BLOG IS MOVING

Frothing at the Mouth has moved. Find the continuing saga here:

http://www.ricknovy.com/frothing-at-the-mouth/

Some Changes Coming

Over the past week, motivated by the problems I had with Zen Cart, I have been experimenting with using WordPress for not only the online e-fiction store, but also my entire web site. I posted links inside Codex Writers Group to elicit some feedback and the response was unanimous toward favoring the Wordpress site.

If you would like to compare the two sites, you can see them by following the below links. First, some caveats:

1. The WordPress site is still under construction and the text color on many of the pages is still a dull gray that will be changing.
2. The Wordpress link will change eventually, so if you are reading this well after it is posted, the links might not work the way they work today.

Current web site:
http://www.ricknovy.com/

Proposed new Wordpress site:
http://www.new.ricknovy.com/entropy/

If I do make the move, which now seems likely, my blogging will probably move away from Blogger onto Wordpress unless I can find some way to cross-post.

Regardless, I am interested in feedback comparing the two sites.

Zen Cart Roadblock

I hit a brick wall with Zen Cart today. Fellow writer Eric James Stone develops web sites for his day job. We were on the phone discussing the Zen Cart install that I had going and discovered it to be very cumbersome to set a file up for download. While I'm not completely decided on removing the zen Cart install, I am going to give some serious consideration to another alternative he suggested that uses a Wordpress plugin.

While I like poking around in html and I'm comfortable in it for my home page, there are a few things I'd like to do with the web site that I haven't done yet. One of those is incorporating this blog into the web site itself rather than making people go to Blogger to find it. Wordpress makes that easy, but I think blogger can be embedded into my home page as well. Research time.

On the other hand, I haven't really found a Wordpress web site that I am all gaga over. So, I have a few alternatives. Move completely to Wordpress, move the store only to Wordpress, or migrate gradually. I think I'll sleep on it and ponder the problem more tomorrow.

On the other hand, I did generate my very first e-format short story as a pdf file. That's the first step. I know there are other formats, but I think it looks pretty good. Here is the cover image.

Zen Cart Progress

I have tried twice in the past to install Zen Cart. During yesterday's install, I remembered why it was unsuccessful in the past. At one point, there are files that need to be made read-only. I know how to do that, but I could never access the UNIX command line to do it. Yesterday, I managed to get into an ugly and clumsy GUI interface that allowed me to do the same thing. Not my preferred way of handling it, but it worked.

Now, I'm faced with the daunting task of setting up the store. It is not intuitive, and there are literally scores of settings. I installed with the demo merchandise, which I soon regretted. It houses a lot of crap, none of which I plan to sell. I managed to clean out all but five items, which I kept to study later.

One task to complete before too long will be creating a pdf version of at least one of my stories so I have something to put into the store. That has a a couple of implications. First, I have to use open office because Word won't save in pdf. Second, I need cover art, which shouldn't be an issue other than being time-consuming. I don't have any graphics software, but I have used Aviary before--an online graphics package that so far has done everything I need. I don't draw or paint, so my covers will of necessity be photographic. Hopefully they look decent.

Digitized Future

Since my meeting with Michael A. Stackpole last friday, digital publishing has been more and more on my mind. I'm in the planning stages of setting up a storefront on www.ricknovy.com. Since there seems to be growing interest in this area, I'll be documenting the experience here for other writers who want to do the same thing. It will leave a trail of bread crumbs for anyone interested in following.
Today's task: Install Zen Cart.

RiNoWriMo a Bust

Bad bad weekend for productivity. Weekends are very difficult to use for writing. Distractions, tasks, and more distractions abound. So, not surprisingly, I have totally fallen off the RiNoWriMo wagon. I'm now hopelessly behind.

So, how to go forward? Actually, it isn't as bad as it seems. Although I haven't put any new words down since I finished the short story for the Aether Age anthology, I have been thinking about a lot of writing-related activity. Much of that is on the reinvention side.

