On the state of the writer... basically, on the mend but still
pookie. And fighting an allergic reaction, to boot. I'm allergic
to a very common additive in skin products, to the point where I've
had to hunt to find things like sunblock; for a while there the only
sunblock I could find that didn't have this additive was a store
brand. The major labels have since re-introduced their traditional
formulations, at least one of them has. But I'm always worried
that I'll find out the hard way that they mixed it back in. In this
case, my lovely and wonderful wife makes up a lotion that helps me
control an entirely different skin disorder, in the eczema class.

She usually puts cortisone cream in the lotion she makes up for me.
Yesterday, I picked up the packages of cortison she'd picked up for
the next batch, because the packaging had changed and I am once bitten,
twice shy. Sure enough, they'd introduced an intensive healing
version of the cortisone cream that contains the additive I'm allergic
to.

So we had to go and hunt down the plain-jane, original formulation
of the cortisone cream. I'm just glad they still had it.

Oy.

Ok, on the publishing front, I got the ebooks for San Angelo and Badlands
up on Nook today. And then I got caught up in Nook's paperback production
setup. I've looked at it before, but it's now similar enough to the
Amazon setup for the print on demand side that I'm probably going to
experiment with it.

After I finish getting up the ebooks on the rest of the retail sites
I'm working through. Basically, there's enough of a difference on
the way Nook Press handles covers for the paperback that I have to
go back and redo my setup for the Badlands paperback. Not a big deal
but I'd rather go ahead and finish the rest of what I was planning
on before I dive into that.

And the writing. The story I'm working on (about 1300 words today)
is called Provisional. It's a relatively near-term sci-fi story, and
apparently there's a part of my mind that's exploring representational
AI in near and far scale human interaction terms.

Basically, think of AI as a natural language compiler/OS, at least in
terms of how such systems would interact with humans. And then go
from there.

Not that that's the story, that's just part of the background that my
mind has been playing with.

No, the story setup for Provisional can be summarized, I think, in this
excerpt:

(excerpt from "Provisional", a work in progress, all rights reserved -mkd)

Problem was, this company, well the family company that owned them, had been
suckered by their own next generation. One of the kids had gone off to school,
then come back with big dreams of what the next gen AI could do for the
family concern.

No big deal, right? They'd been around the block enough to know just what to
do.

That is, give the kid just enough rope, a little project of his own with budget
small enough to make him work for it, turn him loose. Most likely he screws it
up, blows the money on a pile of computers and software out of date before it
came out of the package. At worst, he turns loose a virus that gets caught in
the sandbox the IT crew built around him and melts down his toys.

And who knows, if he actually makes something of it, the family concern comes
out ahead of the game, with the next generation lined up and learning a little
something.

Turns out, they got the worst of both worlds. They got an AI that works just
well enough so they can't justify tearing it out, and just bad enough to make
everyone in the family and the company itself crazy trying to deal with it.

(end excerpt)