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Archive for April, 2007

I’m ba-ack!

Monday, April 30th, 2007

I’ve spent the last 9 days writing 10-12 hours all day, every day, so I don’t want to talk about writing at all. :-/ Instead, I’m going to hit some of the non-writing stuff that happened this week.

First of all, having a hiatus was weird. I’ve been blogging every day (with the exception of conferences when I don’t take my laptop) for like 2 years or something. I can’t even tell you how many times I thought about something being a good blog topic.

Let’s see, I’ve been waiting and waiting for these rug runners to go on sale. One to match the area rugs and runner I already have, and an indoor/outdoor one for the laundry room. Right now, I have a carpet remnant where I want the one runner and cardboard and multiple carpet remnants where I want the indoor/outdoor one.

Last Monday, I received an email from Home Depot saying they had free shipping, and I almost caved in and ordered them even though they weren’t on sale. I’ve just been waiting and waiting! Patience isn’t my strongest personality trait. But on Friday, not only was the free shipping thing still going on, but my two rug runners were 20% off! I immediately ordered, so I made another stride forward in home decor.

I received an email to tell me that the three types of lilies I ordered are shipping. I’ve been waiting and waiting for these flowers, but of course, I don’t have time to plant them or do anything with them. Sigh.

Wasp wars have resumed. The weather finally warmed up, and both the grass-carrying wasps who like to build nests in my windows and the regular wasps have returned. I’m shooting wasp spray through my screens again. Largely missing since the 20 feet distance is less than you’d think.

My dad installed my screen door on my sliding patio door. Um, it’s not great since I really can’t open and close it. He’s going to ask someone to help him get it so I can actually go in and out, but it was nice to sit here this weekend with all the windows open and the patio door open as well and let summer inside.

I have a $100 gift card from Circuit City I need to use soon. I’m debating buying an iPod. I have an MP3 player that I like, but now the battery is starting to not hold the charge, and plus none of the accessories work since they’re all for the iPod and not for mine. I like the idea of popping it into a cradle and having music in the house. The other thing that would be cool is that the Apple iPod can carry TV shows and movies, all downloadable for a fee from iTunes. I don’t know, though. I read the reviews and some people love their iPods and some people don’t. Then I wonder will a new, cooler iPod be coming soon? After all, the current version has been out for a while now. Does anyone have thoughts on the iPod thing? Maybe I’d be better off buying a new ergonomic keyboard with my gift card.

I had bookmarks designed for In the Midnight Hour and ordered them from the printer. I got a proof on Friday and it turned out really nicely. I hope the finished product looks as good. I have no clue when I’m going to receive them, but luckily my mom will work on bundling them up for me while she watches her soaps.

I think that’s it. At least it’s all I can remember. Today, it’s back to the EDJ (Evil Day Job), and since I’ve used pretty much every day of vacation I had, I won’t be getting any time off for a while. Real time off, like to relax and do fun stuff. 10-12 hour days are not fun. :-/

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Hiatus

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

Believe it or not, I have nothing to say. Since anyone who’s read me knows I write a lot of words, I’m guessing it’s stress and/or insomnia. So unless something comes up that I really want to talk about, the blog will be on hiatus for a week or so.

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Writer At Work

Sunday, April 22nd, 2007

I was up at 6am yesterday and went to bed after 11:30. I researched the ancient Egyptian god Set, I did a load of laundry, vacuumed the house, and finished the chapter I was working on. I think. I tack on the “I think” because I refused to go to bed until I finished it and I’m concerned I just ended it because I wanted to sleep so badly. I’ll read through it this morning and see what I have.

I took some pictures. This is what my great room looks like when I push on deadline:



Here’s a close-up of my table:


I seriously want a sign for my front door that says:

Do not disturb
Author at work

Once again, one of my neighbors from down the street came a ringing the bell. Fortunately, I wasn’t right in the middle of writing–I was emptying the dryer–but the last thing I need are these interruptions. I wasn’t going to answer the door, but since I was actually showered and dressed, and because if I didn’t answer, she’d just come back again, I did open the door. And she wanted to chit chat. Gah! Luckily, my dad showed up and he ran interference for me.

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Color My World

Saturday, April 21st, 2007

There was just a commercial on The Weather Channel (Yes, I watch TWC) where it showed a couple looking at their white walls, then they go to Home Depot to pick out paint. It made me remember all the episodes of Designed to Sell and House Hunters that I’ve watched on HGTV and how many of the homes shown have these white or nearly white walls–and usually throughout the entire house! And nine times out of ten, if their walls are blank, their furniture is every bit as neutral, so it looks as if they’re living in a bowl of oatmeal.

I always shake my head when I see this and think, “why are people so afraid of color?” Of course, if y’all have seen the pictures of the house I built (link is on the right to go to the house galleries), you know that I love color. Take my great room for example. The walls are largely a neutral creamy off-white color, but then I have the focal wall. That’s a brilliant blue. There’s a bright pink, tall vase on the floor with big orange flowers and my area rugs are very colorful and fun.

But I digress. As usual. Anyway, I don’t understand why people are so afraid of color. You paint, you don’t like it, you repaint. No, it’s not a huge amount of fun, but it’s not difficult either. Or if they really hate painting with a passion, get some color in the room through accessories, like my brilliant pink vase with the orange silk flowers or accent pillows. Something. I just can’t imagine living in a house without color.

Last year sometime, I found a quiz online that told you what your decorating style is. I blogged about it at the time and included the link, but I don’t have time to try to search it out. Anyway, I took it and my style was determined to be Contemporary, Modern and Asian, and after reading the definitions of those styles on the website, I have to agree, those are totally my styles.

