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Archive for August, 2007

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Dragons and Speed

Sunday, August 12th, 2007

My parents came over for dinner last night, but they didn’t stay long. There was more severe weather coming in and they wanted to get home before it hit. I think they just made it. :-) The severe weather is also why there’s no movie review today. I wanted to keep an eye on weather alerts and wouldn’t be able to do that without stopping the DVD. So I watched Speed on FX and flipped to local stations during the commercials to keep up on what was coming in. Despite the dire predictions, the storms weren’t as bad as what hit at 3am Saturday morning. :-)

Speed is one of my favorite movies of all time. Not only is Keanu Reeves hot, but it’s got action, adventure, and romance. My favorite combination! I never get tired of watching it.

While it was on, I also continued reading one of the dragon books I have. I found some great information as I researched that got me all excited. Maybe it’ll spark a few more ideas. Today, BTW, is the day I get to work on the synopsis for the book for which I’ve been researching all these things. I joined my chapter’s Book In a Week group to get me going on it, but I haven’t been approved yet. Oh, well, I’m going to get started even if I don’t state my goals on that loop. My goal for the week is to finish a detailed synopsis of the new WIP. I think I maybe have a title, too! I have to think about it for a while, though, and see if I still like it before I share here.

Another new flower this morning! Yea! This makes 5 now, although, unfortunately, the first one is fading away. I’m sure the storms we have didn’t help it either since the winds were so strong, and so was the rain last night. I should take more pictures! I know you’re all dying to see them. ;-) Just kidding. I might take more shots for me, but I won’t bother to post them since they all look pretty much like the first flower pictures that I shared. Now, if the Sumatra Lily blooms, I’ll post those shots here since it’s a different plant.

Guess I better get moving since I’m working again today. Fingers crossed that it goes well.

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Presentation Saturday

Saturday, August 11th, 2007

Sorry about posting so late today. I ended up horribly rushed this morning and I’m just sitting down to the computer now.

Today I gave a presentation to my local writing chapter. Each month (or nearly every month) we do something called Journey of a Novel and I talked about In the Midnight Hour. I think it went okay, although I sure hope I didn’t bore anyone too much. I’m not much of a public speaker and I was pretty nervous. No one got up and left, though, and I take that as a positive sign.

Anyway, JoaN started at 9am and I wanted to be there a few minutes early, so I had to leave the house by 8:30 or so. Since I didn’t get up until after 7:30, I was pushed for time. These huge storms rolled through about 3am this morning and woke me up. Yeah, here I go, talking about the weather again. I can’t help it. This was like the weirdest storm. I have never seen so much lightning before. It literally kept the sky lit up continually for about half an hour or so and the thunder kept rolling and rolling and rolling. No damage, but after being up for more than an hour with the storm, I had a heck of a time getting out of bed. Especially when I was up late last night putting together all the papers I needed for the presentation.

Yes, despite talking about being prepared ahead of time, I once again ran around at the last minute getting everything I needed together. At least I was smart enough to put it in one place last night so I could just grab it on the way out the door this morning. Last time I spoke, I forgot to bring something I really wanted to talk about. So I count myself ahead this time around because everything came with me that I needed. :-)

Now that I’m home, I’ve started laundry and I have half a million other chores to take care of. I’d like to get it all done today because I want to start working on the proposal for a new book tomorrow. I’ve been talking about Shona and Logan, researching and mulling, now it’s time to get it down.

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No Sign of Rain

Friday, August 10th, 2007

For reasons known only to my dad, he decided last night was a good night to resume watering the lawn. Keep in mind that the grass is yellow at this point because we’re in a horrible drought and we gave up on the sprinkling about 2 weeks ago since it was impossible to keep up. But last night, I hear the water spigot and look outside. My dad was over arranging the hoses. When I get home this afternoon, I’ll have to remember to look and see if it did any good or if the grass is still as yellow as it was.

I have a brand new lily! It bloomed sometime yesterday and I saw it when I got home from work. I would have taken a picture of it, too, although it’s unlikely I would have subjected any of you to it, but it was too close to the chicken wire to get any decent shots. But I have two flowers in my tree ring and the promise of more to come! I can’t wait for the Sumatra Lily to bloom–that’s a ways a way from the looks of things, though.

And to round out my day, I shoe shopped online. I’d been flipping around while I waited for the 6pm news and landed on QVC. No, I didn’t buy shoes from them, but that had some cute stuff from Skechers on. Whenever I see shoes on QVC that I like, I always check online because Zappos and Shoebuy have free shipping and free return shipping. And as luck would have it, Shoebuy had sent me an email coupon yesterday. Since you saved $5 with one pair and $15 with two pair, I made sure I found two pairs of shoes I liked. :-) I know, I know. But two pair really were the best deal. Besides, I’m picky enough about shoes that the odds of my keeping both pair are about zilch. Actually, the odds of my keeping either pair aren’t that good. This is why I try not to buy shoes online, but it’s oh-so-tempting–especially since I hate shopping.

