Yeah, I know, I’ve been amazingly lax in posting…well…anything on my blog. I’m not good at blogging, and I’m not too proud to admit it. Work has been grinding me down the last couple of years, and I haven’t had the time or energy to do much writing. I’m trying to break that trend.
I’ll start with a quick update on the state of my writing. After a year of slow editing and rewriting, my first non-Kinnear novel, Pluto, is just about ready for publication. It’s with my proofreaders, who seem to be enjoying it, and I’m starting to shop around for an actual agent. I’ll write more about that soon.
For those who’ve been waiting for it with baited breath (I really hope you’re actually out there!), the third Kinnear novel, Seasons of Healing, is almost done. I’m working on the last chapter, and then it’ll go to my proofreaders and editors to be ripped to shreds. 🙂
I haven’t taken part in National Novel Writing Month since the last time I wrote about it (2015), since the hardcore writing grind that year nearly burnt out my desire to write! There’ve been some changes to my writing toolkit lately though, so I’ll just mention the most dramatic: I’ve purchased a Surface Pro, and I’m in the process of migrating away from the macOS.
I honestly don’t think that Apple cares about its computer users anymore. They’re so busy producing phones and tablets with crippled operating systems, working on autonomous cars and going “All in” on original programming for the AppleTV (their words, not mine!), that they’ve forgotten they used to make computers.
Seriously, guys…you can’t keep calling your Server components “macOS Server” when you’re taking out DNS, DHCP, email, web services, and pretty much everything else that makes it a server! And for god’s sake, upgrade the Mac Mini and stop using those crap totally flat keyboards on your laptops!
Bah!
The good news is that Focuswriter (http://gottcode.org/focuswriter/) and Scrivener (https://www.literatureandlatte.com), my favorite writing programs, are also available for Windows. Hopefully, version 3 of Scrivener will be finished soon…in the meantime, I’m working well enough with the beta version.
But yeah, I’ve gone back to Windows. The Surface Pro is a superb piece of hardware in every way, but most importantly (to me) is that the keyboard is the most comfortable I’ve used on a device this portable. It is, in fact, possibly the most comfortable keyboard I’ve used on a laptop computer since my old Sager laptop (which was a cinderblock compared to this thing). I’ll write more about my impressions of the Surface Pro and Windows 10 another time.