WELL NOW, WASN'T THAT FUN?

Now, treat this is apocryphal, because I'm quoting from memory, but the story goes that by the last 60s, Robert Silverberg had developed a reputation as a pretty gun wordage-for-hire man. If you needed 5000 words of alien invasion story with a twist ending by Tuesday, RS was your man. Critical acclaim wasn't heading his way overmuch, but you know, he was making a living and it was all good.

Then he and his wife went out for dinner one night, and came home to find they didn't have one. A fire had taken the lot, including every piece of work past, present, and future that Silverberg had in his files.

Faced with the loss of his career, Silverberg decided to treat the event as a beginning, rather than an end-- an opportunity to put his mid-level days behind him and write the kind of SF art that he'd been itching for, but had never had the space to try. From that decision came the Silverberg who wrote Thorns, and Tower of Glass, and The Book of Skulls, and well, go ahead and pick your own favourite Silverberg novel of the 70s.

So why am I telling you this? Guess where I've been for the last week. No, go on: guess.

Yup. In Why-didn't-I-back-up-my-hard-drive hell.

Booted up last Friday, ready to roll on all the stuff that needs rolling upon (except Luscious, of course. She's in Brisbane until next weekend. I'll be rolling on her when she gets back) and...... nothing.

No booting. No little Microsoft dooby-doo-doo to welcome me to my desktop. Nowt.

I've lost it all. All my files, all my music, all my writing, all my photos. Everything. The Corpse-Rat King is gone. The 80 or so short stories in progress are gone. The movie script is gone. The final edited draft of Napoleone's Land is gone. 4 years of photography, almost all gone (I've got some of Connor and some of Erin and not a lot of much else). After a week of progressively harder scouring of my disc with no success, my IT people have loaded me up a fresh hard disc, a few basic programs, and what percentage of data they did manage to save.

No, I didn't back up. Yes, I deserve the angst.

I am left with: a previous draft of Napoleone's Land that I discovered while cleaning my office this week. By my best estimates, it's 2 drafts old, minimum. But hey, at least I have it. 6 short stories I had printed out to line edit. Producer Matt's email address.

Onwards and upwards, eh?

NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE ARE THE CONGRATULATIONS!

Typical: spend a week without a computer, and everybody starts having cool days. So:

Big woohoos to Aiden, who turned 14 on the 2nd. An envelope with a ticket in it doesn't look like much of a present, but a night at the Walking With Dinosaurs Live show next week is as close to the perfect gift as we could have given him. And, you know, we got him God of War as well. I'd ask him whether he likes it, but he's too busy playing to talk.

Of course, now he's 14 we'll have to sit down and have that little talk. It's about time, too. Maybe he'll be able to tell me where babies come from....

Talking of which (oh yeah, baby, they gonna call me Mister Segue!) I'm over many moons to welcome Indigo Winter Lindsay to the circus: 4th daughter of my oldest friend Seanie and his lovely wife Terri, who joined us at 2.30 on the morning of the 8th. Remember: boys are icky, horses smell like poo, and dinosaurs rock! Now go ask Daddy for a trust fund.

Soundtrack: Get Shorty, The Soundtrack
Reading: BPRD- The Universal Machine Mignola, Arcudi & Davis

hard+drive+crash aiden birthday seanie birth