Hacked: update

After much wrangling with servers and ftp last night, Starwalker is up and running, at least on the surface. It’s not completely healed, however.

The WordPress user database was trashed, and I can’t log in to the back end right now. It’s going to take some more work before I can actually get control of the site again.

The best part is, I can’t even comment on my own blog to tell anyone what’s going on. I always did put comments up when I was logged in and comments are locked unless I approve the commenter. The login is gone and I can’t approve my own comment, so I can’t update anything on there. Security ftw!

So I’m going to be heading home early today to try to sort it all out, and get the damned thing up and running again. In the meantime, I’m going to keep ploughing on at work and hope that the hackers don’t wake up and undo everything I fixed last night.

Wish me luck and coffee!

Hacked

To say that I have not had the best day today would be an understatement. After a frustrating and stressful start to my day at work, heavily laced with exhaustion and not-quite-strong-enough coffee, I  got a message from one of my lovely Starwalker readers. I also got one from another reader when I got home.

Now, let me be clear. I love to get messages from my readers. It makes me a happy little writer… usually. When they are telling me that my website has been hacked, however, that is less fun.

I went to the Stawalker site feeling slightly ill and it was downhill from there. It was definitely hacked, showing a splashpage definitely nothing to do with me. I won’t say who did it or give you one of their sick little ‘look at all the sites we’ve defaced! Aren’t we cool!’ links, because the little fuckers shouldn’t have any more publicity than they’ve already had from me.

It’s not funny and it’s not clever. It’s malicious, it serves no purpose except to fuck up my day, and I hope they’re happy with themselves. Or go die in a fire; one of those.

The worst part was that I couldn’t do anything about it while I was at work. I couldn’t get into the back end of the WordPress installation at all (it didn’t exist, just their damned splashscreen) and the rest I can only access at home. There was no way for me to know how bad the damage was – had they completely wiped out the WordPress installation? Screwed over the database? Hacked a year and half’s worth of work to pieces, or just pasted on an annoying front end?

I had to wait until I could get home to investigate, and today was one of those days where I couldn’t leave early. So I was stressed out all afternoon, not knowing just how much of it is wrecked.

I got home to good and bad news. The WordPress installation was still there, just majorly hacked and disabled. I’m currently going through the painful process of re-uploading all the files to resurrect it properly. All the config is intact, and, blessedly, the database is fine. Everything seems to be there; I just have to dig it out. It’s painstaking but coming along.

The type of damage done doesn’t seem to be a WordPress hack, but a hack on the ftp account to my server. Which is worrying, considering that I haven’t used it in weeks, and don’t store those details in any browser histories. My web hosts seem sure that the leak came from my side but I am dubious; it sounds like ass-covering to me.

Grah. So now I’m spending my evening fighting with ftp to get the site up and running again. I’m partway there; with luck, I’ll get it finished in the next hour or so. Then I’ll be backing everything up (I don’t do this enough, I know, I know).

I’ll be doing some more security upgrades over the next little while. Fingers crossed, this shit won’t happen again. I certainly don’t need another day like today. I don’t think anyone does!

For my readers: thank you for your patience. I will hopefully get this week’s post up tomorrow night.

Hackers: I have nothing to say to you. Begone.

Monetising: Adverts

As a second part to my attempts to make a little out of my writing, I’ve branched out into hosting advertising spaces on my websites.

Thanks to the fabulous Project Wonderful, this is incredibly easy. Just a short time spent setting up the account on their website, a wait while they confirm the site is suitable, and then configuring the ad spaces (doesn’t take long and is very user-friendly), I now have ad boxes up on Starwalker and this blog right here.

The ad boxes are completely controllable, and I’ve only added one or two to each site; it’s counter-productive to have too many, and I hate cluttered websites. I think I’ve reached my limit in the amount of things I want to add to my sidebars!

