Before I went to bed, I broke the book off into 9 short chapters. It’s just under 12,000 words. I’m not usually a short chapter kind of guy, but this one has a mind of its own. On the the other hand, the last chapter sort of stretched out. It may be that the book is drawing me further into the story. I will try to keep at least most of the chapters short to match what has come before, but I’ll be more comfortable around 200-4000 word chapters.

Next I’m going to do a rough outline. I need to get through this and finish it - I have two collaborative projects to get through, and a Stargate Atlantis novel imminent, and I’m still enmeshed in a very intriguing ghost-writing project. There are not enough hours left in the day after a full-time job for so much writing - but currently there’s not enough money behind the words to allow me to write full time. May never be - only time can tell on that.

Will be putting another round of auctions on eBay shortly.

Now, off to work on that outline (and more of Redneck Dragon)

-DNW

Google Chromes End User Agreement does NOT hand over your copyright or ownership of any content to Google.  It does grant them “non-exclusive rights” to reproduce and use content uploaded through their services (we’ll get to what that means in a second) but only for this particular use:  ”This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services”

They aren’t going to publish your golden words in a book, or sell your secrets to foreign nations - or at least, if they do, they aren’t doing it legally.  They also aren’t talking about every bit of content you upload using Google Chrome - which is an APPLICATION.   Their EULA specifically refers to Google Services.  You would know these as Gmail, Blogger (I think they own that now), Google Search (yep that little box you type searches into and the history it leaves behind)  - Google Documents, widgets, programs and other assorted SERVICES.  

So, to recap, they are covering their asses so if they use something someone posts using a service they provide to promote or sell their browser, or their services, they have the right to do that.  That’s all they have the right to. 

Christ, people, they have every word you post cached and archived and indexed.  You write articles, posts, and volumes about how to increase your searchability for Google, and I’ll answer that in a short sentence.  Give them more of your stuff.  That’s how it works - they have it all anyway - anyone who believes their Gmail account is private should think about where the mail is stored - whose server it resides upon - and then about all the IT folks they know and realize their data is as secure as the people maintaining it. 

In short, while they sure could have worded it to cause less of a tizzy, Google isn’t asking for much of anything.  Also, consider that they claim Chrome will be open source.  If this is so, then the requirements of BEING open source would trump this EULA every time were anyone foolish enough to try defending it in court.

Get on with playing with the new browser.  It’s fast and clean, but it has some bugs, and if we want it to work better, we should find all those sites that are broken and report them.  They will use that information (non-exclusively) to make your Internet experience better.

I should add that I believe Google has WAY too much info they should not have, and that if you were to creatively gather things you could probably create top secret documents by picking and choosing from all that is indexed.  I don’t know that there is a way to prevent that and provide the services that they provide…so we live with it.  Only time will tell if we were foolish from the start.

You can’t have a search engine and keep all the avaialable data secret.

DNW

Technorati Tags: Chrome, Chromium, copyright, Eula, Google Chrome, non-exclusive, open source

First I want to hit very quickly on all of the things that captivated the world this weekend as quickly as possible. Bear with me.

Google Chrome: I will download and try the new browser. Of course I will. Still – it’s based on Firefox. It’s Open Source. Do we really need a “new” browser to cause new, unknown pain for all involved, or would we be better served if all the Internet giants would quit trying to own the whole damned thing and just make the browsers, standards, languages, and applications we already have work? It’s like anything else…by the time a company starts getting the bugs worked out of a program, they have some great new idea they just HAVE to implement, and an entire new world of pain begins for the users at the other end of the fiasco.

The minute I signed onto Twitter I was bombarded by posts about this or that site – “is it the new Twitter?” and literally thousands of posts saying “rush over and do this instead because support here is awful” – only to hear support is no better over THERE once the floodgates open and everyone signs on. Here’s today’s tip for all you gurus of Social Media. It’s not a social network if you have to move it every five days to a new service, and it’s not a useful marketing tool if the only other people using it are marketing their own stuff.

Anyway, I got off topic. Google Chrome – unless it’s got some remarkable thing I can’t think of, won’t it just become one more browser that may, or may not work with every new technology that comes along? There are – at the base – only two problems with browsers. One is the refusal of Browser Developers to just cave in and make their browsers compliant with no proprietary nonsense built in that requires people to access some sites using their software. The other side of the shoe is application and web developers who come out with new buggy versions of things on an almost daily basis, finding new ways to break the browsers and then screaming about how crappy the browser is because it won’t decipher their crapware.

