Prime Suspect

Why are they cancelling TV shows I like? We just started watching Prime Suspect. I've been recording every episode from the beginning, but we always watched other shows. However with all the repeats right now we decided to give Prime Suspect a try, and we liked it. It is just another cops and robbers show, but it is a little different, a bit of humor, not too stupid. Now they decided to cancel it! Why??? My wife has this theory that it seems they are cancelling shows where women are portrayed as a bit more aggressive, like in this show. She might have something there. Another show we liked last season, Chicago Code, was cancelled. It was one of the better shows in my opinion compared to some of the garbage that never seems to go away anymore. There was a woman police chief. Is it because these shows don't get enough viewers? Or are some people complaining about them? I don't know how they determine how many people are actually watching the show. I don't write in to the networks and tell them what I'm watching. I guess somebody does surveys, but they are never correct or conclusive. I'm reminded of the original Star Trek. After the show was cancelled it was discovered that it had a huge following, but in the meantime the producers had taken down all the props, the performers had taken other jobs, and it was too late to keep it going. Sure, later on we had the New Star Treks and other spinoffs like Deep Space Nine, but in the meantime we lost all those years were we could have enjoyed Leonard Nemoy as Mister Spock, William Shatner as Captain Kirk, and all the other characters we came to love. We are also watching Grim and we like that one. It is also a cop show, but with a difference. There are all kinds of 'monsters' popping up, like werewolves, werepigs, and other creatures from folk legends. An interesting show. I just read it was given the green light for the whole 22 episodes. I wish they'd bring a few good Science Fiction shows comparable to Star Trek. I miss those. V never came back. The Event was cancelled. They were good shows. I'm hoping to see Falling Skies again. It ended last season with a cliffhanger. On other news: I finished doing the final edits on The Xandra, Book Four, Lure of Seduction, to be published in February. I still haven't seen the cover for 'Mark of the Cobra,' which is supposed to be published in January. Not much progress in The Xandra, Book Seven, which I'm currently working on. Too much to do around Christmas time. Things should slow down after New Years. My wife got a Sony Reader for Christmas. I still don't have my WiFi hooked up to my computer. I've installed the router and it all seemed to have installed, but apparently neither the Sony Reader nor my Laptop detects a WiFi signal. Something isn't right. So I've downloaded books onto my computer and then transferred them to the Reader. Even that gave my trouble. The Reader updated itself and installed a new software, now the Sony file on my computer does not seem to synchronize with the Reader. I'm constantly getting the message 'The Reader encountered a problem and needs to shut down...blah...blah...blah... I think I'm getting too old for these new gadgets. Can't keep up anymore. I still haven't found a use for all those options on our cellphone. All I really want to do is make a call. I don't need to take pictures or upload music. For that I have a camera or an mp3 player. When I want to know what time it is I look at my watch. Much faster and I don't have to constantly recharge the battery. Progress if fine but sometimes it doesn't make much sense. Who needs to be in touch with everyone all the time? Do we need to report everything we do every moment of the day to our friends or the world? People don't seem to have time anymore to relax or just think about things. Especially the young kids. Why would anyone be on the phone when crossing the street or walking through a door? Or while driving? Even with the high fines and all the accidents people just don't seem to learn or get the message. Maybe somebody should send them a email or a text-message. I'm trying to make use of today's gadgets, like the computer for instance. Without it I would never have been able to write as much as I do or even get my writings published. Having an email account is great. Saves a lot of postage and I can send messages out instantly and receive answers back. But there are drawbacks. The spam mail is definitely annoying. The internet is wonderful for a lot of things, but also a terrible time-waster. I try to limit my time on it. My wife likes her new Reader. She can carry a whole library in her handbag. It is good to have a cellphone in case of an emergency, but to chatter all day long is not for me. There are more important things to be done. I find it annoying and almost insulting when I'm having a conversation with someone and they answer their cell phone during our conversation, leaving me standing talking to the air. If they would at least say ,"Excuse me, I need to answer this call. It could be the President calling me. He needs my services." I could understand that, because that would be more important than our conversation, but that never happens. I guess, we have to find a way to manage our time wisely and not to give in to all these temptations the new gadgets throw at us. Unfortunately, some of us are too weak to resist...like me writing this long entry into my blog. I hope I didn't lose any of my visitors because they needed to answer their cellphone. That would really annoy me.

Merry Christmas

It's Christmas again. A time for love and good cheer. A time to spend with family and friends and to remember the ones who are no longer with us. A time to receive and give presents. It doesn't matter if we are religious, it doesn't matter if we believe the reason we celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago. As long as we believe that there is still love and good will in humanity, and not only the hatred we see every day on television, or read about in the newspapers, the reports about people strapping bombs around their bodies and blowing themselves up, murdering innocent people in their misguided fanatical believe. One doesn't even have to watch the images of those incidents in the Middle East. We have plenty of crimes being committed in our own cities. In Winnipeg every night somebody gets either shot or stabbed. So it is good to forget about those things for a few days and enjoy a peaceful Christmas. Maybe some day it will be like that every day. One can hope.

My next release

I just finished the final edit on my upcoming novel 'Mark of the Cobra', to be released in January 2012. (I can't believe another year is coming to an end!). Surprisingly, even after having it edited by my editor (she does a nice job and catches many errors), I still found a few errors. I also re-wrote the odd sentence when I thought it didn't read right. Hopefully, I finally have a clean manuscript. I sent the 'final-edited' version back to Melange Books yesterday. I still don't have a cover for it, but apparently the art's department at Melange Books is busy right now designing one. I am anxious to see what they come up with. Mark of the Cobra was supposed to be published a few years ago by Midnight Showcase. My editor at that time didn't like it. She didn't think the novel was up to my usual standards. She thought the main character was not a likable person. He was a 'wife-cheating bastard' as she put it. I agreed and pulled it. I still liked the story and after contemplating for a while, I changed a few things. Now, the main character is not married, which means he is not a wife-cheating bastard. The novel contains more explicit erotica than I usually have in my novels. I realized this after re-reading it again, but that's how it is now and I hope my readers don't mind. Everything I write these days does have little or no erotica in it. To be honest, I am actually getting somewhat bored with writing erotica. Either because I've written enough of it of maybe it's just because I'm getting older. Probably both. The last novel I submitted to Melange Books, 'Bullet of Revenge', has no explicit erotica. I still like to write about interactions of my male characters with beautiful women, but the sexual action stops at the bedroom door. It means I have to think a little harder to fill the pages with interesting writing. But even without the erotica the novel ended up to be 102,000 words plus long, which proves the erotica is not really necessary to write a long novel. I haven't made too much progress in the novel I'm busy with right now: Book Seven in the Xandra series. I'm still just below 10,000 words, but I have a skinny blueprint of the novel. Now with Christmas shopping and other stuff I just don't seem to find the time to write. Once this is all over I will concentrate again on my writing.

Raptor's Tooth, Book 3 of Lizard World

This book was supposed to be released in October, but for some reasons it didn't. It is finally here. I'm quite happy with the cover, and the story is great, too. There should be no errors in this one. I read it so many times, even after I got it back from my editor. I was amazed how many errors I still found. Nothing major, but still, they were there. Hopefully, I managed to find them all. It just goes to show again how our minds work. We think we notice when something is amiss, but we don't, because our mind fills in the blanks. Things like she instead of the. Totally amazing and sometimes annoying.
To read more about it or to buy either go to my website Herbert's World http://hegro.shawwebspace.ca (or click on the word in the welcoming paragraph at the top) or click on the cover of the book listed in the right column and it'll take you there.