Patti O'Shea's Blog

Over on the ReBeL board, they did a poll of their readers’ Top 100 Paranormal Romances. It was a huge (or should I say hugh?) thrill to see my name on there twice. Both Ravyn’s Flight and Through a Crimson Veil made the list. Whoo hoo!!!! When I see the names up there with me, I’m amazed to be among them.

I watched baseball last night. I know, that’s not a shock. I went to bed, though, before the end of the game. I tried to hang in there, but at 10pm, I had to go to sleep. The Tigers were up 3-0, but when I got up this morning, I wanted to see a score. All ESPN was showing was football and more football. Come on, guys, this is the WORLD SERIES. I finally did find out on CNN HN that Detroit won 3-1.

One of the more interesting moments of last night’s game was when they accused Kenny Rogers (Detroit pitcher, not country western singer) of having a foreign substance on the heel of his hand and made him wash it off. It did look like pine tar, but if someone is going to cheat, they’d sure pick a better place to hide the stuff than right there on his hand where anyone could see it. And it didn’t matter anyway–even after it was gone, no one on the Cardinals could hit Rogers. I think he gave up like 2 hits in 8 innings.

Five more games to go until a long, long stretch without ball.

I have to wrap this up on that note. It’s 4:56 and I have to logoff to get ready for work. I’m sure whatever I would have written next would have been brilliant and fascinating, but we’ll never know because of the EDJ.

I made this for my My Space page. Isn’t this cool?

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I couldn’t come up with anything good to blog about today, so I was procrastinating. Yes, it’s true, I even procrastinate when it comes to writing here. To entertain myself, I started doing some Googling and found something that’s left me in a dilemma. Over on My Space, someone has a profile page posted that has passages from Through a Crimson Veil on it. This isn’t fan fiction, this is outright copying from my book.

On the one hand, it’s just four paragraphs on a My Space page that the author hasn’t visited since September–she’s role playing with some Buffy/Angel people–and clearly she read the book and liked the story enough to use it. On the other hand, copying what I wrote is wrong. Therein lies my quandary. Do I waste time on this or do I just forget about it? What would you do?

Last night, I watched The Transporter. There wasn’t any baseball on. In this movie, an ex-Special Forces soldier (Frank) is a getaway driver/transporter who lives by a few simple rules. I can’t remember his first rule, but his second is: No Names. And the third is: Never look at the package. Only he breaks rule number three and finds a beautiful Asian woman who’s trussed up and stuck inside a large bag. He still delivers her as promised to the bad guy.

Only this guy wants no witnesses and when the hero finds out he’s been double crossed, he heads back to the mansion to kick some ass. The bad guy isn’t there, but Frank takes out lots and lots of henchmen before stealing a car. Guess who’s hiding in the back? Before you know it, our disinterested, dispassionate hero is joining the heroine’s fight to stop a slavery ring. The bad guy, you see, is part of a cartel shipping men, women and children from Asia to Europe to be enslaved.

I really, really liked this movie! Lots of great action and martial arts scenes, without the icky trademark moves that some martial arts actors have–like breaking the elbow backward and other gross out stuff like this. In fact, with the music score accompanying one of the fight scenes, it was nearly humorous. I think that one of the best things about this movie is that you can tell everyone was having a good time making it.

There was just enough relationship stuff between the h/h to keep me interested, but I would have liked more. I also wish that the relationship would continue in the sequel, which I promptly added to my NetFlix queue after seeing this movie. Unfortunately, the actress’s name does not appear in the credits for Transporter 2.

I didn’t like the fact that the heroine screamed so much and stood by helplessly when she showed such ingenuity in other ways. She ruins her own escape attempt by screaming and there were a few other moves she made along those lines. It would have been cool if she was more his equal.

If you like action/adventure, suspense and martial arts, I can give this movie a big thumbs up. In fact, I liked it so much, that I watched it again with the commentary on to hear what the director (?) and Jason someone (hero) had to say. That was mostly uninteresting, but there were a few things I glommed onto.

