Patti O'Shea's Blog

I’m going back to the day job today. I actually asked for two more days off, but since I didn’t go to RT after all, I decided to use the vacation hours differently. I’m going to try taking 4 half days this week. I mean all I’m doing with these full days is sleep with that time anyway. Sleep is for sissies, right?

Speaking of sleep, I’ll be going back with only a couple of hours worth. I don’t know why I can’t sleep on Sunday nights. On the plus side, I think I worked out the rest of the WIP in more detail than I have in my notes. On the minus side, I don’t know how much I remember.

TBH, I was getting kind of burnt out from 9 straight days of the writing marathon. If I were home, I’d have to write, but this way I can take the day off and recharge mentally. Okay, so I’ll probably still try to get a couple of hours in this afternoon when I get home from work, but it’ll be a bit of a break.

Yesterday, my dad decided to schedule someone to come out and give an estimate for putting the deck on my house. I’m like, what??? He knows I have two June deadlines, but apparently the deck can’t wait till July or August. He’s full of plans for the outside of my house, but I’m still trying to encourage him to assemble the last 2 bar stools. They’ve been sitting in a box just inside my front door for nearly 2 months now, and the 2 he already assembled rock. I don’t mean rock! as in way cool. I mean rock as in wobble.

I think I’m done. I need to go find out what Ryne told Deke–specifically–about her past, and I might actually have enough time to do it before I have to get ready for work.

I wrote about 9 pages yesterday. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I wrote about 16 pages yesterday, but I had to cut and rewrite because what I had was boring. I definitely needed the information because it sets up what the heroine is going to do, but the way I was working my way there was awful. After giving it some consideration, I switched to Deke’s POV and I had part of the information given by another character. I’d been waffling on whether or not Creed was going to make an appearance (he’s the hero in book 2), but by having him show up and getting Deke all jealous, it made for a much more lively scene.

I’m on the home stretch now. I’m figuring about 80 more pages and I’m done. Might be a little more, might be a little less depending on how things go. My goal is to be finished in one week. I have to be because I haven’t even started writing the anthology story I have due on June 15th. It’s totally freaking me out to know that other authors are done with their novellas already. I’m still in search of a motive for my bad guy and haven’t had much time to think about it because I’m busy with Ryne and Deke.

Things that have surprised me about Deke and Ryne’s story:

• How dark it ended up being. I knew it was going to be dark when I started, but this is really dark.
• How serious Deke ended up being. He was a horrible smart ass and he was making Ryne nuts, then he discovered just what kind of situation he was dealing with and how critical it was for him, and boom. No more smart ass. Or at least very little smart ass.
• How much Deke likes to kiss. I thought he was never going to get down to sex and I think Ryne was wondering the same thing. Not that she didn’t enjoy the kissing, but…
• How important it was to Deke to feel like he was pulling his weight. It really ate at him that Ryne had to take on most of the fighting.
• That they ended up in Los Angeles. I didn’t have a clue that was going to happen.

And I’ll close by mentioning one of my pet peeves–Authors that don’t keep their websites up to date. Nothing is more frustrating than going to a site to get information and seeing that it hasn’t been updated in 6 months–or longer. It’s such an easy thing to do and it makes your readers happy. Update at least once a month. Grrr!

Ryne and Deke finally had sex on Thursday. It took me like 8 hours to write those 14 or so pages, but then the choreography combined with emotion is always time consuming for me to write. I think the scene turned out well and now that’s over and done with at least until maybe nearer the end of the book.

Despite my late start yesterday, I managed to get 13 pages written before I stopped about 9pm. That actually ended up being a good thing because before I fell asleep, I realized that I’d had Deke saying something he would no longer tell Ryne. I want that information to come across, but I think I came up with an alternate way that won’t compromise character.

The curtains I ordered finally arrived yesterday. I was all excited until I opened the bag and saw the color “antique” actually was. It’s this brownish-gold color. The picture online made it look off-white. That’s what I need, not gold. I don’t know what exactly to call the color I want. Ecru? Ivory? Cream? Anyway, this was a huge disappointment and it looks like I’m back at the drawing board.

