BioBooksAwardsComing NextContactBlogFun StuffHome

Archive for September, 2007

Another Sunday Without a Movie Review

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

I tried to watch The Bourne Supremacy last night, but I just couldn’t get into the movie. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for it, or maybe I had trouble because I’m not a huge fan of Matt Damon. Either way, I’m sending it back unwatched. If I get a sudden desire to see it, I can always add it back into my queue later.

Yesterday, as I cleaned, I had Go Cubs, Go playing on my computer. It’s the song they do at the end of every Cubs victory at Wrigley Field. Made the cleaning go a little faster, but I didn’t get everything finished that I wanted to do. I sat down to take a break, the Cubs game came on, and the next thing I know, it’s 5:30. :-) It was so nice, though, to sit and watch a game without any stress involved. Since the Cubs had already clinched their division and are in no danger of having the best record in the National League, it didn’t matter if they won or lost. They did end up winning, BTW.

Storms rolled through about 4am this morning and it’s been raining off and on all day today. That’s making it really hard for me to get moving. I just feel like vegging out and I can’t. I need to get some work done today. What is it about rainy days that makes me just want to curl up in bed and nap?

  • Share/Bookmark

Cubs Win! Cubs Win!

Saturday, September 29th, 2007



I usually save the happy dancing Hobbes for when I finish a manuscript and ship it off to my editor, but I had to pull him out today. Last night the Cubs clinched the NL Central Division!!! Hurrah!!!

And now for the big question: Where do you find Halloween potpourri? I have this really cool cauldron and I used to have some orange and black potpourri with a spicy scent to it that I poured in it, but I used that up last year and the store I bought it from is out of business. Not being a shopper, I have no idea where I’d go to buy more. Anyone have some hints?

  • Share/Bookmark

It’s Friday!

Friday, September 28th, 2007

Happy Friday!

I’m having a tremendous day already. Last night, I finished the proposal I was working on! Yea! Of course, I might get it back again–this thing has bounced between me and my agent so many times, it’s like a ping pong ball–but for right now, I can move on.

Next up on my Stories To Do List is the idea that had me reading about quantum mechanics and M theory. :-) I’m both excited about it and scared that I won’t be able to pull it off in a logical and interesting way. The hero is still only telling me the truth sometimes; the rest of the time he lies to me.

I can see the heroine, but she won’t tell me her name. I even browsed through one of my baby name books after I sent off my other proposal, but she never spoke up and claimed anything I saw. She did let me know when she didn’t like a name, but threatening to use that didn’t force her to share information. Sometimes threats work, but not this time. Today, I guess I’ll really be putting the screws to her. Confess or suffer the consequences. :-) How far do you think that’ll get me? Yeah, me too.

Maybe now that I can devote myself to it without distractions, I’ll get somewhere.

Cubs magic number is 2. They were very lucky that San Diego beat Milwaukee last night because Miami, one of the worst teams in all of baseball, swept them.

  • Share/Bookmark

Random Thoughts

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

I keep a To Do List, and while I was pushing on deadline for my last book, it was getting long. Really long. I was literally at a point where the question was: What do I have to do today? The thing was nearly a page long.

Yesterday, I crossed the last item off that To Do List!!!

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted. Of course, I have a new list going now, but nothing on it is as difficult as what I had to deal with on the other one. Or maybe it just feels that way because nothing has a real deadline.

Of course, I’m still behind on email. :-(

Random thoughts:

I found a picture of that dress I saw that was perfect for my heroine! Hurrah!

Minnesotans can’t drive. They even did a segment on the news the other night entitled something like why don’t MN drivers know how to merge?

I wish I had an optical mouse at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). I don’t know how many more times this week I can pop out the rubber ball and clean it without losing my mind.

I think the drought in MN has officially ended. We had another hard, pounding rain storm last night. Lots of lightning, too, so I was forced off the computer.

The Cubs magic number is 3, but only because the Brewers lost. Once again, my beloved Chicago Cubs seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of almost-certain victory.