I was able to turn the heat off yesterday, for the second time this spring, and open up the windows. It was windy and it’ll be windy again today, but also 80 degrees. Yea!

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Write Touch Readers’ Choice Award Finalist

Friday, April 20th, 2007

I received a call last night; Eternal Nights is a finalist for Best Paranormal in the Write Touch Readers’ Choice Awards! That certainly improved my mood last night–by like a 100 fold. :-)

I needed the boost. It’s been hectic all week at the EDJ (Evil Day Job) and yesterday was about the worst. I felt like I was running from the minute I arrived until the minute I left and I was frazzled. Then I came home, read through the scene I mentioned yesterday. I decided it was mostly okay, although I did tweak a little and I’ll probably do more tweaking of the language later. The problem was everything in the scene that followed. It was boring and didn’t work. I trashed the entire thing and then struggled to figure out how the hell to write the scene in order to get to the big revelation. It was a big day for wheel spinning. Sigh.

I’m off from the EDJ next week. Hoping for a lot of progress and no more trashing of scenes.

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Crude, Rude and Dangerous

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

The scene I needed to write yesterday was short and I could see it clearly. I figured I’d have it written in no time, only it wasn’t quite that easy. The big problem was the crudity of the scene. It’s in my bad guy’s point of view (this is a rarity since I haven’t published a book yet with this in it.) and he’s thinking very crudely about sex. I rarely censor the characters, but this was just too much and I figured I’d be cleaning it up at one point or another. It’s still crude, there’s no doubt about that. It’s just not as crude as what I saw and heard.

The language was a huge problem, so I was looking for a slang thesaurus. All the links I have to slang dictionaries didn’t really help. I knew the definition of the words, I needed slightly cleaner, but still rough, alternatives. I turned up one on a site for writers, but to see the slang thesaurus I had to subscribe and it was $20 a year. :-( I finally bit the bullet and did it, but I didn’t find what I needed in there. It was okay, don’t get me wrong, and it might come in handy at a later point in time, but for this scene? Nope.

I finally got the thing done when I realized that I didn’t have to describe every action in detail and that what I already had gave quite a clear picture of what the villain was doing. I hope. I’ll have to reread it today and see what I have.

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Just Stuff

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

Boy, the laptop is really slowing down. I’m not talking internet connection speed, which is still at dial up since I’m not networked, but the actual computer speed itself. I’ll have to run a spyware scan when I get home from work today, but I’m thinking it’s probably the fact that the laptop is over two years old and there is a lot of crap on it now. I really should wipe the drive and reload the stuff I want, but I did that with my desktop a few years ago and I still don’t have everything back on it. And it is a lot of work to save everything off the hard drive, wipe the drive, reload all the programs, and then reload all the files. It’s probably easier to just buy a new laptop. :-/ Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll just be spyware.

I tried to get to bed a little earlier last night so I’d be rested today. It started out so well, but I woke up around 1:30. I think it was my dream. Over and over, these little creatures with huge teeth kept leaping at me and sinking their teeth into my left arm. I even think I know what inspired that–my left wrist, arm, hand and thumb have been painful the last couple of days. Bad enough that I started babying it yesterday. Anyway, I didn’t fall back asleep till nearly 4am and then the alarm went off. I’m a hurting unit right now.

Oh, and Shards of Crimson is up for two NOR Awards. This award is in conjunction with Night Owl Romance. You can go over and vote here.

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Romance Novel Discussion

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

There’s an interesting discussion going on at Romance By the Blog with a class from Princeton University about romance novels. I’ve just started reading the comments–there are a lot of them–but I thought I’d mention it here in case anyone was interested in reading what this literature class wanted to discuss with romance readers.

It was a busy day at work yesterday. I didn’t even finish getting through email, let alone the projects on my desk and I have revisions there, too, to get done before I’m off again next week. The coworker from hell, though, is off through Thursday so it should be a tremendous week at the EDJ.

I’m not going to blog about the news–it’s too sad and depressing. I’ll just say that my thoughts and prayers go out to the people at Virginia Tech and their families.

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No Rhythm

Monday, April 16th, 2007

Mornings have a rhythm, a routine–okay, a rut–and I realized a minute or two ago that I’ve totally gotten out of mine. I was running through my usual stops online and I didn’t seem to be out of rhythm, but I looked at the clock and it was 4:47. Normally, I’m blogging by around 4:30 and I went, Yikes! I have to move. That’s when I realized that I had somehow lost my Evil Day Job morning timing.

Anyway, yes, it’s back to the EDJ again. In a way, I’m almost glad (note the almost) because my brain is exhausted from the nonstop writing I’ve been doing this past week. Progress was good, but I was hoping for more.

I know I have two projects waiting for my return to the EDJ. One I was working on before I left, the other was brought over about 2 minutes before I was out the door on the Friday before my vacation. I’m also going to have all the stuff to catch up on that accumulated in my absence. I’m getting more tired just thinking about it.

So basically, deadline hell continues for the book and I’m going to be running at work this week, too. Sigh.

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Quick One

Sunday, April 15th, 2007

I’m not going to blog long today. I have to go back to the Evil Day Job tomorrow and I want to get as much done as possible.

It was warmer (notice I did not say warm) and sunny yesterday, so I took my notepad and sat on my deck to work on chapter goals. I needed my jacket and it was really cool in the shade, but it was nice to get outdoors.

Last night, I dreamt I met Sting after a concert. You’d think in my dreams that I could manage to be smooth socially, but nope, I was as big a geek in my sleep as I am in real life social situations. Sigh. It doesn’t seem fair.

Oh, yeah, I ordered more flowers to plant–someday.

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