Update on Replication (Kid Sensation #6)

I know that readers have been eagerly waiting for me to finish this and I have been anxious to get it done.  That said I've hit two snags lately.

First, a few weekends back, I'm working away on the novel and step away from the computer for a minute.  My eldest daughter gets on to do some schoolwork, which is necessary because - even though the kids have a relatively new laptop - I had failed to put MS Office on it. (Word, to be specific).  When she leaves and I get back on - you guessed it - everything since the last save is gone.  It's depressing, but I pour myself some liquid courage and dive back in, convinced I can make up the time.  (I also load MS Office on the kids' laptop at the first opportunity.)

A week later, I'm working away on the novel when the screen goes fuzzy. (Actually, it's more like a shimmering.) Completely freaked, I look around just to make sure it isn't my eyes (thankfully it isn't), but packing up my desktop and racing out to get a diagnosis reveals that the graphics card has gone bad. I try a work-around or two, but ultimately end up buying and installing a new graphics card.  It works for maybe a second - long enough for me to grab the latest version of Kid Sensation 6 (with only minimal work lost), but now the darn thing won't boot. However, I'm less worried about that - and having to get a new PC - than I am about getting my data off the hard drive. Thankfully, I've got an external hard drive that I back everything up to, so I think I'm safe.  Unfortunately, when I go to retrieve my stuff from the external hard rive, there's nothing.  It's been reformatted - most likely by the kids, who will randomly do stuff like that. At this point, I'm almost inconsolable.

Anyway, I spent almost every spare moment over the next week-and-a-half trying to get the PC working again, but to no avail. Reseating components, clearing CMOS, and so on... None of it did any good.  From all indications, nothing was wrong; the thing just refused to work right.  I finally gave up last week and put some effort into trying to find a decent Black Friday sale. The only silver lining: a last ditch effort to get my data off the hard drive actually worked, so at least I haven't lost anything.  For those curious as to how, I used a Sabrent Hard Drive Docking Station:


I just pulled my hard drive out the PC, popped it into this little baby, and then connected it to another computer. Then it was just a matter of copying my data.  As far as I'm concerned, this device - which, I believe, is sometimes called a hard drive enclosure - is a lifesaver. (Of course, it probably won't help if there's a problem with your hard drive. But as long as the issue is something else, one of these may help get your data off a computer that isn't working.)


So where does that leave things with Kid Sensation 6?  Before my computer woes, I was a few days from finishing. Thankfully, that's still the case, so I anticipate finishing by the end of the week. Of course, I'm now definitive proof of Murphy's Law ("If anything can go wrong, it will") so just keep your fingers crossed that the next few days are smooth sailing on the writing front.