Awful luck (Part 2)

So now what?

I had nothing with which to restart my writing career.

I kept wracking my brains. Was there anywhere, anywhere, I might have backed up some of my files that I hadn’t thought of yet?

Then it hit me: Amazon! My books were still for sale on that site. Was it possible to download the original manuscripts that were converted into Kindle format, or were only the Kindle digital files stored there? I checked and found that, yes, the original Word files were downloadable!

Better yet, not only were my five published novels there, but so was my nonfiction book for writers, Frequently Misused / Misspelled Word sand Phrases (and how to use them correctly), and an unfinished novel (the third in the Imperative series) I had uploaded just to check the formatting before I attempted to finish it.

There was also a placeholder for another unfinished novel, but apparently I had never uploaded it, so that’s 50,000 words gone. Missing, also, were all the poems and short stories I had written but hadn’t uploaded.

At least I had restored 6 ½ books. That was a lot, but much was still missing.

Then it occurred to me to check my website. Because my writing was on hiatus, I hadn’t touched the site in years. It turned out that I had two short stories and a poem posted there.

Then I remembered I had a short story published in a 2009 anthology called The World Outside the Window. So I had that in print. And then I remembered I had submitted a short story and a humorous essay to the NC State Senior Games Literary Arts competition in May. I had won first prize in both categories, and had the printed copies of those as well.

At the moment, I still haven’t accounted for a humorous rhyming poem about Star Wars, another about Hamlet, another about a dog named Hiram, a short sci-fi story about golf, and probably another 5-10 stories and poems I can’t even remember the names of. Plus that half-written novel manuscript.

All in all, it was a disaster, but not the disaster of epic proportions I had original feared, or as it could have been.

Since then, I’ve re-edited the first four novels with a decade’s further perspective, and formatted them for both paperback and hard cover printed versions, as well as the original ebooks. The fifth novel in edited printed versions should be out later this year.

I had planned to create an anthology of sci-fi stories and poems, but with only 5 stories and one poem left, that won't work unless I find or write some more pieces. And I still have that second half of a novel to finish.

Busy times ahead.