Colin Barrett: Blog

Two chapters again today. Once more, they sort of go together.
I'm interested in how seriously people are taking the details of Jack's flight from Federal pursuit in A.I. I've had several readers trying to punch holes in the story. One was bothered by the fact that Jack might not have a Texas accent to back up his new identity. In today's cosmopolitan world, of course, that wouldn't be all that critical, especially given that the Texas address was mainly intended to give his new identity a paper history. Another wanted him to flee the country, and said that with Spook's help it would be easy for him to get a passport. Yeah, but how about Lisa? I actually deal with this in an upcoming chapter.
What really pleases me is that so far nobody's poked a really significant hole in what I wrote. I was concerned about that, given that my knowledge of this kind of thing is fairly spotty. I had to cross the same bridge in a different way in another novel-The Caveman, not yet posted on SOL-and had the same concerns. But I put a lot of thought and research into the methods used in both stories, and so far at least this one seems to be standing up.
Now it's time for Jack to be re-united with Lisa-but without, in the process, involving her in the pursuit as a subject. This isn't Bonnie and Clyde, she can't become a fugitive herself. Be intriguing to find out what readers think of how I handle it.

Once again, two chapters in a day. The first one isn't that short, though the second is. But again, they roughly go together, and with the comments I've been receiving I thought it was time for Jack to complete his own escape and get out of the Washington, D.C. area. I actually used to live there, and now live just outside Charleston, so the geography will continue to be accurate. Writing teachers tell you to write about what you know, so I'm following that advice to this extent.
Yes, I know most cell phones are no longer hinged, but the cheaper ones still are. Since I'm really not a huge fan of the technology-I detest the idea of being available to any idiot with a phone of his or her own, which is just about everybody, wherever I am-I go with the lower end, and so does Jack. Live with it.
By the way, the "town in Texas" that I had in mind was Galveston. Some of its suburbs were indeed pretty well wiped out by a hurricane two or three years back. The records, of course, are still intact, but Spook should have no trouble manipulating them. The point was to make it difficult to check his new back-story.
Spook is coming to life by now as Jack's friend. That will continue. Lots more to come.

Two chapters today, not so much because they're short-they aren't, really-but because they're individually less eventful and they roughly go together in developing the story. I don't want readers to lose interest because this moves too slowly.
Thanks once again for all the favorable comments. Several readers have offered ideas about where the story might go, many very interesting. It's already written, though; I'll never post or let anyone even glance at early drafts before I've got thing in finished form. As I've noted before, the complete novel is published in electronic form on Amazon, and that's what I'm posting here. The effort, of course, is to gain as broad a readership as I can. We writers write for the sake of being read by others, and the more the merrier.
By the way, the Washington, D.C. area geography is as accurate as I can make it. If you live there or have visited, you ought to recognize some of the places.
One brief note: The manuscript on my system is in Microsoft Word, which these days I use for all my writing. (I actually still prefer the old DOS WordStar, which was my first word processor; but while I can still access it under my current Windows OS, I can't persuade it to export to a printer and the WordStar files are unreadable by any other software, so I've at last given up and switched to Word.) To post on SOL, though, I have to submit the files as HTML. The conversion is simple; Word allows me to save as a "Web page," which is HTML. But occasionally something gets lost in the translation, or screwed up-either when I create the HTML or when Lazeez turns it into a screen file. I check every posting, so if there's an error (that's already happened once with A.I.) I'll repost to fix it, but it takes time. Please be patient. Thanks.

This chapter's filed a few hours early; I have a busy day tomorrow, and wanted to be sure to get it posted. In fact, I'm having a pretty full week, so I've neglected responding to a few e-mails that wanted some thought. I'll get caught up soon. Meantime, thanks to all those who've commented, and thanks, too, for the votes. As with a couple of my earlier novels the voting started out pretty low, but the rating has already moved up half an ordinal point, as it did then, too, and the number of downloads has been super, too. I'm really pleased to have found such an appreciative audience.

No big surprises today. You knew this from the novel's title, right? But Jack didn't have that advantage. It's a chance for you to consider how you might react if your own system (the one on which you're reading this right now) suddenly started talking back to you.