I'll take it as a no to anyone runnign a game in Austin...bummer...8(

Well this sounds like a good place to say hello and ask a question;

Hello! Like everyon else here I aspire to be a writer though I have nothing, not even a short story that has been completed enough to be a short story; no wait there is one I sent into a contest somehwere. Sadly I am easily distracted and have TOO many ideas to write myself but here are some highlights:

A science fiction series set in an alternate universe where startships are made of wood, swashbuckling is the norm and the lead character is a Zombie. It has inadvertantly become a vehicle for a large mportion of sci/fi, fantasy and internet memes (zombies, Pirates, Nonjas, Robots, psychics etc...). Its not very devloped but I have a rough outline.
And its not all about the memes, has intrigue, action, some romance and lots of dirty little secrets.

A near future Multi-generation Superhero story with a Unique (as far as I know) origin story for the super-heroic gifts and a fair mix of intrigues and politics and of course love. This story/setting has been in development of one form or another for close on fufteen years now and I think I've got it down to where I want it to be...but I haven't touched it in some time now.

A modern-day fairy-tale story (of the original brothers Grimm variety) of a group of high-school kids and some fo their teachers stumbling into the a secret haven for strange creatures and beings. All of the characters have a reason for being there and the story ranges across a multitude of mythologies and again more horror, intrigue and politics etc...It's one of my newest and more original ideas.

As an added bonus, for amusement sake, I have a short idea about what would happen if the Greek/Roman, Norse and other Old Gods were reborn in new bodies; the short scene I wrote had Thor and Ares sitting in a beach-bar run by Balor one-eye ogling girls in swimsuits...yes its intended to be humorous, if I ever get anything else written for it.

My best developed and most worked-on series is a pure fantasy series set in a world I've been working on for probably as long as the super-hero story and likewise has gone through MANY incarnations. It's also the only project I've been semi-actively working on of late. Like all of my stories it has elements of intrigue, politics, horror and strained romance. It also includes a moslty full though lost origin story and ancient long-buried and mostly forgotten evils.
And thus we come to my question...almost. In this series there are a number of races based on blendings of humans and other elements whether plant, animal or the elements themselves. Amongst them is a wolf-man species I call the "Canen" and have been fairly happy with their hunter-like nomadic mentality.

Then this year I started reading Jim's Codex Alera and discovered his wolf-man species, the "Canim"...or "Cane" for short. You see my problem? I don't want to have a race that is too similar to Jim's creation, but I don't want to lose them either. At one point they were a Bull-man/Minotaur species called the "Thaur" which I liked well enough, but were too close to Wow's Tauren so I changed it to avoid any possible lawsuits. I'm trying to be as original as possible in my ideas and concepts so I don't want to be coying someone elses ideas, even if I've been workin on my book for a very long time.
Any suggestions on how to handle this? Should I even be worried about it?

Changed the title again cause I love the name...

From a Tech Support Employee (me):
Question is, did you reformat and reisntall the entire OS? Even if you did there is always a chance at Data recovery, but you'll have to take it to a Data Recovery company like Drive-savers or Ontrac (Both have very good reputaitons), but it won't be cheap. But if You can't remember things like me it may be the way to go if you dont want to lose 7 years worth of work. With a single small disk it might not be so bad privce-wise, but I'm used to dealing with folks with multi-drive RAID Array with several hundred Gigs of valuable data so take that as you will. You can always ask them for a rough quote.
May want to take it to a local shop first though, preferably someone with a good reputation, and see if they can do anything to help you recoveer that Data. I thought I had lost all of MINE even after backign up to an external drive, but was able to get it recovered.
Hope this gives you some hope and ideas...

It's the bigth teeth up fronth...

Progress updates are good though!

And agreed on the water elementals...eww...and whats worse is making them out of local water, especially if it's sea-water full of garbage...ew....