Category: Star Wanderers

Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I) is now free on Amazon!

Good news!  Amazon just made Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I) free!  It’s been free for a while on all the other eretailers, but if you do most of your ebook shopping on Amazon, it’s now free there as well.

Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I) is the first part of a four part series of science fiction novelettes, possibly with other installments after the main storyline is complete.  From the book description:

HE WANDERS THE STARS IN SEARCH OF A HOME. INSTEAD, HE GOT A GIRL WITHOUT ONE.

When Jeremiah arrived at Megiddo Station, all he wanted was to make some trades and resupply his starship. He never thought he’d come away with a wife.

Before he knows it, he’s back on his ship, alone with his accidental bride. Since neither of them speak the same language, he has no way to tell her that there’s been a terrible mistake. And because of the deadly famine ravaging her home, there’s no going back. She’s entirely at his mercy, and that terrifies him more than anything.

Jeremiah isn’t ready to take responsibility for anyone. He’s a star wanderer, roaming the Outworld frontier in search of his fortune. Someday he’ll settle down, but for now, he just wants to drop the girl off at the next port and move on.

As he soon finds out, though, she has other plans.

Also, for those of you who have been looking forward to the next Star Wanderers release, I have a tentative cover for Part III:

Pretty cool, huh?  What do you guys think?

The feedback from my first readers has been mostly positive, so I think this story is mostly ready for publication.  I’ll probably do another quick pass to touch up some relatively minor issues, then it’s just a matter of proofreading, formatting, and crafting a solid author’s note and book description.  If all goes well, it should be up in two or three weeks.

That’s just about it for now.  More updates later, especially on life here in Georgia and that new fantasy series I just started.  See you around!

On the verge of another story

So with Star Wanderers coming to a close, at least as far as the actual writing is concerned, I’ve recently found myself back in that weird writerly place where I don’t have any pressing projects to work on.  Whenever this happens, I find that it’s generally a good idea to start something new.

Until just a couple of days ago, though, I wasn’t sure which project to start.  At first, I thought I should do the sequel to Stars of Blood and Glory, since I’m currently getting that one ready to send off to my editor, but beyond a tentative title (Empress of the Free Stars) and a really awesome opening scene, nothing has really sparked for that one.  With time, I’m sure my ideas will come together, but for now it’s just not ready to come out of the incubator.

So then I went back to The Swordkeeper, going back over the ideas that had sparked that one.  I started the opening scene back in March, but it’s currently lackluster, and none of my attempts at worldbuilding have gotten me anywhere.  For the past six months, I haven’t really touched it.

But when I took the time to just think about the story, something amazing happened.  All my ideas came together, and the ending just came to me–not just for the first book, but for the entire series.  Seriously, I must have spent hours staring out across the Georgian countryside from my farmhouse balcony, totally in awe of the story in my head.

A similar thing happened to me last summer with Stars of Blood and Glory.  It took me a few months to finally get around to writing it, but when I did, the first draft flew out in just a matter of weeks.  I’ve since made a few relatively minor fixes to the beginning and added some scenes that were missing, but otherwise haven’t made any substantial changes, and the comments from my first readers so far confirm that that’s the right decision.

So if all goes well, I’ll finish up with Stars of Blood and Glory by the end of this next week, and restart The Swordkeeper soon after that.  Things are looking good, and I can’t wait to get immersed in this next story.  It’s a fantasy, so that’s going to be a major shift, but I think it will help to keep things fresh.

Anyhow, that’s all for now.  More later.

Update on STAR WANDERERS and other projects

So I’m back in Kutaisi again, recharging my netbook battery due to some chronic electricity problems out in the village.  Seriously, I think I heard a transformer explode this morning.  Anytime it rains, you can prettymuch expect a blackout here in rural Georgia.  Hope for the best, plan for the worst–but that’s the subject for another post.

Anyhow, here’s where things currently stand with Star Wanderers:

Part III: Sacrifice is almost ready for publication, and will hopefully be up in a few weeks.  I’m just waiting for  some feedback from my first readers, to make sure there aren’t any major problems.  I made some pretty big changes to the story after getting some helpful feedback I got from my friend Laura, so I don’t want to put it out until a few other eyes have seen it in its current form.  Of course, I’ll need some help with proofreading, so if anyone wants to exchange services (proofreading or formatting), just shoot me an email.

