I bit the bullet yesterday. I gave my laptop in for repairs. Remember how it nearly died on me just before the book launch?

Well, it saw me though, just, but things certainly weren’t right with it. It kept crashing. It was unbelievably sloooowwwww.  The fan kept whizzing into high gear, and the underside kept getting hot. Last week, it had another near-death experience. So it went off to the computer hospital, still being under warranty.

I was given a loan laptop to keep me working. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am HUGELY appreciative of this fact and as you can see from this post, I am very much online. And yet… not all is well.

For I’m Wordless. And I can’t Excel either. There’s no Power to my Point, no Office to my Microsoft. My desktop is completely bare excepting the Recycle bin and three Notepad files that serve as pseudo-Word-cum-Excel workaround.

Weird, right? You get a loan laptop to keep you working, you  kind of expect that it should have at least the basics. Not so. I didn’t discover this until we got the machine home (after an 1.5 hour drive from the shop, don’t ask). I had asked, of course, and had been assured it would be fine, but it wasn’t. Something like five hours of telephone calls later, I have decided to give it up. I shall have to remain a half-enabled author for the next two to four weeks.

I won’t be able to write, edit, process data or open attachments. So if you’re due on CentreStage or visiting my blog in any other capacity and thinking of sending me something: paste it all into the email. Everything. Pictures, and all.

I will, however, be blogging, tweeting, Facebooking and such like to the best of my ability. I will make virtue out of adversity and edit book 2 to within an inch of its life while I can’t write or edit in Word; do more research on book 3; and focus on promotion. Jiggle my work plan round, in other words.

Just wish me luck that the repair won’t take the full four weeks. Fingers crossed!

Oh, and if you have any thoughts or tips regarding more workarounds… I’d love to hear them!! X