Wednesday Update Time!

- I sent off the manuscript, blurb, and front/back matter for The Portal Effect, book 10 of the Evaran Chronicles, to my professional editor late last night. For the last two days, I focused on a final readthrough and tweaked a few things, but believe it's in good shape. Now it's a waiting game! Like other books, this will probably be in professional edit for three weeks, and is on track for a release mid to late next month!.

- Due to the final passes on The Portal Effect, I didn't get much writing in on Redemption, book 5 of the Earthborn. I did however hit 32.5k. I'll be focusing on this now that I'm not in review mode.

I talked with Tom on covers and there seemed to be a mixup in scheduling. The cover will now start on November 3, and I'll get it back sometime in December, along with the box set cover. That's fine as this is looking like a January release.

- I've scheduled covers for Books 11 & 12 for the Evaran Chronicles for 2020. The new series will not be as intensive coverwise so I'll be looking for a second cover designer to hit those. This also allows for better scheduling. I seem to have unintentionally moved to a two person per role setup in editing, profreading, and cover design. I won't be doing that in Audio though! There is only one Michael Pauley!

- As I've been reading through the Dresden files, I ask myself, what would my new series protagonist do? As the theme is heavy on tech and science, in a world of nonhumans and aliens on Earth, it depends on the protagonist's origin, personality, and skillset. There is also the Evaran link and of course, the power players and factions like the Ancient Vampires and the Earth Ward to factor in.

There's a lot to chew on in those thought experiments, but that's always the fun part! While the protagonist is tough relative to a human, it will be his awareness, intelligence, knowledge, ability to reason, and technology that guides him.

I hope your week has been going well! Back to the writing den with me!

Sunday Update Time!

- I hit 31k on Redemption, book 5 of the Earthborn. Blake and crew have almost wrapped up events on Hullios. The next few chapters are a breather from all the action. Although I would typically be about the 40% completion mark relative to previous books in the series, this one looks like it will be longer. There's a lot going on there!

I've sent off a request to Tom on the cover, so I'm awaiting that response. I finished the cover brief for it over the weekend, and looking forward to it being completed! I also determined what I wanted for the box set cover.

- I finished the third and fourth self-edit review passes on The Portal Effect, book 10 of the Evaran Chronicles. I'm now doing my final passes on it. It goes to professional edit in 3 days! This is about 98k, so it is a chapter shorter than some of the other books, and is more light hearted, similar to The Unification, book 9 of the Evaran Chronicles.

- I've made good progress on the knowledgbase project in regards to the editor. The mentions system has been updated so that it dynamically pulls data from the database instead of hardcoding for my testing. I've also added a biography section to characters.

The next steps are to allow the series edit/add pages to link books, and implement the races and factions pages. I've also given some thought to the timeline page, and the data model components of it and how it integrates with everything. Lot going on there, and at my current pace, I'm hoping this will all be ready before end of year.

- I've been working on sketching out the details on Book 11 of the Evaran Chronicles! I plan to be done with a full outline by the end of November, and begin writing on it in December. I've already reached out to Tom to schedule covers for 2020 as well with this one being the first.

It's been chilly over here in central Ohio. I hope your weekend went well!

Wednesday Update Time!

- I hit 28k on Redemption, book 5 of the Evaran Chronicles. Blake and crew are now deep into the second part of Zeertalas. Zane is barking and howling with his hellthrower at his side.

I am also working on the cover brief and hope to have that done this week. I'm also going to see if I can get the box set cover in which is a slight retweak of the first book's cover. I'd like to launch Redemption at the same time as the box set.

- I finished the second review pass of The Portal Effect, book 10 of the Evaran Chronicles. I now have one week to polish it up for the professional edit. There's still a bit of cleanup, but it's minor relative to the second pass. Everything is on track for a release next month!

- It looks like Arrow starts on the 15th, not this last Tuesday, but I did get to watch Batwoman and Supergirl on Sunday, then Flash on Tuesday. It's good to be back in CW superhero land.