As for Part IV: Homeworld, I’m currently wrapping up the 2.0 draft and should have it finished by the end of the week.  I’m really excited about this story, especially the ending I have planned and the way I want to bring together all the threads from the first three parts.  You know that moment when a story just comes together naturally, without being forced or anything?  Yeah, that’s what I’m experiencing right now.  It’s awesome.

So the plan is to publish Star Wanderers: Sacrifice (Part III) sometime in mid-late October, and to publish Star Wanderers: Homeworld (Part IV) sometime in November.  As with parts I and II, they will both be free via Smashwords for the first two weeks to subscribers of my email newsletter.  To sign up, fill out the form in the sidebar ——–>

This isn’t the end of the Star Wanderers series, of course.  I’ve already completed the first draft of a parallel novelette to Part I: Outworlder from Noemi’s point of view.  I’d also like to do stories with the other characters, like Samson or Mariya.  And of course, there’s the omnibus for parts I-IV, which I’ll probably release early next year.  If you’d like to see a story from any particular point of view in this universe, let me know–I’m always open to new ideas.

In the Gaia Nova series, I’m hoping to publish Stars of Blood and Glory by January.  I’ve been in touch with my copy editor, and things are looking good for a 2012 release.  I need to make another quick revision pass first, which I’ll probably finish in October, and then we’ll see about getting the ball rolling.

So that’s where things stand right now.  I’m happy to see that sales are trending up on all the platforms where I’m published, which means that I can reinvest more in new titles and put them out more frequently.  And my teaching schedule here in the village is pretty light, which means I have lots of time to write–that is, when we actually have electricity.  And even when we don’t, there’s always pen and paper.

That’s just about it for now.  My battery’s almost at 100% and it’s starting to get dark, so I’d better go.  See you all later!

Trope Tuesday: Wicked Cultured

What Captain Nemo does in his spare time, when he isn’t terrorizing the world of maritime shipping.

This week’s Trope Tuesday series post is by request from a reader.

Evil villains aren’t always grotesque, brutish, foaming-at-the-mouth barbarians.  Quite often, they are wealthy and aristocratic, with exquisitely refined tastes and an extraordinary degree of eloquence.  It isn’t just that evil is cool (though it may overlap with this), or that the barbarians have finally developed a fashion sense–it’s that the more refined and cultured a character is, the more evil they are as well.

This happens a lot more often than you might think.  Magneto (X-men), Lucius Malfoy (Harry Potter), Hannibal Lector (Silence of the Lambs), Ganondorf (Zelda), Captain Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), the Godfather (the Godfather), Kane (Command & Conquer), President Shinra (Final Fantasy VII), the Merovingian (The Matrix Reloaded), Grand Admiral Thrawn (Star Wars: Heir to the Empire and The Thrawn Trilogy), Khan (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), Vetinari (Discworld), Captain Hook (Peter Pan), the Phantom (Phantom of the Opera) and every James Bond villain ever all fall squarely into this trope.

So why does this happen?  I can think of a few reasons, though I’m sure there are others.

First, it hearkens back to the age-old romanticism vs. enlightenment debate.  This is especially true of the fantasy genre, which tends to hearken back to a medieval golden age before the modern, industrial world, when life was simpler and people tended to live in picturesque rural villages instead of dense urban cities.  If your hero is a farmboy in a world of knights and wizards, or a barbarian hero who strikes first and asks questions never, chances are that anyone with a sense of refinement or culture is going to find themselves on the wrong side of the story.

Second, it hearkens back to the mad scientist and the cautionary tale of science gone horribly wrong.  As you might expect, this is much more common in science fiction, especially the classic dystopian stuff. The more scientific and enlightened a character, the more cultured they tend to be as well.  In stories where science is bad, then, it should come as no surprise that these characters are also evil.

Another good reason to use this trope is to indicate that the villains are members of the Empire.  Culture tends to happen when people of diverse talents and backgrounds are brought together, and the best way to bring them together is through conquest.  Just look at the Romans.  Almost every empire throughout history, no matter how brutal, has always produced an increase in some degree of culture.  Even the Mongols gave way to Kublai Khan and the Silk Road.  So in stories where the Evil Empire comes into play, having your villains be cultured can be a good way to show that.

