Lubrican: Blog

I don't usually do this, but in this case I'll make an exception. If you enjoy thinking about life and the trials life throws at you, and if you like a little philosophy, and if you like John Grisham's books then you should read "Naked Loophole." It's really, really good. I almost never read a story that is over five chapters long, because I crave writing instead of reading. My editor, Andy said I should read it. I went all twenty chapters without stopping.
Bob

I'm posting a new short story titled Loving my Niece. It's two chapters long and Chapter two will be posted Tuesday, assuming I remember to do that. I've got a long one at Andy's being edited and I have another long one close to being finished. This little one is just one I found in my "Being Edited" file. The file name told me it had already been edited, and had just slipped through a crack. It's basically a slow stroker, but I hope you like it.
Bob

I usually start posting a story on Monday. It's a habit. Some part of my brain thinks that people don't read this stuff on the weekend, when they can be hiking, or going to the beach, or visiting your aunt or just at work and so on. I am aware this is probably as legitimate as some of what I write is. I didn't go hiking last weekend. The beach is a thousand miles from here. My aunt is long passed. You know what I do for "work". And I went to see what was up at SOL.

Okay, now that I have upchucked my silly belief that nobody will see it because it's the middle of the week, I am posting a two chapter stroke story. It's just a simple stroker which may be of value to someone who needs a little fantasy while tending to the pet lizard. Or pet clam. You know what I mean.
Bob

I have written two new stories in an Alpha and Bravo type thing like I've done in the past. The basic story is Olivia's Escort Service and the difference between the two books is in the foreword.

Both books are virtually identical up to chapter six and then they diverge. I'm starting Monday with three chapters of version alpha and I'll put up three more on Tuesday (if I remember to). After that it will be one chapter a day for until alpha is all up. I'll start the bravo version after alpha is fully posted.

Both books have been published for a couple of weeks now, at zbookstore. I just haven't had time to post them until now.

Thanks for reading.

Bob

I learned some things recently that have suggested I am, officially, a fossil.

This blog entry explains that, but it may also explain a lot of things some people just aren't interested in. So, if you're reading and decide "I'm bored" then click away. My feelings won't be hurt. The purpose of this entry is to explain something I've gotten literally a thousand emails about.

Some of you may have noticed, over the years, that my offerings sometimes had odd displays in them. Most recently, it was where, if there was supposed to be an apostrophe, there was a question mark, instead. In a large number of postings, the ellipses (...) were just missing and there was a large blank space, instead.

This "effect" was caused because of the way I submitted stories and chapters to SOL. I started posting in 2005, at which time, the only things they would accept were html files. So I had to learn to use an html editor. But writing in an html editor was tedious, at best, and sometimes maddening. So, what I did was write in MS Word and save the files in html format. Then I used the html editor to do the final editing and so on. There was a problem, though. Microsoft wanted everybody to know that files produced in Word were MS Word files, so Word embedded all manner of extraneous code in a file if you saved it as an html file.

I had to go through each file and sift out all that extraneous code. I also wanted to get rid of the formatting, which formatted each and every line of text with another line of html code that said how this text should be displayed. By "how" I mean the code specified font, size, color and possibly sexual orientation. It was maddening because it was very difficult to read.

So I did search and replace routines, searching for the code that specified color and replacing it with a blank space. I had to choose something to replace with the code < p > which means "start a paragraph" and then replace something else with < /p > which means end paragraph.

So, what happened was that, as I was replacing code, sometimes I replaced too much code, or only part of the code I needed to replace. Then, when I sent the file to SOL their "grinder" translated all the erroneous code into erroneous text. Does that make sense? When that happened I'd go back to the html file and find the problem (somebody had just notified me about), repair it, and then upload the file again.

What was odd was that, depending on which browser the reader was using, some people saw question marks where apostrophes should have been, and some did not. It was all dependent on how the SOL grinder tried to make sense of what I sent it.

Okay. So, over the years, I probably spent most of a year doing this. I'd write in Word, save it in html, massage the html etc etc etc.

I was not aware that the rules changed. This is because I was a fossil, calmly munching the same feed I had gotten used to when I was "little."

What happened was, SOL began accepting MS Word docs instead of only html docs. They kept accepting html docs, which was why Laz never wrote to me and told me I was a fossil.

So, during this latest code debacle, I guess he finally got fed up with my shenanigans and sent me an email suggesting I stop with the html and just send Word docs from now on.

So I resent everything on the latest book (Frontier Justice) and any of you who read the new chapters today suddenly didn't see fossils in the rock anymore.

What that means is, the only problems you'll see in the future are regular kinds of problems, like misspelled words, timelines that don't make sense, different names for the same character and so on. Michelle and Andy have cut me waaay back on that kind of stuff, but some of it still seeps in when I do final edits after they have sent me back what they have fixed.

I just thought some of you might be interested in how such glaring errors got posted by somebody who has been writing for more than a minute.

Thanks for your patience in the past.

And thanks for your patience in the future.

Bob