writing

TMI, Autocorrect; TMI!

/ Diane Henders / 52 Comments

This spring has been a bit… hectic.  I haven’t really had that many things on the go; it’s just that I haven’t had the time / energy / physical ability to do All The Things.  (Which is intensely annoying and stressful to a compulsive DIY-er like me.)  But it is what it is; and I’m trying my best to deal. Mostly I do okay, but…

On one of “those days”, I was running late. So I fired up a text to friends who were expecting me around 1:15:  “I’ll be there by 1:30 – I’m running a bit late.”

(Yes, I realize that texting complete sentences with correct spelling and punctuation makes me a Ridiculously Uptight Old Person.  So be it.)

Anyhow, I have a deep mistrust of technology and a near-pathological hatred of typos; so I re-read the message as my finger approached the Send button. And there it was:  “I’ll be there around 1:30 – I’m rubbing a boy.”

TMI, autocorrect; TMI! (For the record, “rubbing a boy” is not a phrase I’ve ever intentionally typed on my phone, so it was totally making that shit up.) Needless to say, I corrected the autocorrect before I sent the message. 

In this case, the consequences of sending the unaltered message wouldn’t have amounted to anything worse than lots of laughter and unmerciful ribbing, but it was a good reminder to check before I send.  (Unlike the time I emailed an interior design client reminding them of our upcoming inspection of their pubic areas.  Fortunately they saw the humour of the omitted ‘L’ in ‘public’.)

And in other news… I don’t find much humour in the media these days, but here’s a story from our local newspaper that made me laugh:  https://www.pqbnews.com/news/squawk-of-the-town-euro-seagull-screeching-contest-migrates-to-victoria-7987317.  What could be more fun than watching 60 people dressed as seagulls, squawking madly?

And here’s another joyful thing:  Despite my enforced neglect of the garden for the past couple of years, the miracle of spring blooms still happens!

What’s funny or beautiful in your world today?

Book 18 update: I’m on Chapter 25, and Aydan’s new partner just exhibited five completely different personas in under 90 minutes. That’s doing nothing for Aydan’s trust issues!

Verbal Diarrhea

/ Diane Henders / 29 Comments

The other day I witnessed what was either one of the more inconsiderate behaviours I’ve seen in a while; or possibly a diabolically brilliant business strategy. I’m still not sure which it was, but either way I had to struggle to hold in my inappropriate laughter. (Because if I had let out the full-on-snorting belly-laugh the situation deserved, it would have made me just as rude as the original perpetrators. Life is complicated. But funny!)

Anyway:

Hubby and I had decided to try one of the local Chinese restaurants, and they offered a buffet. Buffets are my kryptonite, because they’re so expensive I feel as though I should eat enough to get my money’s worth. (Which is probably why they’re so expensive, but chicken/egg; whatever.) Anyhow, I resigned myself to the inevitable pain of an overfull belly, and threw myself at the food.

As I returned to our table with my first dish (a cup of yummy hot-and-sour soup), I tuned into the conversation at the table next to us. I’m not normally an eavesdropper; but even though I didn’t want to listen, I had to. And so did everybody else in our part of the restaurant. This couple didn’t seem to grasp the concept of volume control.

And what was the focus of their animated discussion, you ask? Well, what else: Their dog’s diarrhea. Thank you ever-so-much for that detailed description of mucus, blood, and shit.

I’ve been blessed with an ultra-high squeamishness threshold, so my appetite was unaffected. In fact, I had to clamp my lips together to prevent myself from snickering. (Which was a noble sacrifice: Hot-and-sour soup is hostile to sinuses.)

After stifling my initial snort of hilarity, I did my best to ignore the clueless pair. I figured that, like the unfortunate dog’s affliction, this too would pass.

But I was so wrong.

For the whole hour we were in the restaurant, their too-loud conversation never varied. It was funny initially, but then it just got weird. And as the weirdness registered with me, I started wondering why two people would discuss doggy diarrhea for an hour, ever; but especially while eating in public.

That’s when the giggles returned with a vengeance, because the only reason I could imagine was that they’d been hired by the restaurant owners to make buffet patrons lose their appetites. (I told you it was diabolical.)

I guess we’ll never know, but I’m tempted to go back on another Saturday night to see whether the poop-obsessed pair are there again.

