Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Hal 5 progress

Words written in the past two weeks: 0
Tiled floors jackhammered up: 2
Contract programming jobs completed: 2

I'm currently contemplating the laying of 60 sq/m of tiles. Kitchen, PC area, entrance and two hallways. I've also taken on another programming job.

Re the tiles, we'd just about decided on a 450x450 marble-look tile, layed square, which is the easiest way to go. However, all along I've had a hankering for a picture-frame effect. This is where you lay one row of half-tiles all around the edge of the room, then put down a thin decorative strip (optional), and then lay all the tiles in the middle of this frame on the diagonal.

It's at least double the amount of work, the decorative border will add about 30% to the cost of the job, but it looks very special when done right. On the plus side, I'm saving over $2000 by doing all the work myself, and I've successfully laid a large area of tiles before now so I'm happy I can handle it.

Anyway, if you don't see many writing updates, that's the reason ..

Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)

6 comments:

Mary O. Paddock said...

It's nice to see that real life gets in the way for you too, Simon.

What a job you've elected yourself to do, though. Ceramic tiling is not easy (My dad used to be a renovations contractor).

Best of luck!

Simon Haynes said...

I just posted pics of the job on my LJ:

http://halspacejock.livejournal.com/115964.html

Steve said...

Simon, tonight I stumbled on yWriter 5. Sheer genius.

MS Word is just god-awful for creativity. Thanks for rescuing us.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on your work!

Ev

Simon Haynes said...

Thanks - glad you like yWriter!

Anonymous said...

Oh you are self-renovating? You might want to get a professional in for that. Just wanted to drop by and let you know I read your piece on self-publishing at your website. And this sentence made me laugh and laugh, "First, agents and publishers will sign you up if your book is good enough." You must live in a whole different universe than the rest of us. Thanks for the giggle.

Simon Haynes said...

Let me say the same thing another way: if your work isn't good enough, you'll have a much harder time finding a legit agent and/or publisher to sign you up.

Only the top five percent have any chance at all. If you're not in the top five percent, you need to get there. That's the thrust of my article.

How to judge whether any work is in the top five percent is very difficult, first because it's subjective, and second because it varies from agent to agent and publisher to publisher. That's why it's essential to query widely.