The biggest reason for this trope, though, is that it makes the villains more complex and interesting.  If being evil always meant living in a cave and eating raw meat, then every story would read like a badly written RPG, where the heroes keep grinding until all their stats are at 9999 or higher.  And honestly, you have to admit that there’s something a little bit eerie about that guy who gets totally absorbed when playing the organ.

I haven’t played with this trope in a major way yet, but it does come into play a bit in Desert Stars, though only in a minor way.  In Bringing Stella Home and Heart of the Nebula (forthcoming), Lars is pretty much the opposite of this (the Gentleman and a Scholar trope, though he did drop out of college).  Probably the best example would be Heloise from Star Wanderers: Fidelity (Part II).  She’s wealthy, fashionable, and decorates her apartment with wallscreen monitors that cycle through artistic photographs of deep space nebulae.  She’s also one of the more dangerous female characters I think I’ve written.  Who knows–maybe she’ll show up in another story before too long.

Trope Tuesday: The Vamp

Also known as the temptress or the seductress, the vamp is one of the more dangerous characters the hero meets on his journey.  A devastating beauty who is as evil as she is sexy, she uses her feminine wiles to exploit men’s flaws to her own advantage.  If the hero falls for her, he will be destroyed.

Unlike the femme fatale, her more neutral counterpart, she is completely evil and cannot be redeemed.  This is because her role in the story demands it.  She generally makes her first appearance in the initiation phase of the hero’s journey, after the hero sets out on the adventure but before he masters the unfamiliar world.  In many cases, she represents a leave your quest test or a secret test of character.

Joseph Campbell thought this character was so important that he dedicated an entire phase of the monomyth to her:

When it suddenly dawns on us…that everything we think or do is necessarily tainted with the odor of the flesh, then, not uncommonly, there is experienced a moment of revulsion: life, the acts of life, the organs of life, woman in particular as the great symbol of life, become intolerable to the pure, the pure, pure soul. The seeker of the life beyond life must press beyond (the woman), surpass the temptations of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond.

As such, the vamp represents the more carnal elements of the hero’s nature, which he must reject or overcome in order to be transformed.  Confronting her is an important part of the story because it gives him an opportunity to recognize his flaws and master them.  It isn’t easy, though–the vamp is an extremely deceptive character, and often plays tricks like the wounded gazelle gambit to confuse the hero and gain his sympathy.

While often a female character, there are a few male examples of this character.  Mr. Wickham from Pride and Prejudice is one of the more obvious ones.  Basically, the vamp can be of any gender, so long as s/he is someone the main character finds sexually enticing.  Because of the traditionally male-centric nature of the hero’s journey, however, she’s almost always female.

Also, I think it’s important to add that it’s not just the vamp’s sexiness that makes her evil, it’s the way that she uses it to manipulate and undermine the hero.  If she starts out evil but has a heel-face turn later in the story, she doesn’t fulfill this trope.  Likewise, if falling for her wouldn’t make the hero fail, then she doesn’t fulfill the trope either.

I’ve played with this trope a little bit in my own work, but not in a big way yet.  Heloise from Star Wanderers: Fidelity (Part II) probably fits this trope the best, though her appearance is fairly brief.  Tamu from Bringing Stella Home might appear superficially to be one, but she’s actually more of a fair weather mentor for Stella (and has good reasons for choosing the life of a Hameji consort).  And of course, Mira from Desert Stars doesn’t fit this trope at all, seeing how much she changes by the end.

Trope Tuesday: The Trickster

After the hero crosses the threshold of adventure and finally sets out on his journey, he passes through a long phase that Campbell called “the road of trials.” This is often where the meat of the story happens, but it doesn’t fit squarely into any one trope because of all the possible directions where the story can go.  For that reason, I think it’s more useful to think in terms of who the hero meets, not what the hero does.

The Trickster is often (though not always) one of the first characters the hero encounters upon entering the lands of adventure.  He is almost always male, though sometimes he can change shapes and even sexes (for example, Loki, who turned into a mare and conceived Odin’s horse).  His role in the story, though, can range from mentor (Merlin, Yoda, Mary Poppins) to bad guy (the Joker, the Homonculi, Grand Admiral Thrawn) to the hero himself (Prometheus, Bugs Bunny, Bilbo Baggins).

