Patti O'Shea's Blog

Yesterday, as I neared the end of my lunch time at work, I finally decided that the scene I’ve been struggling with would work much better in the hero’s POV. Yes, sometimes I am a little slow. Of course, I didn’t have time to start then, but I decided that was what I’d do when I got home.

Here’s where the title of the blog comes in. I have the laptop fired up, it’s ready to go. I’ve dosed myself with Vitamin B for energy–all systems are go. Until I sat down. I left the laptop on the ottoman and closed my eyes to take some daydreaming time. An hour later, I finally woke up. Sigh.

I used to laugh at my dad when I was a kid. How could anyone fall asleep sitting up??? Now I know. If you’re tired enough, you can sleep anywhere. I was that tired. Worse yet, I woke up groggy. I hate when that happens because it leaves me feeling worse than before I napped.

Last night, I went to bed earlier again. And again, I had trouble falling asleep because my mind was racing. It’s a vicious cycle.

If you’re thinking I didn’t have anything interesting happen yesterday, you’d be right. And just to close on a high note, let me talk about the weather. 36 degrees with the wind chill. 36. In MAY. Rain all day today. Windy too which means I’m going to have to wear my winter jacket. In MAY. Why do I live here?

I hate writing letters.

People seem to think that because I’m a writer that I can write anything, but it doesn’t work that way. Like when I was in college and was constantly writing advertising copy, I became really good at it. But now, when I haven’t done it in years, I can’t write back cover copy or pithy little blurbs to save my life. For me, though, the worst has always been any kind of professional-type letter.

I never know what to say. I try to sound businessy and I think it ends up sounding terse and looking too short, so then I add more, which feels as if it were just put in there. Anyway, my letters are horrible and I loathe writing them. Unfortunately for me, I have two projects on my To Do List that require letters. In fact, one is going to demand I be pretty damn eloquent. Sigh.

My major dilemma in letter-land is a cover page for the Advanced Reading Copies of Eternal Nights that I want to send out to booksellers. Somehow, I think “Here’s my ARC” isn’t going to cut it, but what do I write? Do I give a brief synopsis of the book? A teaser blurb? How much info? With a couple of the booksellers, I can add a handwritten note saying it was nice to meet them in Reno, but for most, I can’t even personalize it.

Anyway, this is something that’s fast approaching the ASAP To Do List so I’m going to have to figure something out. I really wish, though, that writing did translate across the board like most people believe it does.

Nothing really exciting going on here. I was falling asleep in my chair last night–I’m severely sleep deprived right now–but when I went to bed, my thoughts started racing again. I hate when that happens, but that is the harbinger of my insomnia problems. I popped a couple of Advil, though, and that relaxed me enough to put me out. I seriously need to either clone myself or find a way to be creative and productive without sleep.

Temperatures plummeted here and it’s 39 with the wind chill. It’s May for God’s sake!

I have a lot of newsy-type stuff to share, the question will be can I remember all of it. I’m not too hopeful. :-/

First, Through a Crimson Veil finished second in the Lories Awards! I received the news yesterday along with my score sheets. I never want my score sheets back, TBH, because there’s nothing I can do to change anything in a book that’s already published, but they were just emailed back. Of course, I couldn’t help but look at them, but I had some really nice comments.

Secondly, I received the first review in for Eternal Nights along with some really great comments in the email accompanying it!

Eternal Nights combines humor, intrigue, danger, some hot sex and some truly unforgettable characters into one fabulous package.

There’s also some really cool comments about Wyatt. It always causes anxiety to send the newest book out for review, so getting something this fabulous yesterday helped a lot. It also really helped that the reviewer had reread Ravyn’s Flight just before reading EN and said that this one was “deeper and more complex.” RF has reached this cult-status kind of thing judging by the emails I still get and it’s nice to know that EN measures up.

And just like I feared, I can’t remember anything else that I was planning to talk about this morning. I’m blaming it on the fact that I stayed up too late last night. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Edited to Add: I remembered more! There’s a really nice mention of yours truly in May’s Tanzey Talk column over at Fresh Fiction!

And yesterday I received the catalog from my publisher. There, under my name, Ravyn’s Flight was listed! I was beginning to wonder if they’d changed their mind about reprinting it.

This is going to be a really short post. It took Blogger so long to pull up the create a post page that I don’t have much time before I have to get ready for work. Of course, part of the issue might be that I have dial up. Sigh.

Yesterday, I let everyone who needed to know that I wouldn’t be attending the RT Convention in Daytona after all. I was actually looking forward to getting away for a while and the hotel looked spectacular! But I would lose too much writing time and I have too much left to do. Sigh. I was hugely stressed out about this, and while I’m disappointed not to be going, I also feel relieved because I’ll have more time. I’ve still got vacation scheduled from the day job and I’m going to take it, lock myself in and just write. I can’t wait until I’ve got my projects turned in and I can take some time off to just relax for a while.

Since I’m talking writing, I redid the second scene that gave me such trouble on Sunday. I think it’s stronger now and that I resolved the issues. I also sat down and made a list of things that still needed to occur in the WIP, and surprisingly, it was 3 pages long. Yikes! Then I did goals for the next chapter, but I need to find some daydreaming time because I’m not sure how I want to approach it yet.