I finally had a chance to watch a baseball game, but only because the Braves were (SHOCK!) on TBS and playing at 9pm. Of course, they squandered a 5 run lead and were doing their best to lose the rest of the night. I went to bed after the top of the 9th inning with Atlanta ahead 9-8 only to discover they lost it in the bottom half of the inning. Good grief! The only one of my teams that won yesterday was the Twins.

I’m horribly backed up on email right now. I’m trying not to answer anything before I write for the day, but by the time I’m done writing, the last thing I want to do is answer email. Sigh. I also have to get my stuff together for an ad and mail out some advanced reading copies of Eternal Nights.

I way overslept this morning. Kind of. I was up late last night, woke up at 5am and I was like, no way! But it took me forever to fall back asleep and it was after 9:30 when I woke up again. That sucks since I wanted an earlier start than this! Enough about that, though, and on to the subject for the day. (Yes, I actually have one.) Point of view.

The hits I take on my stories that absolutely drive me batty are when people complain because I did point of view (POV) right. This is the one time I’d love to argue with the person saying things, but I never do–even if I am gnashing my teeth over it.

Like in Ravyn’s Flight where a reviewer said the villain was nothing but a feral rogue. Um, excuse me, I’m never in his POV, and from the characters’ viewpoints that I am in, he is a feral killer. None of them are going to stop and look for his redeeming qualities.

If you’re wondering where this topic came from, it has to do with the art sheet I filled out the other day and the ages of Ryne and Deke. It reminded me of a blogger (Back before I got smart and stopped googling my name) who spent a great deal of time talking about how ridiculous it was to make the five year age gap between Jake and Cai an issue and a point of conflict in The Power of Two. After all, in her eyes, the gap was nothing.

And I agree, five years isn’t that much, but in the Jake’s eyes it was one hell of a big difference. As he saw it, Cai was a very sheltered 21 year old and he was a very savvy 26-year-old Special Forces officer who’d been on his own since the age of 18 and who had been in combat. In his mind, the age gap wasn’t so much years, but experience. In fact, he even says that in the book: It’s not the years, it’s the miles.

So as I’m filling out the art sheet, it dawns on me that the age gap between Ryne and Deke is 7 years. It’s not mentioned even once in the book because it’s simply not an issue for either one of them. Ryne is 27 and a troubleshooter for a society of magic users. She’s been at war with the dark forces for most of her life since training began for her at the age of 12. She’s intense and she’s faced hell–a far cry from Cai.

Point of view and characterization. The reader can only know/feel what the POV characters know and feel. That’s how it’s supposed to be.

It would be totally out of character for Ravyn to think about the bad guy (who’s recently killed 19 of her friends) and say, Gee, he’s killing all these people, but maybe he saves animals from drowning–he can’t be all bad. No! In Ravyn’s eyes, he is evil and horrible and feral. Maybe he does save animals from drowning, but she doesn’t care! That’s the bottom line. She doesn’t care. All she cares about is what he did to her friends and others.

In Jake’s eyes, the five year span was huge because of the difference in their life experiences and it was something he thought about, something he worried about. To not address it, would be to do an injustice to characterization and to censor his POV.

I also took hits from a reviewer because Cai and Jake didn’t say this or didn’t do that. Hey, I’m in my character’s heads. If they don’t care about something and aren’t thinking about it, it becomes contrived if I try to force it in there because someone else believes they should be concerned about it.

Point of view and characterization. I’ve gotten all kinds of compliments about how real my characters feel and I believe that’s because I don’t force things into their minds/mouths that they aren’t interested in and I don’t censor their thoughts/dialogue because it’s something I don’t feel comfortable with.

Ryne has some real ugly stuff in her past–it made me uncomfortable–but I wrote it anyway because it’s part of who she is today. If she never brought it up, I wouldn’t have addressed it, but she did tell me about it, and once she did, I discovered it was one of the driving forces in her interaction with the hero (and others).

Mika’s overt sexuality made me uncomfortable too. (Through a Crimson Veil) She said and did things that left me feeling embarrassed and thinking, OMG, my mom is going to read this book. I put it all in there anyway. It’s who Mika is.

Okay, I think I’m done. Bottom line, be true to the characters and their POV. Now I need to get moving. Oversleeping like this really threw me off.