I hate synopses.

  • Share/Bookmark

Laptop Fan Thing Review

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

I ordered a laptop fan thing recently after reading a discussion about them on one of my loops. You rest your laptop on top of it and it keeps the computer cooler. It’s basically a thin, flat surface that houses two fans that blow air onto the bottom of the laptop.

Since my laptop does get hot on the bottom and since I do like to sit with it on my lap, this sounded like something I need. It arrived yesterday.

First thing that surprised me was how small and light the thing was. I expected something heftier and my laptop is bigger than the fan thing, making the balance of the two together seem a little off to me.

The second thing was that when I plugged it into the USB port, I didn’t receive any kind of new equipment message. I thought it wasn’t working so I unplugged it and replugged it a couple of times before I decided I wasn’t going to get a message. I checked the fans, and sure enough, they were blowing cool air.

They had other models of these things, but I chose this one deliberately because its power comes through the USB connection. There were others that involved an electrical cord and I have enough of those to trip over without adding one more.

Overall, I liked the laptop fan thing. It did keep the laptop much cooler (I checked the bottom of it several times to check on it) and it kept the heat from my legs. It’s quiet, so it didn’t bother me when I worked on a couple of synopses last night and the light weight keeps it from feeling like a burden.

There was really only one thing about it I didn’t like and that was the small size. I wish it had come larger to fit the bottom of the laptop. Maybe I’ll get used to balancing it, but it just felt off last night. I think they kept it small for travel.

That’s my review service for the day. Definitely worth it, but I wish I’d found a bigger size with a uSB hook up.

Cubs lost. Milwaukee won. Magic number remains 4.

  • Share/Bookmark

Sometimes It Just Doesn’t Matter

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Dad story. Over the weekend, he began the process of putting some shelves up for me in the garage. Before you think I’m working the poor man to death, I should explain that he doesn’t sit still well. He always needs to be doing something. If it wasn’t putting shelves up for me, it would have been something for his lodge.

Anyway, he had some old shelving units that were rusty, so he bought some cream-colored paint for the metal shelves. He sprayed them on Saturday. Then on Sunday, he decided to put backs on the shelving units, only now his paint for metal won’t work because the backs are some other kind of material. Unbeknownst to me, he decided to paint those, too, and went to the store to get some different type.

This is when I found out what was going on. He came over to my house and explained that they wanted to charge him $10 to mix a quart of paint to match the color of the other paint, and if he bought the premade color, it was like a buck something. He wanted to make sure that this was okay because it was a brown color.

Uh, these are the shelving units in my garage; I don’t care what color they’re painted. Heck, I didn’t even care if they were painted at all. It took a little while to convince him that the color didn’t matter.

Then Sunday night, when I went over to my parents’ house for dinner, he wanted to find out what I thought of the color. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I never even looked at them, so I assured him they looked great. When I got home, I finally checked them out. It’s a brown that will hide the dirt nicely. Besides, the shelving units are in the garage.

You’d think that would be the end of it, wouldn’t you? But nope, he asked me again on Monday if the color was okay. Sigh.

And now for something completely different.

In Sunday’s paper here, there was an article about fashion week and there were pictures of some of the dresses. There were two that I wanted to save because they might work for one of my heroines. I thought about scanning, but not only was the picture newspaper quality, but one of them was too long for my scanner. No problem, right? Quick little internet search and all would be found.

I was half right. The dress that I thought would be hard to find was easy since it was right on the front page of the What’s New section on the designer’s website. It wasn’t easy to save it since it was posted in flash player. Luckily for me, I knew how to get around that, and while it took a little work, I have that picture.

What I couldn’t find was the sea-foam green, Greek goddess dress. The reason I thought it would be quick to find was the fact that it was the largest picture on the page. Surely, that meant there’d be dozens of pictures of it on the net by now. I started with local paper’s website. Nada. I noticed the article was reprinted from the Washington Post and I registered for their website. Nada.

