I’m accustomed to working on a desktop computer, but my PC still isn’t back from Best Buy… and may never be again since they’ve become real asses about welching on their no-lemon policy. I’m more committed than ever to building my next desktop system myself, from high-quality parts, not this bargain-basement crap Acer and Best Buy conspire on.

Anyway, I now have a current laptop, thanks to my Web page creation side-gig, and I love it; aside from the graphics, it matches the specs of my MIA desktop, or improves on them. However, it’s troublesome adjusting to the keyboard layout and the hinky touchpad mouse. I’ve pretty much disposed of the touchpad in favor of a USB mouse and am tempted to add in a USB keyboard as well. I will probably do that as soon as I get my desk put together, since I’ll then have room for the keyboard. At least I’m not laying on glass tile in the meantime; my floor at least has cozy carpet on it.

Other than that, however, everything about this laptop is awesome. And it’s not an Acer, thank God! It’s an Asus T60!

But I still miss my desktop.

It had to happen eventually; it was a title too good to mess with.

I revealed on my blog some time ago that the title for my supernatural murder mystery dramedy was Thirty Minutes Or Less: A Pizza Delivery Mystery. I worried about making it public, but I also knew it was rather obvious and if I didn’t move quickly, someone else would think of it, too, before too long.

And, as predictably as life insurance quotes, that is exactly what has happened; I was reading Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood blog and found out some big shot Hollywood type is prepping a comedy called, you guessed it, 30 Minutes or Less, centering around “the misadventures of a hapless pizza delivery guy.”

Well, at least it’s not a pizza delivery guy accused of murder and haunted by a victim he didn’t kill.

Or, more probably… it’s not until they read this post, right? The trick is to aim the gun carefully so you are sure to shoot yourself in the foot… and not a more vital organ. Ugh.

On their day off, some folks like to puff on those trendy new electronic cigarettes. Not me; I’m not a smoker. No, instead, I like to find time to write… or read, as inspiration to get back to writing more on my novel.

Believe it or not, I’m contemplating a 3.0 start on my novel, not because of losing my progress (yay!) but this time because I’m rethinking the way I’m rolling out the narrative; while it helped get me past my writer’s block on the novel after I lost my first draft to a crashed hard drive over a year ago, I now think that the “flash forward and tell a third of the novel in flashback” approach may not be the right take, from a dramatic standpoint.

I mean, look, my protagonist is being haunted by a murder victim he is accused of murdering, but whom he did not kill. The victim’s ghost knows this, but proving it to law enforcement? That’s another matter.

While starting the novel at a point where he’s captured and interrogated by the local and state police may be a great way to introduce all my plot elements quickly (including the fact that he’s being haunted by a murder victim he discovered), I simply can’t imagine him confessing to ANYONE that he’s being haunted, and then being allowed to go free, even if a guiltier suspect walks into the police station and confesses to the crime. It’s just too much of a stretch of credibility, even for a light-hearted murder mystery dramedy.