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Flower Power

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

I’m guest blogging today over at the Romance Reader at Heart blog! If you have a chance, stop on over and leave a comment.

Sorry about kind of not posting yesterday, but maybe y’all can consider the flower pictures as my Wednesday post since they went up so late in the day. Yes, I overslept again and I’ve been busy at work and I was busy all through lunch, too. I never even had time to crack open my research book on dragons.

So my mom got this catalog in the mail from this flower place and she handed it off to me. OMG! There are hugely cool plants for sale here. I could just go wild if only I had room to put all those flowers. They have black tulips, these snow drop flowers that bloom in way early spring (like when there’s still snow on the ground), these greenish flowers with maroon striping (and $60 for 3 bulbs if you order early. These bulbs also have to be lifted in the fall because they’re wussy flowers), and some big huge, round flowers that come in purple or blue or other colors. They had other items too, but these are the things that really stood out for me.

Anyway, I’m eyeing the tree ring, trying to figure out how I can fit all these bulbs in that small space. And I can’t believe that when the tree ring was first built, I was wondering how I was going to fill it. :-) If only my dad hadn’t transplanted a dozen tiger lilies. I’m thinking of getting some big, deep planters for the front yard and putting some of these bulbs in there. I swear, I never gave a rip about flowers until this year. It must be something about owning a home.

I still need to write my speech for my presentation on Saturday. Wednesday evening, I worked on the time line of what happened when with In the Midnight Hour, but tonight I’ll really have to get to work. I’d like to actually have a chance to rehearse before I get in front of an audience.

I hate how dark it is in the morning again and how early it gets dark in the evening, too. Come back, summer! Don’t leave! If only I could control the axis of the earth. Um, sorry Australia and others in the Southern hemisphere, y’all get perpetual winter because I want long days. :-) Warm weather, too. I guess I’ll quit here or I’ll be whining about winter when it’s still August and I’m running the air conditioner. :-)

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My First Flower!

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

Starfighter Lily Behind Bars


Here’s a close up without the protection


And closer yet

Hopefully, I’ll have one or two more this week.

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To Do List Blues

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

I’m feeling harried again. I have two things on my Must Do List for the week and at least one of them will be extremely time consuming.

Part of this stress is my own fault, I know it. If I’d worked on either one of these things over the weekend, it would have helped a lot. Of course, I didn’t and yesterday afternoon, my “quick” lie down ended up lasting an hour and a half. Needed, I guess, but it didn’t help with the list. (List is starting to sound ominous now.)

The biggest item is writing a presentation for Saturday. Yep, nothing like waiting until the last minute, but at least this time I plan to be better prepared than last time. Then, I had an outline of what I wanted to talk about and it didn’t have enough for 45 minutes. Fortunately (I guess), when I get nervous I talk more, so I just blathered on and on. I hope to do better this time around.

One cool thing, though, is that I have a story coming together for me–finally! After Creed and Maia and all the trouble I had with them, this has been a welcome change. I still need to do some research for Shona and Logan, but I’m thinking that as soon as I get the big stuff off my To Do List that I’ll start working on getting this proposal down in writing instead of just in my head. :-)

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Rabbit 3 – Patti 0

Monday, August 6th, 2007

As you might recall, in the last episode of Rabbit Wars, my dad had fenced in my tree ring in an effort to save the flowers from vicious and unprovoked rabbit attacks. From the title of this post, you can guess that the attempt wasn’t completely successful.

One of the lilies was near the edge of the fence–in fact, one of its little flower buds was sticking out a hole in the chicken wire–and that’s the one that was eaten. I went down to water the flowers yesterday (no need on Saturday since it rained) and saw the fence didn’t look right in one area. Closer examination revealed that it was pushed in and the bricks my dad had used to hold it down had been forced farther inside the ring. There was now a gap between the ground and the bottom of the fence.

I immediately examined my flowers and discovered that the one flower bud that had been poking out was gone. Eaten. Just an empty socket where there had once been the beginning of a bloom. Fortunately, nothing else appeared to be destroyed.

I fixed the fence and called my dad. We began to discuss the cayenne pepper suggestion. :-)

In better news, two of the buds look ready to flower! I will, of course, take pictures and post them. This will be a monumental occasion–especially considering I’m in rabbit hell.

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The Queen

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

Last night’s movie was The Queen starring Helen Mirren in the title role and Michael Sheen as Prime Minister Tony Blair.

There aren’t any real spoilers that I need to worry about giving away. If you were alive in 1997 and had the TV on during the time of Princess Diana’s death, you pretty much know the sequence of events. The movie opens with Tony Blair being elected prime minister in a landslide and his first visit with the queen. She allows him 15 minutes before excusing him.