Next up was an online search. Tons of dresses came up, but not that one. On to the designer’s website. This dress was part of the collection for Spring/Summer 2008, and she only had the two collections for 2007 up. More searching online using different search terms. Nada. I gave up and resigned myself to keeping the newspaper article.

  • Share/Bookmark

The New Garden and Baseball

Monday, September 24th, 2007

Yesterday was the autumnal equinox–one of my least favorite days of the year. From here on out, the days will be shorter than the nights and it’s a long way till the spring equinox where life begins to become beautiful once more. Yep, it was 84 degrees here on Sunday and I’m already whining about winter.

The magic number for my beloved Chicago Cubs is 4! The Cubs won yesterday and Atlanta beat Milwaukee, so it was a super fabulous day for baseball. The Brewers are now 3.5 games back. Yea! And that’s what I did Sunday instead of writing. I flipped between the Cubs came and the Brewers game. The Brewers game was looking pretty grim, but then a miracle happened. Thank you, Atlanta. :-) Anyway, that’s one really nice thing about not having a deadline; I could veg out yesterday and only feel slightly guilty. :-) Of course, it wasn’t total lethargy. I did do laundry, but only because I had to.

I’ve mentioned adding a new garden to my yard. My dad blocked it all in and I’ll have the stone done to match the tree ring (to the left in the picture) next spring. I have to have somewhere to put all the flower bulbs I ordered. :-)

That plastic cube in the foreground? The tree peony is inside there. It had to be protected from the vicious killer rabbit. :-) The new garden area looks a little bit like home plate, doesn’t it? Not that I have baseball on the brain or anything. The original plan was to make a rectangle, then it became a triangle, and finally, home plate.

This shot was taken from my deck so the new bed will be facing the back of the house and I’ll be able to enjoy it if I’m sitting outside or if I’m inside writing.

  • Share/Bookmark

Consider This My Saturday/Sunday Post

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

It has been one long day. I had to get up at 7am for a 9am appointment, sat for about an hour while my oil was changed, and edited my proposal. Then came a trip to Home Depot where I picked up cedar mulch, weed killer, a respirator so I can spray the spiders dead outside my house without killing myself, and a cover for the peony tree so it can stay nice and protected all winter. There was some other stuff, too, but those are the highlights.

My plan for the day was to work in the yard, but my mom decided she was going to come over today and balance my checkbook. I know what you’re thinking, but my mom needs something to keep occupied. My dad and I have tried a million things she can do other than sit in front of the TV. Most of them haven’t worked, but this (and reading my galleys) does because she feels like she’s helping me out. Which she is. So anyway, I had to find all the statements. That proved to be a challenge.

You see, the last time my mom tried to balance my checkbook was last February. It was almost a year’s worth of statements at that time (I know!) and she never did get it to balance. She wrapped up all the statements and gave them to me to put away. I did, but today, I couldn’t find them. They weren’t where I thought they were.

Let me explain the difficulty of this problem. I had boxes I didn’t unpack from when I moved a year ago. They’ve been shifted between the spare bedroom and my office several times. The statements could be in any of those boxes. I started unpacking them into my new filing cabinet, certain I would find them at any minute. I gave up around 7:30 after 6 hours.

In between my search for the missing statements, I had to make continual visits to the yard to okay what my dad was doing. He’s laying out where the new flower garden is going to go. My outdoor plans included helping him with this, but that didn’t happen.

So I emptied a bunch of boxes. Yea! And never did find my bank statements. Boo!

This is really bugging me now because I know I had them. I remember holding that bundle of statements. I just can’t remember where I put them. I’d like to continue going through boxes tomorrow, but I need to write.

Bottom line, one long and busy day.

  • Share/Bookmark

Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

Friday, September 21st, 2007

So yesterday pretty much ended up being a bust for writing. I did a little tweaking during lunch, maybe added a quarter of a page or so, but I got nothing accomplished when I got home. I’d barely checked email when it started to lightning, so that meant off the computer. The severe thunderstorm warning turned into a tornado warning when a funnel cloud was spotted not that far from where I live. Lucky me, my city was in the path, so I dragged the laptop (life support! It has all my books on it.), my purse, and my car keys to the basement and settled down to wait out the 45 minutes of the warning.

