11:51am

You will experience periodic outages with this site (robertmkerns.com) and Knightsfall Press’s site (knightsfall.press) while I upgrade the server to PHP 8 and remove the previous version.

Right, then… moving on.

PHP is one of the components necessary for WordPress to be WordPress and provide this site that you’re reading right now, plus Knightsfall Press’s website.

It’s part of the traditional LAMP stack: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Except… I don’t use MySQL. I haven’t since a group of devs from the former Sun Microsystems took the code and forked it into MariaDB sometime after Oracle bought the aforementioned Sun Microsystems.

I ran a test system (virtual machine or VM) long enough to try porting my sites over to PHP 8 when it first came out, but WordPress didn’t support it yet, and things looked… wonky. I mentioned the test to my web developer, and she confirmed that WordPress (at that time) wasn’t ready for PHP 8. So, I deleted the test machine and continued on with the version of PHP I’d been using.

But it seems that era is past.

A couple weeks ago, my web designer told me that it was time to upgrade the server. I meant to do it the Saturday after she told me about it… but… well… Life happens.

Fortunately, the PHP people are still developing Version 8, and I’ve not seen any noise about a new major version being on the horizon, so hopefully, I’ll get as many (if not more) years out of PHP 8 as I have the version I’ve been running.

In Other News…

Life has kept me busy since my second brush with COVID at the end of July, and I have not successfully resumed the writing semi-habit I was enjoying that month.

My editor sent Colfyr back to me this past weekend (I think?), and I will be setting up a December pre-order for that… probably tomorrow. It will give me something to write about.  😉

I am fairly horrible about keeping in touch (as people who follow this site can easily see), and I don’t like to send newsletters or make posts unless I genuinely have something to discuss.

There is some quasi-news regarding my series Cole & Srexx. I have made no secret of the fact that it was finished in my mind since publishing The Fires of Aurelius in 2021. I didn’t want to write Fires, and because of that, the story I produced through forcing myself to write it was… subpar at best.

Many, many people over the intervening months have helpfully informed me via email of its quality, and every time, I resisted the urge to send the reply, “You don’t need to tell me it’s shit. I wrote the damned thing.”

To cut a growing ramble short, the status of Cole & Srexx has been eating at me ever since I published Fires. I knew Fires was not my best when I published it, but I published it anyway… because I didn’t think or feel that I could do any better.

I have decided to resurrect Cole & Srexx from the dead. Right now, I am going through It Ain’t Over… as a very high-level proofing/revision pass. It will not change overmuch. Then, I will move on to …Till It’s Over! and give it the same treatment. Again, that one won’t change overmuch, either.

Once I get to Haven Ascendant, though, I’ll have some decisions to make.

I cobbled together Haven Ascendant under the gun of a pre-order I didn’t want to miss, and the gist of the story I want is there. But it’s not as meaty as I would like. It’s my shortest novel… coming in at 72,678 words. I don’t really like that, especially for a Science Fiction novel I’ve claimed in public. I don’t think I’ll do a wholesale re-write of Haven Ascendant, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.

Fires, though?

When I finish with Haven Ascendant, I will roll right into Fires, and that one will receive a wholesale re-write. I will start with a blank canvas and go from there.

And the series won’t end with the new Fires, either.

I originally intended Cole & Srexx to be a ten-novel series. Two quintets, like I want Drakmoor to be. It’s too early to tell just how many novels the series will end up being, but I can say that the overall story I want to tell is a finite piece… also like Drakmoor.

The bottom line is this…

I’m tired of there being two titles out there I’m not 115% proud to claim, and I’m concerned that I won’t be able to achieve the level of quality I’ve always wanted for my storytelling (what some people might call professional craft) until I correct that.

Now, then…

I don’t have a timetable for delivery of the new versions. I have to move through… well, I want to move through… the first two novels before even thinking about Haven Ascendant. Plus, I’d like to make major progress on Tribunal (Sorcerous Pursuits #3) by the end of the year. And then, there’s Lynxeen (Shepherd Security Services #3).

Huh… guess I’ll be kinda busy over the coming months.

I will give Cole & Srexx equal priority with my other stories, though. And I won’t take down the existing versions. When I’m ready to publish the updates, I’ll upload them to the existing ebooks so that people won’t have to buy them twice. Not sure what I’ll do for people who purchased paperbacks, but like the Irish Wolfhound said to the Great Dane, “I’ll chase that cat when I get to it.”

Alrighty. I think I’ve rambled on enough. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking with me.

I hope the days treat you and yours well.

Stay safe out there.