Some post convention stuff

Overall, the convention was good, even if I was only there for one day. I spent most of my time talking with old friends and acquaintances, and I even allowed myself to tell some old stories about things I had worked at or done many years ago. Normally I try to avoid those, because they're all past history, and I do enjoy hearing other people's stories.

The presentation went well, the crowd was smaller this year, but the con moved all of the panel rooms to the other hotel, which is on the other side of the convention center from the main convention events. Which is pretty stupid. So panel attendance was down overall from what I could see. I still made a few good connections however from the panel. I also found that my new set of slides caused me to run a bit longer than normal, so I may have to edit them down a little bit.

Need to put them up online today as well.

I think this sums up my mood for today:

Quick Question

For those of you who have been looking at the chapters I put up recently on my Patreon Account, do you think I should continue that story in 3rd person, or go back and do it in 1st?

For the rest of you who have read what I've published so far, the same question: Do you prefer my 1st person viewpoint style over the 3rd person, or does it make no difference to you?

Really been wondering about that a lot lately. I've been doing the current story in 3rd, because the story is in the Hammer Commission universe, and that story was written in third for a couple of particular reasons. But the POI series is all in 1st (as well as the COS stories) and I'm wondering if I should take the story I'm currently working on (King of Las Vegas) and flip it over to 1st person instead.

As I'm about a third into KOLV, I'd need to make that change soon, if I'm going to make it at all. But I'm curious as to which style my readers prefer.

Comments welcome!

I will be at Further Confusion Sat, the 16th

I'll be doing a panel on self-publishing on Sat the 16th at Further Confusion in San Jose at 11am, till I think 12:30 or so. I'll probably be at the con until 8 or 9. I'd like to be there longer, but don't have anyone to watch the dog.

If you want to stop by, feel free. I'll probably be hanging out around Rozga's table in the dealers den quite a bit.

Does anyone else find it funny

That people go on about how bad a series is, yet they continue to read it?
If it's so bad, why can't they put it down?
Why do they keep reading it?
It's not like someone has a gun to their head!

If I could, I'd like to ask you all for a favor.

Could you go to the product page, on Amazon, for Book one in the series, and 'vote up' some of the 4 and 5 star reviews? 

 

 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MKSLRH0

A while back, an organized group came through and voted up some of the 1 and 2 star reviews, so even though 80 percent of my reviews are 4 and 5 stars, the majority people see on the main page are 1 and 2.

So, if you could help me with this, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,

-John

Should I add explicit sex scenes?

Really, should I? I'm already accused of writing porno's, etc, even though I haven't put any explicit sex in any of my books. So should I just say 'screw it' and put that stuff in?

I mean Laura K. Hamilton has made bank off of putting explicit sex in her stories, so have a lot of other authors. It's actually hard NOT to find explicit sex scenes in a lot of stories these days, so should I just give up and do it too? Like I said above, I'm already accused of it by my many detractors.

And if so, what level of explicitness would you like to see?

Please Stop Hitting my Forester

About five years ago, I bought a used 2006 Subaru Forester. The price was right, I needed a new car, and I wanted something versatile, because I have large dogs.

I think it's safe to say that it has been hit, more times, then all of the cars I have previously owned, combined. Thankfully none of the hits have been serious enough to require body work, but the car picks up one new dent or scratch, about every other month. It's been backed into at least once recently (the right fender is slightly bowed now) from the front, and twice from the rear (I had to replace one of the rear taillights, that was smashed, and the rear bumper and quarter panel don't quite match up anymore).

Then there are the shopping cart dents and scratches. The one from a home depot where someone let a bunch of something fall against my car and then fall over (dent above one of the doors, and a scratch in the window), hell I've even picked up two dents on the hood and a bunch on the roof of all places.

I don't know why people think it's okay to put dents in my car in parking lots, and then split. Yes, I know we have a lot of illegals here who can't drive (as well as a lot of semi-legals who also can't drive) who all have no ethics or morals at all, and who will run off whenever they damage someone's property. I know we also have a lot of regular citizens who do the same thing these days as well (but at least they tend to be better drivers, so getting hit by them isn't usual).

But please, really, stop hitting my car. I don't need anymore dents and scratches in it.

Free Stuff!

Well, I finished the short excerpt that covers what happens with Laria when she first visits earth in book 6 of Portals of Infinity. If you go to my author website (www.vanstry.net - link on the right sidebar) you'll see a tag on the left side of that page, for 'Free Stuff'. Click on that and you'll go to the new page I put up a few days ago, that contains mobi and epub versions of that short.

I figured as long as I was putting that up, I'd add a few other things! The 'Origin Story' for Will's sister Nikki is up there as well (25,000 words - it's a novella). I am giving that away for free, because a lot of the events in that story are covered, more or less, in book 3. This just gives it all from Nikki's perspective.

I also added to 'fanish' stories I wrote a while ago, about the 'Banner' character in Lisanne Norman's Sholan Alliance series. The first one is fairly short, (Recruitment) the second one is considerably longer, more of a novella than a short story.

