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Archive for January, 2008

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Tropical Paradise

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

I’d ordered a calendar and some research books from BN.com on Dec 30th and they just arrived yesterday, which I thought was a really long time since I had the three day shipping option selected. But I digress. Anyway, this year’s calendar theme is Tropical Paradise. I loved last year’s Greek Isles calendar so 2008 has a lot to live up to.

It was another tough writing day yesterday. Not only was I my usual Monday tired, but I had to make a difficult transition in a scene. It was something that would have given me fits anyway, but on a Monday…. Especially a Monday where I was busy at the Evil Day Job and not mentally calm when I went to write on lunch, it was extra tough. BTW, I was so busy yesterday, that I was late leaving the EDJ and that almost never happens.

My last amaryllis flower bloomed Sunday. I hate to see the flowers wilt and dry up because I’ve loved having the red and green in the house. Okay, I loved it after I dosed the dirt enough to get rid of the gnats. But I’m not ready to be flowerless. Sigh. At least I’ll still have my poinsettias. The red one doesn’t look too great, but the white one is beautiful. When’s spring coming?

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Back In the Saddle

Monday, January 7th, 2008

The weekend ended up being really busy, but I did plan to get on here at least once to answer comments. I’m sorry I didn’t, but by the time I was freed up to play online, I was so tired, I couldn’t form a cohesive sentence let alone reply to comments. I finally caught up Sunday night. I hope. At least I don’t think I missed anyone.

I stayed up late Friday night to finish cleaning before I had company come on Saturday and then overslept Saturday. Good thing they were coming at 1pm. :-) I ended up nitpicking at the rooms until the first guest arrived. Then, after everyone left, I straightened up the house again and did laundry. It ended up being another late night.

Sunday was writing. I just hate trying to get back into the groove when I haven’t been regularly writing for a while. I know I’m not alone; one of my writing buddies has the same problem getting back into the swing of things, but it’s a pain. Hours and hours spent with very little progress to show for it. Anyway, I learned Logan is really into classic muscle cars–he restores them–and he’s just finished a Mustang. Or as he says a Bullitt Fastback. Yes, I had to research. Luckily for me, he’s going to be much too busy too soon to worry about Mustangs or Cobras. :-)

Oh, yeah, while I was doing laundry, I watched National Treasure with Nicolas Cage. I thought it was okay, but very far-fetched. That doesn’t always bother me, but it did in this movie. (Nicolas Cage steals the Declaration of Independence to prevent a former business associate from stealing it.) I won’t be watching the sequel.

BTW, did anyone ever see The Pacifier with Vin Diesel? There was a preview for it on the DVD and it looked like it could either be really funny or really stupid and I was curious which it was. If it’s funny, I’ll add it to my queue.

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Sin

Friday, January 4th, 2008

I’ve had notes from readers asking for Creed and Sin’s stories–both made brief appearances in In the Midnight Hour. I was able to tell them that Creed’s story was next, but Sin? Well, I knew I wanted to write him at some point, but I didn’t have a story for him. That all changed this week.

The first revelation was who his heroine was. I’ve started working on my next book and the hero has three younger sisters. Boom. Suddenly I knew that one of Logan’s sisters belongs with Sin. That happened back on Monday or Tuesday, I think, but there still was no story, just a pairing. I should be used to this by now since I almost always get the characters first, but I wanted the story, too.

That came yesterday. I can’t tell you what I was doing because I don’t remember. I was at the Evil Day Job (EDJ), and either during lunch while I was writing Logan and Shona, or after lunch when my mind was still on them, I got it. Another boom.

It’s just a general idea and not a full-blown story, but it’s something I can mull over while I’m writing the WIP (Work In Progress). The best part is that there’s built in conflict–I’m thinking the council divided Sin’s territory in half because there’s so much activity that one troubleshooter can’t keep up with it, and that Tris is the one they assign to work in Los Angeles alongside him. Sin would hate that. Tris would hate that, too. But when something that’s related to In Twilight’s Shadow comes to their neck of the woods, they’d have to work together. (And no, because it might be a spoiler for Twilight, I’m not going to say what that is.)