I've been formulating a plan to digitally self-publish all my previously-released short fiction and sell from my own web site in the Michael A. Stackpole model. Following the meeting I had with him on friday, I've been pondering this a lot.

The main barrier is the construction of my online store with Zen Cart. My web host does have an automatic install for both the cart and the database. I've installed it twice before, then my install stayed fallow. So, the big thing now is to reinstall (old installs have been deleted) and then figure out how to get it running. I suspect that mainly involves butt-in-chair time, which will happen soon.

Prior to that, however, I need to create some professional-looking product. Appearance here is of utmost importance, including cover art for even the shortest of stories. I plan to handle pretty much all of that photographically because I have the tools and ability to handle that method, where I have less drawing or painting ability than a chipmunk stoned on catnip.

Also a priority is getting the edits done for the Aether Age story. I expect that will be finished tomorrow, then on to creating the prototype digital story for the online store. Plus, I need to complete that novel I started during NaNoWriMo. Lots and lots to do.

So, consider RiNoWriMo a bust for me, at least by the numbers. However, it jump-started my working on the writing career. Since that was the original intention, I can hardly call it a failure.

News on progress will continue.

RiNoWriMo - Day 5

Despite this being RiNoWriMo day 5, I did not generate any new word count today. That doesn't mean that I didn't get anything meaningful in terms of writing accomplished. I spent a good hour or so with Michael A. Stackpole discussing digital publishing.

For those not familiar with his model, Stackpole uses digital self-publishing as a significant part of his writing distribution portfolio. This is in addition to anything he sells in the traditional manner, and it has provided very good returns for him. He is one of the vanguard authors in this respect and quickly becoming a recognized expert among genre writers. He says his being an expert speaks to the trouble the traditional publishers find themselves in. He's also a fairly polarizing figure, especially among those who have a lot invested in traditional publishing. Go read his own words if you want to know more, I linked to his web site above.

So, I have some plans to make that sort of online presence a part of my writing distribution portfolio and now have to work on the details, like adding Zen Cart to my web site and learning how to produce the different digital file formats.

I think at this point RiNoWriMo has already served its purpose. While I'm not hitting the targets, I am being productive again. However, I'll still track and try to get as close as possible to the target through the end of the month.

Day 5 / 0 words / 3861 total / -3639 from target / 5 pages edited, digital publishing meeting.
Day 4 / 682 words / 3861 total / -2139 from target / 1 short story completed
Day 3 / 810 words / 3179 total / -1321 from target
Day 2 / 1612 words / 2360 total / -631 from target
Day 1 / 757 words / 757 total / -743 from target

RiNoWriMo - Day 4

Ok, so this is not going as well as I had hoped, but I am still making progress and that's a change over last month. Several unusual situations are competing for my time, but I did manage to complete the draft of the Aether Age story today. It finished up at around 4600 words. I'll go over it again tomorrow and do some touch-up.

In my defense, it's difficult for me to finish one project then jump immediately into another one. I usually have at least one down day between projects. That's one reason why I tend to write long fiction faster. For some reason, I have always worked faster on long projects. Maybe that's why my word count is 1/3 what it was in November for NaNoWriMo. Analysis doesn't excuse it, though.

Not sure if I'll get any word count at all tomorrow. I'm scheduled to meet with Michael A. Stackpole to discuss digital publishing strategy. He's got a lot of good ideas and uses digital self-publishing as part of his portfolio strategy. My own online fiction strategy has lagged behind the curve forever, and I finally figured out why. I don't have a clear objective. That's one thing I hope to figure out as a result of the meeting.