If you haven't been to the website in a while, please check it out. As I mentioned a few months back, I added maps and sub-pages for each of the series that I write. Take a look and let me know if you have any suggestions.

Thanks,
-John
(PS, sorry about the way the mobi versions look, I need to find a different converter than Calibre for mobi files. I only just found out it has spacing issues.)

Server Died

My server (snowcloude.com, what the link on the right there points to) died about an hour ago.
Right now, it looks like a total loss, but we'll have to see.

I have a RAID5 in it, which we decided to go to a while ago, because they're more robust and we wanted to protect the data on the system. Well, checking it today, and one of the drives had died and  another one was throwing errors. So out to the store to buy two new drives.
We replaced the one that had died and let it rebuild, which it did just fine, and I guess it removed the bad sectors on the one throwing errors, because that one said it was now OK.

So, once that is all done we powered down the system, to put in a new backup drive (even with the raid we'd been doing backups, but the drive we had was no longer up to the task, so not everything was getting backed up). And apparently that killed the system. The raid is fried, apparently the raid card (very expensive raid card) decided to crap itself, and we've lost everything on the system. Some of it was backed up, but a lot of it was not.

I don't know when I'll get the system back up, we may be able to throw something temporary up for a while, but the server is 5 years old, so it may just be time to trash it and build a new one. I think if we do a raid again, we'll do a software raid, because then at least you're not spending a fortune on a fancy hardware raid controller, that only lasts a few years. Unlike the motherboard, which lasted a good long time.

EDIT: We were able to recover the system late last night. Still no idea why it crapped out on us. I immediately did a system wide backup to the new backup drive (now that we have one large enough). Not sure what the long term plan for that server is going to be right now though. Probably will have to start thinking about replacing it.

Yea, Bike's done

So, the part I've been waiting for came in a couple of days ago (stupid o-ring) and I got the bike back together and just ran it. Changed the clutch cylinder fluid while I was at it (hasn't been changed since I bought the bike in '03), found that whoever installed the bleeder valve clogged it, which was a surprise. Easily fixed though.
Cleaned and re-oiled the K&N air filter. Not sure how long it's been since I've done that last.
Put in fresh radiator fluid and bled the cooling system, now I'll do an oil change and put the fairings back on and it's done.

Now as long as that oil leak is truly fixed...

Portals of Infinity, Book One, on Sale 5th thru 7th!

Book one of the Portals of Infinity series (Champion for Hire) will go on sale tomorrow, at 99 cents for two days (Thursday and Friday) then $1.99 for two more (Sat & Sun).
So, if you're interested, but weren't sure, now you can check it out for just 99 cents!

http://amzn.to/1GLHGU4

A Few Comments on the New POI Book, Reprisal

A few things seem to have come up in the comments on the new book.

One is that there was little time spent talking about Laria's time acclimating to some of the changes she went through. To be honest, I had thought about writing on that, but I honestly didn't think people would be interested in reading it. Apparently that may have been a mistake, so I'm considering writing a short story, to go over the few weeks she and Will spent at the faire. If I do write it, (and I probably will) it will go up on my website, for free.

The other has to deal with Laria being able to bring something back, that William was not allowed to. Fel made the simple comment that 'she was carrying it, you weren't'. Which in this particular case is true. Now there has been some debate over this, and while I find it kinda cool that there are people into my writing enough to debate some of the aspects and plot points, there is actually more to it than was let on by Fel at that point.

I'm sorta debating how much I really want to go into it here, because I was thinking of using this as a minor plot point in Nikki's story, but yes, it is more complicated than people seem to be thinking. Yes, Laria was able to bring back an item that Will could not. Something that Will had not considered. Which may perhaps be a little surprising when you think how often he's trying to game the rules, but we all have our off days, and he had other things on his mind. Yes there are tech limits on what you can and can not bring into a world, but those limits are often about physics and the laws thereof.

Though not always. There is the rule about champions bringing in items/devices/etc of excessive tech, or higher tech, so you've already seen. There also appears to be a rule about bringing devices of significantly higher tech as well, but its only been hinted at, I don't think you've seen it applied yet. The rule on champions has affected Will in subtle ways in the previous books that you may not have noticed, otherwise all of the gods would simply recruit champions from high tech worlds and have them come to theirs and build high tech wonders and death machines (and then there would be no low tech worlds, or developing worlds).

This is why you haven't seen Will use his engineering skills to 'do great things'.

Also, most god's champions can not travel through portals. Will is Fel's first champion with that ability. Eveon is also the first of her god's with that ability. Tantrus, has had several, but then he is a very powerful and old (by that sphere's standards) god. The ability to sense portals is very rare. Until Will showed up in Hiland, no one in the kingdom, or any adjoining ones, had it. So random people stumbling in, with specialty items is going to be a very hit or miss proposition.

And therefore, because of all of this, you are going to see some very byzantine plots and behaviors by the gods revolving around or involving portals. Sometimes it makes my head hurt just thinking about it.