Of course, who knows if I’ll have the chance to write it. The story I’d like to do after Logan and Shona is Logan’s brother, Kel, so this is at least two books out, but it’s nice to have the idea of what to do anyway.

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In Twilight’s Shadow Cover Copy

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

Yesterday I received the cover copy for In Twilight’s Shadow and I couldn’t stop reading it. Hey, it really is a book. :-) What do y’all think of this?

Something Wicked…

Maia Frasier thought she’d escaped the world of troubleshooters and demons when she’d ceded her magical powers years earlier. Now a wounded enforcer has turned up in her home, claiming Maia’s sister is in danger.

Creed Blackwood needs Maia’s help to hunt the demon he’s after, especially since he’s hiding the fact that his powers are becoming erratic. And then there are the blackouts…

Maia soon begins to fear Creed has fallen to the dark forces himself, and with his strong magic, that makes him as dangerous to her and her sister as any demon could be.

I’m not going to load it on my website yet, so this is the sneak peek of what will be on the back cover.

Now if only my ARCs would come….

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New Website!

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

It’s official; the new website is up and functional! Yea! There’s still some work to be done. One of the pages has an awkward layout and there’s other little things that need tweaking, but the major work is done. :-) You can take a look at pattioshea.com and let me know what you think. If it totally sucks, I can reload the old site, but I’m really hoping it’s okay and I’m totally excited to have something new.

New Year’s Day was spent at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). Sigh. I can’t believe they make us work on a holiday like this. There was one other person there yesterday since only my union lost this particular holiday–the other unions and management lost other holidays–and there are only like five of us from this union on the floor. It was nice and quiet and I was actually able to take my lunch hour without ear plugs. :-) Too bad I wasn’t writing yet because it would have been perfect.

Today I begin the new book. I’m actually looking forward to getting started and I probably would have kicked off on Monday if I hadn’t gotten bogged down in my brilliant idea to redesign the website. :-) No tweaking it for the rest of this week. I have to clean my house and write. The site can wait till Saturday evening or longer. Unless it sucks and I need to reload the old one, of course.

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Didn’t Make It

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008

I fell short of having the new website ready to load. I have two more books to do pages for and some links to set up yet; I was this close. If only I didn’t have to go to the Evil Day Job (EDJ) today and I could stay home and finish this morning, but I do, so that means needing to wrap up this website tonight. Tomorrow begins the onslaught of the New Book.

So speaking of books, how did the galleys go? I’m sure you’re all wondering, right? I made 12 corrections. That’s an incredibly small amount. The part that’s scary is that 11 of those changes are to fix my stuff, only 1 change is for an extra word.

My mistakes include the point of view debacle where in the middle of my hero’s POV, I have a paragraph from the heroine’s POV. Why? Because during copy edits I needed to add the paragraph for explanation, thought I was in the heroine’s head and didn’t double check.

My other lulu of an error was having two full moons in approximately a two week period. I almost missed that, but as I made my last read through on Friday at the EDJ, I thought, “hmm, didn’t I mention the full moon once before?” A quick little search of my WordPerfect document when I arrived home showed that sure enough, this was the second full moon in the book. I changed the first reference to starlight because I needed the moon more in the second scene later in the book.

Everything else was mostly nitpicky stuff.

Last Friday night, I go to make my final changes to the galley, and I decide I need to refresh my memory, so I look for the cover letter with the instructions on how they want the markups handled. Um, I couldn’t find them. Anywhere. I think in my cleaning frenzy that I mistook the galley letter for the letter that came with the copy edits and shredded it thinking I was done with it. I was left with my memory of what I did the last time I had galleys for Tor. Hopefully, they didn’t change their process.

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