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paul@paulspages.co.uk
www.paulspages.co.uk
Those Soap Opera Diaries In Full
I've devised and written two fictional diary series to date, both with great
success. They're illustrated by Sholto Walker, who's also freelance and
always interested in discussing new projects (contact details on
request).
Mail
me if you'd like a soap opera - diary or narrative format - in your
magazine or website!
 
is
the diary of a user department manager in a medium-sized UK company. It ran
for over five years in PC Plus magazine, where it was extremely 
popular, and is
currently running in online form on the PC
Plus Online website.
The Group Efforts hero, Bernard Pierce, is middle-aged,
middle-management and always in the middle of new
pilot projects dreamed up by the firm's ruthless IT manager, Chris
Llewellyn, and his technology-obsessed sidekick Amrat Advani.
Bernard enjoys the respect and affection of his departmental
team, led by June, Rose and the ever-troublesome Danny, although Cathy, his deputy, is just a little bit too
ambitious for comfort.
Bernard's real soul-mates, however, are his comrades in the Line Management
All Stars, an unofficial body who meet in the canteen to honour acts of
bravery (such as refusing to install a beta software release) with the
Ceremony of the Free Tea.
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What the readers said about Group Efforts in PC
Plus
Group Efforts is one of those light hearted
inclusions that make PCPLUS the institution it is and so unlike the
competitor mags.
- PC Plus mailbox newsgroup message
There are a few things that shouldn't
change. One's the inclusion of Group Efforts.
- PC Plus mailbox newsgroup message
You can't have PC+ without Group efforts, not the same is it?
- PC Plus mailbox newsgroup message
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 Developer's
Diary, meanwhile, has been running for two
years in Developer Network Journal,
the European magazine of the Microsoft Developer Network. Its heroine is
Angie Baxter, a 28-year-old Systems Consultant who works for a
large freight and warehousing company - quite a stretch of the imagination
for a male writer of rather more than 28 years, but great fun to do
nevertheless.
Angie sees working life from the other side of the
user/developer fence. Her major ongoing problems are the troublesome,
browser-hosted Drivers Allowances System Phase II, and Ed, the troublesome,
browser-crashing programmer who's been assigned to work with her on the DA
project. Her closest colleagues are Carl and Denny, old C++ hands with
impressive CVs, but a
sneaking feeling that Angie's COM and OLE DB skills are a harder currency
these days.
Developer's Diary isn't for sale, but DNJ does publish it online - click
'Copy Sample' to see it.
Text © Paul Stephens 1999. Illustrations © Sholto
Walker 1997-99. All rights reserved.
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