You may have seen my post on social media that my computer died Monday. What exactly happened and what does it mean for JBE. First, what happened: the hard drive went. The boot sector is dead and nothing I do is bringing it back. “Have I tried …” My wife is a computer adept. She tried it. She was able to bring it back enough to copy any files that weren’t backed up online to a thumb drive. There’s still a few more things she wants to try, but what we lack is time to do them immediately, with Thanksgiving being this week and family obligations filling our weekends for the next few weeks. More than likely, I’ll be buying a new computer sooner rather than later.

What does this mean for JBE? Fortunately, there’s good news: my old computer works perfectly fine. It’s been sitting on my desk since I got the laptop and I’ve been wondering what I should do with it. Well, now I know: put it right back where it use to be. Sure, it has lots of updates to do, but beyond that there was nothing wrong with it. I just couldn’t play Skyrim on it. Oh well…

Next bit of good news: earlier this month, I decided to pay for online storage earlier this month and set up the computer so it would auto-backup anything in certain folders. So every file for JBE is saved, and when I left for the day job this morning, I was syncing it with my old computer. I even have the cover backed up that I was working on the night before the hard drive bit the dust. Grand total of files lost: zero.

That’s the good news. Any bad news? Well there will be two things lost: time (syncing, digging out activation numbers, working on an older system, computer shopping, trying to get the old one repaired) and money (new computer/repairing computer cost). How much, I don’t know yet. This much, I am sure about: I will not compromise the quality of our products because of this. If I tried to publish Deadly Delves: Nine Lives for Petane for Pathfinder RPG in December, it would be rushed and may not be up to our standards. Instead, I am delaying it until January 2018 and bringing 13 Fighter Talents and Maneuvers for the 13th Age Roleplaying Game up into December’s slot. The first in our 13 Class Options series is going to be significantly shorter and will require less time than a level 12 adventure. This should be completed before Christmas with the computer delays without compromising quality. I will admit, this is not how I wanted to show off the cover for it to you, but I hope you like it nonetheless.

As far as the rest of the schedule goes, I do not anticipate any issues, but I will keep you up to date should any such issues arise.

Have a happy holiday.