Patti O'Shea's Blog

The Trip To Nowhere

February 2nd, 2012

Since coming to Atlanta, I’ve relied on my car’s GPS system a lot. However, it hasn’t been 100% accurate. To my frustration, it often will refuse to let me input the address I want because it’s not in a range that it believes belongs on that street. The GPS has been wrong.

The worst experience, though, was the one I call the Trip to Nowhere.

My parents and I were determined to buy a recliner for the house. I found a store in Newnan, GA and wrote down the address. GPS didn’t like the number of the building for the street. However, there was a street name, south and GPS did like that, so that’s what I set as our destination.

Things started out okay, but then it began to rain. They drive like Maniacs here, I don’t know where I’m going, and it’s raining??? Gah!

Despite all the weather, we kept going, confident we’d make it to the furniture place. Things started to get iffy when GPS directed us off the highway. It got worse. We ended up in the middle of a residential neighborhood, nothing even remotely retail in the area.

GPS Fail.

Or maybe it was me. After all, I did select Street South instead of street. I punched in the street name, lied on the number of the building so GPS would accept it, and we started out again. This time we ended up near a hotel that appeared vacant. It wasn’t, but it sure wasn’t doing a booming business either. It was raining harder now and it wouldn’t be too much longer before it started to get dark. We decided to go back home.

I selected home on GPS, turned out of the parking lot in the direction from which we’d come, and was led on a roundabout route that ended up turning just in front of the rundown hotel we’d started from. Um, what? Why the hell didn’t GPS tell me to turn right when I went past the road the first time?

GPS Fail. Again.

We did make it home after a drive through several Georgia towns, including one I’d never heard of before. I don’t know if this was the most efficient route ever concocted, but we did arrive back at the condo.

Tags: cars, GPS
Posted in Adventures | No Comments »

First Days – Atlanta

January 31st, 2012

I have a couple of first day stories from Atlanta.

First day in the condo. It was chaos. Pandemonium. Comcast came out to install my cable. This was the day my new mattress was being delivered. And the guy who was going to replace the window called and wanted to come out, too.

We had one lawn chair at this point. No other furniture of any sort. I was up and down off the floor multiple times, including lying on my stomach next to the Comcast tech as we tried to get my internet hookup to work. Late that night, after sitting on the floor chatting with friends and watching MLB Network, I tried to get up and felt my knee pop. The pain as excruciating for days afterward.

Not a great beginning in my new city.

First day at work. It was chaos. Luckily, I’d made a trial run to the office the day before and knew GPS was correctly guiding me in. What I didn’t know was that I’d arrive amid a mechanic shift change which meant hundreds and hundreds of people coming in to the Tech Ops area. I sat in line, waiting to turn in to the building.

I’m just grateful that I was down in December for a meeting and learned where my department was located. I even managed to find it again without getting lost. None of my boxes had made it from Minneapolis even though I’d had them ready to go ten days early. It’s tough to work without your stuff.

But people in my department came by to say hello and I even got a couple of welcome hugs. My boss came by to make sure I had everything I needed and my boss’s boss stopped by to thank me for relocating. Later that week, we were treated to a welcome to Atlanta lunch.

This was a great beginning to my new job location.

Tags: atlanta
Posted in Life | 4 Comments »

Mean Disney Girls

January 29th, 2012

This came through on Twitter a few weeks ago and I thought it was pretty good, so I’m sharing.

Tags: video
Posted in Misc | No Comments »

Must Write

January 26th, 2012

Every character I write is one I feel drawn to and compelled to write. But there are some characters that go beyond that, some I have to write even if it means bringing them into an alternate universe. No lie.

One set of characters started out life in a contemporary world and I pulled them into a paranormal one. It involved a name change for the hero. He informed me that his first name was different in this alternate dimension and it also involved name changes for all his brothers and sisters. Okay. The heroine kept her name, but her entire life changed and her personality along with it.

