June « 2007 « Patti O'Shea's Blog

Archive for June, 2007

This and That

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

I’m really late posting today. Sorry about that!

I’m having a book video trailer made for In the Midnight Hour and it’s really turned out cool! It’s not finished yet, but I think we’re close. Right now, we’re going through, trying to find pictures that fit my h/h and the villain. I wish we could use the pictures I had up as I wrote, but unfortunately, I don’t have the rights to them. I think we found Ryne, but we’re still searching for Deke and Anise.

My plants weren’t quite as decimated as I thought. Last night, I took a break from revisions and went down to really check things out closely. I only lost 1 starfighter lily and it looks as if I only lost 1 toad lily. I really thought I’d lost all but 1 toad lily. The Sumatra lilies, however, were as bad as I thought–three gone out of four. The one remaining one is doing really well, so that’s some consolation. Peony tree is doing excellent!

I finally finished the prologue for Midnight Hour and revisions are starting to pick up speed now. Of course, they couldn’t go much slower than they were while I was writing the new pages.

I think I’ll stop here. I’m writing this at the EDJ.

Tags: plants, revisions, video
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Argh!

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

My parents’ plane was due in yesterday at 2:30–exactly the time I get off work at the EDJ. Since I work close to the airport, I knew I’d have to hang around until they landed, got off the plane, and retrieved their luggage. I was really hoping they’d get in early so I wouldn’t have to waste valuable revision time.

It started off so promising. Their plane pulled away from the gate 7 minutes early and they were scheduled to arrive in Minneapolis 15 minutes early. Yea! That meant I’d only spin my wheels for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. Only the next time I checked to see how their flight was doing, I saw they were delayed. For 50 minutes. Argh!!!

Yes, I ended up sitting at work until nearly 4pm–there was no point in fighting traffic back and forth. The airport was crowded and some woman in a Jaguar blocked me in and then stands in the road behind her car (and in front of mine) talking with her passenger. How rude! By the time I got out of there, dropped my parents off and got home, it was after 5:30.

I open up my windows. It’s been really hot here the last week and I’ve been running the air conditioning a lot. Besides, what’s there to worry about? I haven’t seen any wasps hanging around for a while. As I’m 0pening the fourth window, grass falls. Yes, the grass carrying wasp had built a nest. Argh!!!

This necessitated an SOS to my dad, and while I was waiting for him, I started getting some review copies ready to be mailed. How long can it take to address a few envelopes, write a short letter and seal them? Apparently, longer than I realized.

Anyway, the books are ready to be mailed, the wasp nest is gone, and I think I finally have the prologue finished. Yes, my friend found a ton wrong with it and it took me all the writing time I had today to fix it. Thank God my parents aren’t planning any more trips for a while.

And there you have it, my frustrating ARGH! day.

Tags: adventures, airplanes, wasps
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Revisions

Monday, June 18th, 2007

I can describe revisions in two words: Excruciatingly painful.

I needed to write a short prologue to answer a couple of the issues. Five pages, I figured, no problem. I struggled all day. Finally, some time afer 8:30, I figured out what the problem was, fixed it, and finished about 11pm last night.

There I was at 10:30 on a work night researching aerodynamics and how a bird flies. For one paragraph. On the plus side, at least the information was easy to find. I’ve had to research little facts like that before and have wasted hours because what I needed to know was so obscure. It was good to have the information come up on the first search and the first hits.

I’m hoping I hit what I needed to in those five pages and that I can just fine tune them a little and move on.

It was very discouraging, though, to work for hours and hours and only get five pages out of the deal. And that’s provided they work and my friend doesn’t tell me I need to rewrite them. Gah!

Hopefully, I can move on to the next problem.

Tags: revisions
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Revisions, Ideas and the Death Toll

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

I looked at my revisions yesterday and they’re going to be far more time consuming than I’d hoped. I’m still looking for that clone I was talking about a while back. The clone can go to the EDJ for me and I can stay home and work. And work.

Last night, I was talking to a friend and I came up with this brilliant reason for her forgetfulness. It was so brilliant, I decided it would make a great story idea, I’m just not sure how it would work. I spent some time thinking about it before I fell asleep last night (yeah, I know, I should have been thinking about revisions, but I thought about those when I woke up at 4:45 this morning instead) and I can’t figure out how to structure a story around the premise. Probably because I don’t get my stories from plot premises, I get them from the characters and I don’t have any that leaped in to say they’d do the story. Since I’m still trying to pry information out of my Polynesian couple, I guess I’ll table this idea for a while.

