Thursday, March 14, 2013

I'm in Brunei Darasa... Darase... Yeah, so I'm in Brunei

I've been here for a few days now, actually. Since Melissa has been doing essentially nothing in an office (on land) for three weeks, it seemed like a pretty sweet idea to come out. Two days later, she was sent to an offshore rig. Figures. As far as I know, though, she'll be back on and tomorrow, at which time she can commence slapping my sunburn! I'm currently chugging water to try and fend off the 'pain & peels'.

Ok, so after deciding to focus my energies on In Hell, I've gone through another full edit.. plus a quick edit to fix all the dialogue formatting errors I made previously. It had been sitting at around 85K words, but is now either 92K or 95K, depending on which word processor I use to do a word count. I really think it's better than it ever has been! Here's to hoping people actually like/buy the damn thing.

Now, I need to find an editor, commission an artist to make a new cover (I have an older one, but I got a new idea, and DeviantArt looks REALLY promising), and figure out the whole 'self-publishing' bit. As it turns out, I have no idea what the hell I am doing, but it looks like I'll publish through Kindle as well as Smashwords. The latter takes an extra 10% cut, but pushes my book out to itunes, Barns & Nobles, and a few other stores, so I figure it's worth it.

What else... Not a lot going on, really. Brunei is a pretty nice country. The rat population is apparently pretty low (unlike Melaka), a fact which I think can be attributed to the high snake population. I haven't seen any snakes yet, mind you, but they're out there, waiting. Anyway, Brunei appears to be a cool mix of actual jungle and well-developed areas, though it is not without its hiccups. For instance, in 'Roomz', the hotel Mel and I stayed at when I first arrived, I looked down while dressing to see a cockroach on my hip. I don't consider myself to be too girly or too manly (I figure I'm pretty balanced, aside from my love of bubble baths), but holy shit, did I freak out. I am NOT a fan of motherfucking cockroaches. He was lucky to survive the encounter, and I'm lucky I didn't try to run away through the sliding glass door beside me.

Oh, so... one thing I haven't mentioned previously is what has struck me as the biggest different between Asia and the US: drainage systems. In the US, it's all mostly closed off. You don't see it, and you don't smell it. But here, all the drains are covered either with grating, holey cement, or absolutely nothing. As a result, you see and DEFINITELY smell it. Also, if you're not careful, you'll fall into it and snap an ankle, pass out, get robbed while unconscious, lay there until rescued, get gangrene in your foot due to the nasty shit in that ditch, and lose the whole leg. After that, it's anybody's ballgame, except yours.

Welp, I'm out of stuff to say. Bye!