About Susan Kaye

Writer who avoids writing and a foodie who dislikes cooking.

Use Protection, Kids. And Lots of It.

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Susan Kaye

For a while I have been working to arrange a move for my mother. There are lots of moving parts and I’m not all that good at multitasking these days. To keep my sanity, I have been working on a new story. I finally got far enough in and was confident I would keep with it, so started posting the story on Beyond Austen. Captain Wentworth’s Guide to Romance and Travel: Lyme Regis is Persuasion without Louisa Musgrove’s fall from the Cobb. This past week I was in the trenches of packing boxes, paper, tapes, and Sharpie markers. Wednesday is the day I had chosen to post and so a week ago I put the flash drive in my computer to retrieve the post, and, VOILA! The drive was emp-ty.

Not a crumb remains.

A few years ago, I took Laura Hile’s loss of thousands of words in a computer crash as a warning and started keeping all my writing on flash drives. A couple of years after that I starting getting serious about organizing my writing, graphics, and private business. Yes, indeedy, I did.

So much for my trying to be grown-up.

I’m thankful for two things: that I was hip-deep in real life and not focused on my writing, and that it took several days to realize that the aforementioned story wasn’t the only thing on the drive.

I’ve now officially lost one whole novel, two partial–each hovering around 175 pages–several outlines of novel ideas, and countless graphics I had created for this and other blogs, and several book covers.

There were many family photos as well, but I have found them on other drives and online haunts of mine.

I am home now and have signed up for an automatic, online, cloud storage service.

Lessons learnt: exhaustion keeps you from going ballistic when the unthinkable happens, and back up your back ups. And then back it all up again.

Nothing is certain.

Except the Web Gods will exact a price.

Wentworth Wednesday

Posted on February 24, 2016 by Susan Kaye

The title is out of habit. I tried working through Chapter … 19 of Persuasion and creating a WW worth caring about, but could not.

My attitude is the problem. Real Life has been rearing it’s head and getting things squared away there has taken precedence. And it’s February. And a Leap Year, meaning there is another day in February. Luckily, I have been writing. Not the full 1000 words a day, but something.

So, for those of you who are staggering through February, a solution perhaps:

Attitude_Change

Next week I’ll be back from the beach and ready to bring Anne and Frederick together.

Here’s the blurb for the novel I’m working on and will start posting on Friday at Beyond Austen:

Louisa Musgrove approaches her father with a simple scheme: allow his carriage to be taken for an overnight outing to Lyme Regis, a sea-side village seventeen miles from home. With supreme confidence in the rightness of her cause, she awaits his consent. When he refuses, citing bad weather, she is determined to overcome his objections. After she is sent to her room for being disrespectful, Charles Musgrove takes up the cause, only he is smart enough to find other means of transportation.

In this Persuasion Alteration, only Charles and Mary, and Frederick and Anne go to Lyme. There is no Louisa to fall from the Cobb, but there is a more charming Mr Elliot with which to contend. Anne Elliot still shows her superiority when called upon. The only questions is: will Frederick Wentworth see it and act this time?

Friday.