First, was the fact that the Asian actress pretty much didn’t speak English, but between the time she was hired for the movie and the time they filmed it, she’d learned a lot. Second, this woman had appeared in the Chinese version of Charlie’s Angels for Sony Japan (?) and she wanted her character to be stronger and not a damsel in distress. The director wouldn’t let her because it was supposed to be the hero’s movie. Since one of my peeves was the fact she did stand around helplessly, I was like, cool, she wanted to do more.

My rating: 4.25 Stars

My neighbors across the street are having some construction done. First guess was that they were going to expand their single-car, detached garage into a double car, but that doesn’t look like what’s happening. From what I could see between the house and garage, the backyard is getting torn up. Maybe they’re putting an extension on the house, or if it is a garage, it must be a brand new one going in the back of the house and then the driveway would curve down to the front. Interesting. This house once upon a time had a tuck under garage, but a long time ago, it was converted into a den/rec room kind of thing and the detached built. Anyway, there’s been a lot of beeping whenever the bobcat backs up. I can hear it in my house when I get home from work.

Another neighbor, decided to use some loud piece of power equipment at 8:30 this morning. Sigh. He was done by 9:30 or so, and I’m not sure why he couldn’t wait a little longer to make that much noise. It’s mornings like this that make me wish I could find a house in an isolated spot in the mountains. Or better yet, own my own tropical island.

Most people who knew me had no clue that I wrote until after I sold my first book. You see, not only was this something intensely personal to me, if it turned out I sucked at it and was going to fail miserably, I preferred that no one be aware of the death of my dream except me.

It started to change a little bit in 1999 when I first admitted to an online friend that I wrote. In fact, she’s the only one who’s ever seen the first draft version of Ravyn’s Flight because I never sent it to anyone else. And I did admit what I was doing, what I wanted to do to a few really close friends, but that was about it.

I ended up getting a little more exposed with another group of online friends. At this point, I was working on my first round of revisions to RF, and during a chat, they coerced me into sending them the first chapter. I believe there were five of them. I still remember how nauseous I was after I hit send. I paced the house from one end to the other, certain they were going to critique the hell out of the chapter, that I’d see a sea of red pixels on return emails, that while no one would say anything, the message of pity would be clear. (The poor dear thinks she can write.) And I was hugely relieved when the first email came back and she liked the chapter. Yet I still went through the tortures of the damned every week for five or six weeks before I became accustomed to these women reading my story.

After that, though, I routinely and regularly sent out my chapters to this group because something became clear over the course of RF–they spotted things I didn’t. I didn’t always agree with their comments, but it made me think about why I was doing something and it strengthened the story immeasurably.

But I still didn’t tell my parents, family, acquaintances or coworkers until after I had an offer for RF.

Last night, I had a conversation with one of my writing buddies about the WIP. I had this list of questions I felt had to be answered and we discussed back and forth for more than an hour. She raised some problems I hadn’t thought of and helped me brainstorm solutions. These types of discussions really help me get a handle on my stories.

And that’s what had me remembering when I didn’t have a critique group and why I’m so glad I have trusted friends now.

I don’t think it’s all bad that I was completely on my own at first because I had time to develop confidence in my decisions and in myself. I think some beginning writers get in critique groups too early and end up gutting their stories to please their peers because they don’t have that faith in themselves. And I think keeping myself isolated helped develop some skills I otherwise wouldn’t have acquired until later.

On the other hand, I also think it’s a shame I didn’t come clean a little earlier. I wonder if I would have sold one of my earlier books (maybe the one the editor had gone through for me and post it noted all up with suggestions?) if I’d had people making me think about the story more. I probably did wait too long.

But everything happens for a reason and we’re where we’re supposed to be when we’re supposed to be there. So obviously I wasn’t ready to be published before RF came out. And I think that’s what some writers lose sight of in their desperate pursuit of their dream–sometimes you’re just not ready no matter what you believe. Looking back, I’m grateful I didn’t sell one of my earlier stories. I’ve grown so much as a writer and as a human being and what I’m writing now has more depth.

Even looking back at my unpublished book, the one I wrote after RF, I’m sooo thankful that I ended up withdrawing it. Obviously, it was a story and characters I felt I needed to do, but it makes me cringe to look at it now. Maybe someday, I’ll rewrite the whole thing, but more likely, I’ll just move on and keep moving. Because since then, I have continued to change and grow. That’s what a writer should be doing on each and every book.