But I’d better not. If they were performing again, I’d probably abandon what little maturity I possess and try to out-gross them. I’m pretty sure I could. At a long-ago party, I once recited a limerick so vile that grown men fled, leaving the beer keg behind. (I probably shouldn’t be proud of that.)

Anybody else overheard any *ahem* interesting conversations lately?

Book 18 update: So, you know how my laptop caught fire and I speculated that Book 18 was jinxed? Long story short: Yep, it’s jinxed. I’m still trying to get a new laptop set up.

Short story long:

After wasting an annoying amount of time shopping and deliberating, I bought a new laptop. I had it nearly set up and customized when I noticed heat building up in the case, right below where I rest my left hand when typing. A lot of heat. Too much heat to comfortably rest my hand there for more than a few minutes. Uh-oh. But I cautiously persisted… until the display started to vibrate and flash. DONE! Returned.

More shopping / deciding / ordering / unpacking / setting up the next candidate…

At which point Microsoft informed me that my MS Office had been activated too many times. Of course it had: The first laptop burned without giving me a chance to deactivate the software; and I was so annoyed with the overheating laptop that I didn’t think of deactivating the MS Office license before I wiped the machine and sent it back.

So now I have to decide whether to wrangle with Microsoft over license activations for ancient MS Office 2010 (a fool’s errand at best), risk file corruption by using a newer version of Office on my laptop while keeping the antique version on my PC, or spend an obscene amount of money for two licenses of the latest MS Office.

Or I could switch to LibreOffice, which is free but causes file corruption when saved repeatedly between MS Word and LO. (Sadly, I know this from personal experience.) So then I’d have to load LO on my PC, too; but I’d still need MS Office because I need Outlook to sync its calendar and contacts with my iPhone…

Argh!

Jinxed… And Incredibly Lucky

/ Diane Henders / 43 Comments

So, remember how I speculated that Book 18 might be cursed?

Well, here’s what happened this morning:

Yep, that is one seriously fried laptop.

I was in the shower, but fortunately Hubby was just down the hall when he heard a loud hissing noise. It took about 20 seconds for him to think “What the…?” and run to living room. By then, my laptop was belching out enough toxic smoke to fill the entire house.

Luckily it didn’t actually catch fire, and Hubby (my hero) grabbed the smoking corpse and chucked it outside. We’ve been airing out the house ever since.

Another stroke of good fortune (which I prefer to call ‘good planning’) is that I back up my files daily, so I didn’t lose anything except peace of mind and a whole bunch of adrenaline.

But since my back is still too cranky for me to work steadily at my desktop computer, this means another delay while I get a new laptop and set it up so I can work in other positions besides seated at my desk.

Poor Book 18. I promise, I haven’t given up!

But overall I’m incredibly grateful. It’s a whole lot easier to replace a fried laptop than a fried house. So, ’scuse me while I take a few deep breaths (outside, where it isn’t stinky) and give thanks for my staggeringly good luck!

STILL Not Smarter Than A Cervid

/ Diane Henders / 14 Comments

Remember how I heaved a sigh of relief when the deer finally left our yard?  And remember how I speculated that Mother Nature must have finally decided I’d been punished enough?

Ha.

I’ve always suspected Ma Nature has a sadistic streak, so it was with a sense of inevitability that I discovered more damage in my garden last month.  Only this time it was serious. 

Every morning I trudged miserably out to catalogue the newly-denuded stumps of cherished fruit trees, veggies, rose bushes, and other ornamentals… despite the 8-foot-tall fence around our yard.  Every afternoon I added more fortifications, until the yard was crisscrossed with complex mazes of fencing and netting. The deer got more and more brazen, strolling around and chowing down on the garden even in broad daylight.

Hubby and I sharpened into a precision tactical team.  With a single cry of “Deer!”, we both rushed for the door:  I (carrying my Gel Blaster) to open the gate; and Hubby stealthily circling around from the rear.  Then I fell back and together we stalked the deer, easing it toward the gate and then opening fire with shouts and soft-gels to drive it through.

We kicked that deer out of the yard several times a day, and every evening.  Each time the deer would trot across the road before slowing… and then circling right back.  And it kept getting back in, throwing itself at the fence until the wire ripped from its posts and it could scramble over.  The garden was decimated, and I felt besieged.  What the hell was wrong with this damn deer? We’ve lived here seven years and no deer has ever attacked the fence before.

