Echoes of Erebus civer draft (and misc news)

Here it is, bask and enjoy. Breakdown after the images....

That's our lass Sarah. She doesn't actually have cable plugs, or visible circuitry on her arm, but hey. Metaphor. Cheap flashy metaphor. The one cable with the loose plug does loop around her arm and end with a bleeding fishing hook. For those that haven't been paying attention, or haven't skipped to the 2nd image, yes, Sarah is made out of fish. She does not do any fishing herself, nor draw much in the way of blood. In the lower left we see a bit of my 'mascot nanite'. We'll talk about him in a bit.

The full wrap for the cover. Here we see more of mascot nanite.. he is positioned so that the 3 books, when set together, will make him in whole on your bookshelf. Whee! I'm witty! No, but moving on....

New author photo.. might replace it again. Mildly modified author blurb, and up top, well.. click the pic if you have trouble reading that. I left a lot of 'white space'... hm. We'll see.


As for the writing itself, I'm on quite a binge. This week has been compromised by a lot of random stuff going on, but I had been getting 2o pages a week on the first draft for 3? weeks in a row. This week might be more like 15.. which I hope doesn't mess up my general momentum. (or count). Yeah, 20 pages a week might seem like a lot to anyone who's tried it, and... it is. What I end up with will need a lot of work, but this phase is the most stressful, I think.
Current pagecount, (with no chapter breaks and such put in) 158. I'm hoping the final will be close to Watching Yute's 256, but we'll see.

I've been burning the midnight oil a lot in this past month, staying up til 1 am, (or later.. once or twice to 3 am) which makes for a lonnnnnng next day when Caitlin gets me up at around 7.

I gots a seekrit:

Krak in a Can

So far all my posts have had a specific agenda and/or topic.

Today I'm ragged after going to a pretty intense optimist meeting, so let's discuss the substance that helped me survive it.

Krak in a Can.

I have been a life-long pop addict, but one day something new appeared. Jolt Cola. Ah, back in the day, t'was the bad@$$ of pop. "All the sugar, twice the caffeine" in the age when everyone was pushing their diet varieties.

Jolt stood firm, a cry from, and to, the young caffeine lovers. It quickly became the unofficial official beverage of gamers, geeks, nerds, and cyberpunk wannabes who wanted that extra little boost, often in the middle of the night. Sure, it was largely psychological. Who cares?

Then Jolt seemed to recede into the mysterious abyss form which it came. Was it sales? Had I just moved out of their distribution zone? Had the caffeine gods merely forsaken me?

Much time passed. Then, a glimmer of hope. A bottle here or there showing up. Then more regularly.

About this time, Red Bull and its ilk began to rise. Energy drinks that far surpassed the grand old Jolt. These energy drinks sported unheard of, nay, mystical ingredients. Tourine? A blessing form Taurus? Ginseng? Ah, I'd heard of that one in legend...!

Jolt! You cannot let this stand! In the end, there can be only one!

Not yet defeated, Jolt brought us many flavors, many of which suck. Not all did, and they all came in fantabulous new cans! Nearly liter in size, it was one step closer to the adolescent dream
of laying under a 2 liter bottle of jolt, like a big junkie baby under it's bottle.

Perhaps more notable about these cans is that once opened, they can be CLOSED again. Tell me why this has only come to market now? As a wheelchair user, (and someone who doesn't always drink a pop in one shot) the ability to free one's hands by closing a bottle, and being able to put it away, had made cans nearly extinct from my buying habits.

Yet jolt still offered only "twice the caffeine" as the 'pedestrian' pops. Another new flavor now? 'Silver'? Hmm. BAH! An inferior tasting 7-up/Sprite version of Jolt. This would not do!

Finally, Jolt 'Ultra' arrived. It tastes really bland, but gets ya nice n twitchy. Between that, 'NOS', (Also a really cool container) and a few others, 'Krak in a can' has become an important part of my complete bre.... well, no, but they're appreciated greatly.

And Red Bull?

Yeah, that one still tastes like crap.