The ads have been up for less than two weeks and already I’m seeing returns. Nothing huge – the ad payments are done in cents (and sometimes fractions of cents) – but it will all build up in time. For relatively little effort and no monetary outlay at all, it’s definitely worth it! PJ handle all the complex stuff for me; all I have to do is let it run and watch the cents tick upwards.

Definitely not enough to make a living from, but if I ever get my own adverts sorted out, I’ll be able to afford to display them through PJ using only my ad revenue. Handy!

Monetising: Donations

This subject has been on my list of things to sort out for a long time. Finally, I’m getting around to doing something about it.

Let me make one thing clear: I give my writing away for free happily and willingly, and always intend to do so to some extent. In truth, I am reluctant to ask for money on something I am offering for free.

However, there are people who would happily give money if the option was there. For e-book versions, for merchandise, and even just for visiting the website.

The first two of those options involve a lot of work (which is in progress!), but the latter is easy to set up. It’s also the trickiest for me to want to do. It seems cheeky to me! But I’ve come across a few discussions on this topic over the past months and it seems that I’m in the minority in that regard.

It’s not a case of asking for money; it’s giving the option to those who wish to contribute. Some readers like to be able to support the work they enjoy, and some writers like to support their fellow artists. The more I think about it, the more okay I am with that. If I had the funds, I might even do the same myself.

So this week, I bit the bullet and sorted out donations for my websites. It was actually shockingly easy! (Paypal really have made it a painless process – well done you guys!) There’s now a ‘Donate’ button in the sidebar on the Apocalypse Blog, Starwalker, and this site (look right, everyone!). Hopefully unobtrusive and inoffensive.

So, the avenue is now open. I don’t demand or expect anything, and if I’m honest, I’m still a little nervous about the whole thing (will people get annoyed and leave? will they suspect it’s the start of rabid commercialisation?). But let’s see how it goes!

My first step towards making money from the writing I do purely for the joy of it. Next: actually selling things to people! (Uh oh, I feel there’s a slippery slope coming!)

Starwalker on Top Web Fiction

So many updates lately! However will you all cope? (Assuming there are still people reading this, and you haven’t all given up on me in exasperation. Not that I would blame you.)

I was pointed towards the Top Web Fiction site by a Starwalker reader recently (thank you, kind reader!). I don’t normally check it, mostly because I don’t have a lot of time for that kind of thing recently*. When my kind reader emailed me, Starwalker was number 16 or 17. Out of all the superb worldwide web fiction listed on the Web Fiction Guide! That’s a hell of a complement.

I checked today, and Starwalker is up to number 9!!! On the Science Fiction listing, it’s number 3!

Wow. Just, wow. I am stunned, and so happy. This is unexpected. It’s just one of the many, many reasons I write, and why I love my readers.

I want to say a big, huge, extraordinary thank you to everyone who voted. I’m am honoured by your support.

* Note: I’m trying to do better at that stuff these days. Honest I am.

Marching on

Wow, it’s been three months since I updated here. How did that happen? So much has happened, but I haven’t had the mental time or energy to put together words for this blog.

There’s a lot I want to write about here. Perhaps I’ll try to do it  in bite-sized pieces and update more often, and then there will be stuff on here again! How awesome will that be?

Some explanations are in order. Work has been crazy: we had a huge deadline and I was running around like a lunatic to make sure we met it. My work love me. My team are great. Sometimes, it’s just all so hard. We’ve learned some lessons and put some things in place to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. No more deadline for a few months, I can breathe for now.

Our state here in Australia flooded in January. It was a nightmare for a couple of weeks; now it’s merely inconvenient at times. It kicked everything out of whack, but it’s all spinning back into place now. Slowly. And a bit dizzy.

My health has not been great. The chronic fatigue is kicking my ass, and the meds that my doctor has been prescribing aren’t helping. I have to go back to him and try something else. I am fed up of having this thing drag at me all the time.

