Really. Woe, woe is me. Woe.

The computer is still in the hospital. Just been told it will recover (probably) but that all the data has been lost. ALL THE DATA. Yes, this means more than the ph.d. thesis (which I don't have a hard copy of at the moment) and all the photos of the child that are stored digitally. It also means my first attempt at a novel, The Dreadful Cousin, a regency romance that I had been toying of sending off to Mills and Boon. It also means I have lost Going to Hell in a Late Model Ford, though I should have a hard copy of it with lots of notes scribbled all over it and perhaps the forced rewriting of it will do it a world of good. It also means I have lost The Manuscript, which admittedly I could no longer access because I could never remember what password I had used to protect it. There is also a hard copy of the manuscript up to the arrival back in England but completely missing the whole development of Hawk's Nest, the Bower and indeed the kidnapping of Pansy. It was during these passages I realised that I must always have a villain named Bob in anything I write. I have also lost the first short story that gave birth to Nick, probably my second favorite product of my imagination after Slaughter.

Woe, woe is me. Woe.

Guess this could be fate's way of telling me that as I wasn't writing, I really should shelve those ideas of publishing, book tours, Hollywood rights acquisition and appearances on Oprah (okay, I didn't really dream about the last one).