Some might argue that this makes them different characters. I know better. These are the same people, but the circumstances of their world changed and that impacted who they are.

It’s actually kind of interesting. I’ve maintained from the beginning that if I rewrote Ravyn’s Flight and put different characters in the lead roles, that the story would be completely different. Oh, it might begin the same, but my characters’ choices drive the plot, my plot never drives my characters. Even if I wanted to write that way, I couldn’t. If I try to force my characters to do something they don’t want to do, they go on strike and I spin my wheels until I fix what they dislike.

I have another set of characters that will not go away. I’ve been turning things around in my mind, trying to find a way to get them into some kind of story since their original idea is going nowhere. I need to write them. I have a burning desire to write them. And I will. Eventually. One way or another.

Tags: characters
Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »

I Miss My Cargo Space

January 24th, 2012

In December, mere weeks before I had to move to Atlanta, my beloved Explorer decided it needed a lot of expensive repair work done. Since it was a 1998, I opted to buy a new car instead and went with the Edge. I call it my James Bond car. With all the high tech electronics on it (especially for someone who was driving a 1998), it can only be a spymobile. I swear the only thing missing is the hidden missile launcher.

I do like my Edge. A lot. Really. But there are definitely things I miss about the Explorer. And when I was packing up to leave Minnesota, the cargo space was a huge factor. Things I was planning to pack to take along, things like a vacuum cleaner, suddenly didn’t fit and I needed to buy new down here.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, my day job was relocated from Minneapolis to Atlanta. I chose to relocate with my job, but because of how difficult it is to sell a house in MN in the winter, most of my stuff is still up north and will stay there until I do sell my house and I officially move. Right now, I’m officially a commuter between the two cities.

I did make sure there was room for the important things like my computers. There was no way I was leaving those behind. But my couch? Still in MN.

Some of the lighter things, like my storage containers will get shipped down via UPS or the USPS. Other things that are too bulky or two heavy or not cost effective to ship will have to wait. I even had to leave my blankets and duvet behind because there just wasn’t room in the Edge. As it stood, we were smashed into the vehicle. If only the Explorer could have hung on another few months.

Tags: cars
Posted in Life | 2 Comments »

Ten Reasons Not to Travel to Australia

January 22nd, 2012

I’ll admit right up front that out of everywhere I’ve traveled, Australia is my favorite place in the world. I’d go back in a heartbeat even with the incredibly long flight. I still thought this was funny, though, so I’m sharing.

Tags: videos
Posted in Misc | No Comments »

I Hate You. I Love You.

January 19th, 2012

Last week, I was reading a book that pulled the "I hate you. No, wait, I love you" thing and it made me crazy. IMO, it can’t be pulled off successfully. I’ve never, ever read a book or an author who’s made it work.

In the book that inspired this post, the hero and heroine hate each other. They don’t have one charitable thought about the other. Then about halfway through the story, without warning or cause, the hero and heroine are in lurvvvv. More than in love, they’re soul mates. Kissy, kissy, huggy, huggy. Sexing it up.

Um, no. I didn’t buy it, especially the way their feelings for each other turned on a dime and without any real, earthshaking events occurring.

The only way something like this could possibly work (and I still have my doubts) is a gradual thawing of relations between the characters. Maybe seeing the other in a new light and grudgingly reconsidering their preconceptions of one another.

The other idea that comes to mind that might make it workable as a plot device is having them say one thing and think another. Maybe there’s a reason why they want the other one to believe they don’t like them, but in their head, there’s admiration and positive thoughts. Maybe, but I still have my doubts.

I hated this device when I was mainly a reader, and TBH, I hate it even more now that I write. I think some writers believe this kind of petty arguing/sniping is conflict and it’s not. Conflict is more than this and true, honest-to-goodness character impacting conflict can’t turn off on a whim. If it can, it’s not a real conflict, it’s an author convenience.

