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I do love Halloween. And as you can tell from the two quizzes I posted last night, I started celebrating a little early. That was actually during a break from cleaning. Sigh. The curtain hardware for all my windows is being installed today, and as I mentioned, I don’t know how long it’s been since I ran a duster over the top of the windows. I ended up spending forever cleaning everything, and I must say, it looks pretty nice. Except for the boxes that still need to be unpacked in two of my rooms.

I also found out that the city assayer is coming over Wednesday to see the house. I guess so they can figure out how much to gouge me for taxes. Definitely, the thorough cleaning job was required. I even did a load of laundry last night because my new bathmats arrived! Yea! My old one is now in the rag drawer.

There, I think I hit all the exciting parts of my night. Oh, well, it had to be done and it’ll stay nice for a few days until I have to dust again.

BTW, does anyone know, is it a glamor don’t to leave place mats on the table all the time? I got some really cool aqua ones that look sharp against the table, but after I laid them all out and positioned them just so, I started wondering if it looked tacky.

To close with a real groaner, something borrowed from a commercial: Have a Spooktacular Halloween!

Halloween Horoscope for Capricorn

Your friends see a whole other side of you on Halloween – brash and bold. You make be reserved and conservative most other days, but on the 31st… look out! Costume suggestions: A stripper or naughty priest / nun Signature Halloween candy: M & M’s

You Are

An Evil Pumpkin Face You would make a good pumpkin bomb.

No cleaning done yesterday. Actually, that’s a good thing because it means I was working on revisions all day and not avoiding writing. Of course, that means I’ll be running around like a mad woman tonight, dusting all surfaces, sweeping, etc. Sigh.

Anyway, revisions are more or less finished for In the Midnight Hour. I would like to read through it one more time without looking for spots because I found a few missing words, some repeated words and some other errors and I’m sure there’s more in there that I could find if I did a read through. I also found a few places where I could streamline or clarify my thoughts.

But this makes me wonder–is this perfectionism or is it avoiding the WIP which has been miserable so far? I’ve trashed the beginning so many times, I’ve lost count, and while I do finally, have some pages that don’t completely suck, they’re still rough and I’m still slogging, trying to get into these characters.

Maia and Creed really haven’t been talking to me long enough to feel as if I have a good sense of them. Sure, they both made appearances in Midnight Hour, but the focus was never on either one of them. I have an idea what they’re like. Maia is dealing with the fact that Ryne (her sister and the heroine of Midnight Hour) doesn’t need like she did before Deke. Ryne had been alone, cut off, and Maia was the one person Ryne could trust, but that’s not true any longer. Now Maia is the one feeling adrift. She ceded her powers 7 years earlier and became an outsider to the Gineal, but she doesn’t fit in among humans either. But she had Ryne, and since her sister had no one else for years, Maia didn’t feel alone. Now Ryne does and now Maia does feel alone. She’s going to have to face making the transition emotionally.

Creed is very dark in his personality. He can be ruthless and remorseless. He’s going to be an interesting hero to write, I think. It’s difficult to know for sure because he is barely passing along any information to me at all. I’m having to glean what I can from his few brief appearances in my head. Right now, I believe he might be the darkest hero I’ve ever had show up. I think–and I have to qualify it because of his silence–that he’s fighting to hang on because his people need him. Unlike other heroes I’ve had in the past, I don’t know if Creed has that core of honor left inside him. He’s lied to Ryne by omission and put her in a dangerous position in Midnight Hour and she’s mad as hell at him. Yet, facing down evil to protect the Gineal is honorable. I don’t know. He’s just not telling me enough to get a bead on him.

So the only thing to do is keep slogging through his story and try to figure him out as I go along. Yeah, I’d much rather be working on revisions. Ryne and Deke are familiar and the tough work is done for them.

The Italian Job is my latest movie rental. A group of thieves who steal a hell of a lot of gold bars are double-crossed by one of their own. This is prologue. The main body of the movie is how the gang steals their gold from the double-crosser. Um, not much of a plot summary, I realize that, but that’s about the gist of it. BTW, mentioning the betrayal by one of the thieves isn’t a spoiler because the summary on the movie mentions it.

