It's Monday again
So there was some progress this week. I finished the final edits on "Dussel and Ariel" and submitted it to an anthology. I finished editing my collection of stories about "Tiny Joe and the Green Knight Terraforming Company." I just need to get a cover designed and then put the collection on Kindle.
I used to have a desktop computer set up for covers and design. At the time I used Adobe's suite. Then two years ago just before I moved, the computer did a hard die. I tried changing memory and the hard drive. Eventually I concluded that the motherboard was no good. It had gone through two years of being on unreliable power when I lived in Boulder City, NV. There were brown outs constantly.
I had a UPS for it, but it died within the first few months. I mean the entire thing smoked and burned. I eventually got a new UPS, which oddly enough I use for my TV in the living room and backup hard drive.
It took me another two years to realize that if I wanted to publish again, I needed a normal computer. A google stripped down computer was fine for online, but it was not good for writing or publishing stories. I bought a new Windows laptop this year. So now I have to find a good design program for my covers that won't break my bank.
I started making my own covers, when I found that having someone else do it could cost me 200-400 dollars a pop. I'm a mid-level writing and living on a fixed income so that type of money just adds up. It was easier to buy a program and make it myself. I do have Photoshop, but I'm not sure if it will work on this version of Windows. I might take the time to find out very soon. If not, it is those strange template covers from Amazon.
I wanted to be a writer for a long time. I was a reader first, of course. I started reading in first grade and I didn't quit. By the time I was in fifth grade, I was reading on a college level. My mother had been in several plays during her high school years and still had the stage directions. I read all of them over and over. It was when I was thirteen that I found sci-fi and fantasy. One of my mother's great uncles died and left his library to his family. My mother was given hundreds of books. He had several first and second editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others.
When I was gone, my mother sold the library. I always wished she had left those books to me. Oh well, I have good memories, sitting behind the couch and reading the "Hunchback of Notre Dame" and other stories.
I saw a picture recently of myself and my two other sisters when I was about seven. It brought back memories of writing plays and skits for my sisters to perform. I was always the writer and stage director. We would perform these plays in front of our parents.
I forget when we stopped playing this way. I think it was when my parents moved to Willowcreek, which was sixty miles from the nearest small town on dirt roads. Life got real then because we lived without electricity and had to haul in our own water. Those days we worked too hard to play.
It was like we left one world and plunged into a harder world. What saved me then was books. What saves me now is books. I am so glad that we tell stories.