Skipless

Waiting for the new Magdalena Bay single 'Death & Romance' to become available on Bandcamp. My iTunes days are over, I think. Syncing issues have become too tiresome.

I am at last getting around to preparing the ebook edition of Shirker. My Word 4 draft was recoverable in BBEdit but is the penultimate version of the ms. The final edition existed only as print in the days when sending a digital copy would have required mailing a disc. The pirates saved me by torrenting a PDF that could be OCR'd with 90% accuracy. I haven't opened the novel since I read from it at the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival. Being interviewed for ARTE about it earlier this year made me decide to bring it back to life – the half-life of e-ink, anyway.

Repairing misreads and line breaks turns out to be surprisingly emotional. As I proof the scans, I discover that I can remember writing every line. Although the temptation to remix is strong, the ebook will preserve the original. I'm not nostalgic for the past but I am protective of it. Who else looks after your work? Nobody.