Okay, for the RiNoWriMo talley:

Day 4 / 682 words / 3861 total / -2139 from target / 1 short story completed
Day 3 / 810 words / 3179 total / -1321 from target
Day 2 / 1612 words / 2360 total / -631 from target
Day 1 / 757 words / 757 total / -743 from target

RiNoWriMo - Day 3

Not a solid day. Was interrupted by miscommunication on date/time for a meeting with Michael A. Stackpole, and that chewed up an hour. I managed to get about 800 words down today before being pulled away to help with 8th grade science homework. Fortunately, my day is wide open tomorrow. As it stands:

Day 3 / 810 words / 3179 total / -1321 from target
Day 2 / 1612 words / 2360 total / -631 from target
Day 1 / 757 words / 757 total / -743 from target


Not doing well compared to the goals, but I'm certainly making more progress than i did in January with many days of 0 words.

RiNoWriMo - Day 2

Today, I managed to gut out about 1600 words by writing in fits and starts all day long. That hits the daily goal and makes up some ground for the deficit I left yesterday. The Aether Age story, now titled Goga's First Law, now stands at 3763 words, and will probably grow by another 1000 to 1500 before the dust settles. I should get it done by the end of the week. At that point, I'd like to hammer out a couple of other shorts, but if I don't get any brilliant ideas, I'll go back to the NaNoWriMo novel.


Day 2 / 1612 words / 2360 total / -631 from target
Day 1 / 757 words / 757 total / -743 from target

//

Looks like the Coyotes beat the Predators 1-0 in a shootout. I saw only about 1/3 of the game, mid second through the third until about 6:30 when I had to go back to the Netflix movie. (Sometimes being married means watching things when you'd rather be watching other things.) Good game, from what I saw. The Yotes were beating the Predators in Shots on Goal by a 2-1 margin. just great defensive play. Wish I could have seen the shootout.

RiNoWriMo - Day 1

At writers group last night, Lejon Johnson gave my NaNoSorTa a new name. The big deal in November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Lejon dubbed this February effort RiNoWriMo, Rick Novy Writing Month.

So be it.

In a perfect world, every month is RiNoWriMo. But this is life. And in life, we start to walk, in the immortal words of Kris Kringle, by putting one foot in front of the other. So today, February 1st, I started RiNoWriMo, and did not meet my goal of 1500 words. I did write about half that, putting down 757 words on a short story I am trying to finish for the Aether Age anthology.

For some reason, this story is coming out in first person. I don't think I've sold a first person story to the M-Brane crew, so this will be a little different kind of product than they are used to seeing from me. It will be interesting if it works for them.

RiNoWriMo

Day 1 / 757 words / 757 total / -743 from target

NaNoSorTa

I need a kick in the pants to get writing again. November's NaNoWriMo was very productive for me. I finished over 52,000 words in 30 days. Writing between 1600 and 2000 words a day (with one massive 4000 word day) felt good. It felt productive, I felt useful, and I like how that felt.

With the start of December, I had intended to take a few days to finish a video project, then go back and finish the novel. The plan went awry when my computer crashed, trapping both the novel and the video project for two weeks. By the time I got the computer back, the video project became urgent. Writing is a momentum thing for me, and the crash brought writing to a screeching halt. I still haven't done more than a few token words in 2010. I started the year with the goal of writing every day. That ended January 4th, and I just remembered about the goal as I write this. Too little, too late.

As I sat outside uprooting rogue bermuda grass from the pool, I hit upon the idea of how to get going again. if NaNoWriMo worked in November, why not do it again? It's worth a try, and because I thought of the idea on January 31, I can make it happen in February.

The rules are different.
1) I can work on any fiction project, not just the novel, as long as I put in the word count.
2) The goal is 42000 words in 28 days, that's 1500 per day vs the 1666 in NaNoWriMo.
3) There is no web site and no slick reward banner.

If anyone else needs a kick in the pants and wants to join me, post a comment or email me using the contact link on my web site www.ricknovy.com and let's be accountable to each other.

It's Official. Matt's job to Lose

If you follow sports at all, you probably know that Kurt Warner decided to retire. He has a nice message to his fans on his one and only official web site. You can see it here. Right hand side, just below the fold. You can see more on the Cardinals web site.

