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I found out yesterday that Through a Crimson Veil won third place in the Laurel Wreath Awards! Nice way to end the month of November!

A not so nice way to close out the month is with our weather. On Tuesday we were in the mid-50s. This morning, the temperature with the wind chill is a balmy -6 degrees. The straight temp is 8 degrees. And this change actually happened in less than 24 hours because it was damn cold yesterday morning already. My only consolation is that I don’t live in that wide swath of the country south of here where they’re getting freezing rain, a foot of snow or both. Okay, I know. No one cares about the weather. It’s a Minnesota thing and maybe a Midwest thing.

Yesterday was a very frustrating day again at the EDJ. I’m helping another department update its manuals because they’re way behind and noticed that a couple of their binders were broken. Knowing I’d get little help from Tech Pubs, I went and found two replacement binders on my own, located the spine labels and found tab dividers–kind of a self-serve situation. But for the spine labels, I needed smaller labels that said what manual it was and what volume, so I asked someone in Pubs for them. I was given a blank sheet of labels and told to type up my own. “You know how to use Word, right?” Geez. There are a couple of helpful people in that department, but otherwise it’s a frustrating endeavor to try and get any assistance. I can tell you that didn’t happen when I worked over there.

I shouldn’t let this kind of crap bother me because it’s just the day job, but it did leave me steamed enough that I was stewing about it when I went to bed last night. I’ll have to make a point of thanking the two people in that department who do help me when I need it and tell them how much I appreciate it. I’ve been taking them for granted.

To end on a positive note, yesterday I was checking email at work and I had a note that the moccasins I ordered had shipped! Yea! I figured I’d have them by the weekend, but there they were by the door when I got home. Now that’s service! I tried them on right away and ran into exactly what I expected–there’s going to be a breaking in period. I had my old pair of moccasins so long that they’re really perfect. Soft. Conformed to fit my feet. Sigh. The new pair will be like that some day too, it’s just going to take a lot of work to get them there.

You are the World

Completion, Good Reward.

The World is the final card of the Major Arcana, and as such represents saturnian energies, time, and completion.

The World card pictures a dancer in a Yoni (sometimes made of laurel leaves). The Yoni symbolizes the great Mother, the cervix through which everything is born, and also the doorway to the next life after death. It is indicative of a complete circle. Everything is finally coming together, successfully and at last. You will get that Ph.D. you’ve been working for years to complete, graduate at long last, marry after a long engagement, or finish that huge project. This card is not for little ends, but for big ones, important ones, ones that come with well earned cheers and acknowledgements. Your hard work, knowledge, wisdom, patience, etc, will absolutely pay-off; you’ve done everything right.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Brain schism moment. Yesterday morning I put my coat on, grabbed my purse and tote bag and headed out into the garage–only to discover that I’d never closed my big garage door the day before. Gah! =8-O I can see how it happened. I was tired and I had my hands full. I’d ordered a book on mythology and had it sent to my parents’ house and I’d stopped by after work. The book was huge. Incredibly thick and tall and all that, so that’s probably why I forgot. I’m used to closing the door as I go up the stairs and this time my hands were full and by the time they weren’t, I’d forgotten. Nothing was missing (my dad has all kinds of stuff in my garage, sigh) and I did have the deadbolt thrown on the door between the garage and the house. Freaked me out, though.

It rained most of the day yesterday. The temperature was in the 50s, I think they said 56, and the trees were bare. As I was driving out of work, I thought, you know, it really feels like winter. Then I started thinking about spring when it can be 56 and the trees can still be bare and it made me wonder why that rain can feel so hopeful and this rain yesterday felt so depressing. Is it simply because I know that the high temp today is going to be 23 degrees so I was aware it was the last hurrah? Or is there a difference to rain in fall versus rain in spring?

Yep, I really do think like this sometimes. Scary, isn’t it?

My French books came yesterday for The Power of Two. I received 5 copies which is more than enough since I don’t speak French and I only know one person who does. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with the extras. But that’s a problem for another day. Right now, I still have room in my basement.

I heard about this really cool site where you could click the places you’d been and get a map for your website that shows your travels. I did it and posted it here, but I had to take it down because it hosed up all the formatting on my blog and I didn’t have time to go through the coding and figure out why. If you want to try it yourself, the site is TravBuddy.

And I think I’ve run out of stuff to say. Enjoy your day!

Yesterday was a frustrating day at work. I’m helping out another department by filing manual revisions for them–they’re way behind–and one of the packets is missing about half its pages. Tech Publications is on my floor so I went over there and asked for a copy of the revision. They didn’t have it.

