Busy Busy Busy

After I finished revamping my website, I fully intended to blog more. (In fact, I think I already told you that in my last update.) Unfortunately, I have been busy with a lot of other things. I owed you an update, so here’s what I’ve been up to.

The Nine Lies Series

I finished all the major revisions for Nine Lies Books 5 and 6. My editor has now read both of them, and I have some more tweaks to make. However, before I can do that, I need to redo a lot of the formatting work I had already done and reorganize all my writing files and notes, because in October 2025 I switched completely over to Linux¹.

Leaving Windows

As many of you know, Windows 10 reached its “end of life” in October of last year. I had wanted to go full Linux for a while now so I could ditch Windows, but there were a few things holding me back.

Scrivener

I did all my writing in Scrivener, and I still haven’t gotten Scrivener to work successfully in a way that works for me on Linux. I can write my drafts in almost anything, but Scrivener is excellent for organizing my thoughts during revisions and I always used it to generate my .ePub and .mobi files for ebooks.

Adobe

I also made my book covers in Adobe Photoshop and used Adobe InDesign for my paperback interior layouts. Modern Adobe software is notoriously hard to get to work on Linux, and I couldn’t find a good workaround for that, either, even after attempting some elaborate solutions.²

In addition to software, my Adobe subscription provided me the use of certain fonts. All of the Nine Lies paperbacks used a font I got through Adobe, and the main paragraph text of my website used one from them, too. If I wasn’t going to be able to use Photoshop or InDesign, there was no point in paying tons of money for Adobe every month, but then I’d need to find a way to buy the fonts I needed or redo all my books and my website (again).

ESU

I really wanted to switch to Linux, but I just didn’t feel ready, so finally I decided I would cave and purchase Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates, or ESU, to allow me one more year to get my affairs in order.

I wasn’t particularly happy with this solution, but I figured I would bite the bullet because it would give me security updates on my current computer with Windows 10 and give me time to finish editing the Nine Lies Series or find alternative solutions to Scrivener and Adobe products.

To my surprise, however, I was unable to purchase ESU. I don’t know if I did it to myself (I often turn off all kinds of things in Windows because I hate their constant surveillance “features”³) or if the fact that I built my computer in Korea was somehow blocking me from purchasing from Microsoft here in the U.S.

Regardless of the reason, I had to hurry up and switch to Linux a year earlier than I intended to.

Linux

I’d been dual booting⁴ Windows and Linux for years, but I finally made the plunge to using only Linux without Windows. Now I run Kubuntu, which I highly recommend⁵ to anyone coming from Windows who wants to switch to Linux. It has a lot of similar features to Windows in its graphical user interface, or GUI, but gives you a lot more freedom and privacy.

Generally I have been quite pleased with my decision to go full Linux, but it has forced me to change my workflow somewhat.

FocusWriter

Instead of using Scrivener, I now use FocusWriter for writing. (Actually, I wrote the rough drafts of Nine Lies Books 6, 7, 8, and 9 almost exclusively in FocusWriter because I had Linux on my laptop and not Scrivener, but I do prefer to edit using Scrivener.) I highly recommend FocusWriter for writing—it’s a great “stay out of your way” editor that allows you to focus on your work without distractions.

LaTeX

For making print books, I can no longer use Adobe InDesign, so now I am learning LaTeX. I think that with the Memoir class I should be able to produce a pretty good publisher-worthy PDF to make my print books, but I’m still learning and tweaking.

Adjusting my layouts and trying to get them just right is taking a lot of time and effort for me at this stage, but once I get things how I like them I hope to automate the bulk of the work using scripting, and then it should be much, much more efficient than InDesign to lay out future books. Like anything, I have to put the time in up front to reap the rewards later.

Sigil

As for the digital versions of my books, since I can’t use Scrivener to make my ebooks anymore, I think I will try using Sigil. I had looked at it before but didn’t have the technical skills necessary to understand what I was doing. Now, however, I am much more comfortable with HTML and CSS, so I think learning how to make my own ebooks in Sigil should be doable.

GIMP, Krita, & Inkscape

I haven’t been doing any work on book covers right now because I’ve been focusing on redoing my print book layouts using LaTeX, but when I get to that point I think I will use GIMP and/or Krita. I’ve heard that GIMP is the best substitute for Photoshop in terms of image manipulation and that Krita is great for creating digital art directly. I never used Adobe Illustrator much, but if I end up needing an alternative for that, I hear Inkscape is a good alternative.

Fonts

Thankfully, I was able to purchase the license to use the font I already use for the main text in the Nine Lies paperbacks, so I don’t need to redo anything there. (Phew!)

Unfortunately, I was not able to purchase licensing for the font I had been using on my website because it is a newer version that is only available for “renting” via constant subscription licensing. So instead I paid for the license for an older version of that font, which means I don’t have to keep paying a subscription fee to “rent” the license, but also means the font looks a little rougher than the modern version. So if the website looks a little different, that’s why. Hopefully it doesn’t look too different, though.

In Other News

In addition to all those changes, I have also had a few other side projects going:

Lettuce

Despite multiple attempts, I’ve never been able to grow lettuce successfully in this country, so I switched methods. Now I’m doing a test run of growing lettuce hydroponically using the Kratky method.

At first my lettuce did very, very well, almost shockingly well, then suddenly looked like it died. I thought I’d failed again, but after a few days it sprang back and it’s doing well again.

I’ve only been growing one so far as a test, but if this one finishes well I plan on growing a whole bunch like I used to in Korea.

Birds

I started feeding the birds. The local catbirds and mockingbirds always used to watch me when I would write outside at the table I built for the back yard, and now I’ve started watching them, too.

It’s a delight to see all the different kinds of birds that live nearby and I love watching them enjoy the food that I put out for them. I usually hate winter because it’s too cold to enjoy being outside, but watching the birds descend on my yard is something to look forward to even in cold, gloomy weather.

Note from June 2026: I wrote this blog post back in January of 2026 but set it aside because I needed to find a picture to put up with it and do other housekeeping-type things. Now it’s June and I have been meaning to write another post but I realized I never published this one—sorry! So I’m publishing it now, after the fact.