REP: Blog

Good day to all:

Today I discovered several errors in the story that I would like to bring to the attention of my readers.

Problem 1:

This problem is totally my mistake, and I would like to acknowledge the reader who pointed out the mistake to me. I feel it is a bad practice to repeat the names people use on the site without their permission, but thank you very much JD40 - an abbreviated form of their name.

I have limited experience with load centers and other electrical work. When I wrote the scene of rewiring the BoA building in Chapter 8, I somehow overlooked that load centers receive 2-phase power. Shame on me for that. I also complicated the problem by overlooking that the larger generators that are typically towed by a vehicle generally output 3-phase power; although some have selector switches that permit output of a single phase.

I will be fixing that mistake in the near future and reposting the chapter. My initial thought was to do a quick and dirty fix, but decided it would be best if I fix the problem properly, which will be more work. It may take a few days to post a rewrite of those scenes, since I like to I let what I write sit for at least a day and then come back to it to proofread the fix.

Problem 2:

In the story, I use call signs. The call sign format is a word, such as Ark, that is followed by a series of single-digit numbers that are separated by underscore characters.

Today I noticed that in many places the underscore character is missing.

I checked the HTML formatted story files I submitted and the missing underscore characters were in the story files. SOL converts my HTML to the site format, and apparently there was a problem with the conversion algorithm. I notified our Web Master Lazeez of what I discovered, and we will correct the problem to include all posted files.

REP

FYI regarding my use of 'Over and out'.

When I first started posting the chapters, my radio traffic narrative contained the term 'Over and out' with the second party in the link confirming the end of the transmission by saying 'Out'.

An acquaintance, who was reading the story, informed me he had been in the Signals Corps, and that was improper radio discipline. He said that the convention of 'Over and out' was something dreamed up by Hollywood. Based on his information, I updated the posted Chapters to:

1. Change 'Over and out' to 'Out'.

2. Delete the confirmation by the 2nd person.

I will also be updating the chapters to-be-posted. Nothing was changed in the story. So you won't be missing anything other than no more 'Over and out'.

The Ark, Part 2 is complete and edited; although I am doing my final read through. The story consists of an Introduction, which I strongly suggest you read, and 28 Chapters.

If you have not read Part 1, I suggest you do so for many of Part 2's terms and concepts are based on Part 1.

I will post 2 chapters a week on Tuesday and Friday. I just finished submitting the Introduction and Chapter 1 for posting.


Opening Earth Part 3 is my next major effort. I have an almost complete story that fits into my Universe, so I will finish it in parallel with my work on Part 3.

As you recall, Part 2 ended with Doug on his delayed honeymoon cruise. A number of problems occurred during the cruise and the story ended with:

"Ah, Matt. I don't think we should try to fix this. This was all going to come out sometime, so it will probably be best if we acknowledge the truth of the situation. After all, we have done nothing wrong."

Sometimes, I don't believe how naive I was, back then.


Doug is about to have a large number of problems with Earth's people and with the citizens of the Multiverse.

I'm currently working on Chapters 27 and 28. They are the final 2 chapters and both are over 50% complete.

Chapters 1-20 have been edited, so once everything is complete and edited, I will do a final read through and start posting the story.

The Ark Part 2 is progressing and currently at 25 chapters and over 200K words. I am projecting 30 chapters and about 300K words at completion.

The story is rather complex with around 10 ongoing subplots that are interrelated and presented chronologically.

Continuity checking the subplots and relative timing between subplots will be a major editing effort. I sent the first 5 chapters to my editors today.

I expect the story to be fully written, edited, and ready for posting this January, if all goes well.