I used to work in that department, in fact, the manual I needed the revision for used to be my book. I said, What? What do you mean you don’t have it? They only keep the current revision and one previous now (which meant they should have had the one I needed because it was the one previous, but that’s another story). I pointed out how ridiculous that was (and I speak with authority because I did that job). The response? I know, but Jeff said…. And I was only doing what I was told.

Please allow me to bang my head against the wall now. Call me a rebel, but when someone tells me to do something I know is stupid and it’s someone I know I can’t argue with, I smile, nod my head and ignore them. Seriously, what is Jeff going to do? Conduct a file drawer search to make sure his orders are being carried out? I doubt it.

Sometimes the smart thing is to ignore the rules and do what you know needs to be done. This applies to writing as well as the manuals area at the EDJ. That’s the one thing that drives me nuts is when someone is told they have to do something in their story or can’t do something in their story because it doesn’t conform to the rules. Contest judges seem to be the most fierce in this endeavor at conformity.

An example of the types of rules I’m talking about is the hero and heroine have to meet in the first three pages. (Or two pages or five pages. The rule changes depending on the judge.) My h/h in my latest book don’t meet until the very end of chapter 2. My editor didn’t ask for this to be changed.

If you’ve ever entered a contest for unpublished writers, you probably know what I’m talking about. This need of some judges to follow imaginary rules wouldn’t be so bad if so many writers didn’t take it so deep to heart. They’ll come on a loop and say whatever rule the judge spouted and then say why it won’t work for their story.

Not too long ago, a writer on one of my loops was ready to submit her work and wanted to know if she should cut her dream scenes because she heard that editors/agents/God Himself doesn’t like dream scenes. It just so happened that her story had a character flashing back to a past life and was using dreams to show it. I mostly lurk on loops, but I had to post about this one. Eternal Nights has a character flashing back to a past life through dream sequences and guess what? Neither my editor nor my agent commented on it.

Now, I’m not saying ignore every rule just for the sake of doing it your way. Some things, like the HEA ending, are genre expectations. What I am saying is be smart. Ignore the rules you know are stupid. Or that might not even be rules, just one person’s idea that it’s a rule. C’mon, don’t be afraid to be a rebel!

I’ve been watching the news and hearing about that former Russian spy in Britain who was poisoned with a radioactive isotope and thinking, wow, this is like something out of a book. I’m sure spies and former spies have been killed before, but I’m guessing the assassins make it look like an accident or something, but this is playing right out there on the news for all the world to see and it’s not exactly common or something that could ever be considered accidental.

This is that latest story I could find on the spy’s death and it also mentions the other people who’ve conveniently died since Putin came into office.

I don’t have any insightful commentary, but as a fiction writer, I find this fascinating. Seriously, if you read about a spy being killed with polonium 210, wouldn’t part of you think that the author was stretching the bounds of credibility? When I first heard this story on the news, I was like, huh? And the more I heard, the more stunned I was.

I should probably try to get past the aspects that make it seem like some kind of James Bond movie. A man is dead and if Russian dissidents are being murdered, this is a huge issue.

One of the newscasts I saw had someone who suggested that this man’s death (forgive me for not using his name, but Russian names are difficult to spell) was done in such a way as to deliberately draw attention and to setup Putin. And this theory just makes it more surreal. Wow. Can you imagine being a pawn between the Kremlin and some other unknown group out to discredit the Russian president? How frightening would that be?

I probably shouldn’t have blogged about this on a Monday morning at 4:30, but I’m held rapt by how this is playing out and wanted to discuss it and see if anyone else was as amazed as I am. Sorry if I mentally wandered all over the place. I’m not at my best at this time of day. (BTW, I would have titled this post “Stranger Than Fiction,” but there’s a movie by that name and since I’ve been reviewing what I’ve seen lately, I thought for clarity’s sake, I should pick another title.)

The first review for Shards of Crimson is in! Romantic Times Book Reviews gave it 4 stars and said:

Fans of the successful Crimson series will be delighted to revisit the dangerous city, where vampires, werewolves, humans and demons all vie for supremacy. Four of the original series authors are back and delivering sexy thrills and chills with their enticing novellas.

Whew! It’s always a relief to have the first review good review come in, especially from RT.

Last night, I watched Transporter 2. I liked the first movie, about a guy who drove, no questions asked, a lot so I decided to take a chance on the sequel even though the Asian actress from the first movie wasn’t in the second.

In this movie, the transporter is working in Florida, and as a favor to someone, he’s acting as chauffeur for a family, driving the little boy to and from school and to appointments, stuff like that. He’s asked to take the kid to a doctor’s appointment, but when he does, it’s a set up. The bad guys have killed the real medical staff and taken their places in order to inject the boy with a deadly virus. The transporter manages to escape with him, but in the end, the bad guys kidnap the kid.

