1. Writer Greg Halvorson had his laptop and the unfinished novel saved on it stolen from his car. “You’ve gotta have some cojones to do that,” Halvorson said. “Because if I would’ve caught them, I would’ve just gone football kickoff on them.”
It is not reported what kind of novel Halvorson was working on.
2. In Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a crime writer has been indicted for possession of firearms without a valid license. The writer is working on a book about the murder of another writer and has declared his support for (I assume for the innocence of) the convicted murderer.
3. The Democratic National Convention is in Denver this week, and the city’s drug panel has asked the police to ignore anyone carry a bit of weed with them during the convention. Denver has recently voted to relax restrictions on marijuana use, perhaps in a bid to win favor with the DNC convention committee. Denver police said the drug panel could keep their ideas to themselves.
I have to sympathize somewhat with Halvorson. I lost a few chapters of the first version of Blood and Judgment when my laptop crashed some years back.
But seriously, you gotta back up. Even then I generally backed up, but I’d only written a few chapters at that point, and hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
And that was before flash drives became common. As easy as a flash drive is to use, I don’t understand how any writer can skip daily (or more frequent) back-ups.
The Halvorson loss is heartbreaking. But, like Lars said, it isn’t difficult to back a document up. Heck, you could just upload it to Gmail.
Regarding the pot use, I reviewed Moby’s Area One festival when it stopped in Denver in 2001 and I honestly think I was just about one of the only people at the festival who wasn’t lit-up. I asked a police officer why they didn’t bust for marijuana, and he said it was an officer-safety risk. Afterwards, there were vendors selling bongs and the like on the sidewalk outside the stadium. Perhaps Denver’s a little easy on the “soft” drugs all the time and not just when a political convention rolls into town.
Yes, I think they are a little easy on the soft drugs. Maybe the air too thin for some up there.
I think the funniest part of the Halvorson story is what they quote him saying. I chuckle at his slang. Of course, having a laptop stolen is rotten.