US Army Retired

US Army Retired

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Oops and Yeah

While revising Waltzing in preparation for publishing it on Kindle, Nook and lulu.com, I tried to find a picture from the cult that I remembered. It was a stylized angel with a ring of seven stars above its head.

Well, in my search, I came across a website that the search engine indicated had pictures of the cult I sought. My anti-virus software indicated the site was safe. So, I clicked on the link and found the site blazing with a fiery icon claimed it had been hacked!!! I instantly backed out and went on to try another. Why worry? I had Windows Defender on, the Windows firewall was enabled and my ISP had provided me with an anti-virus program that was updated on an almost daily basis. What could possibly happen?

"Warning! Your computer has been infected with a virus!"

It gave me a link to software that would instantly disinfect my computer - for only $60-some. But, because the virus infected my browser, I couldn't get out or even get to my Control Panel to do anything about it.

My computer crashed!

Where was my backup disk?
How could I get it cleaned up?

Well, the backup disk was several months old but I hoped it had kept me from losing a lot. I knew a couple who ran a business selling and repairing PCs. Luckily, they were able to save most of my data files and even sold me a flash drive with a complete backup loaded.

I lost some stuff but managed - thank goodness - to keep all my novels, stories and works-in-progress,

So, back to work.

Wait! What about the status of the novel I had a contract for? Where was that?

I sent an email to my editor and - lo and behold! - he responded and it appeared almost promising. The cover had been assigned to someone and he was awaiting another board review. And, yes, he wanted to see the sequel - after I did a bit of work on it. [Taking a look at it now, it appears to need more than a "bit of work".] And yes, he'd love to see what I've done on my Father Serra trilogy.

So, after an oops - PLEASE KEEP YOUR FILES BACKED UP AND UP-TO-DATE - I managed to get a yeah. Sometimes things happen that get your spirits up. So, keep at it.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the exposing me to this blog. Easy to set up.
    Sometimes I think a typewriter would save hours of work...lost and crashed.But the research ability can't be repleaced, except when you have problems like you did...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh...and there is spellcheck...inacurate as it can bee.

    ReplyDelete