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I’ve been a fan of Tom Waits and his music since 1990 or so, when my friend Mike introduced me to Waits’s 1985 album Rain Dogs. I admire his range and I find his subject matter enthralling. While Jennifer says my Tom Waits CDs can “live in your car” (apparently she’s not a fan), I listen to them pretty frequently.

Here’s one of my favorite Waits songs, “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”, from 1992′s Bone Machine:

For contrast, here’s “Drunk on the Moon”, another of my favorites, dating back to 1974′s The Heart of Saturday Night:

This song, in fact, inspired a character in my novella, “The Winds of Patwin County”, which is, I think, one of my more successful pieces of fiction.

For some reason, I associate Tom Waits with writing. And for that reason, I’m pondering a project: editing an anthology of original short stories inspired by the music of Tom Waits. I have no idea at the moment how I’d go about doing it (I imagine I’d need to get some sort of rights from Tom Waits’s label to do this). I would probably set up a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project; the money would go to production costs (it’d be self-published) and to paying the contributing authors.

I don’t know for sure, though. Any thoughts, anyone?

Current Mood:  thoughtful

So, our account at our webhost provider was hacked. That was exciting. There was a vulnerability in the version of PHP that the site runs, which allowed a hacker to insert malicious code into certain files; the result of this was that whenever someone visited our site, they ended up downloading malicious code which could trash their computer. Jennifer’s installation of Norton Antivirus on her computer caught the code and warned her before she downloaded the site; my mom’s computer wasn’t so lucky. Of course, since I run Linux, I don’t run any anti-virus software and I had no idea our sites were infected.

I spent my breaks and lunch hour on Friday going in and removing the malicious code. But when I got back to my computer that night, the code had returned. In other words, the hacker had gotten back in and was re-inserting the code. I contacted our provider’s technical support line and asked for assistance. They went ahead and patched the CGI wrapper on our site (geekspeak for they updated our server), and this should have taken care of the issue.

It should have. Except it didn’t.

The malicious code returned. Again. I deleted it. Again. And again it showed up. And so on.

The ticket I had opened with our hosting provider was still open at this point, so I updated it with the ongoing situation, and when it wasn’t replied to within an hour I called the provider on their toll-free line. Apparently, the PHP vulnerability had hit them hard; they had three hundred tickets in their abuse queue, and only one person answering them. Fortunately my ticket was at the top of the queue, so they could address it quickly. The abuse team — the one guy — found a back door script on our site that was allowing the hacker to continue to gain access even though our version of PHP had been patched. He deleted it, but told me there was really no way to find all of the potential back doors.

We ended up deleting the entire site, and restoring it from a backup dated May 6. This ended up being not that big a deal; I had to re-update all of our WordPress installations and restore a couple of photos but that was about it.

Is there a lesson here for me? For you? For anyone? Probably not, except to make sure your installation of PHP is up to date and fully patched. But even then, new vulnerabilities crop up and exploits will appear within hours of the vulnerability being announced.

Have fun y’all.

Current Mood:  aggravated

So, over the weekend we went to the animal shelter in Sacramento, and adopted this fuzzbutt:

Of course we dithered over names for awhile. He’s part Russian Blue, we think, so we tossed around variations of Russian names like Boris and Ivan, then more colorful names like Blueberry. But now I think we’ve settled on Sherman as his name.

So far the other cats seem to be unimpressed. Rosemary hissed at him and Ingrid growled (brave kitty!), but the others are pretty mellow about the new interloper. Rupert wants to be his buddy. Nutmeg isn’t too sure. And Azzie couldn’t care less.

This brings our household up to six cats. I think we’ve reached our limit.

Yesterday I posted to here, to LiveJournal, to Facebook, Google Plus, and to Twitter the question, “What should I write next?”, and I offered three choices:

• Code Monkey! Wherein a computer programmer embarks on strange and exciting adventures when he finally gets up the nerve to ask the pretty receptionist out on a date;
• Padma Wherein a medical student has continuing visions of the end of the world (the research required for this one is daunting); and
• Iron Horse Apocalypse Wherein dark wizardry and other shenanigans run amok aboard a runaway train.

And the results were… A tie. Yep, each one received the same number of votes. So I’m going to go with my gut and work on Iron Horse Apocalypse (hereinafter referred to as IHA). It currently exists as a zeroth-level draft, full of anachronisms and cliches, but with some judicious cutting and revising I think this one will be a lot of fun to write and to read.