It's bitter-sweet. When I moved to Arizona, I bled green and gold. It took Kurt Warner to make me care about the Cardinals, a team with a losing tradition as long and solid as the Chicago Cubs, but without being as lovable. But it wasn't just me, nobody in Phoenix cared much about the Cardinals until last season. Despite, an ESPN has put it, the team having a Jeckyll and Hyde personality, bringing back the old nickname of Cardiac Cards, Kurt Warner made the team into a winner. He elevated the play of everyone around him.

I lived in southeastern Wisconsin when Bambi's Bombers took the World Series to 7 games in 1982. I spent a good amount of time in Kansas City when the Royals won it all in 1984. I lived in San Jose during the Joe Montana/Steve Young era 49ers. And now I've lived in the valley when Kurt's Kards went to the Superbowl. Of all that, I have never seen a place so invigorated as the valley became over a sports team in the past two years. We bought Cardinals shirts on clearance for $1 each back in the day. Now, you can't find even knock-offs under $15.

Kurt, thanks for everything you've done for Arizona and for the Cardinals. It's been a heck of a ride and I wish you all the best in the next chapter of your life.

One of the Evils of Life and Changes in Football?

I think I have all the documents I need to start my taxes. So, here we go again. Time to fire up TurboTax, collect various receipts, print out forms from Scottrade, dig through the medical file to find out how much we spent on precriptions, and so forth.

It's going to be an interesting process this year with all the different situations I find myself in. Unemployment, funeral, odd job income, new business expenses, and business losses.

It's something we all have to deal with, so I best get on with it.

//

Kurt Warner is scheduled to announce his retirement/non-retirement decision in just under three hours. If he decides to stay, it just delays the inevitable transition. If he retires, the Cardinals need to become Matt Leinart's team quickly, and the running game will become a focus for Coach Whis. I'm wearing Cardinal red today (see photo two entries below) to support both Kurt and the team no matter the decision.

The expiration of the agreement between the players and owners will make this an interesting season regardless. My understanding is that if no new agreement is reached, the salary cap goes away for the 2010 season. One of the reasons I have turned away from baseball to football was the long stretch without a labor dispute. I also like the salary cap, and how it seems to have brought a lot of parity to the NFL. With no salary cap, do you see Indianapolis and New Orleans as the top seeds in playoffs, or do the large market teams dominate like they do in baseball?

Remember the days when the Kansas City Royals were a contender? That was back in the mid 1980s. It's a small city market, and they can't compete with George Steinbrenner, who constantly buys pennants. The Yankees are a great organization, but it isn't hard to win that many pennants if you have the cash to hoard all the good players. It takes away from the game.

A lockout of the 2011 football season, which the sportswriters all predict, would probably push me away from football into hockey. That would be a great loss, because I love football.

'Twas an Adventure

Today I made a foolhardy attempt to fix a leak in the roof. I have a two story house, and the upstairs attic is cramped and dusty. Loose insulation comes to a depth of eight inches minimum, buring the 2x4s and covering the drywall floor. That's right, the drywall is just nailed to the 2x4s and that's my floor in that attic.

The leak was a good ten feet from the access hole, and thus I had to climb up there, remaining on the 2x4s at all times. Falling through the sheetrock would have been catastrophic since the leak is over the stairs going to the first floor. A good 15 foot drop to the landing then a roll down the rest of the stairs.

Needless to say, I used extreme caution up there., moving slowly and deliberately. I don't like going up there and I don't want to do it again. Sitting for 30 minutes in an awkward position trying to coat the plywood of the ceiling with patch tar was, well, let's say it was loads of fun. Stiff muscles and fatigue made the difficulty extra challenging. On top of that, I had no evidence of where the leak exactly was, other than the wet spot in the insulation. I took my best guess and sealed up far more than was probably necessary. I just hope I got the leak.

By the way, WD-40 gets patch tar off your hands.

