Archive for June, 2007

Teaser!

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

My super cool teaser for In the Midnight Hour is up on You Tube now! I’m hugely excited about this and I didn’t want to say anything until I had it up on my website and MySpace page, but I just can’t wait. Patience was never my strong suit, but the video did turn out great, if I say so myself. Midnight Hour Teaser.

I took yesterday afternoon and evening off from writing. I feel hugely guilty saying that because I have revisions due on Monday. I did work during my lunch hour at the EDJ and finished everything except the one section that’s going to require a lot of effort and time to take care of. All the more reason to feel guilty, but I was so exhausted that I’d hose it up if I tried to tackle it. Whenever I try to work on anything when I’m tired, I hate everything and I start gutting it. Inevitably, when I’ve had more rest and look at what I’ve done, I have to restore the original version and start over. I figured I’d skip that step this time and just wait until I had some sleep.

So what did I do on my decadent time off? My dad and I cleaned off my chaise lounge and little plastic table and hauled it up onto the deck. I helped my dad hang my wind spinner (it’s only been sitting on my counter since the beginning of May!). Okay, so my idea of helping with the wind spinner was saying, “it looks good there,” but hey, it had to be done! I also watered my plants and did a couple loads of laundry, watched baseball and played Mah Jong.

Yeah, I know. There was some excitement, though. When I came inside for the evening and bent to put my wood in the patio door track, I discovered a wasp! I must have rolled the door right over him and killed it. The wasp being dead is a good thing. The wasp inside my house was not a good thing.

My dad transplanted more tiger lilies from his house to mine. He’s filled the entire back half of the tree ring with them, so I guess I won’t be buying any more flowers next year to fill that space as I’d thought I would.

A ton of work to do today on the book. I plan to finish that and then do one more read-through tomorrow before emailing it to my editor. I think I might have to post the dancing Hobbes gif again when I finish. I’m going to need to happy dance again.

Tags: house, midnight_hour, plants, revisions, video, wasps
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Trendy Names

Friday, June 29th, 2007

I think I’m going to have a hero named Logan.

As a friend pointed out, the name is “trendy” which is something I’d like to stay away from.

He hasn’t “announced” his name and he hasn’t forced me to look through baby name books and become insistent on that moniker. This fooled me into thinking that maybe, just maybe, I might finally get to choose a name for one of my h/h. That would be a novel experience (no pun intended).

Instead, he suggested names that had me begging, “Please tell me your name really isn’t ____” (fill in the blank). He even spoke in phony accents to fit these names. His suggestions included Nash (short for Nashville), Nevada, Reno, Nigel, etc. Do I need this?

As we’ve spent days playing these games, it’s become surer and surer in my mind–his name is Logan. And trendy or not, it’s fitting the man’s personality. I can’t really describe how that’s so–at this point it’s more a sense of him than anything I know concretely–but I’m about 90% certain right now that I’ll be writing about a Logan. I can only hope that it’s his last name and not his first, but I doubt I’ll be that lucky.

I’m nearly finished with revisions. I’ve corrected all the small things and I really only have one item left on the “big” list. That one thing is probably going to be the most time consuming and difficult of them all, but I expect to have the file ready to mail back to my editor on Sunday night.

Yesterday, my dad dug out some tiger lilies from in front of his house and planted them on the backside of my tree ring. (The front side is filled with my lilies.) I don’t know why he decided to do this, but it’s nice to have some tall plants over there. He also weeded out the garden for me and he’s talking about bringing more over to plant today. Wow. I’m particularly appreciative of the weeding part because I was going to have to do that on Monday, after I’d finished revisions. Nice.

Tags: characters, names, plants, revisions
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Wasp Wars–Again

Thursday, June 28th, 2007

And so the wasp wars continue.

It’s been really hot here for the last week, so I’ve had my windows closed and the air on. Because my friend, the grass-carrying wasp, has been so insistent on building her nest in one of my eastern windows, I did open it every day just to make sure there wasn’t anything in there. No grass fell from above and I figured she’d finally given up and moved her nest building attempts elsewhere. I had almost sprayed her with wasp poison right before the hot spell hit.

Oh, how foolish I was.

Yesterday, it finally cooled off enough to open the windows again and still no grass fell from above. Yea! So I’m working with the windows open in the house, enjoying the heck out of it and all is well.

I decided to go to bed early last night, and as I’m shutting the windows for the night, I glance down as I’m turning the crank on her window, and much to my surprise, I found grass jammed in around the lower hinge. Not just grass, but some big, dead bug. (It’s for the wasp larvae to feed on. I looked up grass-carrying wasps on the internet.)

Like the big, bad wolf, I tried huffing and puffing to blow out the wasp nest, but that didn’t work. My dad didn’t leave the leaf blower at my house, so that left one option–my hair dryer!