I'm excited about this season due to the crossover event and all the characters that will be appearing. Even Black Lightning, the one show that tried to be disconnected, is making an appearance.

I thought the below link was a good intro to start off Flash for this season. It touches on Nora, Flash's daughter who was erased from the timeline last season, and Godspeed, a speedster from the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiDiKbRI63o

Speedsters were one type of being that I classified early on in the Evaranverse, and if you read The Unification, book 9 of the Evaran Chronicles, you saw how Evaran deals with them.

I hope your week has been going well!

Sunday Update Time!

- I hit 25k on Redemption, book 5 of the Earthborn. I realized when I was writing the chapters leading up to a big fight that I didn't have the chronology in place. I took some time to go through nine chapters and timestamped everything. I'm in the middle of an Andia/Rakar chapter, so it's fun to write from their perspective. The chapter after that is going to be fun and involves a sweet tooth.

- I've reviewed 27/29 chapters of The Portal Effect, book 10 of the Evaran Chronicles. Only two chapters left, then I begin the final self-edit passes before the professional edit which is now only 10 days away! Dr. Snowden and Emily are still adjusting to life after the events of The Cosmic Parallel, book 8 of the Evaran Chronicles, but they compensate with PSD creativity.

- I've made progress on the knowledgbase project. The big feature implemented is the ability to use a mentions system, similar to when you use a @ in Facebook, in the editor application. I've also began work on a timeline system. It is at the book level, but can be viewed from a series and overall level.

I hope your weekend went well!

Wednesday Update Time!

- I hit 23k on Redemption, book 5 of the Earthborn. The group has made it past the first hurdle on Zeertalas, and they're now gearing up for the second part. Blake gets an unexpected ally to help out.

Part of this book's theme is how Earthborn have been mistreated over the previous books and that all the work Blake put in to making alliances with various groups comes into play. Earthborn operate differently and come in as an outsider without historical baggage to most of these groups which allows Blake to capitalize.

- I've reviewed 24/29 chapters of The Portal Effect, book 10 of the Evaran Chronicles. The professional edit is only two weeks away now! I really enjoy writing, and now reviewing, the Jake and Jelton show.

- This month is when the cover for Redemption, book 5 of the Earthborn, is done. I know what it's going to be and can't wait for it to come to life!

- The knowledgbase project continues trucking. I've got over some hurdles on the editor and making good progress. I hope to be done with it soon, then I can focus on entering content and making sure it looks good on the site.

- For those who watch the CW superhero shows, Batwoman and Supergirl start this Sunday at 8/9 EST respectively, while Flash and Arrow are 8/9 EST the following Tuesday. This is the last season of Arrow, and I've seen some big names mentioned.

The crossover event is "Crisis on Infinite Earths". Below is an image of Supergirl's version of Superman next to Superman from Superman Returns.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3Flplmly4b/?igshid=123oc7behnq9l

I hope your week has been going well!

Sunday Update Time!

- I hit 20k on Redemption, book 5 of the Earthborn. I had actually done 22k, but decided to redo the most recent section that I wrote. When I finish a logical section, I take a step back and try to poke holes in it. Unfortunately, I found a few, and while thinking about it, realized there was a better path. Blake, Zane, and Kal are stll on Zeertalas, but now they have a much more sensible path ahead of them!

- I reviewed 21/29 chapters of The Portal Effect, book 10 of the Evaran Chronicles. I plan to be done by October 9, which gives me a week before it goes to professional edit. I figure it will take about three weeks there, so I'm looking at an early November release, or about five week from now.

Once I'm done writing Redemption, book 5 of the Earthborn, I begin on Book 11 of the Evaran Chronicles. The current plan is to begin on that in December.

