The helmet hides the ears

More time travel trekkie stuff

Lower tech time travel

...Is listening to the music of your youth...

More time travel pics

This one isn't

Its apparently a real photo

Engage FTL drive

"A pillar of physics - that nothing can go faster than the speed of light - appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories.

Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said today (NZ time) they have clocked neutrinos travelling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity - the famous E (equals) mc2 equation - just doesn't happen..."

The rest of this story here.

In my opinion, this is the greatest discovery of the century (at least, so far!)

You do have to wonder...

... how some types manage to log onto a computer, download a book and write a shitty review, when they lack the brainpower to notice the blindingly obvious.

One craphead complains that 'I can't see why they traveled to the 9th century'

Never mind that the blurb on the website states- ‘Meddlers in Time’ explores the shaping of a parallel earth, by altering events in 9th century England.'

Back to your comic books and Spongebob DVD's!

The latest

6700 downloads!

I like this chap!

Review by: Richard Christopher on May. 31, 2011 :
Time travel/alternate history somewhat in the 'Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court' (or' Crosstime Engineer') vein. Reads like the Mission Diary it's framed as - the writing is promising journeyman work - but for a REALLY interesting mission. The main characters are pretty bloody minded - nukeing a medieval city to get rid of maybe 5% of the population would take a thicker skin than mine, for example. Heinlein's 'Time Enough For Love' is referenced, staying just this side of the homage/fanfic line. Was surprised to find this one offered for free - it's worth paying for. There is certainly worse out there from major publishers. The author might - if he hasn't already - consider submitting to Baen Books, which has published a deal of similarly themed work.

From Smashwords

Future project

A discussion about WW2 lead to the idea that two teams of Meddlers in Time could havc been operating during WW2.

One boosting technology (pro Germany)

One other interfering in politics (anti-Germany)

What one would be my team and why...

Back to editing

Ok, I have re-read MIT after my line edit.

The errors are way down,but there are a few, so here I go again...

MIT country

The New Zealand setting of Jamieson & Associates farm is shown over in my photo blog:

NZ Back Country

The posts under 'The Tora Collection' show the coastal setting of Earth's main portal site.

There are more coming.

Bloody grammar nazis

I have weeded out 99.9% of the typos now and yes, I know that not all of my grammar is not perfect.

I have written much the way the characters would actually speak. Some may not know that military and ex-military do not speak the same as civilians. That is way 'some of the words are not used properly', to quote a reviewer. Tradesmen are the same, to a lesser degree.

Mark Twain used to do this too...

But I have made the concession of not using 'fuck' as every third word, which I would if I was being strictly accurate, along with using a 'civilianized' form of radio procedure.

Back from camping

Bugger!

I mixed two incompatible styles.

My bad.

Back to the never-ending reformat.

(editing is easy)

Moving onward

All four are now line-edited.

Time to get back to writing the next one!

A big Milestone

5000 downloads!

The great line edit progress

I have about two days work left to finished the last of the three books.

The first two have been uploaded to Smashwords, but 'Meddlers in Time' isn't going through the Meatgrinder- it appears to, but the new download doesn't show.

'Out of the frying pan' has made it through and looks good- unless you download the RTF file, which always changes the font sizes (always has) PDF looks good, though and I will download Epub to my ebook reader tonight.

One thing I have learned the hard way. Don't trust Word to sort out your punctuation problems!

UPDATE:

'The Cockatoo River Incident' made it through and 'Meddlers in Time' went through after I stripped all the Word formatting out, buy pasting it onto notebook, then pasting that back to Word. Or so I thought- It failed the criteria for the Premium list as somehow it had tabs in the document- removed 19 of them (I don't know how they got there) and now its fingers crossed...

The all- new Meddlers in Time

I have finally finished the line-editing and with several thousand punctuation errors, a couple of dozen typos sorted and a bit of minor tweaking to sentence structure, MIT is in the waiting list at the meatgrinder.

The software appears to have a stripped gear or a bone in the works, but no doubt the Smashwords team will get that sorted before too long.

I love reviews like this!

Meddlers in Time - or how to run wild with a time machine?

by Veedubvanfan

This is highly entertaining stuff! It picks up most of the niggles we all make about time travel fiction and leaves the rest of the genre far behind... bit like a stealth bomber overtaking a Robin reliant!! Just how much fun could you have if you knew how to time travel? What do you do when you get bored of just living in luxury on your lottery winnings? How about, just for starters, going to the ninth century England with a few mates, say ten of you altogether, a couple of trucks full of modern weaponry, maybe the odd piece from the future .... and face off against an invading army of Vikings!! Three and half thousand of them.
Take as long as you like on your time jaunts, you can take a year off in the time it takes your other half to make a coffee!...