Obviously, the Trickster is a very slippery character.  You can tell who he is, though, by whether he meets these two basic criteria:

  • completely unpredictable
  • not beholden to any authority

In this way, the Trickster often stands in stark contrast to the people of the ordinary world that the hero left behind.  Which makes sense–having just crossed the threshold of adventure, the hero needs to leave his old mentality behind and be exposed to new experiences and ideas.  For that reason, the Trickster’s antics often serve to teach the hero an Aesop, helping him to learn and grow.

That doesn’t mean that the Trickser is harmless.  Quite the contrary–he’s a dirty, lying cheat, capable of taking any disguise and throwing the victims of his pranks into any moral quandary just for laughs.  He’s not necessarily a jerkass–he may even be more of an ally than an enemy–but he definitely is not to be trusted.

Like most things associated with the hero’s journey, the amazing thing is just how prevalent this trope is.  It’s even cropped up in some of my own work.  For example, in Bringing Stella Home, Ilya Ayvazyan is a trickster of the playful hacker variety.  In Star Wanderers, Samson is a blithe spirit who doesn’t necessarily have Jeremiah’s best interests at heart…though his girlfriend (the one at Alpha Oriana) is a lot more sinister.  I’m not sure if anyone fits this trope in Desert Stars, but you could probably make a case for Lena or Amina–or better yet, Ibrahim.

Of all the major character archetypes, though, the Trickster is the one I feel like I know the least about.  If you have anything else to add, I would like to hear it!

Summer recap and new goals

So back in June I made a to do list of things I wanted to accomplish this summer.  I’ve only got a week left before I go overseas again, and I’m happy to say I’m on track to finish most of them.  A couple of them (such as doing a blog tour and submitting aggressively to book bloggers) I decided weren’t worth my time, and dropped them, but these are the major things I’ve accomplished:

  • Release print-on-demand editions of Genesis Earth, Bringing Stella Home, and Desert Stars through CreateSpace.
  • Redo cover art for Bringing Stella Home.
  • Redo blurb/description for all titles.
  • Put proper copyright page in all titles.
  • Publish all titles on Kobo Writing Life.
  • Find a better way to build an ebook and reformat all titles.
  • Finish the second draft of Stars of Blood and Glory.
  • Finish and publish parts I and II of Star Wanderers.

The only major thing I haven’t accomplished is figuring out how to sell ebooks directly from my website.  I figure I can set that up later, though, when I’ve got a large enough readership to justify it.  If it’s all online, I can probably do it from anywhere.

While I was vacationing with my family on Cape Cod, I had a chance to step back and take a long look at what I’m doing with my life, which helped me to set some new goals and get a renewed sense of direction.  I stopped tracking my daily writing word counts in July, which threw off my productivity a lot more than I thought it would.  After setting some long-term goals, though, I think I can find a better way to structure my writing.

In ten years (2022), I want to…

  • have 25+ published novels.
  • earn a solid middle-class income through my writing.
  • be married and have kids.
  • own a house.
  • live in the United States.

My lifetime goal is to publish 100+ novels, which is actually a lot more doable than it sounds.  It means writing a minimum of two novels a year, though, so I’m going to have to follow Heinlein’s rules a lot closer than I have been in the past.  That’s the trouble with keeping a daily word count: it made me look a lot more productive when I was in revisions, so I spent more time doing that than writing new work.

In three years (2015), I want to…

  • have at least 10 published novels.
  • make enough with my writing not to need another job.
  • be married or engaged.
  • have lived for at least three months in 3+ countries (not including USA).

I want to settle back down in the States eventually, but before that I want to get around and see the world a bit.  The absolute coolest thing would be to marry another world traveler and make enough on the writing to have a bunch of adventures together.  I’m not sure if I’ll find her in Georgia, but I’ll be sure to keep my eyes open.

As for short-term goals, I’m still trying to work them out.  Here’s what I have so far:

Quarterly Goals:

  • Start at least 2 new projects.
  • Finish at least 2 first drafts.
  • Publish at least 2 titles (print and ebook counts as two).

