I’d surrender all the club flyers you could shake a stick at for one thing: a PC that works smoothly and fast, and time enough to write.

It’s been rare to have either, let alone both, lately. Yet that is certainly the way I’d most like to spend my time in the evening when my wife and I go to our corners to wind down before sleep. I’m spending a lot more time lately in the evening with my father and my wife, and I love it; but in the late evening hours, I do want more time to write, and a PC that doesn’t hold me back from doing so.

Is that too much to ask?

It’s good to know details about anything; one thing few young writers consider are the details of aging. At what age, for example, is it a good idea and a customary practice for a person to take chondroitin glucosamine? At what age does prune juice become essential to maintaining digestive health?

And does anyone really like prune juice, even when they need it?

For me, a lot of my questions on aging have been answered by caring for my father, who lives with my wife and I. It’s something few people do anymore, but it’s especially useful to a writer.

When I started my latest draft of my novel, I decided to try some flashbacks and flashforwads to get the main cast in front of my readers and all the elements of my story out in front of my readers within the first fifty pages.

It re-energized me initially, but now I wonder if I’m robbing certain scenes of their dramatic power by doing so. After all, if the reader knows Zach is alive to be talking to the police, for example, they know he survived being held hostage by another suspect two days earlier, right?

Can knowing someone survives rob all the dramatic tension out of a scene? Or can a scene that you know the hero survives still keep you on the edge of your seat, if it’s well-told?

These are the things that keep me wondering about the best narrative approach. But at least I don’t need any Accutane to think it through!

With all my PC troubles, my writing time’s been suffering lately; I have enough time for blogging, which brings in much-needed funds, but no time for any novel writing. It’s like someone took thermogenic fat burners to my writing time and burned most of it away.

Trouble is, I’m really full of ideas for my novel right now; but with my laptop as slow as it is and my desktop constantly in for repairs, it’s just hard to find the time.

Of course, I’d have more time to write if I didn’t take time to pray; but my prayer life has to come before my writing life, or the writing I do becomes worthless to me.

I was overjoyed when I received the call last night (and again this morning) that my PC was back from the Geek Squad and could be picked up at any time.

“It has a new motherboard, a new card reader and is running like a dream,” I was told by the enthusiastic Geek.

Then I got it home.

The first sign of trouble was this: my PC, which had great sound when I sent it in over two weeks ago, now recognizes NO sound device as being installed; not my speakers, not my headphones; nothing!

The second sign of trouble was when I received a runtime error when trying to run some of my games; they refuse to play, even after being uninstalled and re-installed.

So I called up 24-hour Geek Squad Support and was told I’d be connected to a techie who could fix things over my internet connection. Nice enough, I supposed.

Thirty minutes goes by; still on hold. At forty-five minutes I lose patience and fire up the 24-hour support software from Geek Squad. Takes ten minutes to get someone on a chat window with me.

And what does she tell me, even as I’m burning up an hour’s worth of minutes on hold, waiting for a live techie to help me?

“Oh, you need to take it back to the store anyway. We can’t help you.”

They couldn’t have told me this fifty anytime cell minutes ago?

So during all that time on hold, I got curious; I opened the box to see if maybe a wire wasn’t connected that would acknowledge the sound card. Nope, it was attached.

Then I looked more closely at my PC icon and noticed… my card reader’s slots were still invisible!

And right about then, my PC’s video started freakout out and sent my to a blue screen!

What? I realized the truth, then: all the same problems were still there, new motherboard or not.

I can’t say for sure whether my PC has a new motherboard in it, but I can say all the problems that were there are STILL there!

Then I remembered a KEY fact: My extended warranty was scheduled to expire on February 15. I renewed it for a year, though.

My suspicion? Best Buy gambled that I wouldn’t renew it, sent me the broken unit back un-fixed, and hoped to catch me out-of-warranty so they could either charge me for the repair, or force me to buy a new PC.

Heads will roll when I take this thing back to Best Buy Richfield tomorrow: BELIEVE IT! Outer banks foreclosures will be more pleasant!