Of course, the cops think the transporter was part of the gang because he was forced to do some driving when the hench woman held a gun on the boy. So when the transporter calls to tell what really happened, they don’t believe him. What follows is our hero trying to unravel the plot and rescue the kid and a lot of other people.

I did like this movie, but not nearly as well as the original film. The action here was taut and suspenseful–probably more so than in the original–and the fight scenes were almost as fun as the original as well. Yet something fell short for me. The plot was a little over the top and far fetched, but that normally doesn’t bother me, and in essence, this is a martial arts movie, so it should have worked. The chief bad guy does take time to explain the situation to the hero, something that irritates me in movies and books. (I’ve tried to avoid this as much as possible when I write my own books, but geez, sometimes there’s no other way to get the info across and it’s sooo tempting. But I digress.)

After giving it some more thought, I decided what kept me from liking this movie as much as the first one was that there wasn’t any romance in it. Not that the original Transporter had much romance either, but there was some and I thought the relationship between the transporter and the woman he rescued was great. I liked their chemistry and I would have loved to have seen them still together in this movie. I know that likely the actress had other commitments, but I did miss her.

The French inspector did make an appearance. I enjoyed him immensely and he added pretty much the only humor to this movie. That’s another thing I missed from the original film–it had more amusing moments in it than this one did. There was almost a quirkiness about it that made me believe that they were all just having a great time filming it. Instead in T2, the only moments of lightness are the very few with the inspector, and IMO, he wasn’t in nearly enough scenes.

The police, who in essence were working against the hero, were also not well defined. It would have been nice if we could have gotten a few more scenes from their POV in order to make them feel more real as characters. That probably would have increased the suspense as well.

There were a lot of things I did like about the movie. The actor who plays the transporter (I don’t remember names real well and these people aren’t stars so forgive the lack of accreditation) is engaging and enjoyable to watch. He’s got the martial arts movie hero down really well and I think he could be a star in this subgenre.

The driving scenes are absolutely fabulous! This is one area where they surpassed the original movie. There’s one stunt, where the transporter has to get a bomb off the bottom of his car, that is total genius.

The fight scenes are also well choreographed, and while they’re not quite as quirky as in the original movie, there is one scene that combined humor and action really well and was one of the highlights for me.

Overall, I liked this movie a lot, but not quite as well as the original Transporter. I would watch a Transporter 3 if they make one, and would love to see the Asian actress from the original back in a second sequel with a little more romance between our driver and the woman. (And wouldn’t it be cool if she kicked some butt as his partner in a third movie?!?)

On the NetFlix scale, I give Transporter 2 3.5 stars.

I had to work at the EDJ (Evil Day Job) yesterday. It ended up being an okay day, though. I was the only one there until after 7am and there were only three of us on my floor, so it stayed nice and quiet. The day actually flew by quite quickly and that was good too.

At lunch, I checked email and I had a note from Pay Pal. They had a deal offering free shipping from select stores when you paid with their service, and there was an online shoe store with $10 off in addition to the free shipping. I checked it out. Clicked on casual shoes and discovered Minnetonka moccasins for sale.

I have a pair of moccasins that I just loved, but they were getting old and worn, and then I wore them outside to water the sod after it was put in and that was just too much for the poor things. They ended up soaked with water and one of the shoes started coming apart at the toe. Clearly, it was time to replace them, but I didn’t have time to go looking. I had checked online at one of my favorite online shoe stores, but I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted and the price was a little high too. I wasn’t expecting a whole lot when I clicked the brand name at this online store. And sure enough, as I paged through the shoes, the pair I wanted wasn’t there–at least not in the color I was looking for.

There were a couple other pairs of cute moccasins, so I clicked on one of them and discovered that you could choose your color in that style from a pull down menu. Hmm, I thought, I wonder if I clicked on the shoe I’m looking for in another color if I could find the one I wanted. I gave it a try, and there was my moccasin! Hurrah!

So without having to battle any crowds, I shopped on my lunch hour and came away with a hell of a deal. $10 off a pair of shoes I’d been looking for since August and free shipping!

On my way in to work yesterday, I had to drive past several small malls–they’re right off the freeway. One had Kohl’s and Toys R Us and another had Best Buy and Borders. The parking lots for both were jam packed before 6am. I don’t know what time Best Buy opened yesterday or if they were just that crammed with people that not everyone could get inside, but I saw a line up of people in front of the store. I’m not quite sure why anyone puts themselves through this. There is no bargain so great that I would battle crowds like this in the pre-dawn hours. And when I left work at 2:30, both parking lots were still jammed. I don’t know if you could find an open spot to leave your car. I happily continued on home, content that I wasn’t frazzling my nerves to spend money.