They graded my yard yesterday. It looked really good when they finished, but a couple of hours later, it just poured. Hope it’s going to be okay till the sod is in.

Yes, I did it again. I overslept. Considering my insomnia was back and I probably ended up with maybe three hours of sleep, it’s not too surprising I couldn’t get up this morning.

Did 12 pages yesterday. It would have been 18 if I’d counted the 6 pages I wrote, then cut and completely rewrote. The scene still has some problems, but I think I figured out how to fix some of it and will go at it today. Normally, I move on and fix later unless it’s big enough to affect the next chapters. This might be.

Again, I ended the chapter on an emotional bang. I need to ramp up the plot now, somehow. Why are characters and emotional stuff so easy and plot so hard? Gah!

Anyway, my brain is fried so going to work where no thinking is required might not be a bad thing.

I officially received the word last night that Through a Crimson Veil is a finalist in the Golden Quill Awards for Best paranormal! I actually had heard this unofficially from two different sources a couple of weeks ago, but I kept mum until I heard from the coordinator. It was a long two weeks to wait!

Yesterday, I wrote something like 21 or 22 pages, which is a lot for me. I would have kept going, but I didn’t have a clue what happens next and it was after 7pm, so I called it a day. I think I know what I want to do now–I woke up with an idea in mind–but I have to do my list of goals for the scene and see if there’s enough there. That’s really my biggest problem, keeping the plot on track. I’d rather deal with emotional bombshells than the plot bombshells and it’s a struggle to keep this balanced.

I don’t think I have anything else to say this morning. My brain’s still tired from yesterday’s writing marathon.

I saw my table and it is beautiful! After 4 months of waiting and hassle, my transaction is now completed. It was so funny, though, when I tried to fold the leaf in. It didn’t look like it was going to fit under the table like it’s supposed to. My dad was helping me and we were discussing it and trying to figure out how the guys who delivered it worked it. We finally figured it out. The table with the leaf tucked away is a much better size for my small space.

My mom found some old curtains/drapes (what is the difference?) and hung them up for me while my dad was waiting for the table to be delivered. These are old, sheer, lacy things in an off-white. I don’t know when my mom used them last because I don’t remember seeing them even when I was a kid. But these old curtains/drapes/sheers look perfect over my great room windows! So great, in fact, that the other curtains that she gave me (these are white) now look not so good. We’re discussing strategy for this. But if it comes right down to it, I’ll just have to stay with the white because the price (FREE) was right for these window coverings.

In writing news, I fixed some stuff in the first scene of the chapter, which added a couple more pages, then I went on to the next scene. Most of that is going to need to be redone or tossed out completely. I was so tired yesterday and it showed.

I still need to write my intro for the RT Convention. It’s on my To Do List. I also decided to go with the blurb from the publisher for my RWR ad. I couldn’t come up with anything better.

Today is National Scrapbooking Day. Just FYI.

My dad just called. My table arrived, and after inspecting it, he says it’s fine! Also, my bookmarks arrived for Eternal Nights!

If you’d like one, sent an SASE to:

Patti O’Shea
PO Box 1365
Minnetonka, MN 55345

Today was my day to blog over at 2 B Read. I ended up confessing about my Obsessive Book Hoarding and the size of my TBR pile. That’s a little embarrassing, but given the topic, I didn’t think I could avoid it.

My table is supposed to be delivered today. I don’t know how many times I’ve mentioned this for sure–at least once before–but I’m half-hopeful, half worried. I’m reaching for good omens. I found the table on January 5th. It’s May 5th. That has to mean the table is going to be perfect when they take it out of the box.

On Sunday, I blogged about one of my pet peeves–people not replying to my emails. I never did hear from either of the people who inspired that post, at least not about the topic that I emailed about. But I had a couple of other emails I sent out to reviewers who I was hoping would read Eternal Nights. I didn’t hear back from two of them. Sigh. So now I’m wondering do I email them again or do I just let it go, assuming that the no reply is a no?

I know, I can’t really assume since I could be sitting in a spam filter, but if they did get the email and did decide they weren’t interested and I email again… This is why people need to answer their email! Good grief! My neuroses can’t stand it. Plus, it’s only polite. I’ll refrain from saying more, but this is a topic that irks me enough to get me going every time.

After four or five false starts on the chapter I started Wednesday, I manage to write 9 pages yesterday. Okay, closer to 9 1/3. Yea! Of course, most of those pages are without point, but my writing buddy and I found a way to tie them in to the story as a whole, so I’ll be working on that today before I move on to the next scene.

Still trying to come up with a snappy tagline for EN. I’ve got something about: Desperate smugglers, an ancient temple and a sexy Special Ops officer…. After that, well, nothing real good. I’m going to try turning it around so the list is at the end and I start off with the heroine. I’m hopeful that will work. I am, however, open to suggestions.

Saturday is Free Comic Book Day at participating comic selling stores. To find out more, check out the official site.