I think this is enough to stretch me while still being doable.  By my count, in the first quarter of this year I did 2-2-1, in the second quarter I did 2-2-0, and in the current quarter, I’m at 2-0-5 so far.  Of course, this includes all the Star Wanderers novelettes and novellas, which I hope to expand in the future.

I’m not going to count revisions as progress, except as part of the publishing stage.  Some stuff needs a lot of revision, other stuff, not so much.  What I really want to do is train myself to produce high quality work on the first or second write-through.  Of course, I’ll still use test readers to gauge my work before publishing anything.

Monthly Goals:

  • Finish at least 2 projects (first draft or revision).
  • Write at least 15k words of new material.

I can write a lot more than 15k words in a month, of course, but I figure this is a good starting point.  The key is that this is for new material.  When I looked back at my word counts, I found that months of revision would go by before I actually worked on something new.  I want to change that, but I still need to allow for longer projects that might require several weeks of revision (while emphasizing the need to produce new material, of course).

Weekly/Daily Goals:

  • Keep all project deadlines.
  • Start each day with writing.

I’ve found that if I don’t start off each day with writing, I keep putting it off until I’ve spent more time and energy angsting about it than actually doing it.  For a short period of time this summer, I put my butt in the chair and my hands on the keyboard first thing after waking up (even before getting dressed).  It was amazing how much of a difference that made.

Beyond that, I’m not really sure what other goals to set.  I want to plan things out on a project to project basis, but beyond that I haven’t yet figured out what kind of a daily structure I need to build.

It’s probably a good idea to keep things flexible at this point, though, since I have no idea what my schedule is going to be like once I’m in Georgia.  I do know a little bit about my next placement–more on that later–but for the first half of September, I’m going to be all over the place.  Ani, Tusheti, Kars, Akhaltsikhe, Tbilisi, Baghdati, and Istanbul–it’s going to be crazy!

For this next week, my goal is to finish the revisions for Star Wanderers: Sacrifice (Part III) and send that out to my beta readers.  I’ve been struggling with it all month, but I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of where I need to go with it.  I’m going to finish chapter 3 tomorrow, then rewrite chapters 4 and 5 from scratch.

After that…another Caucasian adventure! 🙂

Got a moment? Help me make my book free on Amazon.

So Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I) is available for free now on Kobo and Smashwords (it’s also free on a couple of other sites, but hasn’t yet updated to the new version–see Monday’s post for the explanation).  I would like to make it free on Amazon, too, but I need your help!  Here’s what I need you to do:

Step 1: Copy this URL

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Star-Wanderers-Outworlder-Part-I/book-OkUwT3TLcE2GfBP8sCDHHA/page1.html

It’s the page for the book on Kobo.  Amazon doesn’t usually price match to Smashwords, but if you want to be extra awesome you can do that too.

Step 2: Go to Amazon and click on “tell us about a lower price”

Open a tab in your browser and navigate to the Amazon page for Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I). Above the customer reviews section and below the “Customers Who Bought This Also Bought” is a section labeled  “Product details”:

Click on “tell us about a lower price,” and a small window should pop up.

Step 3: Fill out the details and click “submit feedback”

The window should be pretty self explanatory.  It basically asks you where the book is selling for less, and how much it is selling for.  Select the option for the online store, paste the Kobo URL into the appropriate field, and fill out the price/shipping details:

It shouldn’t take more than a couple of moments.  After that, you’re done!

If you could do that for me, I would really appreciate it.  Amazon’s bots are sporadic and unpredictable, but if a whole bunch of different people (from different ISPs using different Amazon accounts) tell them that a book is free, they’re more likely to price match.

If you’re an Amazon customer and use the UK, French, German, Spanish, or Italian stores, it would be even more awesome if you could help me out!  I’ve never been able to get any of my titles to price match on those stores, though I’ve certainly wanted to.  Here are the links for Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I):

So why would I want to give this book away for free?  Well, Star Wanderers: Fidelity (Part II) is already out, and the next two installments should be out in a few months as well.  Plus, I figure that people who read this and enjoy it will be interested in checking out my other titles as well.  I’ve already made Sholpan and “From the Ice Incarnate” permanently free, and it’s helped a lot to drive attention to my other works.

So thanks for your help!  I really appreciate it.  I don’t have anything to give you for taking the trouble, but if all works out, you might be able to download a free ebook soon. 😉 Enjoy!

