Backups, Critiques, Facebook, and Grass Skirts

Imagine losing twenty-five years of financial records. Or even worse, five years of manuscripts.

I had a week of horror wondering if nothing remained of my computer hard drive. Farm records, emails, photos, music, and *heart thumping horror* my manuscripts. Yes, I had backup. In fact, I had three, one more than I thought I had. In my heart, I knew nothing would be lost. But wondering, speculating about the prospect of losing everything to the wrath of God jangled my nerves.

All is back to normal...relatively. After updating, sorting, slotting, and using words that would rate the stink eye from my mom, my records and manuscripts are back in place. There is still some warfare continuing between my preferred browser (Google Chrome/blogger) and my internet security program (Norton). But I’m not losing any sleep over it.

My advice? Use redundant backups. Online as well as an external drive. I use Carbonite Mirror Image, Norton, and Dell for storage. Seagate is my external drive. If you don’t have backups, for the love of Pete get them. Now. Set them up and then you can forget about them.

At least until you’re working on the sequel to your book and something pops, the screen goes dark and the computer starts beeping.

Critiques. My writers critique site, Unicorn Bell has new blood, fresh eyes. Check out the additions to our team:

• Matthew Keith
• Misha Gericke
• Kristin Smith
• Beth Fred

Our blog is the crucible of critique, a writer’s realm with crits, information, book reviews, book tours/spotlights, and bloghops. This week the query monster has taken over the site.

In line with our new faces, we now have a Facebook page. Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and mosey on over.

Want a good laugh? Check out the duel between our Alex, Blogateer Extraordinaire, Cavanaugh 

and Mark, Looking Good in a Grass Skirt, Koopmans at Father Dragon's house.

And how about this tidbit from the Ninja Captain: From February 4 – 10, CassaFire will be 99 cents at Amazon Kindle, Amazon UK, and his publisher’s site. 

“This sequel to Cavanaugh's first novel, CassaStar, delivers on the promise of its predecessor, combining military action sequences and political intrigue with strong, memorable characters. Reminiscent of the action-driven stories of Robert A. Heinlein's early fiction…” - Library Journal

Check out CassaFire. And MK's legs