[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUeqAVIwQqA?fs=1]

It’s not that I didn’t want to read the book, or at least part of it. However, I found that with the schedule I’ve been keeping, I just haven’t had time to sit down and read that much.

Okay, all day I have been obsessing about whether “on accident” could someday constitute proper usage vs. the more traditional “by accident.”

I’m not going to give the whole rundown as Grammar Girl does a pretty good job of it. Suffice to say (or Suffice it to say, or Suffices to say, egad), that age is a major determining factor.

It seems younger people like “on accident.” No one seemed to have a good answer to this other than young people like the dichotomy of “on purpose” vs. “on accident.”

While not scientific, British and Australian commenters seemed to prefer “by accident.” I wonder what Canadians use.

I like “by accident,” but then again, I’ve been told my usage of English is precise to the point pedantry and bordering on baroque. Maybe this is just the march of progress passing me by, or maybe this whole business is just something that happened on accident.

Looks like a responsible party to me

Recently, I read an article about Cory Doctorow’s wife Alice Taylor. The Daily Mail contacted Ms. Taylor about running one of her photographs. When she quoted a price they though was too high, they decided to run it anyway, for free.

This article served as a friendly nudge that I should be more careful about photographs I use on this blog. Now, up until a couple days ago, I’d been using mostly images which were (hopefully) obviously in the public domain, in that they were over 200 years old (or at least looked that way, that’s where the hopefully came in.) However, the last couple of days, I’ve been sort of lax.

So, today, I went through and replace the few photos I thought might have copyright issues with free images from morguefile.com. It’s not as easy a Google image search, but I know the images are properly licensed.

I know that numbers aren’t the best way to track success in writing, but when I get a good portion of the way through a novel, I like to think I’ve accomplished something. As of today, I’m 20,000 words into the novel I started at the end of last month. This isn’t the most I’ve written in a month, nor the least, but I think it’s a significant amount.

Now, I just have to slog through the middle of the novel.

I worked a full day at my day job, wrote 1000 words on my new novel, made a header image for this blog, and still had time to watch the classic Star Trek episode “Amok Time.”

Now I’m ready to chill.

As the large-font header above might have clued you in, my name is Shannon Ryan. I write boring computer programs by day, and I write fantastic books by night. Now, I don’t mean fantastic as in wonderful, because I still have a lot to learn about the writing business. No, I mean that they involve vampires, and Greeks gods, and drunken spacemen.

So, why do I write? Well, the simple answer is that I have to. The more complicated answer involves a surly, drunken, eighteenth century Frenchman who has it in for Louis XVI, but that’s a whole other story.