Staying inside meant I could work on a review of a movie I happened to see the night before on TCM, The Mating Call. A silent film from 1928, I found myself intrigued and I wasn't able to find much really good information about it. I like it when I can find a film I can really write about, which in most cases, is to actually tell the story rather than the very brief and sometimes incorrect ones available on the internet. The review, which I wrote in the morning, ended up being almost 2800 words. Not sure when the review will post, but I like having more in the quiver than just the next one I'll need.
Wrote another 988 words on The Runaway, as I'm trying to make up for a less than stellar week in writing the one before.
We heard from our artist on Powers Squared the night before. She's in a mandatory evacuation area due to hurricane Dorian, so we may not be getting anything new from her for quite some time. The most important thing is for her and her husband to stay safe and live to draw another day.
I know we wrote that we're closing down the poll on Mascot colors for the t-shirt but decided to do what the car dealers do and extend the weekend until the 3rd. I'll post something in the morning in a last effort to get votes. But after that, we'll have to shut it down and make a decision.
Wasn't expecting to hear anything about my queries, though I did check the status on the one through the Query Status Portal and there is nothing new to report. Still no decision has been made. While I don't like the uncertainty, not knowing is better than rejection.
Late on Monday afternoon, I had what seemed like a major catastrophe when all my Microsoft Office products went bad. Not sure what the cause was but when I opened Word, Excel or PowerPoint I got a giant white screen rather than the program or the file I was trying to open. I have protection through Geek Squad but they're going to have to dial in and there is a five to five and a half hour wait due to the holiday, so I'm going to ask Paul to call for me tomorrow. Ackk! It really took the wind out of my sails.
I have a backup computer, my old laptop, but it took 20 minutes to boot up and I had to update a bunch of the passwords, etc. A real pain but I'm hoping this is very temporary.
Tuesday was hard, going back to work and all. Didn't really have the energy to do much writing though I did make some posts on Facebook and Twitter, update the website and come up with a new poll question for Powers Squared.
I also posted about a new review that went up on Trophy Unlocked. In honor of the release of Catherine: Full Body, which was on Tuesday, Trevor wrote a second review of the original Catherine which he posted that morning.
Geek Squad came through and now Word and Excel seem to work fine. I'm still having an issue with PowerPoint. I found what seems like a really good template for putting together Pitch Packets, though this one is for live-action, I would think there are updates that can be made to make it animation friendly.
The problem is that it's a Google doc and I don't like having to do my personal projects on the internet. You can download it into Powerpoint but when I do, almost nothing displays. The same is true of other Powerpoint presentations I have made in the past. This is the problem I tried to fix on my own that lead to my problems with Excel and Word, so I'm going to seek professional help with this. Can't ask Paul to babysit this again for me, so I'll probably hit them up this weekend.
Besides some social media posts, including posting our Peek-of-the-Week on Instagram and some posts on Twitter, didn't really get that much done.
Things are kind of slow with Powers Squared at the moment. Hurricane Dorian forced our artist and her husband to evacuate and seek refuge in Raliegh. Not sure how long she'll be displaced but it has sort of put some things on hold for a while.
Thursday morning, I made several posts on Twitter about reviews tied to release anniversaries. This is something I do every morning when there is one to post about. I've also been posting the same image on Pinterest with a link to the review in Trophy Unlocked. I've been trying to abide by decades with some exceptions like Star Wars, Christmas and Westerns. I'm planning to go back through next year and divide them up into genres as well. But that's fodder for another day.
Thursday night I made more progress on The Runaway, writing about 800 words before dinner. We've been eating kind of late for the past few days so it's kind of hard to get motivated after that. I did have an idea for the story. I'm sure I'm not alone but sometimes real-life events can influence my stories. While I had been sort of banging around trying to think of where to take the story, I decided that I could use a story that has been in the news as background for some of the action in the book.
Friday, Paul and I did our second On the Air with Powers Squared Podcast on Podbean. Last week, we talked about why we decided to do a comic book, this week, we talked about the various influences on the comic book, including our writing and the visual look of the comic book. Would really appreciate it if you would give it a listen here.
This Saturday's Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked was one written by Paul for Metal Wolf Chaos XD, the remaster released earlier this summer of a videogame originally released on Xbox in 2004.
Got some good news early Saturday afternoon, our Powers Squared artist Rachel Wells and her husband have returned home after evacuating based on the threat of Hurricane Dorian. Happy to hear that she's okay and happier still that we can get moving again on the comic book and on some merchandise we're excited about.
Saturday, I finally had a chance to get Geek Squad on my issue with Powerpoint. I started with them about 5:30 and it was after 7:30 before the problem was resolved. Geek Squad dialed in and then had Microsoft dial in and work on it. Eventually, they had to re-install Microsoft Office. It took a while but at least everything seems to be working, though everything is running slow and every website I open, I have to reload before everything shows, like the banner image on this post. I'm hoping that soon things will pick up again but the first time something doesn't load it gets a little scary.
I worked on Powers Squared's newsletter The Hound Dogs' Howl, something I had worked on earlier in the day and then after all the dial-in help. We had heard from our artist, Rachel, and she was back home after fleeing Hurrican Dorian. I wanted to update that part of the newsletter but the first time I went in it wouldn't edit. I was able to refresh and then I could edit.
When I worked on this blog on Saturday night, I couldn't even get into the blog at first. Again, refreshing helped but I hope this isn't a long-term trend.
Sort of a bumpy way to end this week in writing. Hope next week goes smoother. Keep writing and we'll see you next week.
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