I was out checking my lilies early this morning before I started the sprinkler and I have an preliminary death toll. Of the four Sumatra lilies, only one looks as if it’s growing. The other three look dead. Hugely dead. Of the four toad lilies, two are for sure gone. The other two? Shrug. It’s too early to tell. The only lilies that seem to be doing really well are the Starfighters. I have 12 of those and I think there’s only 1 or 2 that aren’t looking good. I guess those white stakes that I joked looked like grave markers were more apropos than I believed.

Tags: ideas, plants, revisions
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Big Deal or No Deal?

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

I’ve had a pretty lazy morning so far and I shouldn’t. I need to be working on my revisions. It was nice, though, to sleep in, and last night, I did a load of laundry and was outside dragging the hose around because the lawn needed watering so bad. My tractor sprinkler jumped the hose line three times and that necessitated some rescue trips. After all that, I woke up at 3am to lightning. Yes, it rained and it must have come down for hours judging by how wet things were when I got up at 9. Oh, well. As dry as it’s been, I’m sure the extra watering didn’t hurt anything.

You know, even as I wrote the above paragraph, I’m thinking when the hell did I get so into my yard? I water my flowers every evening, on my day to water, I’m out there dragging hoses around. I check on my peony tree and lilies almost every day. And I’m someone who never used to give a rip. The only thing I can think of is it’s the difference between owning my own home and not owning one.

My revisions were waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday. Yea! Um, kind of yea. The part of me that worries is glad they’re here and not lost. The part of me that wants this story finished is thrilled too. It’s the part of me that’s still tired of this book that’s balking. I’ve never had revisions turned this fast before and it must be some kind of mental thing.

Parent story. My folks went to Chicago for a bridal shower for one of my cousins. She’s registered at Target, so I went online, bought a gift and had it wrapped and set to be delivered to the cousin that my parents are staying with this weekend. I barely get in the door yesterday afternoon and the phone’s ringing. It’s my dad. The gift hasn’t arrived yet. I’m like dad, it’s no big deal. If it doesn’t come before the shower, it’ll just have to get to her later. It’s not like no one is ever going to see the cousin getting married again.

Maybe I should call Target, my dad says. Sigh. It’s 3pm in the afternoon. I explain that it’s coming UPS. He finally seems to get it. The gift might still be delivered that afternoon. Then I logon to the computer and I have an email survey from Target asking if my inquiry had been handled satisfactorily. Yep, he called Target and must have done it almost immediately after I we hung up.

Is this one of those ways that parents are supposed to drive us nuts? The things I think he should worry about, my dad blows them off. The things I think are unimportant are critical in his mind. I just don’t get it.

Tags: parents, plants, yard
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Tattooing

Friday, June 15th, 2007

I didn’t think my half Polynesian hero had any tattoos, but I found out differently. So today, during lunch at the EDJ, I started looking up information on Maori tattoos. Most of them dealt with facial designs which are very significant and important to them (Ta Moko), but I knew he wouldn’t get any of those because he grew up in America and he’d want to fly under the radar. I think he might be ex-special forces, but he’s still not talking. I turned up some interesting information on tribal tattoos, though, and bookmarked them for later reading. His heroine always had a tattoo and I discovered that turns him on.

My revisions weren’t on the doorstep Thursday when I got home and I really expected them to be there. Boy, I hope they come today because I really want the weekend to work on them. It’s funny, but every single time I get revisions, it’s like I forget how to do them and I get overwhelmed. Then it’s like I take a step back, decide to take it one scene at a time, and somehow it all makes sense.

Since I didn’t have my edits, I took a nap. My second three hour nap in two days. I must really be tired. I was groggy after I woke up, but that didn’t matter since I had nothing in particular to do except water my flowers. Some of my lilies are not doing well. I thought the bulbed ones would be okay, but not all of them are and that’s unfortunate.

Tags: characters, plants, polynesia, revisions
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Stubborn Darn Characters

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

I’m still reading my book on Polynesian mythology. I’m finding some of the information very interesting, but my heroine (and her hero) still aren’t talking to me. It’s very frustrating because I can sense them there and I want to know what their story is, but I get nothing. I’m wondering if this is payback because I made her go away while I was writing In the Midnight Hour?

It’s very frustrating because until one of my characters tells me or shows me what’s going on, I’m clueless. Right now, I’m wishing I was one of those writers who was able to come up with the story, but it’s never worked that way for me.