Both sides claim to want compliance and operability while at the same time they fight for sneaky back doors that will make their product work and some other product not work. It’s very much like the presidential race – first and foremost, they want to WIN. Guess what that means for end users? There’s only two sides to a coin, after all.

And speaking of presidents…is anyone surprised that the world has decided to jump all over Palin for her daughter and the tiny little maybe-scandal they’ve dredged up, rather than trying to see if she’d be a good vice president? Not a person on either side – Republican or Democrat – that doesn’t have skeletons in their closets, and I don’t find this nonsense relevant at ALL to the race. It IS relevant that McCain seems not to have vetted his choice for VP very well (or at all?) and gone for the “shake it up” political strategy. We’ll see how that works out for him. For me, the fact that Palin doesn’t know exactly how things work in Washington is a major PLUS – because things DON’T WORK in Washington…isn’t that the problem? Lack of experience with the same ol’ same ol’ goes in the plus column.

I wish I could draw caricatures better. I want a political cartoon with a bunch of past Vice Presidents sitting around a television set, watching intently…fists clenched. On the screen, Palin is asking “What does the Vice President do all day?” and they are all DESPERATE for that answer. Until Cheney, the only VP of note (that I recall, anyway) was Bush Senior, and his involvement with the CIA and the United Nations pretty much assured that he’d be in the thick of things. Other than that, Doonsebury captured it best showing the VP as an invisible person with a voice.

I ran on longer than intended. I’ll leave you with a short scene from my screenplay in progress – Redneck Dragon. We wrote this in the car on the way to the zoo…and I typed it out when we got home. Made me chuckle…might make the trailer if I sell the film.

EXT. SHACK FRONT PORCH - DAY

BOBBY LEE and HIS MENTOR (named later) push through the brush and approaches the front porch of a rickety shack. On the porch, an old man sits staring off into the trees.

BOBBY LEE
Who is that?

MENTOR
Don’t rile him. Just move slowly and carefully, and maybe no one gets hurt.

BOBBY LEE
But…

MENTOR moves forward and BOBBY LEE follows a bit more slowly.

MENTOR
Ray? You awake?

BOBBY LEE
Ray? His name’s Ray?

The man on the porch continues to stare into the trees as if he’s heard nothing.

MENTOR
His name is Thumbeye Ray. I done told you to shut up and let me handle this.

Bobby Lee smirks. He sets his bags down in the dust and climbs up onto the steps, standing close beside the man on the porch.

BOBBY LEE
Hey Ray, I’m Bobby Lee. My friend MENTOR here tells me maybe you can teach me something about fighting.

The man still doesn’t move, and BOBBY LEE frowns. MENTOR steps up and grabs BOBBY LEE by the arm, but Bobby Lee shakes him off.

MENTOR
Let him be, boy.

BOBBY LEE
(ignoring Mentor) Mentor tells me they call you ‘Thumbeye” Jake. Kind of a funny name.

MENTOR
It aint’ funny.

BOBBY LEE
Why they call you Thumbeye?

Mentor dives off the porch. At the same time, moving quickly, Ray rises and jabs his thumb into BOBBY LEE’s eye, sending him reeling off the steps and onto his ass, screaming in pain.

MENTOR
(spits) Done told you to keep your mouth shut.

THUMBEYE
(glaring down at Bobby Lee)
Ain’t too bright.

MENTOR
Nope.

THUMBEYE
You think he can fight?

MENTOR
Maybe. Now it kind of depends on if he can see…

-DNW

Technorati Tags: browser, compliance, crawpare, Google Chrome, Palin, redneck dragon, screenplay

I say let the madness end, somewhat.  I already branched out and moved some of what I write about Nanowrimo, the novels I’ve written during that magical month-long experience, and the promotion of those books to their own site at VINTAGE SOUL THE WEBSITE.

Now I’ve done the same for my collection ENNUI AND OTHER STATES OF MADNESS.  Just click that title and you’ll go to the new site I’ve set up.  I’m going to populate it with descriptions of all the stories, the introduction by Brian Hodge, the contests and promotions, excerpts from the stories, and anything else I can think of related to that book.  The goal is to make it a sellout.  I like selling out, in this sense, anyway.