At last, all was revealed when Hubby glimpsed the deer in the woods:  It wasn’t an ‘it’; it was a ‘she’.  And she had a fawn.  No wonder we couldn’t keep her out.

Without much hope, I purchased a deer call to simulate doe grunts.  The salesman at Cabela’s openly laughed at me, and in my heart of hearts I knew he was right:  There was no way I was going to be able to lure the baby outside the fence.

But the very next morning, Mother Nature (and Mother Deer) finally relented.  I looked out the window and there was Mom in the yard… with two fawns gamboling after her.  Absolutely adorable!  And, more importantly, positioned so that we could herd them out the gate.

After all our practice, it was ridiculously easy.  Mom knew the drill by then.  In fact, I’m pretty sure she was counting on us to open the gate so she and her babies could leave the nursery.  The operation was accomplished in only a few minutes, and they trotted calmly away into the forest.  As Mom flicked her tail nonchalantly in our direction, I read the thought-bubble above her head:  “Stupid humans.”

And I hardly even minded, because the fawns were SO cute.  (And SO GONE!!!)

But I haven’t relaxed.  In just a few short weeks, the fawns will be old enough to jump almost as high as the mother.  I really hope they’ve forgotten about our yummy garden buffet…

Book 18 update: I’m beginning to wonder if this book is cursed. Every time I start to make progress, something else goes haywire. But despite demonic deer, a forced transfer to a completely new publishing distributor, some necessary updates to book covers and promos, “fire-smarting” our house and yard for the current wildfire season, AND another round of medical appointments for my cranky back… I’ve managed to complete Book 18’s plotting! Stay tuned for writing progress, hopefully soon. 🙂

AI’d

/ Diane Henders / 38 Comments

There’s been a lot in the news lately about Artificial Intelligence and how AI is disrupting the writing and publishing industry. 

When AI-written “stories” first appeared a couple of years ago, authors scoffed.  AI-generated stories were bad.  Really bad.  Whew, nothing to worry about.

But…

We didn’t know that the creators of AI had scraped up a giant library of books (without paying for them) and fed them to the hungry AI machine.  And recently, I’ve seen excerpts from AI-written books that were… not awful.  Or at least, not substantially more awful than a lot of human-written books.  For one thing, AI usually uses correctly-spelled words in appropriate context, which is refreshing for a word-nerd like me.

What’s not-so-refreshing is the knowledge that AI is gunning for our jobs.  Maybe not so much for fiction writers (yet), but I’d be nervous if I was a non-fiction writer. 

Hell, I’m nervous anyway.  Even if AI-written fiction never quite matches the quality of human-created fiction (and I don’t see any reason why it won’t eventually… or next year), Amazon is already being flooded with millions of AI-generated books.  Some of them even steal an established author’s name and put it on the cover; so be wary if you discover that your favourite author has unexpectedly released a new book or ten.

From a reader’s standpoint, AI-generated books would be a boon.  AIs never have to take time off from writing for injuries or illness or family crises. And why wait a year or more for a human author to release their next book, when AI can pump them out faster than any human can read?  Maybe the books aren’t as “good”, but “good” is so subjective that it’s nearly irrelevant.  I’ve struggled through some human-produced fiction that’s so bland it might as well have been computer-generated.

When I was a kid, nobody had heard of AI except farmers… and they knew AI meant Artificial Insemination.  Today’s AI has a lot in common with the original meaning:  We’re all gonna get thoroughly screwed; it won’t be any fun; and we won’t even get a kiss first.

But being human means I’m capable of stubbornly ignoring unpleasant facts. Since it’s far too late to slap the lid back on this particular Pandora’s Box, I’m going to just keep writing and hoping for the best.  In fact, I’m going to get really subversive here and imagine a happy outcome! 

Courts have already ruled that AI-generated works can’t be copyrighted (at least so far — this is a very new area of copyright law). So maybe in some rose-tinted fictional future, the proceeds from sales of AI-generated works will be divvied up and distributed to human authors.  Seems only fair, since the AIs learned to write by reading our books in the first place.

Hey, I can dream, right?