The full review here

A brave new world

In the dark alleyways of publishing, an author uprising is brewing against Big Publishing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about revolution lately thanks to the events unfolding in North Africa.

My wife, Lesleyann, has friends in Egypt, and they’ve kept us up to date via email. Their dispatches alternate between fear, uncertainty, optimism and celebration.

Revolutions are an awkward and messy business. They represent the end of one paradigm and the beginning of the next. While the root causes can trace back decades, when the uprising arrives it can occur with alarming rapidity...

Read the whole article here

A good day

Another review and a donation from a happy reader!

Mark C- you will get your wish when I finish the 35th Century story- I intend to put it out as a full-length novel, by tying the novella together.

Cheers!

Research

Time-travelling trillionaires can't always be off having adventures, so I'm doing a little research on how idle moneyed folks used to live.

Especially slightly eccentric ones.

One thing I have learnt- if you want to write, it helps to read a LOT!

The Hair Shirt

Three books for a total of 265,000 works to line edit.

It's going to take a month or two. I have finally learnt that slow is the only way.

I'm getting lots of minor punctuation and formatting screw-ups, thanks to upping the font size and enabling the mark-up. Typos or 'wrong words' that don't get picked up on the spell check are running at about one every eight pages. I'm doing a few minor wording changes too, as I sometimes slip into 'Yoda" mode when writing I am.

Those wondering why I don't pay somebody are probably not from New Zealand, where we do it ourselves-at least for the first couple of times ;-)

Line editing

Again.

This time I have the 'show formatting' setting on.

Painful, but I do want to get this right.

Eventualy

Another Review- thanks Mark C!

Review by: Mark C on Feb. 11, 2011 :
I have read all three books now and felt it was time to come back and add a review for each. I'll start with the first book.

There is no doubt that the book could use the finer editorial touches the more poular authors receive, but for a self-published first book - well done! It takes awhile to get used to the NZ references (especially from us Canadians!), but using a Kindle allows the reader to look up unfamiliar words.

Yes, the storyline was basic, but it was also thoughtful and certainly very detailed - perhaps a little overboard even for us "A" personality types. I did very much enjoy the premise and the characters. The next two books add to the character's backgrounds and development.

I would have enjoyed some more adversarial aspects in this book, but you get some rewards if you move on to books 2 & 3. Keep up the good work Wayne, I'm looking forward to the 4th book!

Ranking

In the Smashwords fiction section (Long) Meddlers in Time is 162/17010

I'm in the top 1% of downloads!

Acronyms

If you are not ex-military or a military enthusiast, you may find the glossary at the back of the book useful!

I DO use a lot of them, being ex-military and an engineer and they are essential, as when your characters are ex or serving military you are going to get a lot of them in conversation.

I would also point out that if I used the EXACT language of such people, my word count would have been increased by about 25%- all Anglo-Saxon colloquialisms ;-)

I left in enough to get the flavour, but removed the rest, as they added little to the actual story!

Praise helps get new books written

THREE 'Favorite Author' ratings on Smashwords, now!

More reviews in

Thanks to Alex Kienle for the kind reviews for all three books- these are gold to a new author!

Whats coming?

One word-

STEAMPUNK

(once I finish the 35th century tales)

Progress

I'm way behind where I hoped to be- only 5% of the next MIT written.

One of my advisors on all things military keeps throwing me more 'essential reading'- usually exactly what I need for the bit I'm working on!

So while an end product is delayed, I'm hopeful you will find the next book all the better for the wait.

Going back to the first book, my brother had asked if I had read Twain's 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'

Having just read it, I understand the question.

There are more than a few parallels- and all by co-incidence.

I'm willing to accept that great minds think alike- and Twain was probably as much a scoundrel as myself ;-)

Migear ebook reader update

The 'cheap TFT LCD screen' is a plus when out camping and wanting to read at night.

No need for a lamp that attracts moths and blood-suckers for miles! The screen back lighting lets you read in the dark.

With the back lighting turned down to the lowest setting, I'm getting 6-7 hours reading between charges. next step will be to get a solar-powered charger.