Friday, August 17, 2007

But Will They Read It?

Here's a Friday-worthy news bit: icSouthLondon reports that a crime novelist's manuscript - which rather ironically happened to be about the theft of a rare book - was swiped by burglars last weekend. Laptops belonging to Will Hodgkinson and his wife were snatched from their apartment, and with the computers went the near-finished manuscript. "I've been working on the novel for about eight months and I was supposed to be handing it in this week to the editor. I had pretty much seven years of work on the laptop, which was basically my entire back catalogue."

Behold, the power of backups. This (well, among other reasons, namely that I'm afraid my computer could just conk out any moment) is why any file of any value or usefulness is stored at in at least two different places, including one in a web-based email account ... just in case.