I thought the movie was okay, but lacked the excitement and suspense of The Transporter, which I watched last week. The first problem I had was that when the double cross happens, I really don’t care about any of the characters yet. Which kind of left me shrugging when it happened. And truthfully, I never really did care about any of the characters at any point in the movie which was part of what hurt the suspense.

Which leads me to the second problem I had with the movie. I never felt as if it were all that suspenseful. Will they get away with avenging themselves against the betrayer or not? That should have been a driving question. There should have been twists and turns and setbacks and surprises, but I didn’t really see any of that. The few things that were supposed to raise the suspense level as to whether or not they’d get away with it, didn’t really do much to that end. Most of it was fairly predictable.

Overall, it was an okay movie, but lacked the flair and excitement of the really good caper films where the viewer gets to enjoy seeing how ingenious the thieves are as they pull off their job.

My rating: 3 stars

Adventures in Car Repair
I brought my car in to have the oil changed, have some recall work done, and hopefully, get the engine to stop sounding so rough. I ended up stuck at the dealership for a couple of hours, but that wasn’t too bad–considering. Plus, I found a magazine that talked about the art/museum scene in the Twin Cities area which is info that might help me with the WIP. Serendipity.

The adventure begins when I get in my freshly washed vehicle and drive off. The car didn’t want to stop. It raced forward and I had to ride the brake. I’d be at a full stop at the light, take my foot off the brake and shoot forward even though I hadn’t touched the accelerator. I didn’t have to press the accelerator at all on a flat stretch of road because it just kept going and sometimes even picked up speed! This was wrong, way wrong. I turned the car around and went back to the dealership. I turned the ignition off and talked to the original guy I’d worked with. He took the car out for a drive and guess what?

Yep, it didn’t do it for him!

He speculated it might have been something that happened in the pressure wash. Maybe something got wet or whatever. So I drive back home and the car is perfect. It doesn’t do one weird thing. It’s as if it were possessed and bringing it back to the car place exorcised the demon. Grrr! I’m supposed to call the car guy on Monday because he’s going to talk to some of his master mechanics and see if they have any thoughts on what happened.

That drive, though, was one wild ride I could have done without.

And Other Stuff
The guy who’s supposed to install my curtain hardware called on Friday and he’s going to come out on Halloween to put the stuff up. Of course, that means I have to clean and in places I might otherwise skip, like above my eye level. Seriously, I frequently skip dusting the top of the windows, but I’ll have to get the old Swiffer duster out and hit them. On the plus side, though, besides the house being all clean and sparkly, I’ll have my curtains all hung and that will be one more thing finished. And once the curtains are up, I’ll be able to arrange the furniture in my office and in the spare bedroom. I haven’t been able to do those rooms because I had to leave the area around the windows open for installation.

I forgot to set my clocks back before I went to bed last night. I love the day when Daylight Savings Time ends because I get that extra hour of sleep without losing what seems like half the day. However, I hate that it gets so dark in the afternoons so early and I loathe winter. From now until Solstice, it’s just going to get darker and darker. Sigh. Then there’s the fact that I wish we’d pick one time and stick with it because my internal body clock is going to be screwed up for weeks as it tries to adjust to this new time.

I’m almost done with revisions to In the Midnight Hour. I still have a couple things left to do, but I haven’t found the perfect spot to drop them in yet. I’ve got some thoughts on where I hope to put them, so that’s the plan for the day–find them and finish revisions.

This is a preliminary version of my cover for my next full-length book. Because it’s not final, it’s a low-res image and I’m only going to post it here. Once I have the final version, I will, of course, be posting everywhere in the known universe (including here), but I thought I’d give visitors to my blog a sneak peek and solicit opinions.

This book is Ryne and Deke’s story. When a troubleshooter for a society of magic users rescues a private investigator from a dark spell, she finds more than an ally as she faces down her former mentor In the Midnight Hour.

So what’s your opinion of the cover? I’d love to hear!