Starwalker is hard work. The characters are in a tough place (being captured my space pirates will do that) and I’m reworking a lot of stuff that I wrote back in November to be more how I really want it to be. There are a lot of balls to keep in the air – and in my head – so it’s definitely a challenge.

Not that it’s not fun – it is and I still love it to bits! But lately, it has been a struggle to pull together the wherewithall to give it that shine that I want. I have the best readers, though, and they are very patient with me. I’ve had to miss several weeks so far this year, something that I despise doing, but I’ve had nothing but support from them. Thanks, to everyone out there.

It’s March and things are finally calming down for me. I’m starting to grab hold of my to-do list and shake it to see what falls loose. I’m getting there, slowly, and looking forward to some time off next month.

Hopefully, soon, I can do a more up-beat post that has less whining about my life in it. Who knows, right?

Retrospective: 2010

2010 has been a strange year. Wonderful and frustating, with progress both backwards and forwards. I haven’t done many things that I had hoped and planned to do, but it hasn’t all been disappointment.

Achieved this year:

• Got Starwalker up and running, and completed Book 1. When I started it, I had no idea how much actual story I had to play with. I had 12 ‘chapters’ planned out and had only got through 6 when the 100,000-word mark arrived. The arc worked out nicely, so that became Book 1. Book 2 looks like it’ll only take up the next 2 planned ‘chapters’ (!!!), so it seems that I’ve got lots of material to play with for that particular story. Which means: yes, there will be a Book 3.
• Started some Starwalker shorts. Got some good ideas lined up here and the groundwork done. Some previews are available – now all I need to do is go back and finish them all off. Ahem.
• NaNoWriMo – got my 50,000 words done, and did some bewildering ML-stuff at the same time. My co-ML and I had some ambitious plans, added a few things in on the fly, and had a fantastic time. It was bigger and better than 2009, and it all went swimmingly. I was left feeling awesome, and completely drained.
• Creative Writing Group is still going strong. We had a hiccup in the middle of the year when our venue decided it couldn’t host us any more, but now we have a new home and it’s all looking good.

Things I didn’t manage:

• Posting Starwalker three times a week. I dropped it to one post a week to give myself a bit of a breather, and haven’t managed to get back up to three posts a week. Even with a pile of NaNo material to use, editing and sorting out the posts in time to get them up three times a week just hasn’t happened.
• Apocalypse Blog shorts. I promised to do them. I have half of one written, but just haven’t got back to it in months. I am disappointed by this, and I do hope to get back to it at some point. To everyone who has been waiting for them: I’m sorry. It is still on my list. Really sorry. 🙁
• AB e-books. I am most of the way through editing the first ‘book’ of AB, but various other commitments have got in the way. I will have to attack this again soon.
• Merchandise. My potential avenue for this is struggling to get off the ground, and it hasn’t happened. Delayed but not forgotten or given up on.
• Getting business cards and doing more self-marketing. I had hoped to put myself out there a bit more, get some AB/SW t-shirts and go to cons to spread the word some more. Hand out business cards and bookmarks. Still struggling to sort out the graphics/design for these, though. It is still on my list of things to do.
• WorldCon. Work interfered and I had to be here for a major deadline, so I couldn’t go down to the event in Melbourne. Poot.
• Novel edit/submit. Haven’t even picked it up. Part of this has been the weight of webfic stuff I’ve been doing, but it also needs something more. I’m not sure what that ‘something’ is yet, but it is percolating in the back of my brain. Once I find that elusive missing piece, I will go back to it, but it’s not something that can be rushed.
• Other random blogfic. Yeah, didn’t get to this either. Starwalker has sucked up a lot of my creative time this year, and the angel-based blogfic has a lot of prelim work needed before it can start. With my energy levels as they are at the moment, this one won’t get going until SW is well and truly finished!
• More writing tips posts. I haven’t been posting on this blog anywhere near enough, and with nothing like the amount of ‘tips’ posts that I had hoped to do.

