What was the problem? Were the .exe extentions being blocked or something?

Damn, you can take the girl out of tech support, but ...

Connie, no frellin' clue what the problem was, and in fact? The damned hypertext shortcut icon is still there, mocking me with its monkey pants.

I hate the very sight of it. Three of the four most recent additions to the household are Buffynamed (I have the two girls, silvery Buffy and coal black Wil, in my lap as we speak).So I'm looking at them thinking, huh, OK, which one of you little moggie rat bastards tried to fry my stuff? And does it make you less technodweeb than I am?

Hie thee to a back-up format, deborah. I'd accept this as one of those delicate little polite warnings the universe is not always so kind as to give.

Oh, we do; the first two novels are safely backed up onto CD. But the third one, Matty Groves, is going so fast that figuring out what the most recent backup is would be tricky. I started the damned thing five weeks ago and I have 26,000 words and 116 pages.

This is short (continuation on Needfire, just written). Is it too lyrical? I'm hoping not, because it's relevant to who and what Amanda is and has been since birth, and it's also her first sight of Rupert:

---

They led the way, Richard Giles and my mother, and I followed behind. As we moved into the dimly lit bookshop, my steps slowed, faltered, stopped altogether. I stood, ignored by the now more easily conversing adults and ignoring them as well. My head tilted to one side.

There was power in here. There was music, as well. I could hear it, an odd distant thing, a chime, a tone, a deep humming. Something in my head locked on to this, understanding that a visual also was trying to make me see it. Eyes fixed and staring, I emptied myself out until the image and the music came together.

Planets, worlds, dimensions, shuttered and then unshuttered, moving in a huge endless harmonious burst, darkness and shadow and light and all the place in between where the universe walks softly, rubbing together. The images poured in, and the music with it. It came from somewhere in the shop itself, inside this odd dark place with its blind harper hanging over the door, and the voice of eternity whispering from the volumes.

Once, twice, three times, the same note. Three times, the same hum. Always in threes. A phrase came into my mind, watching the firmament wheeling into the vast reaches of forever, for my pleasure and amusement, hearing the triads pouring like cold distant starlight into my witch's ear.

"The music of the spheres."

"What did you say?"

It took me a moment to come back, and a bit longer to realise that I had spoken aloud, and was being answered. I looked up at Richard Giles and, instead, found myself confronting a boy, not very much older than I was.

I haven't said anything about these, deborah, because I've got a mental blind spot about 1st person narrative. I like the immediacy, but sometimes it feels too immediate to me. It's not too lyrical, because all the images are clear, but it a little--dense? Overly rich? Sensory overload? Gah, I can't put it into words that explain I think it's beautiful but maybe overwhelmingly so.

That said, I'm plot's bitch. I enjoy reading other people's descriptions, but I never seem to write anything so rich myself.

I like it. And I'm very glad your computer troubles came up all right.

By the way, did you know there was something that you could buy to install on your computer to safeguard it against cats walking across the keyboard and reformatting your hard drive? (Or baby toddlers getting to it, and banging on the keyboard as though it were a cheap piano, or whatever.) It watches for suspicious patterns of nonsensical clusters of near keys all being pressed at once, and if that happens it freezes up the computer. To regain control, you type "human".

rebecca, I was planning on doing some research and finding one of those things. Enough is enough. I don't mind them farting but paws off the hard drive, damnit!

Connie, I'm totally the opposite; I suck at plot. I differentiate between plot and story, though, which may be peculiar to me. But I'm a storyteller, and for me, the people drive the story and are what make the story interesting. Interesting characters for me will stay interesting, no matter the events. (and I'm not sure that's remotely coherent; it's been a ferwonkety long day)

Also, it is relevant to who Amanda is and becomes; in "Pensioner", she uses the music of the spheres to access Willow in the chaos dimension.

I love immediacy, generally, although I totally agree that you have to be very careful with first person. Mostly, I dislike it because I can see the author's voice in there; writing in first person is unusual for me, but a good exercise.

Oh, Deb, so glad about the remote fix. Bad kitties, bad! But pretty.

I'm a character-person, myself. I can't seem to plot worth a damn, but a fully(or nearly) realized character will pull me along in his/her wake while getting on with whatever comes next. And after that follows. I know no other way.

You're probably right about the Giles and Wyndam-Price age difference. Just Joss' daddy issues surfacing with different characters. I don't think your description is too lyrical at all, since it's first impressions of a young child, and a fey one, at that.

One of the emails awaiting me once Nic remote-fixed the problem was from my agent, Jenn, wanting to know if I'd heard from Ruth (my publisher) about the current MS. What, like I wouldn't tell you? You're my agent.

She also wanted to discuss last night's Buffyep. This was how I knew Jenn was going to be my agent; first time we spoke on the phone, ever, we were winding up the call, it was after four pm her time (she works mostly out of her farmhouse in Connecticut) and said it was great to be able to talk to a real live human being this late on a Friday, because mostly at this point in the week, she just looked at the dead phones and the upcoming weekend and said, Bored Now.

In just that tone of voice.

My sister!