I’ve read books in the past where the h/h have "hated" each other right up until the last few pages of the story. Really? And the author expects me to believe the Happily Ever After? I don’t think so.

Tags: reading
Posted in Books | Comments Off

The Big Move

January 17th, 2012

I made it to Atlanta, Georgia. I’ve been here two weeks now–one getting setup and one where I actually went to work at my day job.

Things still feel pretty unreal, you know? Like I’m on some kind of extended vacation. My parents are still down here and that adds to the vacation feel. I’m not sure how long it’s going to take before it sinks in that this is more than an extended stay in the south. Maybe once my parents have returned to Minnesota and I’m here alone for a while.

I can say I definitely like the weather here better than Minneapolis, although it’s been kind of bipolar. One day the high will be in the 60s, the next it’s in the 40s. I did wear short sleeves to work four out of five days last week. Short sleeves. In JANUARY! Wild!

The one thing I dislike–okay more than dislike, hate–is the driving. OMG, it’s like commuting through the middle of the Indianapolis 500! People, I have out of state plates, I’m driving in the right hand lane (a lane I rarely, if ever, used in Minneapolis), give me a break and stop tailgating me. I don’t know where I’m going even with GPS. To add to my fun, the commute is about double what I had in Minneapolis. Totally not cool.

On the plus side, most of the people I’ve talked to have been very nice. We’ll disregard the two mechanics I talked to in the elevator at work who pretended I didn’t exist. They’re probably not from around here anyway, right?

In other words, like anywhere you live, there are pluses and minuses in Atlanta. I’ll probably have more to say later, but so far, so good.

Tags: atlanta
Posted in Life | 2 Comments »

The Secret Life of Books

January 15th, 2012

I can’t help but wonder if this is the secret to how my To Be Read pile keeps multiplying.

Tags: after-hours
Posted in Books | 2 Comments »

Doppleganger?

January 12th, 2012

A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting discussion on one of my writer loops about doing a Google search before finalizing a pen name. The topic came up because a self-published author is using the name of a multi-published with New York author and another small press author was using a name that was nearly identical to another author’s romance pseudonym.

The subject than turned to Googling character names. Sometimes I do this, sometimes I don’t.

I pretty much have zero leeway on the first names, especially of my hero and heroine. It doesn’t matter to them if I don’t like the name or not, they tell me who they are and that’s that. I’ve learned to deal with this, and in all honesty, I like it. The one time I was left to choose a name was torturous. Sometimes I still complain about not being the driver’s seat, but as soon as I remember how miserable I was when I did have control, I shut up and say never mind.

Surnames, though, I do have some say in. Not always and sometimes not much, but the characters are rarely intractable on this score. And when the last names come too easily, I tend to Google. Sometimes it turns out there is a real person with that name. There was one time my hero’s name was identical to someone who was arrested for a high profile crime. I can’t help but think that I’d heard that man’s name on the news at some point, and when my hero gave me his first name, my subconscious dredged out the felon’s name. Needless to say, the hero had his surname changed.

Sometimes the name is completely set and I can’t change it no matter what Google turns up. Like Mika Noguchi from Through a Crimson Veil. In the book, Mika makes a joke when Conor searches her name and discovers that Mika Noguchi is an Asian woman’s wrestling champ. Why does she do this? Because there really is a Mika Noguchi who’s a woman wrestler. This actually led to a running joke through the story.

Checking out a character’s name isn’t a bad thing, but I doubt there’s any name out there that no one in the world has unless it’s something totally made-up and bizarre, and even then, who knows? Where does the line get drawn? No, I wouldn’t let a character named Brad Pitt loose in a book, but Mika Noguchi? I thought that was okay since there can’t be that many of my readers who follow Asian woman’s wrestling. In the end, I think it has to come down to a writer’s best judgment.

Tags: characters, names, searches
Posted in Writing | Comments Off

Blogroll