Here goes…

Paddytum, by Tricia Heighway

Every once in a while, you read a book that just sits entirely right in your brain. It fits, it’s comfortable, it makes itself at home and weaves its way into your psyche. Paddytum, the début novel by Tricia Heighway, is just such a book. I finished reading it last evening, and I was sorry it had ended. It was a sheer and utter delight.

Paddytum is the story of man who is rudely awakened from his dreary existence by his stuffed bear, who tells him in no uncertain terms that he’s wasting his life and had better shape up if he doesn’t want to end up a corpse before he’s even dead. More than that I’ll not tell you, as the rest of the book is as whimsical and engaging as the premise. It’s also touching, heartfelt, silly at times, and incredibly funny. Oh, and there’s that supernatural stuff, too. Not to mention a mystery.

I have the great good fortune to know Tricia Heighway. She and I both joined the Protagonize.com community fairly early in its evolution, and we, along with a fair-to-decent number of other writers, all jumped in and helped each other hone our craft. Paddytum began its existence as a story on Protagonize, and everyone who read those first eight chapters clamored for more. We all wanted to know what was going to happen.

Well, we now know. The feedback was plentiful and positive enough that Tricia (or Trish, as we lot calls ‘er) decided to take the next step and turn Paddytum into a novel. Unfortunately, she had to remove the story from Protagonize to do it properly; fortunately, I now have a copy of it here by my desk.

Tricia lives in England with her husband, daughter, son, cat, and gerbils. Paddytum is printed by Hirst Publishing and is available to order from their website.

Voices of Reason

The Voices of Reason Project is nearing an auspcious beginning. A rather hectic couple of weeks has kept me from doing as much work on it as I would have liked, but I’m getting back on track. As a matter of fact, I have my first two interviewees roped in.

Yes, you read it right. Two interviewees. I had two creative friends in mind from the very beginning, and when it came right down to it, I simply couldn’t choose between them. So I asked them both. And they both accepted my invitation. So, I shall be writing up some interview questions and emailing them off shortly. I’d like to build a bit of momentum here.

There’s a kind-of-funny story involved with this preliminary activity. You see, even through all my thinking, pondering, reflecting, and finally emailing, it didn’t strike me until earlier today that my two interviewees, while not related, have the same surname. I don’t even know if they know each other. It’s a bizarre coincidence, and my mind reeled a little bit when I the realization hit me.

So, be on the lookout for interviews with singer/actor/comedian Margot Sampson and photographer Patricia Sampson. They’re two highly creative gals that I’m sure will have a few things to say about their processes and about how creativity works in their worlds.

I’m looking forward to it.

My Little Ubuntu of Joy

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I removed Windows XP from my home computer and have installed Ubuntu. My website was hacked twice, and, despite running virus checkers and malware checkers on my system and finding nothing wrong, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that it was something sinister running on Windows XP that was providing my FTP password to someone, out there, somewhere.

So I decided to install Ubuntu, which is a flavor of the Linux operating system. Not only is Linux run on a significantly smaller percentage of home computers out there; it is also safer by its very nature than Windows XP. Basically, you have to explicitly allow a program to run on your system before it can do its thing. Windows XP is a much more open, trusting system. And it’s everywhere, which makes it the juiciest target for virus and malware creators.

So far, the transition to Ubuntu has been fairly smooth. Getting my wireless network connection working was a bit of a hassle, but beyond that, things are working well. I’ve had to replace some of my trusty old Windows programs with Linux equivalents, and installing things is not quite as straightforward as it is on Windows XP, but I’m an experienced computer user, and running some programs using a command line window doesn’t bother me at all. As a matter of fact, if I have to do a little bit of digging to find out how to get something to work, I find it a bit of a challenge, and getting a new program to run is all the more satisfying when you’ve had to do a bit of research first.

Also, if I’m really stuck, and there’s no Linux software that works like an essential Windows program, I can run the actual Windows software (most of the time) using the Wine emulator, which is a software layer that allows Windows programs to run under Linux. Quite cool.

My main problem right now is that there is no Linux printer driver for my Lexmark X2330 All-in-One printer/scanner combo. Fortunately, I don’t do a lot of printing, but unfortunately, when I do, I can’t. We do have another computer in the apartment, with a printer attached, but damn, it’s inconvenient to move files from one computer to the other.

So, while I feel my computer is safer now, and functionally I’ve been inconvenienced only a little so far (i.e. not being able to find an exact Linux match for some essential Windows program), I’m really quite liking Ubuntu, and I have no plans to switch back to Windows any time soon.

That’s it for my updates this time around.

Let’s keep it real out there.