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Archive for December, 2006

Movie Review Sunday–Kind Of

Sunday, December 31st, 2006

Last night’s movie was The Butterfly Effect. I’d love to give you a review, but unfortunately, I didn’t make it through the movie. I found it confusing and disturbing and turned it off early. If it had only been confusing, I would have hung in there because it was confusing in an intriguing way, and I believe, that’s what the director was shooting for–to have the audience wondering what was going on. However, I found aspects of this movie so incredibly disturbing to me personally, that I shut it off. I lasted until the little psycho kid was going to burn another kid’s dog alive. On top of the other stuff that had already happened, that was too much for me.

However, I was intrigued enough to want to know what the heck was going on and I did a search online. I found a great Movie Spoiler Site and it explained everything that happened in a concise way.

Anyway, I found the premise for the movie intriguing from reading the spoiler, however, the execution didn’t work for me. People who don’t mind dark, grim and disturbing might like it, but I give it 1 star.

On a more fun note, I was reading Leiha’s blog this morning and she had a link up to a cool Avatar Generator website, so of course, I had to create my own.

Notice the jacket and the hat–it’s winter–and the laptop and coffee cup are perfect for writers. At least this writer. Caffeine is my friend and the laptop has become part of my body. :-) Leiha has more cool examples of avatars up on her blog for today.

Speaking of perfect for writers, a while back, Joely Sue blogged about a Demotivator poster that was absolutely spot on. Sorry, I’m too lazy to actually look up the post and link directly to it. :-) I finally went over to Despair.com and ordered it. Here’s a link to the poster. For those of you feeling lazy like I do, it shows a Mayan temple (at least I believe it’s Mayan) and it says in large letters: Sacrifice. Then below that, it says: “All we ask here is that you give us your heart.” If that isn’t the most perfect poster ever for a writer, I don’t know what is.

The power went out at 4am this morning. I know because I sleep with an air cleaner on and the sudden silence woke me up. Of course, I didn’t have a flashlight handy, but I figured I better call this in so that I can have power back by the time I wake up for real on Sunday morning. I managed to find a battery-powered mini lantern and I found the phone number for outages. A transformer was smoking, they said, and they’d have it fixed by 9am. I went back to sleep–tried to anyway–the air cleaner came back on at 5:15. Yea!

Made good progress on my edits yesterday and I’ll finish the first run today. I’m fixing all the small stuff and tagging the stuff I need to think about or that will require time to work on. After I finish the first run, I’ll hit these bigger items.

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Unpublished Contests and Thank You Notes

Saturday, December 30th, 2006

I was thinking about contests yesterday (the kind for writers) and realized that I preferred to judge the Golden Heart more than the Rita. Part of it is because there isn’t as much reading to do. It takes a lot less time to read 55 pages than it takes to read an entire book. But the biggest reason is how exciting it is to read an unpublished writer who leaves you wishing you could read the entire book. I’ve had this happen to me several times in my years as a judge and I buzz with enthusiasm for days afterward.

I don’t judge as many contests as I used to, I can’t because it takes too much time and I don’t have much to spare. I’ve only judged one chapter contest in 2006, and BTW, didn’t receive a single thank you note from any of my entries. See My Post about how important it is to send thank you notes to your contest judges.

One of the reasons I list in this post is that published judges appreciate the thank you notes–I haven’t heard one that said she didn’t care. But I’ll tell you another reason, one I don’t believe I ever posted here before.

I judged a bunch of contests in 2005, and in one of them, I read an entry I thought was fabulous. I also happened to read it right before RWA National, and when I had dinner with my editor and we started talking, I brought it up. I know we’re not supposed to talk about these things, and I normally don’t, but I thought my editor would really like the story, and from my description, she did. She wanted to request a partial. When I got home, I sent her the name of the entry and the contest coordinator’s email. I found out later, when I asked my editor about this, that the contest coordinator not only wouldn’t give my editor the entrant’s name, but apparently wouldn’t pass a message along to the entrant either. The entry didn’t final in this contest, so I couldn’t get her name that way, and if the writer sent me a thank you note, she didn’t mention the title of her story so I had no way to know if I heard from her or not. If she’d sent a thank you and mentioned the title of her entry, I would have passed the info along to my editor.