I have to take my parents to the airport this morning, which means I needed to get up early. My alarm was set for 3:30. I didn’t hear it. Not until just before 4am–the time I get up normally. Now I’m going to be rushed today and there was no time to just lie in bed and acclimate myself to the morning.

Last night, I checked phone messages and was utterly amazed. Someone had gotten my voice mail and left a message. It was a wrong number or at least the person he wanted was no longer at this phone number. Maybe she was the one who had it before me? Anyway, he apparently wanted to order something from “Laura.” He gave me his name, his credit card number, the three numbers on the back of the credit card, and his expiration date. This man has no idea how lucky he is that I’m an honest person.

And on the phone front, some chick is giving people the wrong cell phone number. I never use my cell–it’s primarily for emergencies and to call people I’m supposed to find at conferences –so I figured those 9 voice mail messages were wrong numbers. I was right. It wasn’t just one person calling the wrong number, it was like four or five different voices, and since one of them was this woman’s kid, I’m guessing she’s giving people the wrong number by mistake. But man, it’s irritating to wade through messages for someone else and it’s not like voice mail lets you delete them before you listen to the whole thing. I’ve settled for speeding them up. Judging from the messages I’ve heard, I’m glad I don’t have this chick’s life.

Last night, I needed to do more research and it involved image intensive sites. I seriously need to get high speed internet. It was such a huge waste of time waiting and waiting for these pages to pull up.

Gotta run.

The phone company fixed the line before I got home from work yesterday, so I’m relieved to report that I’m connecting to the internet again at the incredible speed of 46.6 again! Yeah, but compared to 1200, this is lightning fast.

Which is a good thing because I realized my non-visual mind needs to know what Creed’s condo looks like and what kind of view he has of Lake Michigan. Unlike most Gineal, Creed can tolerate being surrounded by humans like this. I’m not sure why, but I have a feeling he’s not as sensitive telepathically/empathically as most of his people. (Or maybe he’s better at blocking?) And because he travels all the time and is rarely home, a condo made more sense for him than a house. But I wanted to know what it looked like. An image search turned up a few things, but most weren’t particularly helpful. On the second page of results (out of 2), though, I found hits from a real estate site and I visited it. I did a search and ended up with an incredible number of results. The only catch? If I wanted to view them, I had to register.

So I signed Creed up. Hey, I wasn’t giving them my name! 245 search results showed up. I didn’t realize there were that many condos available between $550,000 and $2,500,000, but apparently there were. Along with gaining access to the results, Creed was assigned a personal real estate agent and promised that when new listings that fit his criteria became available, he’d receive an email. Okay, I thought, that would kind of be cool and how often can million dollar condos in one particular area of Chicago go up for sale anyway?

Then the deluge began. Creed’s name might have been on the sign up form, but I used one of my email addresses. Two email arrived immediately. I opened one, found the opt out link, and used it. I went back to searching through the results, trying to find the right fit for a dark, troubled character. And more and more and more email arrived.

Maybe this was a different type of correspondence, one not covered under the opt-out link I already clicked. I opened another email prepared to opt out again and there was no link provided! They weren’t going to let me opt out of these.

These notes are now going directly to my spam folder. I had a ridiculous amount come in last night and I woke up this morning to see that even more notes are in that folder. Sigh. I guess a sale in Creed’s price range is just too tantalizing to honor any kind of opt-out agreement–or something. ;-O

This site did have a bunch of listings, but a lot of them didn’t have pictures or just had that virtual tour thing where there’s some kind of video of the condo. Still pictures would have worked better for me because I want to click and save them for future reference. I didn’t find any one place that will work for my hero, but I’ll patch a few of them together to come up with what will work. I also have pictures from a hotel that looks out over Lake Michigan and that fits what Creed is looking at better than the yacht club views I found last night.

I don’t know why he couldn’t just have a nice home where I could find dozens of usable pictures online, but I have a feeling Creed is going to be trouble all through this book. More than my characters usually are (and that’s saying something)!

I thought once the phone company finally got around to burying my cable, that my internet speeds would stabilize. And they did–for like one week. Yesterday, though, I reached new lows: 1200. Gah! I don’t think we’ve seen speeds that low since the beginning of time. I tried three times to connect and got that speed over and over and over. I picked up the phone, and not only was there some kind of echo on the line, I could hear other voices faintly in the background.