When I arrived home from work yesterday, I found a surprise. There’d been this Kitchen Aide knife set I’d seen at JC Penney that I really liked, but that wasn’t high on my priority list of things to buy so I just kind of said to my mom, wouldn’t that be cool? It’s a knife set that didn’t come in that usual wooden block, but was in a round red and silver carousel. Much more sleek and modern looking than the usual knife block. I’d previously decided to go with red in my kitchen because I thought with the charcoal countertops, the red would look way cool. Anyway, I get home from work, and there, sitting on my island, is that knife set! My parents kept this a secret from me, although when I was thanking them, my mom revealed that my dad had nearly spilled the beans on Thursday.

I’d also ordered some stuff from Linens and Things and a box had arrived from them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the new bath mat I so desperately need, it was one of the other items. I’d ordered a 16 piece plate collection thing. Place setting for 4. It’s okay, but not something I’ll want to use forever. But they’re white plates/bowls/cups with a rim of red around them, so it kind of goes with the kitchen decor.

The only downer to the day yesterday was that I moved wrong and irritated a muscle in my back. I’ve been popping Advil and using a heating pad, and while it’s getting better, it still hurts. The really funny thing is that while I was at work, it never occurred to me to take anything to relax the muscles. When someone mentioned it, I wanted to slap my hand to my forehead and go, Duh! Why didn’t I think of that?

I’m up early today–not happily–so that I can get my car in to be serviced. Oil change, recall for something on the cruise control, the engine running rough and that metallic sound I heard on Monday needs to be investigated. I’m trying to figure out what I can bring with me to do (there’s no place to plug in the laptop, damn it!) that will keep me busy for all the time I’ll be trapped there. It’s difficult since I don’t have time to print anything out. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll offer a loaner so I can sit at home and work while they do their thing.

My order from Amazon France arrived yesterday! I opened that puppy up immediately and there, nestled inside, were three copies of The Power of Two in French!

It’s my first foreign translation and it was hugely exciting. Well, except for the fact that the three books I’d ordered were all a little banged up. Not horrible, but I’m the person in the bookstore examining every copy of a title I want to buy to find the most perfect one available. In other words, I’m totally anal about the condition of my books. :-/ If you look at any book I’ve read in the last ten years, you’d never know it had ever been opened.

Anyway, I thumbed through one of the books. Cai’s name is Kali now, but Jake is still Jake. Beyond that, well, I can’t say because I don’t know French. I took German in high school/college so I just kind of looked through it and giggled now and then because my book was in a foreign language, and darn it, that’s just too freaking cool!

The Firefox browser just had a new version released and I updated. (Firefox totally rocks, and once I got used to it, I loved it! I have a hard time using IE now.) Now I’m trying to get used to the new version. The options panel has really changed, and because spell check is built into the browser as an option, the spell check window in Blogger won’t open. At least I think that’s the reason. Yeah, you’d think having my spelling checked once would be good enough.

I’m still working on revisions. My goal was to be finished tonight, but I think I’ll still be doing them on Saturday. My agent had sent a email back in July when she read through it with some things she termed nitpicks too, so I’m doing those changes too. Again, nothing major, but it’s finding the right spot to put the info in and smoothing it out and that takes time.

I was working on revisions again yesterday and rereading the story has reminded me of how much I like Ryne and Deke. She’s prickly and he’s such a smart ass that he drives her nuts sometimes. There’s something about a few months away from a story that allows a different view of the work. Maybe because time creates more distance for a writer. I’ve only been reading little bits here or there, scenes or chapters where I think I can slide in the changes I need to make, but there’s one change that I still have to do that will involve a bigger reread because I’m not sure of the right place.

Revisions are helping me, I think, with the WIP because both Creed and Maia have roles in this story. I didn’t remember Creed swearing so much, but he does. I also heard his theme song on the radio yesterday, Carry On Wayward Son, and after fighting with his story, I had a different perspective on what it meant.

The other thing that’s been interesting about the WIP is that the bad guy is a demon. Seth. Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a really scary name, but if you visit behind the name.com and look up the second definition, it fits. (And I didn’t get to name him. Like my heroes and heroines, Seth told me his name. Have I mentioned how much I envy authors who actually have the power to bestow names and not have their characters fight them?)

