Category Archives: Writing

A Tiny Computer!

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My friend gave me a Tiny Computer. Yes, that’s the whole computer in the first picture (it’s upside-down). It is running Ubuntu Studio, which includes audio, video, graphics, and publishing software. There is a very good chance this could replace my Adobe suite. I will have to experiment. The video is me scanning a drawing into The GIMP, a raster image editor.

The Tiny Computer!

And this post is being made from Linux! Getting images out of my Mac onto Linux required some setup… accessing my Dropbox account from both machines turned out to be easiest. (I kept wanting to cut and paste…)

This Linux distribution is Ubuntu Studio. It includes The Gimp (like Photoshop), Inkscape (like Illustrator), Blender (a 3-D animation app, like the control panel of a 747), Scribus (maybe like InDesign, but we’ll see), Calibre (for ebooks, but annoying because it wants to manage your files), and lots more. There are audio and video editing apps; I’ll have to see what corresponds to After Effects for editing limited animation. Alas, Scrivener is not available on Linux. If I can make and publish a book on this platform…

The trickiest part so far was configuring my scanner. The Epson scanner requires a driver, which Epson provides, but that driver requires further software. I had to go into the command line to install it (fortunately this is the kind of thing I used to do at my old job). And I had the help of my friend Mike, who is a born troubleshooter.

I will be presenting at JAMBARK 2025!

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JAMBARK 2025 is an online summit of writers presenting topics to help writers. It is organized by the fine folks at What’s Your Story Author Services.

We will be presenting about things like worldbuilding, how to write a book if you have no time to write a book, social media for authors, and much much more!

My topic is: “Turning Personal Experiences into Fiction”. I’ll be presenting on Sunday the 26th of January 2025.

Our participants:

The Eventbrite link to sign up:

Register on Eventbrite

Another writing challenge!

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So now the Write Now Club is starting another challenge! This time, it’s Sixty Thousand Words* in Sixty Days!

But I put an asterisk beside the word “word”… because it’s not just words this time. There are many tasks involved in creating a book beyond just putting words down. What about doing research? Marketing? Illustration? One of our members is an incredibly-talented cartoonist. His stuff just doesn’t have many words. Should he be penalized even though he is doing as much work?

So another member came up with a list of tasks and word equivalents. You can get points for how much time you spend on a task, instead of for how many words you create during that time. Of course, if you’re mostly creating words, that is fine too.

This is great, because I’m doing a lot of illustration and drawing research in support of my story. It helps me figure things out.

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Diane Visits Algonquin Main

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The Bunnies decide to let a few carefully-selected Humans visit their home.

This is a segment that may or may not make it into the final version of “The Rabbit Trap”. It’s really part of the backstory, explaining how the conditions arose that let Red and his family live in Algonquin Main.


It was happening! Diane was excited. Caramel had bounced up to her during the weekly closed-doors Rabbit Meeting and announced the news. She, Diane, had been selected to visit the rabbit city of Algonquin Main!

It wasn’t going to be a long visit. Caramel had said that the warrens were thinking of expanding their contacts with human society — carefully-selected parts of human society, anyway — and this visit was a trial run.

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Holidays. And Writing…

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I’m working on some things for The Rabbit Trap suggested by Akosua. One of them is rewriting a tentative first scene to be from the viewpoint of character Darlene rather than character Red. This turns out to be surprisingly tricky, given that the main actions in the scene are performed by Red. This is something I have tried for the first time.

Another request is rewriting the story outline to follow the internal emotional events of my protagonist rather than the external events. Again: tricky, and new to me. But it makes sense given that everything my protagonist (or any other character) does has to make sense to them at the moment. It has to be the option that appears to move them toward what they want with the least effort. Appears to them, that is. To the rest of us, it could appear completely crazy.

So I will have to dive into the emotional arc behind my character…

In other news, Happy New Year! I made a commemorative drawing for the New Year with many of my characters!

“The Ornament” sees the light of day…

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A couple of years ago, I drew a short story called “The Ornament”, to be included in a wintry holiday compilation. That compilation did not appear then, but it has just been published now!

The compilation is called “Snowflakes, Secrets, and Other Winter Reflections”.

It is available now from Kipekee Press as an ebook. Print books coming soon.

But that’s not all! There’s an advent calendar: https://hi.switchy.io/WinterTales2024

…and a contest!
https://kingsumo.com/g/1ggoez1/winter-tale-advent-calendar-and-book-launch

A Need for Giveaways

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So there I was. I had just wandered into a convenience store while wearing my new shirt that I had made with the logo of The Rabbit Trap. The cashier was asking me about it, what did it mean, and I was describing the book. He asked, did I have any info on it that he could give out, and I had to admit I did not yet. Creating something to give away was literally the next major thing I was doing.

To that end, I have now created and ordered bookmarks for The Rabbit Trap. Hopefully they will be here this week.