Great. So of course this meant a phone call to the phone company. Fortunately(?), I had just received my bill, so I had their phone number handy. Can you believe that when I tried to file a trouble report, they tried to sell me DSL? I do have plans to go to high speed, but cable internet, not DSL. Cable will be faster and I’ll be able to keep my ISP which is cool since I do not want to change email addresses again, but before I go cable, I want to network my house so I can access it on the laptop no matter what room I’m in.

But I digress. Finally, I get a hold of someone who isn’t pitching and she tells me that they’ll have it fixed by 8pm Tuesday night. This is around 4pm Monday. 28 hours? What?

Speed has picked up a little bit. Right now, I’m connected at 24.4, but it totally sucks. I seriously have to get networked ASAP so I can switch over and ditch the phone company.

Now that I’m done complaining, and believe me, slower than usual dial up internet can keep me going forever, I can talk about the positive stuff that happened Monday. I already posted about my French edition which is like the coolest thing! I’m still psyched about that. But my dad also came over yesterday and we hung my paintings. I should take a picture, but at my connection speed, there’s no way in heck I’m taking the time to upload a photo.

Anyway, these two paintings were bought when I was in Hawaii in 2002, but I didn’t have anywhere to hang them until I moved. They were sitting on the floor next to the wall, waiting and waiting for my dad, but finally he did it. They actually hung nicely, but I’m not sure I’m 100% happy with them in this room. They’re very blue paintings and they’re on a very blue wall. I think it’s too much blue, but I’m not taking them down and I’m not looking for different paintings so I’ll just have to get used to it.

The other thing my dad installed for me–without any assistance from me–was my magnifying mirror. I had one of these in my old bathroom and I totally loved it! It’s great for plucking eyebrows, applying makeup, finding zits. So I bought a new mirror for my new bathroom July 2nd and I’ve been trying to get my dad to put it up for me ever since then. Three and a half months later, he did! I think, though, that I might have made a little error in judgment. My other mirror was a little too high for me, so I chose a lower spot, and unfortunately, it might just be a little too low. Since he already drilled holes in my wall, though, it’s staying where it is. Like the blue Hawaii paintings, it’s something I’m going to need to get used to.

Oh, yeah, and I actually managed to write a little bit in the new book yesterday and it didn’t totally suck! Now that is the best news of all!

The Power of Two is now available in French! It went on sale yesterday. This is my first foreign translation so this is like way cool!

The other books in the 2176 series had covers that I’d seen before, although one of them was a cover that ended up not being used. I don’t know where the heck this one came from. Cai never wore something that looked like that. And Jake is in a sweater again–on the Raft Cities, a tropical climate. Oh, well, this is still exciting!

I wonder if the publisher is going to send me copies or if I need to order from Amazon France?

I finally managed to find out the score of the Mets/Cardinals game this morning and it wasn’t easy since there were so many darn football scores. I didn’t stay up to watch the entire game since the Mets were having so many problems lately, and as a die-hard Cub fan, I am duty-bound to loathe the Cardinals. It didn’t seem worth the lost sleep to watch. However, I just heard that the Mets kicked butt. Yea!

Okay, now that my baseball fixation is addressed, I can move on. Yesterday, I actually managed to get a fair amount of writing done. It came pretty easily too, and although what I ended up with isn’t perfect, it’s something I can work with. I’d be in raptures, except for one thing. This isn’t the book I’m supposed to be working on. I know. But that one is giving me fits and making me clean the house. I even stayed off the internet and didn’t watch television until I finished the pages I needed.

That’s when I found out about the earthquake in Hawaii. Again, I can’t find any updated news on this so far this morning. What the heck is up with that? By now, I expected to have a lot more information available, but none of the news stations had anything when I flipped through.

I’m a news junkie to a degree. Probably that journalism major in college. I love to watch how they handle big stories so I ended up glued in front of the television for hours. The last report I’d heard said no fatalities, thank goodness! I also had a phone call from my dad letting me know that my cousin and her husband were in Kona and fine. I’m keeping the people of Hawaii in my thoughts and hope that things turn out as well as they sounded last night.