So stop by those other sites from time to time.  Wordpress has made it possible to quickly set up a fully functional, robust site with comments and interaction.  I live for interaction.  See you there!

http://ennui.macabreink.com

http://vintagesoul.macabreink.com

-DNW

There are 365 pages of fiction here, and 100 pages of this (the last 100) is the novella “The Preacher’s Marsh,” which has never before seen print.  Also included are several stories previously appearing in obscure, or poorly circulated markets, and one that was here in my journal once, long ago, but that I do not believe counts as published, since it was majorly revised after that…click the cover to find out details about ordering!

The other bit of good news I got was in my e-mail box.  For whatever reason, Five Star / Gale missed the artwork that was originally submitted along with my novel Vintage Soul - and at first I was upset.  Then I found out they assigned the book to artist Alan M. Clark, and I relaxed.  Alan and I spoke about the piece on the phone, and he went to work.  Yesterday he sent me the approved cover art for the Five Star / Trade HC edition of Vintage Soul, and I could NOT be happier.  I now have two kick-ass covers - one for the limited/signed edition, and now THIS for the trade.  You can find info on ordering this at a discount by clicking on the cover art.

Onward!

-DNW

Technorati Tags: alan m. clark, books, contributor copies, cover art, discount, mail, news

Next I enter what we call the King Street Cemetery.  It has another, official name, but I don’t know what it is.  In this graveyard, generations of Whites, Winslows, and the other old families of Hertford share space with Catfish Hunter’s remains, and a smattering of newer graves.  Halfway through is a low spot where a creek runs through.  The water is often stagnant here, and doesn’t smell so great.  It was near that point that we found Tommy (who turned out to be Thomasina) the Hertford Turtle so recently returned to the wild.

There is a sign halfway through - “No markers will be set without prior notification of the Town of Hertford.”

I wonder about that sign. For one thing - it doesn’t say you can’t BURY someone, just that you can’t mark the grave.  It also makes me wonder how many people over the hundred plus years the graveyard has been there have tried to sneak in and bury someone - as if no one would notice.

After the cemetery I pass around Perquimans High School and run back through one of the worst couple of blocks of the city, where the houses are falling down, and every night you see bunches of young men with vacant-eyed stares and no future hanging out on the corner, passing poison through car windows and waiting for the next meth lab to explode.  At 6:15 in the moring, no one there is awake - and most of the homes are so run-down you’d assume that they, like the old house I see at the beginning of my run, were empty and abandoned.  I hate that neighborhood.  I cheer when the meth labs explode.  Two homes have gone that route in the last year or so, and both improved the neighborhood.

This morning’s writing revalatoin was that I need to find a study on perspective in art.  I need to find out if there has ever been an artistic school where the point was to find the things that were NOT in your subject.  To create, in other words, from what you don’t see, instead of trying to bring to life what you do.  It’s related to Tatttered Remnants, and if such a school exists, I want to get their take on what I’m doing by a little research.  If not, I’ll wing it…it’s what I do.

- ONWARD !

DNW

Technorati Tags: cemetery, graveyard, perspective, running

Along with the lavishly illustrated collector’s editions, they plan to issue a trade hardcover edition of most of their books as well. This edition will be available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble on line, and will be distributed to brick and mortar stores, as well as marketed heavily to libraries around the country. This means that the authors in question have a good shot at some actual circulation, and that more readers will become aware of the publisher, and the nicer, collectible editions they could be buying. It’s a win win for me, in any case.

As I’ve mentioned before, anyone who pre-orders my first Full Moon Press book will be entered into the contest to win the hand-painted electric guitar by the cover artist, Alex McVey, as well as a signed copyof the manuscript.

The first book by Full Moon Press is out now - THE WILDMAN - by Rick Hautala. This is a good, solid traditional horror / thriller story with great illustrations. It’s available now. Any title you buy at The Full Moon Press website - use the discount code DNW - just like that, all caps. You’ll receive a ten percent discount on whatever you buy (courtesy of me).

You can read about MAELSTROM and view the cover art by clicking RIGHT HERE

You can read an excerpt of MAELSTROM by clicking RIGHT HERE

Onward!

Technorati Tags: artist, guitar, library, library edition, trade