P.S. I hear you asking, “How can I support a human author when I’ve already bought all their books?” Answer: Thank you for supporting human authors! If you want to help, introduce your favourite books to your friends, and post about your faves on social media. Every mention helps! (Some authors have donation buttons on their websites, too. I haven’t felt comfortable doing that yet, so I welcome your thoughts about it.)

Book 18 update: I’m on Chapter 20, sneaking up on the halfway point! Aydan is struggling to put out metaphorical fires that seem to pop up every time she turns around. But then, what else is new?

Twit-ish Bitch

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

After months of unusually mild weather, winter finally decided to kick our soft wimpy West-Coast rumps last week. The rest of Canada plunged into deep-freeze temperatures of -30°C to -50°C (-22°F to -58°F), and here on temperate Vancouver Island, we went down to -10°C (14°F).

But I really like to sit outside every morning and drink my tea. Most people would consider subzero temperatures a good reason to change that tradition, but I’m pig-headed dedicated.

Before I start this story, I should note that we live out in the boonies. Gunfire isn’t exactly usual but it happens, especially during hunting season. So it’s comforting to be able to identify firearms by the sound of the shot. The flat ‘bang’ of a distant shotgun doesn’t concern me much, but the ringing report of a rifle never fails to make me hurriedly estimate range and direction. 

Next point: Our nearest neighbours have dogs. One is a good watchdog that only barks when a potential intruder approaches. The other is a brainless twit that barks just because she likes to hear herself. 

(I’m probably judging the dog too harshly. She doesn’t bark all the time. The owners are good neighbours, responsible pet owners, and all-round nice people. They say the female barks whenever she can smell a bear. There are a LOT of bears around here and they don’t always hibernate, so it’s certainly possible.)

But regardless of whether the bitch is a twit or I’m just a crabby old bag (or both), the end result is the same: The barking sprees get annoying to the point where even I, who love animals and would never harm one, start harbouring dark fantasies about making the damn dog shut up.

So.

I was sitting out on my porch, wrapped in a blanket and sipping tea; and the idiot dog was barking her fool head off. After twenty minutes of steady barking, a sour thought flitted through my mind: “There’s nothing wrong with that dog that a bullet to the brain wouldn’t fix.”

A shot rang out. The dog fell abruptly silent. My subconscious snapped “.22 rifle, damn close!” 

Some silly part of me thought, “OMG, did I just do that with the awesome power of my mind?”

An instant later my smarter self realized, “Holy shit! Somebody just shot the neighbours’ dog!”

I scurried indoors and texted the neighbour, whilst keeping an eagle eye on the road just in case the continuing shots were coming my way.

The neighbour texted back with reassuring rapidity: Nothing to worry about; he’d just gotten a new .22 and was sighting it in. It hadn’t occurred to him that we’d even hear it at our place, since nobody in their right mind would be sitting outside in the cold. (He politely omitted the last part of that sentence.)

I drew a deep breath of relief and got on with my day. 

But… I haven’t heard the dog bark since then. Hmmm. Remind me to stay on good terms with that neighbour. Just in case.

*

P.S. Could you please answer three quick one-click questions? (Anonymously, of course.) Click here to go to the poll. Thanks for your help! 🙂

Book 18 update: I’m on Chapter 14, and Aydan and her co-workers are locking horns with their new boss after less than a day on the job. Even John is keeping his head down!

Stand and Deliver

/ Diane Henders / 26 Comments

Hi everyone – Something weird is going on with WordPress this morning, and all my site settings are messed up. Please excuse the oddball appearance – WordPress is working on it!

*

Last year my doctor recommended that I get an Apple watch so I could track my heart rate while they investigated me for atrial fibrillation. It turned out that my cardiac issues were only temporary and my heart is just fine, which pleased me to no end. So the Apple watch had served its purpose after only a few months; and I had an expensive watch that I didn’t particularly want or need.

I’m a cheapskate, so my choices were a) sell the watch on Facebook marketplace at a ridiculous discount; or b) use the watch. I chose (b), because I’m so cheap that the idea of losing money on a sale was more repugnant than learning to use a watch with more features than every other device in my household combined.

