I’ve been on a new author kick lately after finally finishing the Dark Tower series and reading some of Dean Koontz’s newest stuff (The Husband was really good). Over the past couple weeks I’ve read the first four novels in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson. If you haven’t read any of his stuff, you should check out The Tomb and see what you think. He has a really unique blend of horror and action/adventure writing that actually works very well. The premise of the series is that there is this “repairman” who fixes problems that you might not be able to fix with conventional methods. That premise is enough to get me started on the first book, but Jack’s increasingly paranoid personality and his incredible run of bad luck is what keeps me reading. I’m on book five (Hosts) now, and I actually enjoyed the one right before this (All the Rage) the best so far. The scene where he is driving along and has a case of chemically-induced road rage had me rolling on the floor laughing. Good stuff, I promise.
On a completely unrelated note, I’m writing up this post using Windows Live Writer. The Web site boasts that this product will make it easier to produce compelling blog posts, which is good, since my first two were rather boring. It’s actually really neat software so far: no lag while I’m typing, and it seems to work with all different types of blogging services. Plus, I found a nice extension for Firefox that will make my life a lot easier.
Cool stuff? You can add your ping mechanism to Technorati from the Tools, Preferences tab. It doesn’t look like you can do that from WordPress, though they promise to take care of that for you. Control-K will add a hyperlink, just like in Word or Powerpoint. No lag when typing entries. The extension I mentioned above. Nice interface for adding links, pictures, tags, and maps. I’m fairly impressed!
Drawbacks? So far, I don’t see any way to add new categories from the software, which is a pain for new bloggers like me. PC only; ain’t gonna work on a Mac. Also, it seems to have a problem displaying certain formatting conventions, like my 100 Ways posting looks really messed up in this interface. The software is still in Beta, though, and hopefully this won’t be a perpetual Beta like Google’s stuff. It’s worth the few bugs though just not to have that server lag on every word I type. I mean AJAX is great and all, but come on, man!
Here’s a picture of the interface:
