I’m a self-publishing author, which means that I take stories from the germ of inspiration all the way to the ebooks of Amazon and the permanence of paper. Over the years, I’ve noticed that there were certain tools that I consistently use to shepherd a story from one point to the other. Write Or Die, Scrivener, TrueCrypt (for protecting works-in-progress), Dropbox (for portability and backup), OpenOffice, Calibre, etc.

I found myself thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if I had a thumb drive with all the tools installed already? When on vacation, I could use whatever system was nearby and plug it in, then continue my writing right where I’d left off.”

This is a link to BoingBoing, one of the best megablogs out there.

Also, this is a pic of my little girl’s Halloween costume, which is freakin’ awesome.

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/31/adorable-minecraft-creeper-and-candy.html#disqus_thread

I know I don’t update this much, but we got some big news that I thought I should share.

First, I finished my novel. This, my fourth book, is about a ship salvage crew from the future who crash-land on a planet that is stuck in the middle ages. They use their futuristic skills to make prophecies come true, at a price. The first pass is about 50k words long, and it’s current title is “Discount Miracles”