Update for the week ending on 08-01-25

I don’t know if that’s what I get for making notes as the week progressed, but it feels like a lot happened this week.

Starting with the writing.

It’s going to be the usual 3 chapters for Mind Your Step, and 3 for The Technician’s Fight. I also write the first chapter of what I call ‘the selection process’ for The Harker Project. This serves to introduce some of the characters, directly and indirectly, by showing how they were selected to attend Harker. They'll all be scheduled after next week’s read and correct.

No chapter for The Tourists because I had to have blood tests done on Tuesday.

Writing adjacent.

The editing, in the form of Read and Corrects happened. The three for The Technician’s Fight, one for Tiranis, and a handful, done off stream, for Stepping Up, in preparation of the book being published in March.

I also finalize the placeholder cover for Mind Your Step which, at this time, is only used for the stream ad thumbnail.

Still Writing Related

The scheduling of the chapter transition for Stepping Wild from it own books to the Dungeon Runner series is completed. At one chapter a day, while the stand along for Stepping Wild is 3 chapters a week ends up meaning that both will end on exactly the same day.

Stepping Up and Breaking Step have been added to the Dungeon Runner exclusive tier.

And I bought and received a new… Well, kind of mouse is the best I can say. It’s a slider mouse. More specifically the Ergo Slider Plus. The reason it to attempt to approach the experience of my Charybdis keyboard no so much in the ergonomic aspect, but in the ‘not having to take my hands off the keyboard’, which I realized is the more impactful aspect to how I work. So that means I need a way to move my cursor without a mouse on the side of the keyboard.

The slider sits under the space bar, so it was to reach with my thumb, which is what I’d use to move a trackball, so I don’t have to relearn anything in that aspect. On major downside is that the mouse buttons are under the slider by a significant distance, and spaced in such a way I need to use the thumb from my right hand to right click. That us not comfortable or ‘instinctive’. I even feel it goes counter to the ergonomic claims since I have to significantly stretch my thumbs to reach them. It was a scroll, which improves the use, but it is also under the slider. Here the issue it tends to cause is that I’ll move the slider as I reach for the scroll, changing my cursor’s position. If it’s enough to move it off the window I am focusing on, then the scroll’s affecting where ever it ended up.

With the main issues being the mouse buttons, I can see resolving that by buying a programmable keyboard, ideally split, and incorporating the mouse buttons within the keyboard layers, the way it was with my Charybdis.

Life Update.

Been on the new sleep schedule for the whole week now and…it happened? That’s about all I can say. I think it’s still early to say it’s working, especially since the tough one will be the night of Friday to Saturday since that’s the one where staying in bed when I wake up in the middle of the night is tough.

The obvious effect is that I no longer have the time to ‘relax’ before starting my pre-writing block. I get up, get coffee going, take care of business and pretty much start working. It means not wasting time on the computer for an hour, but I had established a series of stretching exercises within that time I can’t perform now. I’m old, so that’s definitely something I’ll have to figure out, because I need them if I don’t want to start breaking at the joints.

I saw Fantastic Four: First Steps. It was good. I mean really good. For any fans of the comics, I think you’re going to like it. It’s the movie that feels the most like them, managing to balance the ‘grandiose’ with the sense of family the FF should always embody. They even manage to portray that Johnny is actually clever, instead of purely a hot-head.

That’s basically it.

If you want to pick up an E-Book, check out the shop.

If you have questions, please do not hesitate to ask them. If you want to drop by my stream, that’s on Twitch and Youtube. https://www.twitch.tv/thetigerwrites and www.youtube.com/@TheTigerWrites

Have a good weekend, and see you next week, hopefully