I’m awake. Not happy, but I am awake.

Am I up at this ridiculous hour to hit the mall? Nope. My beloved day job took two holidays away from me and one of them is the day after Thanksgiving. The other is New Year’s Day. Let me tell you, I am far from thankful about this. The only bright spot–and I use this term lightly–is that no one except others in my union are going to be in so it will be nice and quiet. There are 3 of us on my floor. That doesn’t mean they didn’t take vacation time. I thought about it because I knew I wouldn’t want to get up today, but I decided I might need to save this time off for later. You see, the beloved day job also stole a week of my vacation and I don’t get it back for something like seven more years.

Yesterday was a nice day. I spent a few hours with my parents and then came back home. The weather was warm, in the 50s, and the sun was out. Maybe that’s why the workmen were busy at the neighbor’s house. They were there most of the day too putting down sand/rock or whatever needs to go underneath asphalt. They’re widening their driveway to two cars. Anyway, I felt bad that they were working on Thanksgiving, but in MN, I guess you have to take the good weather when you can find it–especially at the end of November.

Last night, I saw a really cool commercial. It was for Puma and I guess that’s more than half the battle since I’ve only seen this ad once, but I remember the product. This woman fights off ninja warriors. Great action and some fabulous fighting moves. I wanted to download it to watch again because some of that choreography would work wonderfully in my stories. I found the ads on their website, but the only choice offered for download was iPod format. My MP3 player is not from Apple because I got a lot more memory for a lot less money by going with another manufacturer. I downloaded it anyway in case the iPod format was something my computer would play, but alas, it isn’t. All I received were error messages when I tried to open it.

While we were cooking Thanksgiving dinner (I made Stove Top Stuffing–about the extent of my culinary ability), there was a dog show on TV. I always cheer for the Husky, Malamute and German Shepherd dogs because I’ve had two Siberian Husky/German Shepherd crosses. The poor Huskies never seem to do well at these shows. But they also advertised a dog show for all breeds, even mutts and my parents and I were laughing about entering Kody.

Kody was my last dog and the pet of my heart. She died years ago now, but we were imagining her at a dog show. Kody was terrified of other dogs because my brother’s stupid poodles tormented her as a puppy. We’d go to obedience school and she’d hide behind my legs. When we did the sit and stay, she could hardly stand it and most times I didn’t even make it across the room before she bolted for me. She was just so scared.

But Kody also had the Siberian Husky temperament, which meant she was independent and did what she wanted to do. Dog Whisperer would have had his hands full with her. I like to believe I’d established myself as pack leader, but she didn’t always care about that, and she found ways to covertly give her opinion of that. Or maybe it wasn’t so covert. LOL.

I have to run. Traffic should be bad today because I have to go past the Mall of America to get to the evil day job.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American visitors! I thought I had a really cute animated gif to put up, but I can’t find it, so I’m guessing I forgot to save it when I saw it.

I know this is the time across the blogosphere where everyone posts about what they’re thankful for. I’ve avoided doing that for the first two Thanksgivings, but I think I’m going to succumb today. I’ll be brief, though, I promise. It’s just that I tend to be a glass half empty kind of person, and if someone points out a silver lining, I’m the one mentioning the gray cloud around it. Because of this, I thought it might be a good thing to mention some of the positive things in my life. I won’t list them all.

I’m thankful I have my parents and that they’re mostly in good health. They adopted me when they were older, so I’m dealing with them aging way before I’m ready to. My mom is the only one left in her family in her generation, my dad only has a younger brother left. With the death of my aunt this month, it’s made me doubly grateful my parents are still around and that my dad is willing to handle so much for me.

I’m thankful I have true friends who’ve stuck with me through thick and thin. Friends who’ve listened when I’ve needed to vent, whine, celebrate and have kicked me in the ass when I needed a good, swift kick.

I’m thankful I finally was able to buy my own home. I love my house, and while I do wish I had a little more room and more time to finish unpacking, it’s home. I like having the space to put all my things without being smooshed together and I like the openness the floor plan has. I’m especially thankful when I think of all the people who don’t have any home, the hurricane victims of 2005, particularly Katrina, who still aren’t home. I do know how lucky I am even if there are times I feel overwhelmed.

I’m going to stop here and not talk about writing and being published. That gets to sound like bragging and I’m from Minnesota–we tend appreciate modesty. I need to work on that since self-promo would undoubtedly help me.

This day tends to get hectic as all family holidays do, but I’d like to suggest that everyone take a moment and remember the things in life that they’re particularly thankful for and it doesn’t matter if you’re in the US and celebrating a holiday or in another hemisphere. It’s always nice to take time out and focus on the positive. I know I don’t do it often enough so this is a good thing for me too.

Enjoy your day!