So lesson one: Send a thank you note. I spend hours judging every entry, you can spend 3 minutes to write me a note. Lesson two: Mention the name of your entry and the contest. That year I’d happened to judge two or three contests around the same time and all in the same state, so the postmarks didn’t give me a clue.

Just think, if this writer had sent a thank you note with the title of her entry and I passed her name on to my editor what might have happened. At the very least, she (or he) lost a great opportunity.

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What Should Your New Year’s Resolution Be?

Friday, December 29th, 2006

I figured out that my post about calendars from this morning was boring. Sorry about that. When I’m tired, I lose perspective. Here’s a quiz, though, and hopefully, that will make up for it.


Your New Year’s Resolutions

1) Get a pet iguana

2) Eat more cotton candy

3) Travel to Alaska

4) Study abnormal psychology

5) Get in shape with surfing

What Should Your New Year’s Resolution Be?
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It’s New Calendar Time

Friday, December 29th, 2006

I overslept again this morning. Sigh. Worse than yesterday and that’s why this is posting later. I was working on edits and didn’t get to bed till after 11pm. They were going so well, I hated to stop, but I knew I’d pay the price today–and I am.

Last night, I had a spend $40, save $10 coupon from Barnes & Noble, and since I needed wall and desk calendars, I decided to check out if they were on sale online. I confess, I wait till they’re 50% off to buy. I was planning to hit BN this weekend, but if I could avoid a trip to the mall, that’s a good thing. Luckily, most of the calendars were marked down.

The wall calendar ended up being really easy. The featured item had pictures of the Greek isles and the images were gorgeous! Usually, I go with Scotland or Ireland and last year I had New Orleans (proceeds of the calendar went to Katrina relief), but this year I wanted something different. Greece is definitely different.

The desk calendar was a little more difficult to pick out. I usually go with the French Impressionists, but again, I wanted something different. I found a really cool Japanese art calendar and I was going to order it, but the description didn’t say whether or not it’s spiral-bound. I want my desk calendar to be spiral so I couldn’t risk ordering it. I went with one of Italy instead.

Then, to make up my $40, I picked up the Lonely Planet guide to Tahiti and French Polynesia. (Yes, my Polynesian heroine is still hanging around, but she won’t talk to me until I’m ready to work on her story. A good thing, too, since I have to concentrate on Creed and Maia.) Lonely Planet has fab pictures (I have their guides to Australia and Ireland already) and good info and it’s a research book. I was all set now to check out.

My Italy desk calendar was out of stock. Sigh. I had to pick a new one. (I wish they would have told me that before I was ready to buy!) I dithered a little, but finally went with a Zen calendar. I haven’t been meditating the way I should lately, so hopefully the pictures and text will encourage me.

The Zen calendar, though, was cheaper than Italy and now I didn’t have $40. I had to find $5 somewhere. I almost bought a Lonely Planet guide to another part of Polynesia, but didn’t want to spent that much money when I don’t know my heroine’s (or hero’s) heritage for sure. Polynesia covers a lot of ground. I ended up going with a Susan Andersen book that I’d missed earlier this summer. Susan Andersen has been a must-buy author for me since Baby, I’m Yours and I read Head Over Heels so many times, I had to buy a second copy. This new one (the title escapes me) has another showgirl heroine and Andersen does them so well. If I only had time to read…

I also discovered a textbook on Polynesian Mythology. It was $75. Gah! But I actually found it at the publisher’s website for half price–new edition must be coming out–so I’m going to order it from there. It sounds like it’s exactly what I’m looking for.

The weather yesterday ended up being much ado about nothing, but it was nice to have extra time to drive into work. It’s amazing how much calmer I am when I don’t have to rush.