Code Monkey! (the exclamation point is part of the title) needs a rest. I wrote the zeroth-level draft a couple of years ago, and while I’ve enjoyed working on it, I need to take a break to get some perspective on it. It will return, though.

And, finally, I plan to continue the research I’m working on for Padma. I currently know very little about Hindu mysticism, Indian mythology and folklore, cosmology, or what life is like as a medical student; and since all these topics play a role in this novel, I need to know at least a little bit about them.

Others “in the know” might point out that I’ve got another novel in the works, The Winds of Patwin County. But since that one is comprised of interlinked stories, of which “The X of Doom” (my pirate story, the one I’m working on now) is one, I feel just fine and guilt-free about excluding it from my list.

Thanks for your input, all who inputted. And now, off to the keyboard!

I find myself stuck between writing projects. I’m progressing just fine on my short story “The X of Doom” — it’s got pirates in it! — but I’m having a hard time deciding what my next novel project should be. Here are my options, and I’m leaving it up to you, my faithful readers, to help me decide:

• Code Monkey! is the story of a computer programmer who gets embroiled in amazing adventures when he finally works up the nerve to ask out the pretty receptionist in his office. This one exists as a zeroth level draft already, but needs quite a bit of work.
• Padma is about a young woman who has visions about the end of the world. I’ve written an outline and a couple of scenes, but the amount of research I would need to do to write this one is daunting.
• Iron Horse Apocalypse is about dark wizardry on a runaway train. This one also exists as a zeroth level draft.

Which one of these sounds the most intriguing to you? They all sound intriguing to me, and I’m afraid my energy, so to speak, is drawn to each of them.

Your input, dear readers, would be much appreciated.

Jennifer and I have a plethora of zombie games: we’ve got Zombie Fluxx, Zombies!!!, Humans!!!, Last Night on Earth, and Munchkin Zombies. Who’s interested in coming over for a zombie-themed play day?

Apparently if you’re a knitter, like my wife, then the thing to say when you’re describing current projects is to say you’ve got them “on the needles”. When I ask my wife what knitting projects she’s working on, she’ll say, for example, “Oh, I’ve got a pair of socks and an afghan on the needles right now.” It’s a thing you say if you’re a knitter.

But what’s the equivalent phrase if you’re a writer? I’m going to suggest “on the platen”. It’s a typing thing. You remember typewriters, right? They were like word processors and printers, all combined into one device. They were pretty awesome.

So here’s what I’ve got on the platen right now:

• “The X of Doom”, my short story about the Pirate Queen, was not finished by the end of January as I’d originally planned. On the other hand I’ve got a solid concept — part pirates, part Labyrinth — and strong characters. I just need to tighten the outline and get the writing started. I’m hoping to get the first draft written in the next two weeks. Also it’s getting more complicated the more I outline it, and it may end up being a novella rather than a short story. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but may complicate longer term plans for the story.
• Also: Code Monkey!. This was my NaNoWriMo project for 2009, and I’ve been slowly but surely revising it for public consumption. I had fun writing it back then and the people who’ve read it seem to have enjoyed it. I’ve revised part one, but revisions for part two are going slowly. But getting the revisions done by March 8 is my goal.
• And: Iron Horse Apocalypse. This is my “doomsday-on-a-train” novel, which I wrote for NaNoWriMo in 2008. Another novel that I had a blast writing, and one that I think is fun to read. It’s chock full of anachronisms and cliches, but that’s okay with me. I have plans to self publish this one over the summer, which means it’s in revision as well.
• Aaaaaand finally: The Winds of Patwin County. This is more of a collection of intertwined short stories than a novel. Some of the stories (like “Who Remembers Molly?”) have already been published; most have not (and “The X of Doom” will be one of these stories). I’ve been working on the “Patwin County” mythos for decades, and it fiendishly extends into just about everything I write; I even created a large family tree reflecting all the characters in the various stories, and I have it on my wall in my office. I’m not sure what the ultimate fate of The Winds of Patwin County will be. But it will be published. Oh yes it will.

And that’s it. For now. Here’s hoping that putting these goals online will make me somewhat accountable.

My first print publication, “An Interrupted Nap” (from Shimmer #1), is now online for free on my website. Check it out here.

Current Mood:  accomplished