But anyway, the thing is that for Through a Crimson Veil and Dark Awakening in Shards of Crimson, I had demons for the heroes and one heroine. And while I did have demons for the bad guys in both those stories, these weren’t well-defined characters that were talking to me. Seth is kind of talking–at least enough to tell me what to call him–and it’s making it hard for me to see him as the villain and to think of him that way. I guess this is a problem for when I’m done with revisions and working on the WIP, but I keep looking at this and thinking, wow, this is strange.

And speaking strange, My Space is insisting I have 4 messages in my inbox and yet it’s empty. I’ve refreshed, I’ve cleared my trash and still they insist I have these messages. Now I’m paranoid that they’re there, but I just can’t see them. Of course, I’m always worried about email. :-/ It’s why I have such a hard time when people don’t reply because then I worry that they didn’t receive it. Every time I email and ask, they always have and then I feel silly for being concerned. I’m trying really hard not to email any of the people I emailed to see if they got my notes.

I saw some poll results on the news the other day about stress in the workplace. 35% of those surveyed cited a coworker as their main reason, the highest percentage of everything named. I can relate. I have Mister Congeniality, the loudest, most obnoxious person I’ve had to deal with in years. The thing that makes him really unbearable, besides his noise, is that he has no concept of himself. He honestly believes he’s considerate and selfless–exactly the opposite of what he is. You can’t joke with him or point out something he’s done wrong because then he gets all pissy. He is 90% of the reason that I don’t like going into work.

He was in a meeting last week where he was asked if we could provide a report. So he asked me if I could do it. I couldn’t. It’s fine till this point, but then he decided that I would spearhead finding out how we could get these reports. Gee, I wasn’t at the meeting, I can’t answer any questions anyone would have, but he’s decided it’s My Job and he’ll be damned if he’ll do it even though he was the one at the meeting and he is the one that can answer the questions.

I’ve tried not to complain about him on the blog because no one wants to hear about it, but I need advice. How do you deal with an obnoxious coworker who won’t allow you to just ignore him? I seriously need some coping strategies because he makes work nearly unbearable.

In a complete change of subject, I have the rest of my revisions for Midnight Hour and it should only take a couple of days to do them. The most time consuming part is finding the right places to slide in a sentence or two. Sometimes the choice isn’t obvious and it takes some reading and considering. Then once I choose, I have to smooth out the insertion so it reads seamlessly. I have one addition that’s going to take reading through a lot of the book to find the perfect spot. Not all bad since I really need to make notes to help keep things straight for the next book.

I mentioned I was going to trade cars with my parents yesterday since mine was making noise, but I ran short on time so I drove mine and it ran normal. It was normal this morning too. Makes me wonder what it was that I heard on Monday. Anyway, I’m due for an oil change so I’ll bring it in on Saturday and mention the noise. I’m sure, hundreds of dollars later, they’ll tell me they couldn’t find anything wrong. :-/

I keep meaning to mention this really cool commercial I’ve seen a few times. It’s for Liberty Mutual and it shows these people doing a nice thing for someone else, and a third person seeing it and then doing something nice for someone else in this chain that circles around to the guy who starts it. I love this ad, but I don’t know how effective it is since I have no idea what Liberty Mutual is trying to pitch. TBH, the only reason I even remember the company’s name is because I saw it last night and made it a point to memorize it. I love good advertising, though.

Have y’all seen the latest Levi’s ad? This guys steals a pair of jeans off a balcony and then his body keeps moving like the guy whose jeans he took. Like when his girlfriend pushes him out of the way of the TV, the thief moves as if he’s been pushed too. Finally, tired of all this stuff, he returns the jeans just in time for the owner to go out, grab them and put them on. I’m really impressed with this series of ads. I should try to find out who the agency is that created them. (It’s that ad major background rearing its head! I like to see who’s doing work I think is good and I’m not sure why since I have no plans of putting together a portfolio and applying at any of these places–no matter what I threaten after hearing bad radio ads.