At least some of those features are handy. Back in the good old days before I hurt my back, I would often spend 14-hour days at the computer. I got up for brief meal-and-bathroom breaks, but otherwise I was utterly absorbed by my screen. These days I still get absorbed by my screen, but only until my back or legs demand a new position. The watch’s regular reminders are a convenient way to make sure I stand up and move around before I get to the point where I can’t stand up and move around.

Sometimes, though, the watch’s smarmy little motivational messages annoy me, and its reminders baffle me. This watch has a GPS that knows where and how fast I walk, plus its sensors are supposed to be smart enough to detect if I’ve fallen or been in a car accident. So why does it remind me to stand up when I’m already using my standing desk? And why does it award me exercise points when I’m driving in my car? Does it really think I’m capable of sprinting at 100 km/hr for twenty minutes?

Best of all was the time I was perched on the throne in the bathroom and my watch sounded its happy little chime: “It’s time to stand up!”

I burst out laughing. Trust me, it was really not the time to stand up.

But I guess I’d have gotten a major butt-pucker if my watch actually knew what I was doing at that moment. Or worse, if it made a perky motivational comment about my *ahem* activities.

Hmmm, now I’m envisioning a whole new set of motivational messages for the Apple watch:

  • “Good job!”
  • “Just a little longer, and you’ll break your personal record!”
  • “Congratulations! You just achieved a perfect streak!”

Ew. Or maybe not.

What’s motivating you this week?

Book 18 update: I’m halfway through Chapter 9, and Aydan has just been reminded again of why she never wanted a career as a public servant.

Ten Years Off…

/ Diane Henders / 32 Comments

You know the expression “That took ten years off my life”? I know the feeling well — I’ve had quite a few experiences that felt as though they’d shortened my life. That ‘ten years’ must be metaphorical, though; otherwise I’d be dead already.

Nearly drowning at a swimming lesson (there’s irony for you), getting cornered by a guy much larger than me, having my dirt bike’s brakes fail on a steep mountain trail: Thirty years gone right there.

Watching a steel lawn dart (which I had thrown) plummet toward my sister’s head: That must have taken at least twenty years off my life. If I had yelled a warning and she had stopped and turned, I probably would have scored a bullseye on her brain and this story would have had a tragic ending. Fortunately I was paralyzed by horror and she was walking away, so the only end that suffered was hers: I scored a bullseye on her butt. It’s funny in retrospect (as long as you’re not my sister), but at the time it was terrifying.

Okay, no; it’s still terrifying. I love my sister, and just thinking of ‘what might have happened’ makes my stomach clench. I don’t know whether the patron saint of idiot kids was on my side that day, or whether her guardian angel was working overtime; but, yikes! *shudder*

Having a bear sniffing around outside my tent in the middle of the night: Ten years. Seeing a funnel cloud bearing down on our house: Ten years. Getting a phone call saying, “Your husband has a head injury and the ambulance is taking him to the hospital now”: Ten years… no; actually about thirty. But I’m deducting a couple of decades after the fact, because fortunately Hubby was fine. (Except for six hours of amnesia where he didn’t know where he was and he asked the same three questions every five minutes. Those were lo-o-o-ong scary hours.)

A couple of weeks ago I took another ten years off my life, but this time the process was much more relaxing: Instead of abject terror, I used Photoshop.

Yep, it’s time for another cover update for the series — it’s hard to believe it’s been over ten years since Book 1 was published! And since I’ve never been thrilled with the image for Book 1, I decided to change it as part of the new look, too.

Posing for the covers seemed like a good idea at the time: The model is always available, and I never have to pay her. But unlike Aydan, who has only aged two years since 2010… well… let’s just say I’m not forty-eight anymore. Thank goodness for Photoshop’s ability to erase a decade! (Or thereabouts. No need to elaborate.)

Here’s the new look:

The updates should start appearing in retail channels in the next few weeks.

What’s new in your world this week?

Book 18 update: My time has been spent on cover updates lately, but I’m on Chapter 7 and looking forward to getting back into my writing routine!

The Whole Fan-damly

/ Diane Henders / 40 Comments

It seems like only a few years ago I had to show ID to prove I was old enough to buy liquor. Now, suddenly, I have to show ID to prove I’m too young to qualify for a Senior’s Discount.