There’s a montage of Diana taken from real sources in that time period and then the story resumes with news of the accident that Diana was involved in. Most of the rest of the movie shows the royal family’s actions/reactions to her death and how out of touch they are with the mood of the rest of Great Britain. In fact, the queen greets Blair’s calls to her vacation estate in Scotland with irritation. She doesn’t appreciate his warnings and dismisses the coverage she sees on television and the newspapers as the media trying to sell newspapers. In the end, however, she does listen to Blair and brings the royal family to London.

This is a dramatized version of real people and real events, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much of what I saw was true. I mean of the personalities of those involved, since I do know the public events occurred and it’s doubtful that anyone knows about the behind-the-scenes events since sometimes there was no one present except the actress playing the queen or some other royals, and certainly they’re not going to share this information, so I had questions. Is Prince Phillip really a jerk? Is Charles really that ineffective and wussy? Is the Queen Mother really the way she was portrayed? Or Tony Blair and his wife? I don’t follow the royal family or British politics enough to know the answer to any of these questions, but I’m curious.

The Queen wasn’t a movie that I’d had any great desire to see. I added it to my queue at Netflix because I wanted to make an effort to see some of the films that were nominated for Oscars. No one is more surprised than I am at how much I totally loved it! Helen Mirren did a brilliant job and it’s no wonder than she won for Best Actress. I believed she was the queen from her first appearance and she managed to convey so much emotion even while keeping her facial expression neutral. That couldn’t have been an easy thing to do, but she pulled it off.

Again, because everything revolves around events that really happened, there are no sudden plot twists. What carried this movie was the actors involved–particularly the queen and the prime minister. The bulk of the movie really seems to revolve around their relationship during the time of Diana’s death.

As soon as I finished the movie, I thought about watching it again (I didn’t because of how late it was), that’s how much I enjoyed it. For a good, well-acted, character-driven film, I highly recommend The Queen.

My rating: 4.5 stars

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Midnight Hour on Television

Saturday, August 4th, 2007

I’ve seen my ad for In the Midnight Hour twice now–once on Lifetime and once on Sci-Fi Channel! That was totally, completely cool. I wish I could have afforded broader television coverage, but I did manage to catch a number of cities. I still can’t get over the fact that my book is on TV. :-)

I actually have real copies of Midnight Hour in my hands now, and that means I need to sit down and read it. :-) I always read my books when they first come out. The problem is going to be finding time. I have to clean today and do laundry. I have a memory foam topper for my bed that I need to put on. Another writer said she’s had trouble with her fingers going numb and that this ended the problem for her. I’ve been dealing with this since last fall or winter while I was working on In Twilight’s Shadow and I want mine to go away, too. Some other writers have recommended these shapeable pillows, so I’ll be trying one of those as well. It’s hard to feel creative when you can’t sleep very long, even on the weekends.

I also need to do some research, particularly on dragons, and write my speech for next Saturday’s Midwest Fiction Writers’ meeting. I’m doing Journey of a Novel and talking about Midnight Hour. Oh, and I need to write a blog entry…on something. And what am I doing? Sitting and watching more bridge collapse coverage. I really have to stop doing this.

One of the big tasks for the day, though, and among the most important, is figuring out how to use my DVD recorder so I can save my TV commercial for posterity. :-)

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Say What?

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

The last two mornings as I drove to work, I’ve been very cognizant of the bridges I drive over. I’m not scared, I don’t hesitate, but I do think about it. Of course, it doesn’t help that one of the electronic traffic alert signs announces that 35W is closed at a certain point. A reminder of what happened–as if we needed it.

I turned on coverage of the bridge collapse as soon as I got home from work yesterday and watched for hours. I’d intended to get all my email answered–I even spent nearly my whole lunch hour trying to get caught up–but I couldn’t reply to anyone while I had the news on. I finally forced myself to turn on a baseball game and watch something happier, then I could get to email.

It was one of those nights where as soon as I thought I was done and could go to bed, something else that had to be handled would crop up. I didn’t make it all the way through email, but I’m almost caught up.

Now for something completely different.

Do writers really believe that it’s okay to do research from FICTIONAL sources???

I put my request for dragon information out on one of my writers’ loops and half the people who replied (okay, it was only two, but still…) suggested I read fictional sources!!! =8-O

That stunned me. Absolutely, totally floored me. I thought it was basic, elementary knowledge that you never, ever used fictional work as the basis for any kind of research and yet these people suggested it as if everyone does it. What? Okay, some don’t believe dragons are real and that everything about them is made up, but still this isn’t right.

Do they not understand that 1) the author who wrote the fictional work might not have used reliable sources in her research or that she might not have researched at all? 2) that even if she did solid research that she might have changed things and/or made things up to fit her paranormal world? 3) that building off someone else’s imagination is wrong?

If we’d done a research paper in school–yes, even on dragons–and tried to use a fictional novel as a source, we’d have received a failing grade. That doesn’t change when you’re an adult. Research should be from non-fictional sources ONLY and always verified with multiple sources.

I was so appalled that any writer at any point in their journey believes it’s okay to use a novel for research. Gah!

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