I almost forgot to blog today! =8-O

I’m reminded again that I don’t blog “right.” I should be interesting and funny to attract visitors or find a niche–like craft or industry–and address it. Only that’s not me. My life isn’t all that interesting and it’s hard to fake it and I’ve never been funny. There’s a reason why I don’t write romantic comedy. I love reading it, but don’t have the voice for it. The only time I’m funny is when my characters say something humorous. It’s them, not me.

I’ve tried talking about craft, but I ran out of steam pretty darn fast. I’m a sit-down-and-write author and I don’t spend a lot of time analyzing how or why I’m doing something for fear of paralyzing myself. It makes it darn hard to talk about craft when I don’t think about it at all. As for industry stuff, well, I keep up loosely on what’s happening, but I work full time and have tight deadlines–I don’t have time to become an authority on the subject.

As for being controversial, that’s not me. I crave peace. I want everyone to like me and I want to like everyone else. I hate it when someone stirs up a tempest in a teapot and I would just dread coming to my own blog if I started doing that. I offered my opinion on the state of the romance genre once, and inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings. Maybe it’s considered wussy to not want to ruffle feathers, but I don’t want to burn energy on this kind of thing. I like smooth waters and I do everything I can to keep my life running without snags.

I already thought this through when I’d only been blogging a short time and decided that I needed to blog in a way that was comfortable for me and if I never attracted thousands of hits a day, so be it.

I had an epiphany about promotion and how much I could handle thanks to a couple of authors on one of the loops I’m on. I needed to hear them say it over and over, but it finally sank in. The words of wisdom? “The only thing you can control is the writing.” And “You can only do what you have time for to promote the book.” Two tough lessons for me, but I’m learning to let go and work on the one thing I can control (kind of)–my story.

So sorry y’all for not blogging in a way that’s super interesting and makes millions of people flock here every day to read more pearls of wisdom, but what it comes down to is I have to be me.

In writing/book news, I filled out my cover concept form for the book I’m writing now. This is always an interesting endeavor, but my theory on this is to give the artist enough to work with and let them create.

I think I read that somewhere. Maybe. Anyway, it fits. I’d been hitting a lot of emotional points and not having a lot of plot stuff going on, so I critically injured a secondary character. She’ll survive. I have plans for her down the road.

My head finally feels halfway normal today. I took it easy yesterday and took a lot of breaks to get up and move. After 4 days of non-stop writing, I’m not sure any longer that I want to do this full time. :-/ At least at the day job, no thinking is required. Although maybe if I were doing this full time, I’d be able to do like 6 hours a day and take the rest of the day off to do other things. Instead, since I’m using vacation from work, I’m putting in 10 hour days. Or thereabouts. And it’s exhausting.

I’m hearing reports from RT and really wishing I could have gone. It’s such a blast! But there’s no way I would have gotten as much done as I have if I were down there and I’ve got too much to do before the end of June.

Since I’ve done nothing except write for so long, I don’t have much interesting to say. It was beautiful here yesterday. I opened windows up throughout my house and let the fresh air in.

Anyway, I suppose I should get back to the Twilight Zone. That’s what I call the writing zone when nothing outside the story really registers for longer than a few seconds. Been there for days, and actually, it’s a pretty nice place to be.

After spending all my waking moments on the computer for the past few days, my head rebelled yesterday. I woke up with a bad headache and started taking stuff to alleviate it right away. Neither of the two OTC pain killers I tried worked, so I decided to nap. Sleep usually knocks even the worst headaches out of me, but even that didn’t help this time. Needless to say, I didn’t get as much accomplished as I wanted to yesterday. Not only did I knock off around 4 hours earlier than usual, I didn’t get much accomplished while I was writing.

This morning, my head feels better, but still kind of iffy. If only my physical body would listen to me and straighten up.

I had totally bizarre dreams last night, including hiding my airplane ticket in Jennifer Aniston’s wine cooler underneath one of the bottles. Don’t ask me where that came from because I have no clue!

For the last two days, the road construction crew has been using some heavy duty equipment–I can already hear it and feel the rumbles this morning–and that didn’t help my headache any. I hope they don’t do what they’re doing now all day long. That would just be hideous!

