The tribble with Technology (*trouble*)

 

image source: therussianrevolver.tumblr.com

The last week has seen the end of my trusty Acer Netbook… 😥

Technology comes and technology goes, but when so much time has been spent with a single device, the experience can be pretty disarming for a writer.

You may recognise this as the unit I used to create my ‘Keep Calm and Write On’ logo (see bottom of the page).

I have no real way of calculating this for sure, but I must have written close to a million words on this faithful (wipes away a small tear) little device.

Fortunately, almost everything on the little hard drive had been backed up and is in no danger of being lost. However, the times spend pounding the pint-sized keyboard will always remain with me, a considerable number of years in the 1999 to 2014 span of my ‘real’ writing.

The Netbook wasn’t my first writing device.

It followed the clunky Acer Notebook (Laptop) which was heavy and sucked the life from its battery in under sixty minutes.

Then there was the quirky, palm-sized HP Jordana. Tiny (like peering through a letterbox at a billboard) but with almost infinite battery capacity.

Sure, I could let the poor thing slip quietly away to Silicon Heaven (where all the pocket calculators go), but I’m strangely reluctant to put this significant episode of my fledgling writing career behind me.

I know, but technology can be revived, right? I mean, it’s had a new screen, two new batteries, some extra memory and a replacement modem. What’s a little more TLC?

image credit funny-pictures.picphotos.net

Am I alone in not wanting to move on? Has anyone else found themselves stymied when their favourite piece of technology has shuffled off its coil? Have you successfully divested yourself of it, or does it still languish in a cupboard somewhere, a reminder of happy times?

Or am I just being over semi-mental?

.

And so, for possibly the last time,

Write On…

So long and thanks for all the memory,

(all 2048Mb of it)

 

Six Sentence Sunday

A short extract from my second WIP, ‘A Vengeance of Angels’…

To avoid creating any spoilers for those who haven’t read the first book ‘A Construct of Angels’, I can’t tell you who is speaking here.  All I can tell you is that one of my characters is wandering through their memories;

Dry leaves crunched beneath my feet as I stepped from one pool of light to the next, my eyes intermittently dazzled by the bright sunlight that fought its way down through the canopy.  Slow-breathing trunks soared around me, reaching upwards to dwarf my human form. 

I turned fully around to see forest stretching in every direction whilst I breathed deeply, relishing the unspoiled scents of loam, pine resin and the steady decay that was the circle of life. 

I began to wonder if the Shee-Han still inhabited these parts; if they still strung their incredible cities through the canopy of branches – but then I remembered that the Shee-Han were gone…long gone.  

That was a different time; a different Universe. 

I felt a pang of loss at their passing, even though I knew that was simply how the world was…it was the way of things.

Write on in 2013!