- I've made more progress on the knowledgbase project. I've created an editor to sit on top of the database. As there will be a lot of information going in, I wanted the data entry aspect to be easy to use. There's still a bit of work to go, but once it's complete, I'll be able to add data on a frequent basis that will be available immediately on my website. Below are some screenshots of my basic editor. For the techheads, it's an ASP.Net Core 2.2 Razor Pages application.

I hope your weekend went well!

Three small updates!

- My website now has SSL on it, so instead of http in the url, it's https. I've been meaning to do that for a while, and was in no rush since it is just static html, but I also know it might be flagged by some browsers. Nonetheless, it's setup and if you do go to the http version, it will redirect you to the https one.

https://www.adairhart.com/

- October 16 is the official date that the professional edit begins on The Portal Effect, book 10 of the Evaran Chronicles! That's just a little over two weeks away, but I should finish my passes by then with some buffer.

- On a minor note, I've selected Jodit as my text editor for content heavy sections on my knowledgbase. You can see an example of what it can do here:

https://xdsoft.net/jodit/play.html

My inspiration for the knowledgbase is Wookipedia:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Boba_Fett

I hope you're ready for the weekend!

Wednesday Update Time!

- I hit 18k on Redemption, book 5 of the Earthborn. I originally thought that the chapter I was writing would have been two scenes, but it became three. Blake, Zane, and Kal are deep in Zeertalas now and working the hyena-like Sorazians!

- I reviewed 18/29 chapters of The Portal Effect, book 10 of the Evaran Chronicles. Only 11 more chapters to go! I've done a fair amount of touchup work to this point, but mainly to clarify some topics or to reiterate a concept.

The scene I finished reviewing is probably one of my favorite ones in the book. It deals with Evaran consoling V and showing V a conversation Evaran and U4 had.

- After I wrap up my writing for humans portion of the day, I switch to writing for machines! The knowledgbase project is in full swing now. A large portion of the data model has been completed, and I have a sample call that goes from webpage to API asynchronously to the database and back.

There's still a lot to do, but now that all the peices are in place, it's a matter of tweaking everything. I still need to build a site to administer all this data, but for now, I can just enter it directly into the database.The proof of concept page to see the calls through all the different layers needs a lot of work, but it's literal raw data being semi formatted for the moment:

I hope you're week is going welll!

Boston Dynamics published a recent video of their Atlas humanoid robot doing some parkour, or as I like to call it, the beginnings of the Android Resistance! Below is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sBBaNYex3E

The Boston Dynamic page on Atlas is here:

https://www.bostondynamics.com/atlas

Sunday Update Time!

- I hit 15k on Redemption, book 5 of the Earthborn. I enjoy writing what I call downtime chapters where it focuses on interactions between characters. In this case, it was Doc and Ada in one scene, and Seth, Kane, and Luke in another. Ada learns of "guy time" while Seth learns about "spiderfiring".

The next chapter deals with Hullios and Blake, Zane, and Kal venturing into the city of Zeeertalas. Kal, as usual, has a contact, but it's with the Toigarma Dizar merc group, which translates to "Quick Death". I love writing those type of interactions!

- I had initially reviewed 16/29 chapters of The Portal Effect, book 10 of the Evaran Chronicles. However, ProWriting Aid decided to get wild and crash, and I lost chapter 16. Although I had autosave on, it seemed to have lost chapters 15 &16. Sigh. I redid chapter 15 today so I'm at 15/29. Nonethless, it's progress, but aggravating to lose time like that.

- While I watched my usual college football on Saturday, I took a stack of blank papers and sketched out the knowledgebase site. It will integrate into the exisitng website and be seamless.

I evaluated some tools that might make the process easier from a data perspective, but in the end, it was not as advanced as I needed it to be. I decided then to roll one myself, andthe tools I did look at gave me some ideas. I have a clear path to get this going, and once it's done, I can actually reuse the data part once I upgrade my website. I'm back to data modeling and writing an Application Programming Interface (API) and a front end to consume it!

I hope your weekend is going well. It seems like this year has flown by!