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Searching the Blogosphere

Thursday, December 28th, 2006

I have to be brief this morning. I looked out the window and the deck is wet and some of it is freezing so the roads could be icky. Again. Sigh.

I’m over 1000 blog posts here now. That’s pretty darn cool because when I started this, I wasn’t sure I’d stick with it. I had all kinds of diaries as a kid that were started and dropped within a matter of weeks. I even had a 5 year diary where there was only room for a short paragraph about the day and I couldn’t even keep up with that. I’m better on the computer, I guess. :-) Or at least more prolific.

One of the things that always interests me is the stats on the blog. I can see what search terms people are using to find my blog. Right now, I’m getting a plethora of hits for “Golden Heart Judge.” I mentioned getting my entry packet a couple of weeks ago. I’ll also mention when I’m done judging, but that will be all I say about the contest, so I’m not quite sure why it’s worth searching. There will be no mention of any particular entry, not by title or by subject matter and I’m sure other judges will be just as mum.

I also get a lot of hits for “how to hang a scarf valance.” Some vindication since I’m clearly not the only one who’s had a huge amount of trouble getting those damn things up. I have a picture from a catalog of two scarf valances swagged across a curtain rod exactly how I want to put mine up so it is possible to do it. Just apparently not by me.

I’ve gotten hits on oven smoke and on how to hang a bifold closet door. See? I’m not the only one with household issues/disasters. :-) And hits because of the television commercials I’ve talked about.

What’s also interesting is the things I don’t get any hits on. Like my movie reviews. :-) You’d think someone would be searching for movies, wouldn’t you? Oh, well, I’m certainly no Roger Ebert when it comes to this, so probably it’s just as well.

I have to run.

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Old Celebrities and Shards of Crimson

Wednesday, December 27th, 2006

My parents have some of the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts on video and we watched the one where Johnny Carson was the man of the week on Christmas. As they introduced the people on the dais, I’m thinking: He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead, she’s dead, he’s dead, etc. For the ones that were still living, I was like, wow, he looks so young! There was only one person on the stage that had me going: Who the heck is that? It was some blonde woman and I don’t remember her name.

Mostly, the show held up fairly well. There were some jokes that just weren’t funny any longer, but Bob Newhart was still very funny and George Burns. Rich Little did all of Johnny’s mannerisms and that was hilarious too because then Johnny stopped trying to do any of those gestures. BTW, whatever happened to Rich Little? I haven’t seen anything about him in ages.

Overall, it was a nice, relaxing Christmas and spending an hour watching Dean Martin is no hardship even if he was older during this show. Have I mentioned this crush I developed on Dino when I was 9? I saw a movie called Artists and Models and fell madly in love with the man. Of course, I had no concept of how old that movie was or how old Dean was, but I still enjoy watching his movies and shows and listening to him sing Baby, It’s Cold Outside.

I received my author copies of Shards of Crimson yesterday afternoon. Hurrah! This might be the first time these arrived before I’ve found the book in the store. Of course, I’m giving the mall a wide berth right now anyway because I don’t do crowds. The first thing I did was check my dedication/acknowledgment page because I didn’t get to proof that with the story. The second thing I did was check a few spots in the book that I’d wanted changed from the galley. The three changes I checked on were all made–whew! If I could have remembered the others, I would have checked on those too, but my memory isn’t that good and I was too lazy to dig out the copy I made of the galley.

Speaking of Shards, there’s still time to enter the Super-Deluxe Crimson City Action Pack Contest! Lots of cool prizes. You can check it out on the Contest Page of my website.

Carolyn: I’ll try remembering your sentence for affect and effect. It might help. But my problem isn’t when it’s something that’s fairly straightforward–at least I don’t think it is. :-) Although I suppose if I could figure out if the way I’m using it is a noun or a verb, that might help me.

