#psa Okay, learned a lesson today. I either missed this or the setting changed in an update. Both #OneDrive and #Dropbox have a setting for keeping all the files in the cloud rather than on your Mac, downloading them as you need them. This means that if you need them and the service is responding poorly, or you have no connectivity, you can't get to your files. If you use #scrivener, for example, which syncs through dropbox, this can cause sync errors between devices!
Both services appear to set all files online only. Both services have a way to change this to ensure all files are downloaded for offline use.
#Writers, #authors, as well as #artists, I strongly suggest you keep your files on disk as well as in the cloud. Change these settings now!
Okay. Interesting. Moving files from Dropbox creates placeholder files that are empty but take up space. There's a little cloud symbol beside the files in the dropbox directories, but they refused to download. Sheesh. Luckily, the files exist online. I've logged on to the online dropbox and downloaded all my files to my hard disk in a separate directory as a backup. I'm trying bypassing the dropbox refused to sync issue by signing out of dropbox and orphaning the current directories. Signing on again, but creating new dropbox directory tree on disk that must be downloaded again from the #dropbox#cloud.Hoping that this fixes the #sync problems I'm having between platforms, at least from the Mac perspective.
And Bam! Less than 10 minutes later, #dropbox has laid down all the files from the #cloud in the new directories. #Scrivener opens the previously damage project (because dropbox had refused to download things) with everything consistent with the iPhone version. Yay!
Today, I ran errands (getting something done that I have literally not managed to do in years), sent off two letters (again, something I haven't done in a while), and cooked a meal for myself.
I also commissioned the cover for Sun Burns - a huge step for me. I hope it'll help motivate me to finish the story... so hard right now!
Yes, I played a lot of Valheim. The Swamp is becoming a lot less scary now that I have better equipment.
Why you don't want to piss off a #novelist (#writer, #author) or an #artist (or people who have them as friends). They may get #creative all over your face.
Another day, another chapter, as I settle back into my routine today.
Still, the weather grows mild & my AllTrails app keeps sending me temptation. The trails beckon. This year, I’ll explore the trails on Blue Mountain to the west. I haven’t there in years or done serious hiking there.
Summer is always a reminder of why I live where I do. It’s literally an outdoor playground and my health is greatly improved.
#PennedPossibilities 310 — MC or SC POV: What was your favorite day or holiday when you were a child? Favorite Day Remembrance CW: Sad.
Why are you making me remember this now? My favorite day? When I was a child? It was /that/ day, each time Mom returned home. She would sing to me, but she belonged to the world, the theatre, to the concert hall. Plenty of her albums proclaimed that. "Midnight, the Voice and the Heart of the Nation." Those albums, they're all I really have of her. She wasn't one for family pictures. Or family. It's why I can't listen to them any more, and walk out of restaurants when any of her show tunes play.
I do sing her songs in the shower, unthinkingly. My roommate doesn't know who I really am, but she's told me my voice is just like hers. Stupid memory. Stupid reflexes.
I remember being /so happy/ when she'd return home. She'd sing to me, but wasn't at all "hands on." She'd sing and she'd listen to me telling all the things that happened that day with friends and nannies—always with a smile, but I was always on the floor or in my bed or in someone else's lap. Her manager—with whom I share my hair color and skin color so he likely fathered me—would hold me while she sang sometimes. He'd read to me. He'd call me his little tomato, since that was the hair color we shared.
I remember the pair once laughing after I'd been put to bed, not sleeping. I'd peeked through a barely opened door to see. /Him/ she held.
I loved them both.
You've made me remember. Are you happy now? How many times could it have been that I remember her returning? A few dozen? They died before I was five, and now I remember /that,/ too.
[That's the Aurora Midnight, the devil girl from the Reluctance stories. Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]
Finished the final draft, sent out the files, and ordered copies of the hardcover and paperback. Release date is set for May 25, aka #GeekPrideDay (appropriate for a #superhero#novel launch, I think). The pre-order links to pretty much every major retailer are up and linked on my site, https://JeffreyHarlan.com
Now to play my favorite video games for the first time in 3 months.
He leaned against a round window frame and pressed his forehead to the stained glass. Through a haze of purple, he could see a little grove of trees trembling in the wind. He focused on the branches, on the sensation of glass cooling his skin, on the woodgrain of the windowsill plucking at his fingertips like the drum of a music box.
#WordWeavers 2405.10 — Antagonist POV: What do you like the most about yourself?
[A short tootfic. Likely canon. Her Highness speaking. From /Inklings:/]
My jaw almost dropped at the shear gall of the question, but the Midlands plenipotentiary was, if anything, expert at being jovial. His smile was disarming. He was a diplomat. I didn't gape, but put the tea cup down carefully.
"You're referring to the dragon incident, aren't you?"
He nodded. He plunked a couple lumps of brown sugar in his tea, stirring. It accounted for his corpulence, something rare amongst his gaunt brethren who spent much of their day running on forest paths. He'd made it from the Midlands in just weeks, on horseback I guessed. Poor horse. "It's on everyone's tongue. You'd mobilized the militia. Detailed reports hit the Forest Ridge High Tower as if carried by a thunderstorm."
He was making sure I knew "people" kept him well informed, and that my military wasn't what interested him. Much, anyway. I sighed, crossing my legs as I sat back.
I'd mobilized the best and most radiant of my magic users. None could best me, but we expected to face a wyvern the size of my in-town mansion. It had burnt up part of the Fell Woods. A good thing, thinking about that unassailable haven for monsters and wild beasts. Then it attacked a farm.
"The attack on the farm was an accident," I said off-handedly, steepling my fingers.
He paused. Blue eyes speared me. I'd never announced the details of what happened because if I made them official rather than rumor, the public might panic. Nobody died.
The Midlands ought know, I decided then and there. It'd be to my advantage. I'd let him decide the implications. "The grain silo had a moisture problem. It had started to ferment. Who would have thought a dragon might like beer?"
He chuckled, then, "You're serious? You know this? /How?"/ He put down his tea cup with a loud clink, spilling some of the reddish liquor.
I'd rode in with an elite company of my army, through a wood arch that proclaimed "Cornfeld," into a farm yard. I'd been ready to use my radiance to repel fire; dragons of all shapes breathed fire. My troops had the best spears, but it had been centuries since anyone had needed weapons against dragon scale. Would newiron even work? Drowning the beast by swirling airborne the farm's pond was almost our best offense, if the magical beast decided to fight. I knew they disliked fighting. I hoped that I had that much correct. If I had to resort to radiant kinesis to heave rock from a stone fence, it might decide to retaliate against my Townships—if I failed.
What I found was a half-naked girl, barely a woman though very tall, mollifying a distraught farmer and mediating with a red dragon who looked to be hanging on her every word. I could tell this, even though the dragon had the form of a giant bat.
Apparently, with her mediation, both parties were apologizing to each other!
Worse, though covered with mud and ash, visibly scarred, the young woman was devastatingly beautiful. The type of beautiful that made a seasoned and well worn woman like me think of a different kind of bedmate. I wasn't a man...
Wintereyes was her name. She had befriended a dragon.
Innocent and kind.
And immeasurably dangerous.
The ingénue now attended my magic university, despite being uncomfortable around people and wearing clothing. Learning to be human. One of mine.
I said, "What I like about myself is that I know when to fight and when to make friends."