I might have mentioned this before, but take Midnight Hour as an example. I had the premise behind Deke’s curse years ago, but I had nothing beyond that. It was a cool idea and one I wanted to write, but not only couldn’t I hear Deke, I had no clue who his heroine was. Fast forward to Ryne’s appearance. When she came in, she told me about her people. Lots and lots of information about her people. I didn’t know for a long time that she was Deke’s heroine. As soon as I realized that was who she was, the story started coming together.

So here I sit, reading the mythology book and waiting for this heroine to give me more than the fact that she’s half Tahitian. I guess it doesn’t much matter, though, since I have revisions coming and that would shunt her aside again anyway. It’s just that my curiosity is driving me crazy!

Tags: characters, midnight_hour, polynesia
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Big Sigh of Relief

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

I’ve heard from both my agent and my editor about In Twilight’s Shadow now and I’m hugely relieved. My agent said she missed her subway stop because she was so engrossed in the story, and while I don’t have my revision letter from my editor yet, she sent me an email to say there was nothing big. And that revisions are on their way via Fed Ex. Perspective on my own work is usually difficult, but with this story, I honestly had no idea what I had.

Since revisions are on their way, I knew I didn’t have time to continue making envelopes. I needed to get my mailing out the door ASAP. My dad stopped at the drug store for me while I was at work and picked up a couple of boxes for me, the kind with the peel off, self-stick flap. Hurrah! All the promo stuff is in boxes, ready to go to the post office tomorrow. But now I have tons of handmade envelopes lying around. Some are all ready to go. Some just need to be sealed. And some are lying unfolded. Now what am I going to do with all this stuff?

With the craft project and the mail out done, my tabletop is clear and so is most of my counter. Yea! I can’t live in chaos and that’s what it always feels like when my open surfaces are cluttered.

The peony tree is doing fabulous. There are even more new shoots coming off of it. Some of the lilies seem to be doing exceptionally well, while others don’t appear to have grown at all since being planted. Then there are the poor toad lilies. Two of them might make it. Two of them… Sigh. It’s been really dry here, though, and I’ve been watering everything, trying to baby them along. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Tags: crafts, plants, WIP
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Paper Folding

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

I’m still folding envelopes. Gah! Why did I think this was a good idea? I’m so ready to get these things done and move onto something (ANYTHING!) else. I was so busy folding, I even forgot to go out and check on my lilies. I’ll have to do that this afternoon when I get home from the EDJ.

The last box is now off the counter next to my stove. It’s been about 6 weeks since I’ve had that clear because that’s where I had my boxes of flower bulbs to be planted and the last box was a solar-powered bug zapper for my deck. My dad and mom came over last night and he put it together for me. Now, all I need to do is clean off the lounge chair and get it up on the deck–then it will officially be summer.

I think I’m finally starting to recover from my brain drain because this morning, I had a flash of an idea for my Light Warriors series. Just like old times. The downside was that it had nothing to do with the book I want to write next in this world. I need to start working on that and getting things planned out.

Tags: and-the-beat-goes-on, life, light-warriors
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Sometimes I Scare Myself

Monday, June 11th, 2007

My table and the snack bar on my center island are covered with bookmarks, papers, and assorted other items for my promo mail out. All this stuff has been there for a few days and it’s bugging the heck out of me! I need to get moving so I can get it all out the door and in the mail–except that I had a “brainstorm” yesterday. Sigh.

I didn’t have enough #10 envelopes for the mailing, and instead of getting in the car and heading to the office supply story, I get a “brilliant” idea. Why don’t I make my own envelopes?

It seemed so logical. I have the templates and tons of extra scrapbook paper. And how hard can it be, anyway?

As it turns out, not that hard except I needed about a hundred of these envelopes. I cut and cut and cut. But that wasn’t the time consuming part. Nope, the part that’s taking forever is folding them and fastening the edges down. Some of my folding didn’t turn out exactly right, although it’s close. Others look perfect. I’m not even a quarter of the way through, yet.

I’m going to be spending many, many hours assembling these envelopes. What was I thinking?

The really sad thing is that it’s now become a challenge, something I’m going to see through to the end or die trying. What the hell is wrong with me?

I wonder if the people who receive my handcrafted envelopes will think, “wow, this is really cool” or “what’s up with this chick using this weird paper?” It’s not really businesslike, I guess, but do you think readers and/or booksellers will be put off by striped or flowered or colored paper?

I guess if I get revisions this week, though, that I will be dropping the envelope project and heading to Office Max. :-/ It’s a matter of priorities and using my time wisely.

Tags: bookmarks, crafts
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