Without trying to make excuses, I will offer some explanations. I think the main one has been my health – I simply haven’t been as well this year as I was in 2009. The CFS is becoming more of a problem, and while I’m seeking specialist help, I still haven’t found the meds that will help kick it back out of my way.

It’s like trying to think through treacle, only not as sweet. Exhaustion is a weight on creative thinking, and I’ve had to push hard to get through some weeks and create something entertaining, for me and my readers. I don’t like that the CFS gets in my way, but I also can’t deny it or pretend it isn’t there, as much as I’d like to. Sadly, this isn’t something I can do a lot about – no more than I’m doing already, anyway. Just keep slogging on, I guess.

The other major factor this year is my work. Since my promotion in late 2009, I’ve had to take on the management of a small team with very little preparation or training, and carry it through a number of changes. Everything has changed, from our deadlines, to our format, to our management, to the structure of the entire R&D department, to the company we work for (we got bought out last month). Between picking up all the things that we’ve done previously and making it work with all the new stuff coming at us… it has been stressful. And busy. And crazy. And yes, very distracting.

I’ve had good stuff come up too. I managed to pull together some threads of various plots and characters I’ve been tossing around for a while. I have plans for the Starwalker universe that will take it beyond the story of the ship. There’s the possibility of a whole offshoot into another facet of that world, and that’s exciting. One particular character that I’ve been playing around with for about 10 years now has morphed in just the right way to fit in. And there’s a plotline that almost got started back in 2008 in a different project that I think I can make work in Starry’s world, too. Plus, of course, there’s the villain shorts that I’ll be working on in the new year, too.

I should probably come up with a name for the universe, to tie all these pieces together. Hmm.

Another couple of ideas have also recently come together, marrying up another long-standing character idea with a previously-separate world concept, with some aspects inspired by other fiction that I’ll mash in for good measure. That one has some background work to go yet, but I managed to get some outline notes down during NaNo (when I was burned out on Starwalker and needed to bulk out my wordcount), and I know I’ve got enough plot for three full story-arcs.

In short: I’m not going to run out of things to write anytime soon.

I’ll post more about my immediate plans in my ‘what I want to do in 2011’ post, which I’m sure will turn up sometime in the next few days. In the meantime… 2010? You were hard work. You weren’t all that I hoped you’d be, but I had high hopes to start with. I achieved some of what I set out to do, and I’m not disappointed with what I ended up with.

Here’s hoping that I can climb a little higher next year.

Monthly write-ins

I had so much great feedback on the NaNoWriMo write-ins this year, and so many people sad to see them stop, that I let myself get talked into running a write-in every month next year.

Clearly, I don’t have enough to do in my life already. 😉 But I’m looking forward to it, and it’s getting lots of interest even though it doesn’t start until January. And hey, maybe I’ll get more of my own writing done!

Things are looking good. I have the Nightowls set to help me edit the first book of Starwalker next year (and I’ll be giving them feedback on their novels, too), and I’m sorting through the stuff I wrote for NaNo this year. Book 2 is fun! Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to get up to date soon.

Anyway, back to the grindstone. Looking forward to next year, stuffed full of writery fun!

Starwalker: have your say!

I’m looking to change things up in Starwalker during Book 2. Things are going to get rocky for the crew – and complicated. There are going to be new characters, and some of the existing ones may well be leaving. (Method of exit is yet to be determined, but it doesn’t necessarily involve dying.)

I’m curious to know what my readers think about the characters, and which members of the crew they would like to see go (if any!). I have plans for most of them and there are some that I won’t get rid of, but I’m not going to tell you which ones they are. I’m curious to know what others think. Tell me. Better yet, tell me why.

I’m also curious to know which characters people most want to stay. I think I can take a stab at one or two of the most popular ‘must never leave’ characters, but always happy to be wrong!

But don’t tell me here! Head on over to my forum and dive into the thread.

Also, keep an eye on the forum, as I will probably be doing more reader polls soon.