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Grammar Gremlins

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

I read through my copy edits this weekend and had affect/effect marked a couple of times in the manuscript. I’m not surprised. No matter how hard my teachers drilled me, I never got it. Not in high school, not in college and not now. I know that I don’t get it and I even copied a piece out of a book and posted it on the wall so that I’d be able to reference it easily. Unfortunately, I get more confused after reading it, so I’ve decided to just go with what feels right. Either that or I rewrite the sentence so I don’t have to use that word. :-)

I didn’t see this marked, but another one I have a huge problem with is lie/lay/laid/lain and any derivation of this word. This is one of those cases where I’m always wrong. Whichever option I choose, the other one is right. You’d think I could just go with the opposite then and that would take care of it, but the few times I’ve tried this, I was actually right originally and switching made me wrong. Again, I try to rewrite to avoid this series of words.

As I went through the manuscript, I learned that a while isn’t always two words. I thought it was. This will now become another rule I don’t understand, right there with: into/in to, anymore/any more and onto/on to. What I do in these instances is pick one way to write the word(s) and do it throughout. :-) Consistency is key, right?

Then there’s my comma usage. Blame this one on journalism school. We had it drilled into (one word) our heads to never, ever put a comma before the word and unless it’s part of a clause, that it’s completely unnecessary. This I learned well and to this day it bugs the hell out of me to see a comma in this position. So of course, at both my publishers they stick commas before the word and and I have to grit my teeth and say, yeah, okay, most people didn’t go to J School. But the overabundance of commas drives me insane. Of course, I also have a habit of leaving out other commas or putting them in where they don’t belong and this has nothing to do with college. I’ve had several comments over the years about my “interesting” use of this punctuation mark.

What can I say? I try. My teachers tried. I remember week after week of diagramming sentences and being drilled in grammar. I think I need a refresher course or something. Of course, it’s unlikely that this would help with affect/effect or lie/lay/laid/lain, etc, but there’s always hope.

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Merry Christmas!

Monday, December 25th, 2006

For those of you who celebrate, Merry Christmas! Have a peaceful and joyous holiday!


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What Christmas Carol Are You?

Sunday, December 24th, 2006

Sorry, I can’t resist.

Your Christmas Song Is

Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

And so this is xmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong

You would gladly give up all of your material Christmas gifts…

If it meant peace for a few more people

What Christmas Carol Are You?
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The Five People You Meet In Heaven

Sunday, December 24th, 2006

It’s movie review Sunday and this week I saw The Five People You Meet In Heaven. This was originally a made for TV movie a couple of years ago and I saw it then, but it’s better without commercials. :-)

In this movie, the hero, Eddie, is a maintenance worker at Ruby Pier, an amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, one of the rides breaks, and in an attempt to rescue a little girl from a falling car, he’s killed. He meets five people in heaven, each of whom had his or her life touched by Eddie in some way. And along the way, he discovers things he didn’t know about what really happened. I don’t want to go into too much detail, so I’ll stop here.

This movie is one I recommend highly. It looks at how one life can touch another’s and how we might not realize the impact we have. This is a movie that if you think about it for a while, there are deeper layers than what’s obvious. It’s not a main thread, but one of the pieces is that our view of our lives is narrow and we can’t see the big picture, but as we go through Eddie’s five people with him, we find out things about his life and how it fit into a bigger reality than he knew. For example, with his father. Eddie thought he knew how the man had died, but he was wrong. He was seeing his father through his misconceptions and it wasn’t until he saw what had really happened that he was able to look beyond it to the man his father really was–a man with both good and bad traits.

Another interesting facet that’s never addressed directly is karma. Because of something Eddie did as a young man, he had a karmic debt to pay. He didn’t even realize he was paying it, he simply believed his life had been a waste because he worked at this amusement park fixing rides, but with his last person, he found out differently.

This movie is a tearjerker and also very meaningful and deeply touching. It’s based on a book of the same name by Mitch Albom. (BTW, Netflix misspelled his name and this is a NYT bestselling author. Gah!) I haven’t read it, but if the movie is this good, I can’t help but wonder how great the book must be.

My rating: 5 stars.

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