I miss being young. I miss the absolute conviction that I’m smarter than any old fuddy-duddy, that I can do anything, and the world is my oyster. The world might have been my oyster at one time; but the older oysters get, the more they stink. And now that I’m an old fuddy-duddy myself, the more I ‘know’, the less certain I am about any of it.

But most of all, I miss the certainty that my body will do what I expect. It used to be a well-tuned machine: All the parts worked smoothly together to get the job done. These days, I feel like a beleaguered single mom trying to parent a much-too-large family. Every day is an endless round of Me The Mom cheerfully saying, “Let’s do (some previously enjoyed activity).” But instead of enthusiastic cooperation, I get, “NO, NO, NO!!! I don’t wanna! You can’t make me!”

Giving in to the tantrum, I soothe, “It’s okay, we’ll do something else instead.”

That makes another body part act out: “NO! She ALWAYS gets her way! I want attention, too! Me, me, me!!!”

The cranky toddlers’ names are Lower Back and the Thumb twins. On any given day, they may throw a screaming tantrum for no apparent reason; or they might smoothly perform a task I never thought they’d manage.

The Knee twins are mostly well-behaved, but sometimes they can be whiners.

Upper Back is a moody tween given to dramatic declarations that (so far, fortunately) haven’t amounted to anything.

Neck is a surly teenager who greets every task with complaints and martyred sighs, but gets the job done in the end.

And the short-circuiting nerve system that makes my legs and feet feel as though I’m wearing electrified tights? Yep, Leg Nerves are the couch-surfing twenty-somethings who won’t follow the house rules, but refuse to get a job and move the hell out.

All that domestic dysfunction is exacerbated (or maybe that should be ‘exasperated’) by the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks family pet: The Ghost of Youth Past. It’s constantly bouncing around in the background, slobbering eagerly and panting, “Yeah, yeah, let’s do it! It’ll be SO MUCH FUN, come on, LET’S DO IT!”

But, like most moms, my grumbling about the Body family is tongue-in-cheek. I’m (literally) quite attached to the whole fractious gang. At least everybody is still speaking to each other despite their squabbling; and the days when they all choose to work together are precious indeed.

Now, if only I could get Mouth to stop gobbling up all the leftover Halloween candy…

Book 18 update: Book 17 has been unleashed on the world, hooray! I’m finishing up its post-release tasks, and I’m hard at work plotting Book 18. I’ve already written part of the first chapter, so stay tuned for progress reports!

Pop.

/ Diane Henders / 39 Comments

The other day my friend Swamp Butt mentioned that one of her co-workers had guessed her age at nearly twenty years younger than she actually is.

“Must be nice,” said I. “Nobody has ever said anything like that to me.”

But Swamp Butt was blessed with superb genes passed down from her father, who lived to be 102; and she has always looked younger than she is. So I shrugged it off.

Only a few days later, I changed into my goin’-to-town clothes (which are only distinguishable from my around-home clothes by the fact that they don’t feature holes and/or paint and/or automotive grease stains). I glanced in the mirror before I left the house and thought, “Huh. I look pretty good for my age.” Buoyed by that thought, I drove to town with a smile.

While I was standing in line at one of the stores, I noticed it was Seniors Day: 15% off. *shrug* Whatever. Didn’t apply to me.

When it was my turn, the cashier scanned and totalled my items, and then asked, “Do you qualify for the senior’s discount?”

That took the wind out of my sails.

“Sadly, no,” I said, summoning my most youthful smile.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

Pop. That was the sound of my bubble bursting.

“Really, really sure,” I assured her. “I’m only 58.”

Then I did a mental head-smack. Shit, if I was going to get kicked in the ego anyway, I should have at least lied about my age and snagged the discount. Apparently I’m only getting old, not wise.

Fortunately, I’m blessed with a huge capacity for denial and and very little concern for what others think of my appearance. After I got over the momentary ‘ouch’, I found the whole exchange pretty funny, and I’m still chuckling about it. (Albeit somewhat ruefully.)

And I still like what I see when I look in the mirror. It’s nothing to do with my face — it’s what’s behind my eyes that counts. 🙂

Anybody else have a face that doesn’t fit their (mental) age?

Book 17 update: Woohoo! LIVE AND LET SPY will be released on October 28/22, and it’s now available for pre-order at all retailers. Pre-order links are on my Books page, and I’ll be sending them out to my mailing list soon!