Writing like crazy: this year’s NaNoWriMo

I can’t believe it’s nearly the end of November and I haven’t talked about NaNoWriMo yet! I need to get better at updating this blog. Bad me, no biscuit.

This is my fourth year taking part in NaNoWriMo. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s a mad challenge to write 50,000 words in November. It’s the best fun, completely exhausting, and wonderful for ploughing through that project you’ve been putting off all year.

Of course, I crank the pressure up to a hundred by acting as an ML (Municipal Liaison) and organising all the local events and get-togethers. Yes, on top of working full-time, writing 50,000 words, and dealing with my CFS. Yes, I’m nuts.

This year, the turnout has been astounding. Over 950 people in my region for me to look after, and event attendance is up to double what it was last year. It’s all a bit bewildering at times, but we’re making it all work and having a great time doing it. I’ve met so many new people that my ability to retain names is completely retarded, and I caught up with lots of familiar faces from previous NaNos.

My co-ML and I have been ambitious this year, organising prizes and competitions and all kinds of extra stuff for the writers in our region. We’ve had several write-ins every week, all over the city and surrounding areas, and big BBQs to organise.

We even had one write-in on the local trains, travelling around the city, collecting writers as we went and writing like mad. It was hilarious and everyone enjoyed themselves, and I actually got quite a bit written. Definitely one we’ll try again, and I have another idea for a similar roving write-in for next year.

The past few weeks have been a blur of organising, travelling, working, and running events, but it’s all gone great so far! What’s terrifying it that I think we might try to top it next year. At which point I suspect my head might explode.

On the actual writing side, things have been more mixed for me. Due to the crazy schedule I’ve been keeping, I’ve wound up having blitz writing days, and then gaps when I was catching my breath or too tired to form sentences.

I had a pretty clear idea about what I wanted to do this year. The timing actually worked out pretty well for me – I finished the first book of Starwalker early in October, and took a break in the lead-up to the NaNo madness, and then ploughed into Book 2 on 1st November.

But when I got into the meat of the first section of Book 2 (nominally named ‘Slave’), I realised that I hadn’t planned it out anywhere as much as I would have liked. Normally this isn’t a problem – I work a lot of stuff out as I go and see where it all takes me. But with the momentum of NaNo behind me, driving me to up that wordcount, I didn’t have time to stop and ponder. And because the bulk of my writing (in fact, all of it so far) has been done away from an internet connection, I couldn’t stop and research the little details like what star system they are visiting next.

It isn’t going to plan. Just like Book 1, Book 2 has six sections or chapters planned out. I’m almost to 50,ooo words and I haven’t finished the Slave section yet. I had to stop a week or so ago and go back, adding in notes about things I wanted to put in or change. Book 1 was just over 100,000 words.

Yet again, it looks like the story is not taking the shape I thought it would. And, actually, that’s fine. When I realised where it was all going, I took a pause to think about it, and I think it’s all just fine. ‘Slave’ looks like it will end up being the majority of Book 2, along with the section that is due to follow it. Which leaves the remaining four planned sections for Book 3.

Holy crap, there’s going to be a Book 3.

With that decided, I now have lots of scope to go back and fill things out. I will probably end up breaking down ‘Slave’ into several smaller parts, but that’s something I’ll worry about later. Right now, I’m excited to hit the NaNo target, so that I can go back and edit the guts out of what I’ve got. And by ‘edit’, I mean ‘rewrite and expand’. And fill in the details that I had left, like the names of new characters and that star system that I still have to look up.

And, just to be annoying, I heard of a magazine that wants horror scifi stories. Which got my overactive imagination going, and so I’ve been working on that when I get too braindead on the main Starwalker run. The story I’m working on is set in the Starwalker universe and connected to the events in Book 2. Never done horror before, so this is a new endeavour for me.

In all, I am doing okay, and looking forward to December. I have the last two days of November off work, and can’t wait to sleep, recuperate, and come back at it all fresh.