Tuesday Miscellaneous

As my regular readers know, my brothers arrive in the US today! There is, of course, an effluence of excitement and an abundance of squeeeee! in the Smith household today. I alerted you on Sunday to the fact that this might mean my blog posts may be short, erratic, or non-existent for a few weeks–but this blog is fun to write and I’m sure I’ll have some fun things to post about while they’re here, so you never know. Like I said on Sunday, check in every day, or, better yet, subscribe so you get notified of updates. Even better, if you haven’t already, join the blog using the Google Friend Connect button on the right —>.

Scrivener for Windows 1.0 was released yesterday. Scrivener was developed to help with writing long pieces of text (e.g., novels, scripts, non-fiction works, theses, dissertations, etc.). It’s intended to help you produce a first draft, which you can then export to your favorite word processor for revising and polishing. How does it help? It has tools for organizing your work–folders for research materials, character notes, and so on. You can create separate documents for each chapter, or each scene in each chapter. For each scene or chapter, you can create summary notes so you know what’s suppose to happen–excellent if you like to plan your work. I could sit here and waffle on about all the features, but it’d be better for you to see for yourself. Check out the website, and, if you’re interested, download a trial version. It only costs $40, which really is great value for money considering all it does. And this is just the Windows version! The software was originally written for the Mac, so the Mac version is older and has even more features. I pre-ordered Scrivener on Sunday (pre-order deal: $36), and downloaded it yesterday. I’ve only gone through the tutorial and imported my WIP, but already I can tell this is going to be a fun and useful tool.

Finally, I finished Scott Westerfeld’s LEVIATHAN yesterday. This is currently my book of the month. I know, we’re barely a week into November, but I’ve already read a couple of books and this one is topping the month-so-far list. In fact, I’m more in anticipation of reading the next in the series (BEHEMOTH) than I was for any of the UGLIES books. UGLIES is a good series, but, I don’t know, there’s something about the characters and setting in LEVIATHAN I like more. I have yet to read the last in the UGLIES series, EXTRAS, but I can’t say I’m chomping at the bit to read it. I’ll get to it eventually. I’d sooner read BEHEMOTH, to be honest. But next on the list is Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. More on LEVIATHAN if it ends up as my pick of the month for the last Road Trip Wednesday of November.

Have a great Tuesday!!