Well, I got everything back in the end, after my 'crash', which was a power supply failure, combined with a scrambled BIOS and a few other things.
All the archival stuff is now backed up on the external HDD, and I have adopted the policy of regular postings to Dropbox of the current files, at least twice a day.
This is August and Book Week us upon us, so I have a few functions to get around, including one in Melbourne that will see us down there for three days, including dropping in at the newly-opened Embiggen Books in Little Lonsdale Street, where I will have to nag them about getting their web site up-to-date.
I also have a school visit and a function/luncheon for local school-children, both close to where I live. In short, I'm busy.
That aside, I have final edits coming in from one book (Australian Backyard Naturalist), I have another away being edited (Curious Minds), I have a first draft (The Shark Suit, the Shoe-gun and the Short-shanked Sheep, working title)marinating before I take to it with a chain saw.
Shark Suit etc. is the one that might have been partially lost in the "crash"—I had taken it from completed research to a 56,000-word draft in a month (that makes it sound easy, but there was three year's worth of research at the back, and I had a lot of scraps of text already written). I have submitted that one, and I am waiting.
Right now, I am in between the scoping stage and the shaping stage on a serious social history of gold rushes past and present, and the havoc created when people get gold fever (working title Gold Lust— and that will definitely change). That is also the final piece of research for another project that has been in the pipeline for six years (code name Cornish Boy), one which requires a better mastery of the technicalities of assaying and such. Right now, I have a lot of the shaping done: this alerts me to the gaps in the story, and the gaps in my research, so that when I start, I know where I am going.
On the side, I am doing some fun stuff for younger readers (code name Young Henry), but I'm not talking about that just yet. Not on the record, anyhow.
Anyhow, in summary, I now have five books in the air at once, possibly more, because Young Henry may be several shorter works or one long one. I must be nuts!
There is, however, light at the end of the tunnel: I am in a four-year run-down program, at the end of which time I plan to hang up my pen and read. There are so many good books out there to read, like those on this NPR top 100 F-SF list that I saw today.
