Okay, I have updated the pages for The Cyborg and the Sorcerers and The Wizard and the War Machines

Still don’t have the other two (artists and directory) done.

Haven’t done anything more with those new placeholders, either.

The next chunk, chronologically, is five files dated November 6, 2007. They’re all for novels — Split Heirs, The Lure of the Basilisk, The Rebirth of Wonder, Touched by the Gods, and Worlds of Shadow.

Yeah, fine, that last one’s a series, rather than a single novel.

Anyway, I don’t know how much work they need, but I’ve loaded them into my web editor.

I still haven’t finished with updates for The Cyborg and the Sorcerers or The Wizard and the War Machine, or two others — one I decided was just too much for now and put the placeholder back up with a few minor changes, and the other (about cover artists) is progressing bit by bit.

But I skipped ahead and did several more files. Except for those four, I’m now up to November 6, 2007. In the last three months of 2007, ending December 16, I did a pretty major update, so there’s plenty to do — but once I’m through this chunk things should speed up, at least for awhile.

I’ve spawned four new placeholders I’ll need to fill in eventually, for Nathan Archer, the Bound Lands, Carlisle Hsing, and Tom Derringer.

Workin’ on October 2007.

You know what I hate? When I realize I missed something obvious from a recent update. For example, I updated The Chromosomal Code and The Spartacus File earlier this week and only just now realized that I hadn’t added a link to Realms of Light to either of them — and even stupider, I had added links to Vika’s
Avenger and Tom Derringer and the Aluminum Airship to the page for The Chromosomal Code, but not to the one for The Spartacus File that I did two days later.

Well, they’re fixed now.

I’m working on The Cyborg and the Sorcerers and The Wizard & the War Machine. They needed some work. There’s no mention of the Wildside reprints…

Updating my website is addictive. I keep trying to tell myself, “That’s enough for now, focus on something else,” and then think, “Oh, just one more…”

This is because I spent three years wading through all the placeholder files I put up on March 7, 2005. File after file, tracking down where a story had first been published and saying something about it — and then suddenly, on December 7, 2014, they were done, and I was updating existing stuff and talking about all sorts of different things and there were never more than maybe four or five files in a day, and I could just tear through months at a time.

Exhilarating!

I’ve gone from nine years and nine months back to seven years and three months since then. It’s wonderful.

So I had to figure out what to do with that bibliography page — which, upon checking, said it was last updated on December 12, 1995, and the 2007 update had only consisted of tagging it “Placeholder” and moving it to a new URL. Did I really want to update nineteen years of missing data?

My eventual answer: No. I decided that this mostly duplicates information I have elsewhere on the site, so I threw out most of the content and reduced the page to more or less, “The information you want is here, and here. Follow the links.”

One reason to do it that way is that if I kept it, it would need constant updating. I now know I’m not going to keep up with anything like that — back in ’95 I hadn’t yet figured that out.

I went ahead and worked through several more pages after that, many of which didn’t need much. Even the “personal” page turned out to need less work than I’d expected.

I did generate a couple of new placeholder files, though, where pages I was updating should obviously have links to pages that didn’t exist yet. I’ll fill those in eventually.

The next set of four files, from October 12, 2007, is the pages about the four volumes of “The Lords of Dus,” and I know the links to booksellers need updating, but otherwise they should be pretty much okay as they are.

So I’m down to just seven years and three months out of date.

Still updating my website, oldest files first.

There were six files that shouldn’t have been on the server in the first place; they were blog archives from when I switched from Blogger to WordPress in 2006, and they should have been filed away on my hard drive, or simply deleted once I’d copied the posts here to the WordPress archives, instead of sitting there taking up space.

So I copied them to an archive folder and deleted them from the server. I did put in a redirect for the one that had been set up for public access, even though I doubt anyone ever saw it.

(If you’re curious about what was in them, it’s everything in the September 2006 archive, there in the right-hand column, except for the last two entries.)

Did a few other quick little updates which finished 2006 and got two files into 2007. Updated or removed some dead links, reformatted a couple of things.

The next file is from April 23, 2007 — International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, less than eight years ago. Definitely needs some clean-up, but a relatively minor job.

But after that there’s a bibliography page, and then http://www.watt-evans.com/personal.html, which is going to be a big job.

I’m making progress on the ongoing webpage update; the oldest file on the site (not counting images) is dated September 16, 2006.

Of course, just because I’ve revised a file recently doesn’t mean it’s actually up to date; yesterday I tackled all nine installments of “So You Want to Be A Writer,” and mostly just made some esthetic tweaks and added notes saying how horribly out of date the articles are.

Still, at least I looked at them.

I’m eight and a half years back; I should probably decide just where I want to stop. Three years, maybe? The oldest file on ethshar.com is from 2009, the oldest on misenchantedpress.com is from 2014.