Meet Up with John Brown and Larry Correia

I love when writers I know from cyberspace show up in Phoenix and I get to meet them face to face. Two writers I know from Codex showed up during a book tour last November. John Brown I have known electronically for several years. Larry Correia I've known electronically for a few months. I met them on November 17.




That's me on the left in the Cards shirt. John is in the middle, and Larry on the right. I don't think we intentionally stood in height order, but that's how it worked out.

Nice folks. Wish we had a little more time to talk, but they had a whirlwind tour scheduled and I had science homework to help with. I look forward to hanging out at a con one of these days.

Rain? In the Desert?

The same series of storms that passed through California is in process of making its way through Arizona. We've collected considerable amount of water in the back yard over the past several days. It always accumulates in the low areas because the ground is so hard. It takes a long time for the water to soak into the ground. Some of the computer models show as much as six inches dumping on Phoenix. It seems like s decent storm for anywhere, but to put it into perspective, we only get an average of seven inches of rain a year.

Honorable Mention

Sometimes a surprise comes in the mail. Today I received my third Writers of the Future certificate for finishing as honorable mention. WOTF is funny that way.

I have placed at Honorable Mention (or Quarter Finalist, as it used to be known) nine times. I have received three certificates. The first one showed up two months after I received the SASE back with the notice of the HM finish. The second time, the notice in the mail stated that I had to REQUEST a certificate. This time, the certificate arrived unexpected with the SASE inside, but no letter at all. I posted a cell phone picture on twitpic (where I often post pictures of noteworthy events and just weird or meaningless tripe on a whim). http://twitpic.com/yuhy0

Consistency has never been one of their stronger suits, though they do a great job keeping the contest alive and humming.

Gotta go find a frame now...

Gearing Up

I went into last week with three classes to teach at the local community college. By thursday, two had been canceled due to low enrollment, and one had been take by a full timer who lost a class due to low enrollment. Friday I picked up two new classes at a satellite location. It's a little farther from the house, but it's 7 credits total. That should be enough to knock me off unemployment again.

I only have to generate notes for one of the classes this time, as I've taught the other one before. Generating notes is the worst part. Very time consuming.

This afternoon, I plan to get back on the writing horse. I have an Aether Age story to finish, then I want to get cracking on that NaNo novel and finish the thing. There was a nice motivation article in today's business section by Harvey Mackay called Rebound from your Failures by Taking Lessons from Mistakes. Among other influences, this article is motivating me to get writing again after the 6+ week hiatus that started when my hard drive crashed last month. I'd like to get back on the pace I held during NaNoWriMo, or reasonably close to that. It's a good clip that can finish a novel in two months, and it feels good to be that productive.

Of Roasted Cardinal and Mangled Bats

My son and I participated in an Eagle project for one of the boys in his scout troop this morning. We did trail work on an unlisted trail to repair ATV damage, and also to block an illegal ATV access trail. hard work, very physical, cutting and dragging dead branches around. We also found a wounded bat on the trail and the boys attempted a rescue, taking it to an area where the rangers deal with wounded animals.

We left the house just before 7:00 and got home at about 1:00. that gave enough time to get into the shower then dress for the Cardinal-Saints game.

Other than the touchdown run on the first snap of the game, the Cardinals looked flat. They lost two major defenders early, and Kurt Warner went down after being hit trying to tackle the guy who intercepted his pass. Matt Leinart looked okay through the end of the second quarter, but Neil Rackers missed another field goal--this time short. Rackers never misses short, which tells me that groin injury isn't properly healed and quite likely was aggravated last week. Even punter Ben Graham looked flat, punting uncharacteristic short.

I think Green Bay just wore the Cardinals out. They looked tired,and they played tired.

It was a good run, a better season than last year even if the ride didn't last as long.

Now that football season is over for me (though I'll probably catch a few more games) I'll be turning to hockey until the Olympics, where it will be more hockey and some speed skating, luge, and bobsled.