That almost didn’t work. My 1600 watt ion dryer blew out some of it, but the bulk of it stayed locked in place. I started sweeping the dryer, trying different angles. Finally, after a lot of jiggling, I finally cleared out the nest. Whew!

From now on, I’m going to have to check the tops of the windows and the bottoms. Sigh. I’d never heard of grass-carrying wasps before I moved in my house last year and now I’m routinely fighting them off.

BTW, the plan to go to bed early netted me a grand total of maybe 6 hours of sleep. I’m still tired.

Tags: adventures, wasps
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Culture Talk

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

I found out yesterday that the Pompeii exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota is open. I’d heard this was coming, but I was on deadline for In Twilight’s Shadow and I completely forgot about it until I saw the article in the paper yesterday.

There was some other Pompeii exhibit that went through Chicago like a year or two ago. I heard about it after the fact, though, and hadn’t gotten the chance to drive down to see it. I was disappointed by that because it sounded really interesting, but driving to St. Paul is much better than going to Chicago. So it’s all working out just fine. I’ll be waiting to go until after the kids are back in school. I’m thinking after Labor Day sometime.

I also discovered yesterday that the Guthrie Theater is doing a production of 1776. That’s one of my favorite musicals ever! I even own the movie on DVD as well as having a couple of copies on VHS tape.

The Guthrie used to send me a mailing every year to let me know what shows are playing for the season, but I didn’t get one this time around. And when I went to check ticket availability on the theater website, all that dates I wanted to attend were marked “limited.” Guess I won’t get to see 1776 live. That’s a huge disappointment.

I found out about 1776 because the Guthrie Theater is on MySpace and sent out a bulletin. Now that’s modern theater!

Revisions continue and I think they’re going well enough. I’m actually thinking I might, just might, end up with enough time to do a straight read through for nitpicky smoothing stuff. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I have one more big, time consuming issue to tackle, and if that ends up being more difficult than I anticipate, that extra time might disappear.

Tags: cool, edits, excitment, myspace, news, revisions, theater
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My Fabulous RT Review!

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

I received a great review from Romantic Times BOOK Reviews for In the Midnight Hour!

O’Shea ratchets up the paranormal thrills with this inventive and clever new tale. In book after book, she’s has been proving why she’s destined to be a significant player in the paranormal genre. Rich with action, drama and passion, this is pure paranormal pleasure!

How cool is this???

My favorite parts are where Midnight Hour was called “inventive and clever” and the line where it says that I’m “destined to be a significant player in the paranormal genre.”

The only downside is that something was revealed in the review that I wish wasn’t. I knew it would happen and that it will probably occur in most of the reviews the book gets because the event happens in the first three chapters. Reviewers generally consider anything in that area as fair game to be mentioned.

When I was writing this book, I didn’t give my writing buddy any warning about what I had planned, and her reaction when she read the scene that revealed the information was priceless. I was hoping all the readers would be able to have that kind of delighted surprise, but I knew the odds were against it. Ah, well.

In other news, revisions went well yesterday and I made really good progress. Of course, I still have a couple of the bigger changes left to handle, but I’m cruising through the littler ones. Yea!

I talked to a woman at work about my poor flowers being sheared off and she thought it might be a cut worm. She recommended some powder stuff that won’t hurt the plants or any animals, yet keeps the bugs away. I now have a bag of it and my dad volunteered to put it on for me this morning. Hopefully, the protection will save the rest of my flowers.

Tags: midnight_hour, plants, reviews, revisions
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Titles Are Hard

Sunday, June 24th, 2007

Revision work started out a little slow yesterday. I struggled with out to fix one of the problems, but once I got through that, I was able to power through a lot of chapters. Today, though, I hit the scenes requiring the most work, so it’s going to be a long day.

Yesterday evening, I walked down to the tree ring to check on my flowers and something had ruined three more of my starfighter lilies! They appeared as if they’d been bitten through and a fourth had the leaf edges chewed off the top. Do rabbits do this? We have a lot of them around this area. I talked to my dad and I’m hoping he’s going to put up some kind of wire fence to protect my beautiful flowers. If it’s insects that did it, though, I guess I’m SOL. I was not happy to see the destruction.

I managed to have an all day baseball extravaganza while I revised. I love having a game on, with the sound muted, while I’m writing. I was able to go from a noon game, to a 3pm game, to a 6pm game. I wish every day I write was like that.

I also had a new character come in yesterday while I was revising. She did interfere with my revising, so I wasn’t thrilled. I also wasn’t thrilled because this puts me at like five projects now that I might/will tackle when I finish revisions and work on getting proposals together. I’m not sure if I’ll do this new character’s story, although it is intriguing. It’s just a pretty bleak world she lives in and I was hearing her story in first person. Ugh! I hate first person.