Since being on the computer is what triggered everything, and since I still feel iffy, I’m going to keep this short and try to stay off the thing when I’m not writing. Easier said than done, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

I’m in deep immersion writing this week. Actually, I have been for a while, but since I’m on vacation this week (I was supposed to be at RT), I’ll really be doing some heavy duty writing. Already, my eyes hurt from staring at the computer screen for so many hours and I’m sure by the time I’m done, I’ll need a massage or a chiropractor.

I haven’t looked at the book in its entirety for so long, I have no idea how the story as a whole looks. I’m solely focused on the current scene. It’s kind of a weird mindset to fall into. I can’t remember what happened three chapters ago, so I can only hope I’m not repeating myself. My biggest concern right now is the action/suspense/plot. It’s been heavy emotional stuff, which I enjoy the hell out of writing, but I don’t know if anything is moving the plot forward. Sigh.

The plan for today is when I’m done writing, to stay off the computer. Email is an evil lure, but I don’t think my eyes can take extra time staring at the screen. And I do have a bunch stuff to do for Eternal Nights that won’t require me to use a computer–at least not for longer than it takes to print off some mailing labels.

This blog should really be writing focused this week since I won’t be doing much of anything else.

All in all, Saturday turned out to be a pretty darn good day despite the fact that it was raining and cold–again.

I finished the scene that has been giving me fits! I discovered that the problem was that I thought Ryne would be acting one way and was insisting on trying to write it that way. After wheel spinning, I finally asked both characters if they had a problem. Being the perceptive person I can be, I started with Deke who had no issue. Once Ryne told me that she’d never behave that way, and I wrote the scene with her correction, things went smoothly.

The really cool thing that happened yesterday, though, was that I woke up with a plot for the Crimson City novella I have due mid-June! I wasn’t even focusing on this just yet, but I did have a loose (very loose) idea of what I wanted to do. Now I have particulars. Yea! I just need to get some questions answered to nail down a few big picture details and then do some daydreaming about it.

I stayed up way too late last night, not working, just reading some stuff and I’m paying the price today. I still woke up before 8am which I knew would happen, but I stayed in bed and tried to fall back asleep anyway. Didn’t happen and I finally got up. My goal was to start writing by 9am and I just finished my coffee. Tonight, I have to do better.

Happy Mother’s Day!

There have been a lot of birds around my area lately. There’s more cardinals then I can remember seeing in about forever, and a pair of mallard ducks were waddling around the backyard of the house next to mine. I could see them as I sat writing. Mallard males are not gentlemen. He left the female to waddle along behind him.

But my favorite are the Canadian geese. I’ve been told they mate for life, which is part of what endears them to me, but it’s more than that. They’re beautiful and majestic birds. When I was driving home from work the other day, there was a pair along the side of the road (a very busy road with a high speed limit!) and they had 4 or 5 fuzzy little goslings with them. They were so cute! If I wouldn’t have had someone plow into my car from behind, I would have sat and watched them for a while.

A long, long time ago, when I was in second grade, our class hatched baby chicks (the kind that would grow up to be chickens). At the end of the school year, whoever brought a note from home with permission to take a chick home, got to keep it. I remember it took some fast talking on my part to talk my parents into this one, but they agreed with the stipulation that we give it away when we went on vacation late that summer. My dad knew this chicken farmer, you see….

So I had a chick and we ended up going to a pet store to buy a second one for my brother. His had black plumage, mine the white. They were so cute. If you picked up one, you had to pick up the other and I remember them being sweet. I don’t remember what I named my chick, but I know I did. They were a little messy and the dogs weren’t too thrilled to be sharing their home with a pair of chickens, but overall it worked out well.

Then we went on vacation and my dad took the chickens to his farmer friend. I absolutely refused to eat chicken for at least 10 years after that for fear that it was my chick.

I’m guessing this trip down memory lane is more interesting to y’all than listening to me bitch about the weather. I did wear my winter jacket yesterday, and I’ll need to today too. Sigh.

I’ve been trying a new reminder service to help me keep track of things. It’s been working out really well and I’m very happy with it. It’s called Memo To Me. I’ve been using it to remind me about a website I have to check weekly (and kept forgetting) and I used it to remind me about my blog date for 2 B Read. I plan to start making more use of it since the test period worked out so well. (And no, this is not paid advertising. I just found a service that’s really working well for me and wanted to pass it along.)