Star Wanderers: four novelettes or a novel in four parts?

So my plans to publish Star Wanderers have run into a little snag…Part II was rejected for distribution to iTunes, Sony, and other retailers, with an order to unpublish both parts and republish them as one work.  The order probably came because of this clause in the Smashwords Terms of Service:

9d. You further warrant the book represents a complete work:
• this is not a work-in-progress;
• the uploaded file is not a partial sample or sample chapter, or is not a collection of sample chapters, or not simply a catalog advertising other books
• the uploaded book represents a complete story with a beginning, middle and end; not a short serial

Now, I do not believe that I have knowingly violated any part of the agreement.  Each installment of Star Wanderers is a complete 15,000 to 17,000 word novelette with its own arc, including a beginning, middle, and end.  I have finished all four installments and only need to revise them before publishing, hopefully in a couple of months.  None of them contain sample chapters from any other work.

However, up until now I have seen this story mainly as a novel published in four parts, kind of like how Tolkien originally intended Lord of the Rings to be one giant book, published in three parts.  In my mind, “a novel in four parts” and “a series of four novelettes” are not mutual exclusive.  Apparently, Smashwords doesn’t think so.

All this makes me wonder, though: should I just drop my plans to publish this as a whole novel and instead keep it as four separate novelettes?  I intend to write a parallel series of the same events from Noemi’s point of view, and may expand that to include other viewpoint characters.  Maybe I should wait to novelize this series until I can include other scenes and chapters, turning it into a substantially different work.

This kind of puts me in an awkward position, though.  I’d originally planned to drop the price of Part II to $.99 after Part III comes out, and Part III to $.99 after releasing Part IV.  The idea was to keep the total price of all four parts below $4.95, the price point I’ve chosen for all my other novels.  But if Star Wanderers in its current form remains a series of four novelettes, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to drop the price of any one of them below $2.99 (except for the first one, which I still intend to make permanently free).

If I have to make a choice between unpublishing parts I and II of Star Wanderers and publishing it as one novel, or simply repackaging the parts that are out as separate and distinct works, I’d much rather do that.  It seems a truer reflection of the overall story structure, and gives me a lot more flexibility to add more in the future.

This is a pretty big shift, though, and I worry it may offend readers who expected me to drop the price according to the previous plan.  I really don’t have any excuse for that: it’s entirely my fault for misreading the Smashwords TOS, and I apologize.

For newsletter subscribers, though, I still plan to make each subsequent release available for free for the first two weeks following publication.  That’s a promise I made to my readers, and I’m not going to go back on it, no matter what I end up doing.  And if I do repackage Star Wanderers as a series of novelettes instead of a novel in four parts, I’m not going to make any substantial changes to the actual story of Part I or Part II–just the titles, and possibly the author’s note at the end.

All of this is still in the air, though, so if you have any ideas or suggestions to offer, I would very much like to hear them.  I still have a lot to learn as a writer, and the publishing landscape is changing so quickly that I really have no idea what I’ll be doing even a year from now.

The only thing I know for sure is that I’ll still be writing.

Quick summer update

So I just finished a quick 2.0 draft of Star Wanderers, and there still seems to be something missing.  Not sure what it is, but I probably need to take a break from it for a while and focus on something else.

Working on it has really drained me, which is one of the reasons why I missed the Trope Tuesday post this week–sorry!  I’ll try to get something up this coming Tuesday, though I can’t make any promises since I’ll be at Cape Cod on vacation with the family.

I’m not sure whether to take a break for a while or to throw myself into another project, but I’m going to take it easy this next week and focus on  having a good time with my family.  That’s the main reason why I came back to the States, after all.  But one thing I do want to do is read more, so I’ll definitely be spending some time with my kindle while on the beach.  Expect to see a few reviews here shortly.

I can’t really say which project I’m going to pick up next, but I’m going to take a break from Star Wanderers for a while.  Don’t worry–Part III will be out no later than October, possibly sooner depending on any number of things.  Taking a break from this story will help me come back to it with a fresh perspective.  And who knows?  I might write something really awesome in the meantime.

That’s just about it for now.  If updates are sporadic for the next week, it’s because I’m on the beach somewhere, reading a good book. 🙂