Talk about a waste of time, but better safe than dead, and the weather was pretty rough for a while. There was even hail and I had standing water in my tree ring.

That was pretty much the most exciting event of the day, and for a while with the tornado sirens screeching, it was more than enough.

So I got a new gardening catalog on Wednesday, and this one had some different stuff than the company I ordered all my other bulbs from. I’ve got at least a dozen pages dogeared and I’m sooo tempted. I really shouldn’t order any more, but some of them are beautiful and they even have a garden layout (including a plant collection to buy) that’s designed especially to attract hummingbirds and butterflies. Now how cool would that be? Plus, I wouldn’t have to play designer, they have it all laid out for me.

When I mentioned it to my dad, he threatened to take my gardening catalogs away from me. :-) Okay, so I tend to be just a tad compulsive and gardening is my latest thing. It doesn’t mean that everyone won’t enjoy the beautiful flowers I’ll have next spring, summer and fall, right?

BTW, the Milwaukee Brewers have a player named Corey Hart. Every single time I hear that name, I think Never Surrender. :-) And wasn’t he the Sunglasses at Night guy, too? Or am I confusing him with that other singer from the 80s?

  • Share/Bookmark

The Joke’s Afoot

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

I was up late last night watching the Cubs/Reds game. Now late is relative. For some people, going to bed after 10pm isn’t late; for me, it is. I have to get up at 4am for the Evil Day Job (EDJ), so that’s really shaving off my sleeping time. But I digress–as usual.

So I stayed up to watch the Cubs game. I was hoping they’d be up like 14-0 in the third inning and I could go to bed early or at least early-ish, confident in their victory. It didn’t work out that way. The score was deadlocked 2-2 in the eighth inning, and when my beloved Chicago Cubs did score, it was only 1 run. Since 3-2 wasn’t a safe lead, I was forced to stay awake and vigilant until they won. :-) And after such an exciting game, it was difficult to wind down.

Okay, I see the eyes glazing over as I gush about my Cubbies, but I’ve restrained myself all season–almost. Besides, I’m going to swing this around to my books.

All my books have inside jokes in them. Some have a lot, some have a little. Some can be figured out, some you have to know what it is I’m talking about. The most continual inside joke is my love of baseball and it’s usually the Cubs.

Ravyn’s Flight has Alex overhearing a discussion aboard the rescue ship between his men as they debate whether or not the Cubs curse has been lifted.

Eternal Nights has two of the bad guys discussing the All Star game and most of the secondary characters have the names of baseball players. If you know the game and who was in the playoffs in 2005, you’ll be able to figure out which teams I was rooting against. Hey, it’s not easy to come up with throwaway names, so having two teams with 24 players each was a treasure trove.

In the Midnight Hour has Deke pointing out to Ryne that she shares her name with Ryne Sandberg, Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame second baseman.

And In Twilight’s Shadow, my June 2008 book, has more baseball references. Including the fact that Creed, the hero, has dreamed of playing for the Chicago Cubs. :-)

The two books I didn’t mention (The Power of Two and Through a Crimson Veil) might have baseball references, too, but I couldn’t think of them off the top of my head. Both books, for sure, do have inside jokes in them. :-) You know, I should probably write these things down as I do them because I’m already beginning to forget what I did. :-/

I know some other authors do slip stuff into their books, too. It’s fun! It’s even more fun when people catch it. Like with Eternal Nights when I got an email from a reader who nailed all my baseball names. I loved it! Usually, no one comments (although one person at the EDJ caught the jokes that related to that in TPOT) and I never know if that means no one caught them or no one let me know they caught them.

In other words, if you discover one of my jokes, email me and let me know! It makes my day almost as much as hearing someone tell me how much they’ve enjoyed my stories.

  • Share/Bookmark