Tags: baseball, characters, plants, revisions
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Busy Week at the EDJ

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

I was originally going to share with you all a story from the Evil Day Job (EDJ) that involved maneuvering, manipulation and backstabbing, but I decided it would bore y’all senseless. I will tell you that it was like a soap opera at work all week long and that the entertainment value was relatively high since I wasn’t involved in any of it. Let’s just say that Mister Congeniality was thwarted in his attempt to oust another tech writer from a position that MC wanted and leave it at that.

Another one of my tech writers, one that’s funny and a good guy, took a position in another department. He’s only going to be around two more weeks. It’s a good opportunity for him, but I’m going to miss picking on him.

We cut over to a new computer system at the EDJ this past week and while part of it went smoothly, a big part of it is all hosed up. Of course, IS didn’t listen to the people who were impacted and deleted the old database despite their protests. Since this is the part of the system I work in, this doesn’t sound too good. Luckily for me, I won’t see anything in this area until the big problems are worked out.

Work on revisions for my book continue. I was thinking the other day that producing a book is kind of like a miracle. One day, you have like 10 pages and then the next thing you know, there’s a 420 page story. And it actually makes sense. =8-O I’m amazed each and every time this happens.

Tags: EDJ, revisions
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Of Writing and Revisions

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

It’s going to be a pedal to the metal weekend for me with revisions. I’ve been making the smaller changes, but the bigger ones–the ones that require thought–those I’ve been saving for when I’m more rested and can think more clearly.

Revisions are driving home for me how much I need a coffee table. I’m working on the couch with my laptop and I have papers to either side of me and I have to keep getting up to look at the piles I have on my table or to look up a synonym. I keep thinking, wow, if I had a coffee table, I could lay everything in front of me and I wouldn’t have to keep jumping up and down or worry about my papers falling on the floor.

One of the things I started doing on the last two books was print out a calendar and write down which chapters happen on which day. I’ve discovered I really like this because then I don’t need to worry about keeping the timeline straight or rereading to find out how many days have passed. I just consult my handy dandy calendar and the info is all there.

In the Midnight Hour was the first book I did this on and it’s because the book starts on the spring equinox and the full moon plays a huge role so I needed to make sure my timing matched perfectly. I liked this method so well, I did it again for In Twilight’s Shadow, my 2008 book.

Another new idea I picked up–and I wish I’d heard about it sooner–is a name chart. It’s to help you make sure all your characters don’t have names starting with the letter J or whatever. It’s just a one sheet thing with all the letters of the alphabet listed, and when you mention a new name, you write it down. I think this will work really well for the magical creatures I use in my books as well as the names of the people in the book.

In other news, my friend, the grass-carrying wasp, has tried to build a nest in the same window every single day. I keep opening it up wide when I get home and the wind has blown her nest away, but she doesn’t give up.

And two flowers in my porch planters are dead. The plant assassin strikes again.

Tags: plants, revisions, wasps, writing
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The Greek Mythology Personality Test

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

I found this on Joely’s blog.

Your Score: Nemesis

0% Extroversion, 100% Intuition, 72% Emotiveness, 47% Perceptiveness

You are a normally quiet person with very strong convictions and a marked activist streak. You have a clearly defined sense of right and wrong, and you like seeing people punished for their transgressions. You are Nemesis, goddess of punishment. You are a champion for the defenseless, you love poetic justice and, if karmic retribution doesn’t have its say, then you’ll have yours. You are astute, rarely fooled, and idealistic.

Your defining characteristic is your internal and inflexible system of morals. Because of your highly intuitive nature, you possess the theoretical nature required to define those morals, but you sometimes lack the ability to verbalize and expound on them, especially on the more nuanced parts of your worldview. Regardless, you have strong instincts which often prove to be correct, and rather than preaching, you act on them. You don’t compromise — ever.

You can sometimes be a person of great internal stress. You don’t have double standards, and so you expect the same of yourself as you expect of others. You might find, sometimes, that you have just as hard of a time in living up to those expectations as the people around you. As a result, you are rarely at peace with yourself, but you’re also likely to think of this in a positive light — you’re always forcing yourself to improve, and you avoid making mistakes.

You tend to be a private person, and don’t like to talk much about those staunch morals of yours until, that is, they become violated. Once that happens, everyone is going to know exactly where you stand. You have a distaste of nihilism and intellectual relativism that will make you naturally compatible with scientists and certain kinds of philosophers, even if they don’t share your activist streak.

Famous People like you: Goethe, Voltaire, Susan B. Anthony, Robert Burns

Similar Personality Types: Prometheus, The Oracle, Hermes, Orpheus

Avoid: Icarus, Dionysus, Agamemnon, Atlas

You may or may not be able to get along with an Odysseus — it will depend on his/her upbringing.

Link: The Greek Mythology Personality Test written by Aleph_Nine on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Tags: quiz
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