starfiend: Blog

I've just dropped chapter 36 into the posting queue.

This is the last chapter I posted before I did a complete repost. From here on in everything is new for you.

There's currently 15 more chapters, plus a short epilogue, but I may yet split chapter 48 into two parts as it's now getting quite large. And still isn't finished! And neither, for that matter is the current chapter 50. My muse is fighting me, and fighting hard to stay away. :(

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Hey folks. Posting time.

A couple of weeks ago, as its Random story From the Archives, SOL showed Zipper D Dudes The Concert. This is also a Swarm story, but I don't ever remember reading it before. It's a nice, short story, but as it's set in the UK and after Maquis has started, I felt it incumbent upon myself to put a passing reference into my story. Particularly as he had, indirectly by mentioning the Safety Patrol, referenced my story.

It took me a while to work out what the change (or as it happens, changes!) should be. So along with the new chapter 35, I've also submitted updates for chapters 11,12,14 and 18. Only small references, but it's probably better you go and read The Concert before you read my changes.

The Swarm universe is a shared universe, created by The Thinking Horndog. We are all playing in his toybox, but even so I think it's important that our stories cross and touch occasionally. It makes the point that this is a single universe with multiple stories.

I hope you enjoy the latest chapter, as well as the updates, and, as always, I love hearing what you think.

Hi folks, two of my computers failed last week, both with hard drive errors. I've sort of managed to rescue the spare, this one, but it's suddenly very flaky and crashes regularly. It (usually) reboots each time, but just occasionally I get a Kernel Panic, before a successful reboot.

The other machine, my main machine, will run from a live distro, but not from the main HDD. I've managed to archive all, or most, or my stuff to a NAS, so hopefully I've not lost any work,

So now I'm going to have to do two full rebuilds. The flaky machine (this one!) I'm ripping the mobo out and I've bought myself a brand new MSI B450 tomahawk max with 32M of ram, an SSD and a Ryzen 5 3600X. I'm putting the XFX Radeon RX 580 GTS XXX graphics card from the other machine into it, as well as some other bits and bobs including 4TB of SATA HDD's in a RAID array. Hopefully it'll be a spanking gorgeous machine afterwards, and will become my main machine.

The current main machine I'm just going to completely replace the HDD's, but otherwise downgrade it to my spare.

And then, of course, I just have to put the OS back on and reconfigure it all again.

How long this will all take I've really no idea, but hopefully I'll be back by the time the next chapter of Maquis is due to be published in twelve days.

I bloody work in IT! Why do I have to do this sort of stuff at home as well? :(

Wish me luck folks!

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Hey folks. Chapter 26 is in the queue for posting.

Most people probably know that I found an old and part written chapter a few months ago. One that was supposed to have gone in far earlier than I had got up to in the posting. Well, you all know what I did then in getting the story partially withdrawn and then reposting the chapters, most of them cleaned up, up to the new part. That was chapter 13.

Well, after that I got thinking. I needed to insert another brand new chapter, based on what had happened in chapter 13. It took me a while to write, and given that each chapter is set at a specific time in the calendar, I knew it needed to go in at 26, so I slowed my posting of subsequent chapters to give me chance to finish it and get it checked.

So, this is it. This is another brand new chapter. The next half dozen or so chapters are all reposts, so, probably starting next week, I'll post them about one a week until we are caught up.

The primary reason I'm posting so slowly, one chapter a month, is because when I started posting, I still hadn't finished four chapters. 45-48 of 49. Well, as I've inserted two, that now makes it 47-50 of 51. I had bad writers block. I've still got it, partially.

However I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that I have now managed to finish 47 and 49, and have got a lot further through 48. (Yes, I do mean finished 47 and 49 but not 48!) Just two and a half more sections. 48 is likely to be a very large chapter and I may split it into two, however I'll make that decision closer to the time. 50, however is still far from finished. 51, the final chapter is finished, but I'm not calling it finished as it's always possible I may need to change it depending upon exactly how I finish 50.

So, that's the current status of Maquis.

Aside from that, I work in IT and normally work from home 4 or 5 days a week, so from that perspective the current lockdown hasn't impacted me very much, apart from the fact I cannot visit my 83yo mother quite so often, just in case.

The 'just in case' comes from the fact that my wife is a staff nurse in a very busy A&E department in one of the worst hit areas of the UK outside of London. I'm not even allowed to hug her when she gets in from work until after she's had a bath. As you can probably imagine, life can be a bit stressful at the moment. And that's without the terminally bored and hormonal teenage step-daughters who are now around permanently instead of being at school during the day.

Mind you, on the up side, I've got a hell of a lot of gardening done in the last few weeks. :)

Ho hum.

Enjoy life, stay safe, and keep to the social distancing rules. Don't let the idiots who say it's a waste of time fool you. It works, it is working. Slowly! All power to the genuine front line workers who have to be out and about!!!!

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Hey folks.

I've just reposted a slightly corrected version of chapter 22 from last week, and also the new chapter 23.

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