And now, THE RUBY KEY (and funny cats) (and a software evaluation)

Today and the rest of this week (and perhaps some of next week), I’m going to bury myself in backgrounding the MOON AND SUN series, starting with The Ruby Key and working my way through to a planned ending. I want to finish off the language work, map, culture-build, and create a timeline of past through future. I’ll be doing a lot of work on moonroads, and what inhabits them, and how folks get on them, and more importantly, how they get back off.

I got Letrin’s Hunt yesterday while eating lunch. I was—seriously—staring at my food, and the mashed potatoes had in interesting look about them.

Letrin has these hunting dogs. I discovered that the dogs are enormous, gray or fog-white with white eyes, blind but endowed with supernatural senses of hearing and smell. Lord Letrin (still debating his title; I think I can do better with something in Osji) is one of the primary villains in the series, a nearly-immortal nightling who murdered his wife and all children save one to cast a spell that, when he kills the last kid, will give him true immortality.

The story’s young heroes have been forced to promise to find and bring him his last child in exchange for the freeing of their parents from the moonroads. Letrin doesn’t intend to play fair, and the Hunt is part of how he’s keeping track of their movements.

Completely off-topic, Paul Auldridge sent me another YouTube link. This one is simply funny: World’s Dumbest Cats. I like cats, I have cats, but … yowza. These, my friends, are cats with Issues. Subscriptions, even.

ADDED NOTE: I’m currently evaluating WriteItNow Novel-Writing Software. Currently I can say that it has some features I love, some I like, and some that frustrate the bejeezus out of me; my question is whether the likes and loves will overcome the frustration. (It does some seriously cool things for world-building, character development, tracking—in these areas, it beats Word into the pavement. It does NOT offer a convenient word count. I need a convenient word count. It does not let you see your manuscript in double-spaced format (I need this), or permit you to change the color of your type (though it does permit background color changes. It does autoformat your manuscript. Nicely. And save in RTF, making it useful to any other decent word processing program.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

image_pdfDownload as PDFimage_printPrint Page

By Holly

Novelist, writing teacher, on a mission to reprint my out-of-print books and indie-publish my new ones.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

13 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
eitje
eitje
16 years ago

you rarely hear about dancing bears. i recommend working that in somehow. 😀

eitje
eitje
16 years ago

also, the backstory to Letrin sounds familiar to me. Do you like, dislike, or disregard feedback on similarities to existing works?

eitje
eitje
16 years ago

http://www.ravensheadservices.com/faq.php
How do I get a word count?
The word-count is part of the readability score. This shows the readability of a selected block of text. If no text is selected it shows the readability of all the text in a section. You can check the number of words in any block of text. To check a chapter go to the chapter. Click the ‘Edit’ button and select ‘Readability’ To check a story go to the ‘Overview’ tab. Click ‘Options’ and select ‘Readability’

how much more convenient do they need to get? 😛

😉

pugh7755
pugh7755
16 years ago

Rose,

You can keep it as long as you like. You just can’t save any files or use add-ons. Which, by the way, renders it useless unless you keep it open all the time and never close it. I just downloaded the demo, and from what I can see I will be purchasing it very soon. Like Holly said, there are some drawbacks. However, I have been using NewNovelist and I can tell you that I will not be using it anymore. WriteItNow is the way to go. It is well worth the price…at least to me. I’d wait to see Holly’s final opinion before making a final decision.

The English Rose
The English Rose
16 years ago

Question: I’ve been all over the WriteItNow site, but I can’t find this. How long can you have the demo w/o registering? I’m tempted to try it but I’m not starting writing my next project yet and I don’t want to waste the demo while I have it.

pugh7755
pugh7755
16 years ago

Funny Cats made me realize that I missed having a cat. Thanks Holly, You’ve put an end to my animal free life. I’m going to have to get me a cat now.

I have been checking out NewNovelist writing software. Are you familiar with this product. If so how does it compare to WriteItNow?

shawna
16 years ago

Cats are crazy sometimgs. The kids’ grandma has a psycho-cat that would fit right in with these… lol.

Is the “check readability” screen that’s shown on the website hard to get to? Or not accurate?

Can’t believe there’s a writing program out there I haven’t played with. That is NOT what I needed to know this week, lol.

The English Rose
The English Rose
16 years ago

Ditto, TinaK. But it’s so cool to watch the books as they take shape; as noted in the comments for the entry about this being a writing diary, that’s half of why we all come! *learns* (And Ruby Key sounds really neat.)

shay
16 years ago

the cat vid was funny, they do some funny things at times, especially my little fuzzball 😛

TinaK
16 years ago

Nice to hear you are working on something ‘new’ rather than just the edits. The Ruby Key sounds like an exciting and fascinating book. Another book I have to wait years to read. *sigh* This is the biggest drawback to reading your blog. Getting teased with new books we have to wait and wait and wait for…. *grin*

13
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x