Problems and copy protection

A little more on my problem.
The hard disk itself is fine. The motherboard is toast. The logical solution is to replace the motherboard and go to work.

Unfortunately that runs square into Microsoft's copy protection fetish. If you replace the motherboard the operating system thinks its been loaded on a new computer, so it won't work until it is reauthorized by Microsoft. To get it reauthorized you need the OS serial number -- which I didn't get with the computer (remanufactured). So I'm stuck.

This has been very frustrating.

PROBLEMS

Thanks to computer problems posting "The Wizardry Recapitalized" has been serious disrupted.

In the last month I've had not one but two computers turn into expensive doorstops and discovered that my backups weren't recoverable. Wiz 6 is safely sitting on a hard drive on a dead computer.

It's going to take a fairly elaborate recovery process to get the novel back -- essentially I've got to take the hard drive out of the system, connect it temporarily to another box and download the data. One complication is that the drive is IDE and the box is probably going to use SATA. The other complication is Windows copy protection.

My tech says he can do it, but it's going to take time. In part because all this has put me seriously behind on my paying work and I'm just getting caught up on that.

Oh well. If it was easy everyone would do it.

--RC

Chapters 10 and 11 are up

Okay, I just posted Chapters 10 and 11 of Wiz 6.

That's the good news. The bad news is that after this you're going to have to work. I had this first part of the novel pretty well done as an excerpt for the Baen Free Library (Note I said "pretty well" it still needs work). The rest of the book is a lot more fragmentary and organized by sub plots rather than in a continious narrative flow.

I'll start getting that up in a day or two.

Meanwhile, thanks for sticking with this.

--RC

Chapters 3-6 up

As promised, I'm now posting several chapters at a time. I just put up 3-6.
Enjoy.

--RC

Feedback on Wiz 6

I'm beginning to get feedback on Wiz 6 and I'm going to modify some things in light of it.

First, of course, the postings, from the choice of web sites to the way things are arranged is at best crude. My initial efforts having fallen through, I wanted to get something up that would be fast and foolproof.

However I am going to try to make it better by providing links from chapter to chapter. That will be in the next week -- I hope.

Second, some of you have complained that the chapters are very short. And they are. The manuscript was divided to highlight the key scenes with the idea they would all appear at once. Posting a chapter at a time on the web divides the book into snippets that are just too small. So from now on I'm going to post larger sections -- probably several chapters at once.

The first batch will go up this weekend.
--RC

Payment

A couple of folks have suggested that I accept donations for Wiz 6 The Wizardry Capitalized now that I've actually started posting it.

I appreciate the compliment, but I don't feel right taking money for something that isn't finished. However I do have another idea.

I've recently opened a CafePress store called Wiz Zumwalt Enterprises (http://www.cafepress.com/wizzumwalt )where I'm selling T shirts, caps and stuff with sayings from the Wiz books, including some from Wiz 6. It's small so far. I've only got about a dozen items up, but it's going to grow as I coordinate with artists and others.

If you'd like to contribute something to the cause, visit http://www.cafepress.com/wizzumwalt and if anything strikes your fancy, purchase it.

--RC

And Chapter 3 is up!

Just posted chapter 3 of the Wizardry Capitalized.

As I said, the first 20,000 words -- eight or 10 chapters -- are in pretty good shape. Then the fun begins.

--RC