pages of the 321 page manuscript. I had hoped to finish this by Friday, but obviously won’t.

I also completed a column for Buildipedia.com, my twelfth. I’m under contract to do another, which is due May 18. I expect them to keep coming at two per month.

I’m also spending a little time on The Candy Store Generation. That’s what I shared at BNC Writers Monday night, and what I hope to get back to in a big way as soon as FTSP is put to bed. Still 8,000 words to go, but some research needed before going too much farther.

Consequently, I haven’t spent much time with my blogs, especially this one. And I don’t expect to for the next week at least. I’ll try to pop in and let you know what’s going on, but realistically I just don’t have the time to spend on it now.

I’m writing this at 10:07 AM, Central Time, at my computer in my office at work, taking a short break from what has been an intense morning of work so far.

Tonight is our biweekly meeting of the BNC Writers. Normally between meetings I send out two e-mails to the group: one at about the midpoint between meetings, just saying high and updating everyone on what’s going on in the writing world, and reminding them of our next meeting; and one the night before reminding them of the specifics of the meeting. Last night when I went to bed, as soon as my head hit the pillow, I realized I hadn’t sent the e-mail. No problem, I thought. I’ll send it first thing in the morning.

But this morning, after my devotional time, after I printed my first-of-the-month forms, I discovered I could not connect to the Internet. Not a big deal, I thought. Our e-mail seemed to be working, so it must just be a modem or router needs resetting. As soon as the IT department gets in they’ll take care of it.

But I still couldn’t connect at 08:30 when I went into a one-on-one training meeting on floodplain modeling with a young engineer. When I was back at my desk after that meeting, at 09:30, it still wasn’t available. An e-mail from our IT guy said it was external. Sprint is having issues, and had not given us an ETF: Estimated Time of Fixing. I saw him about 09:45 and he said it’s a major issue for Sprint. They mentioned problems in Fort Worth TX and maybe even on the west coast. So this is not going to be solved any time soon.

Great. The one day in fifty when it’s imperative I send an outside e-mail first thing in the morning and we don’t have the stinking Internet available. And, I e-mailed a client late on Friday, after he’d left the office, telling him I’d completed a task and asking for instructions on what I should do with some documents on Monday morning. It’s some stuff his lawyers need concerning a lawsuit. Since the Internet is down, only our internal e-mail is working, not our external, and I don’t have his instructions. Guess I’ll have to use the telephone.

When I made my to-do list for today, I figured I’d use some time on the noon hour to begin my research into corporate leader ages, data required for Chapter 4, “Boomer Corporations”, for my book The Candy Store Generation. That research will require the Internet. Will it be available to me? It’s now 10:35, and that little circle on Internet Explorer is just spinning ad nauseum. Still no Internet.

Oh well, I could always walk during the noon hour. I could drive the two miles to the Bentonville Public Library, ignore the librarian who wouldn’t add my book to the shelves and use their computers—calling ahead first, or course, to see if they are on Sprint and thus out of service. I could read some in The Federalist Papers, which will serve both for research and promotion for a couple of books. I could work on the formatting needed for Volume 7 of the letters of John Wesley. I could pull up a study document I downloaded a few months ago concerning the Harmony of the Gospels, and read and/or print a few more pages to supplement what I’ve done with it so far.

But none of those are what I want to do. So I’m an unhappy camper right now. Which is 10:40, and the Internet is still down. If you are reading this, you will know that Internet service finally returned, and I just cut and pasted this into my blog.

P.S. I came home at 8:15 PM after writers group. An e-mail I had sent to the house from the office (with this text) was in my inbox, so I guess Sprint/ATT fixed their problem.

Leave it to Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler to take on the titans of the publishing industry without fear. In a recent blog at A Newbies’ Guide to Publishing, Joe and Barry take apart a post made elsewhere by Scott Turow. Scott is the president of the Author’s Guild (I guess; so say Joe and Barry). His post was against the recent lawsuit threats made by the Department of Justice against Apple and five of the Big Six publishers.

The lawsuit is about price-fixing between Apple and the five, based on Apple’s “agency model” for e-book sales via Apple’s iTunes store. I’m not sure I fully understand what the agency model is, but that’s probably not germane to this post. Suffice to say that DoJ considers it price-fixing, and are in the process of taking the perpetrators to task.

Warning: Joe and Barry are not shy about the language they use. You will have to wade through a few four letter words, though not too many.

The writers basically say that Turow and the Author’s Guild are supposed to represent authors, but the post appears to be one in favor of publishers at author’s expense. Turow argues that the actions by the five were justified because Amazon is taking too much market share. This is bad for the literary world in that it will restrict consumer choices and reduce author income.

This is clearly ridiculous. Amazon’s e-publishing platform and store have busted wide open the stranglehold that the Big Six previously held on book distribution. Consumers now have a much greater range of choices, and authors have a distribution outlet that doesn’t require a Big Six or Little Seventy-Five (or however many other publishers there are) contract.

One wonders why Turow and the Author’s Guild aren’t sticking up for authors. I’m working through the comments on Konrath’s blog. It will be interesting to see if Turow himself leaves a comment, or if anyone defends him.

I have no stake in the traditional publishing industry (or legacy publishing, as Konrath calls them). So far they haven’t deemed my work worthy of inclusion in their publishing plans. Then again, the world isn’t beating a path to the door of on-line publishers to buy my stuff either. As I’ll report in the next post to this blog, I currently have no submittals pending to any traditional publishing outlet, neither agent nor publisher/editor. I think I’m pretty much locked in to independent publishing from this point on.

But I have nothing against the traditional publishing world (other than they don’t recognize my obvious genius :), but I’m going another way. This lawsuit, if it comes to that, will be an interesting development. If the Five lose, it seems that will hasten the day when they will be obsolete.