One of the perks of the writing profession is that it has virtually no hardware requirements. My friends in the 3D animation or video and photography fields have to spend money on powerful rigs with lots of fast storage, but I work with text. Everything I’ve ever written, a dozen novels and as many novellas and short stories, could probably fit on two or three of the old 1.44MB floppy disks if I saved everything in plain text.
My entire computing life fits onto a 2017 MacBook Air with the base 128GB storage, and I’ve only filled a quarter of even that modest storage. (I only use the essential apps I need for work—Scrivener, Word, and web and email because I can’t take those off without breaking the OS.) There’s nothing on this machine that isn’t needed for putting words down and editing them later. All my pictures and non-essential data are saved in the cloud, so I don’t need a lot of local storage. The processor in the MBA is a few generations behind, but I don’t need a ton of horsepower to run a word processor, and I picked the old model over a newer one because of the vastly superior keyboard and better battery life.
The external 27” display is there for ergonomics, because looking down at a 13” screen all day gives me a literal pain in the neck, and my eyesight is going downhill as I get older. But whenever I need to take my work with me, all I have to do is disconnect the laptop and stick it into a bag. All the benefits of a desktop, but with the added ability to take everything on the road without having to worry about keeping stuff in sync.
Paring my electronics use down to just a handful of single-use devices has done wonders for my productive workflow. It’s amazing how much fluff you can cut from your setup once you focus on the essentials and ruthlessly drop everything else. I have a blog post in mind for those friends of mine who have expressed curiosity about my recent ditching of social media and technology distractions, but that one will have to wait until I have turned in this novel.
Hey Marko,
Sorry for posting this here but I couldn’t find any soc media contacts for you or an email address. I was doing a re-read of Frontlines today, got to book 6 and noticed that there’s been a 3 year jump from book 5, and yet on page 36, our main character talks about *being something for only a year* when if it has been 3 years since book 5 he would have been *that thing* for more than 3 years by this point, and they JUST discussed mandatory time-in-service req’s for, er, *progression in that thing*. Sorry I tried to make it as spoiler free as possible, just thought I’d share the error. (My phones kindle app says its page 36 of 293). Please delete if I’m wrong or it’s too spoilery!
Love your work, Palladium wars is a nice change in world and character but I don’t think anything can beat what you’ve built Frontlines into!
Regards,
Hayden
Yeah, I changed the time scale halfway through the draft, and didn’t manage to change all the references in the draft. I’ll see about having it changed at least in the Kindle version. (And that’s why it’s important to plan a draft well ahead of time instead of just going by the seat of one’s pants all the way and relying on memory…)
Haha, yeah I noticed after posting this that some scenes with dialogue with the friend of his from the TA who also went SI (trying real hard not to spoil for anyone glancing over this), have him talking about the Mars stuff happening 2 years ago, where at other points (specifically I believe with halley) he references Mars as 3 years ago (which lines up with the 18 months doing that thing at that place followed by the multiple times doing the other thing at the other place which should total 3 years). No worries, not trying to nit-pick or complain, just trying to help out! Stuff will get through no matter how many eyeballs are on it. Just love your work and this universe and to me, sharing the chronological mix up there might help another kindle reader, maybe someone new to the series, to not get confused about timelines or anything.
Been a fan since about two weeks after Frontlines 1 went on amazon. These books have helped me escape the world through some very difficult life events. So thank you, and please keep providing us with these works of art that allow us to explore different worlds and escape from some of the grim realities of our own.
I just started reading your Frontline series to my reading blind father.
Unfortunately we’ve had to put it on hold because his health went downhill recently and he’s had to check in to a medical facility via doctor’s orders, but hopefully we’ll be able to pick Frontline back up just as soon as he’s able to come home.
As his daughter, I usually used to steer clear of this type of story, but as I continue to read many books to him, I’m finding that I actually like these stories.
We did manage to read and finish “Aftershocks” prior to his health decline and we both really enjoyed it.
Thank you for helping my father with his pain by distraction and thank you for peaking my interest in a whole different experience.
Sincerely,
Brittany McDonald on behalf of my father, Alan
Thank you for the kind words. I’m glad I could help in some way to make your father’s life a little easier. I’ve sent an email to the address associated with your comment, so please make sure it didn’t go into a spam folder.
Is that novel Orders of Battle? Will it get squeezed into 2020? So looking forward to 2 books from you this year, both are on my list of favorite author anticipated books to buy (my list is at 16 right now)! Thanks!
Yes, I’ve been told that Orders of Battle will make the 2020 release schedule. It will most definitely be toward the end of the year, though. I’m guessing November or December.
I was seriously thinking about picking up that exact mouse mat to put on a shelf to make a lap desk.
It’s a nice, non-distracting monochrome pattern, and it’s actually useful at times when I do research.