My laptop is dead.
We had been through a lot, like the time I spilled half a cup of coffee across the keyboard after only having him for about a month. My uncle had to rebuild him practically from scratch because apparently French vanilla coffee creamer cannot be completely scrubbed off computer part. Well, after that trauma, he survived through the rest of college and two years of grad school, so I really can’t complain about his performance.
The downside is he died before I could download all of my files. As I watched my computer slow down, then freak out, I could feel myself internally screaming, MY FILES! MY SUPER IMPORTANT AUTHOR FILES!
Then, I remembered that I’m paranoid and a bit OCD, so I constantly send myself files as a way of backing them up. The bad news is I didn’t organize them in any form, so I need to comb through my email and flashdrive. The good news is I found most of them and have backed them up… again. The other semi-bad news is they’re a little old, so I need to go back and update them with fixed typos and new links. Overall, the outcome isn’t too bad for suddenly losing my computer and everything in it.
In the meantime, I’m using my mom’s laptop until my new one arrives, and I WILL be meeting the deadline for The Earl and the Artificer, which is coming out January 30th. Take that, entropy!
Kara Jorgensen 
I dread this happening and am continually backing up to about four different locations! I hope it doesn’t take you too long to update what you need to again 🙂
Backing things up is the best idea. Luckily, it shouldn’t take long to fix them, and they don’t need to be altered immediately.