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Archive for September, 2008

The Blog Where Patti Rants

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

First, I updated my website today and added a new Extras page. This is a work in progress, but so far I have a glossary for the Light Warriors series, a list of the theme songs for all my books, and the videos are grouped together. I used bookmarks so it’s easy to access the information you’re interested in seeing.

Now, beware, I’m about to rant.

Today, I received an email from an author I have never heard of before in my life. I most definitely never signed up for her newsletter nor did I enter any contest she might have been running because I don’t enter contests from other authors. I figure they’d rather have a reader win than another writer and I do them the courtesy of not throwing my name in the pool. Yet for some unknown reason, this woman thought it was okay to just add me to her newsletter list. Grrr.

To say this irritated me is understating things. The only way people get on my newsletter is if they sign up for it, or they enter a contest where they are given fair warning that entering will put them on my newsletter mailings–and I haven’t even held a contest in a couple of years. You’d think the law of karma would protect me, but I guess not.

Where do some people get their idea of proper online etiquette? Just because my email address is available on various loops (and this was the email address I use for loop email) does not mean that I’m fair game. If she harvested this address from any of the writing loops I’m on, she violated list rules on top of spamming, and given the genre of her book, I have a fair idea from which loop she might have gotten my name.

This author accomplished thing–she ticked me off. Big time. Enough that I will never buy a book from her. I don’t appreciate spam whether it’s for Viagra, penis enlargement, or an author.

Now extrapolate. She harvested my email address, so odds are good she harvested others–probably a lot of others–and they were spammed, too. Probably a lot of these people are as angry as I am about it. Does she really think she did herself a big favor by sending out this email to all of us?

Don’t spam, people, it’s not nice.

Tags: spam, websites
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So How’d It Go?

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

As y’all know, I’ve been dreading last Friday’s book signing for weeks. If I wasn’t such a dork, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but I’m an introvert and meeting strangers is a huge challenge for me. So with that set up, the big question is: How did it go?

First off, I didn’t get lost driving to the signing. This is a big deal for me because I get lost all the time. I was worried for a little while because Google maps said 8.6 miles and I thought for sure I’d gone farther than that, but I continued on and found the street I needed to turn onto. I also managed to find a parking ramp right around the corner from the River Center and got a spot right next to the elevators. It cost me $10 for event parking, but it was handy and I paid that outrageous amount.

Another worry I had was traffic, but that wasn’t too bad either. Of course, I wasn’t on the freeway, which probably made a difference. Nice, though, to not be stressed out about being stuck in some kind of jam and watching the clock tick away.

I registered and received my badge. I forgot to grab a program for my scrapbook, though, darn it! And received directions to where the signing was being held. Here’s where I became a little directionally confused, but they had a map on the wall of the building and I worked it out.

My signing was scheduled from 5:30 to 6:00 and I arrived at the correct spot at 5pm–and was promptly kicked out while they finished setting up the room. I got in about 10 minutes before I was set to sign and got myself organized. I’m glad I had the first time because I did have that opportunity to get settled which those who came in later didn’t get. Lines were in place as we swapped out at 6pm.

Anyway, I had a few moments where no one was in my line for books although everyone else seemed to be busy. Fortunately, those lulls didn’t last long. I knocked my stack of books over twice. Once a bookseller helped me rescue them before they hit the floor. The second time no one was close enough to assist me, but I had a lot less books then, so it was easier to catch them. I did sign all of my books–I’m guessing I had 48–and give them away and I only had one “I’m a complete dork” moment.

Yes, you knew it had to happen–at least I did which was why I was a wreck about the signing. I glanced up at someone’s badge quickly, saw three names and asked if he want the first two on the book. On closer examination, it turned out that the third word was not a name. It said “staff.” Gah! Fortunately, he was a total sweetheart about it and made a joke to save me from dying of embarrassment. So Mr. Staff if you’re reading this, thank you.

Originally there was someone directly after me who was supposed to be signing a tarot book. My plan was to finish my gig and go get a signed copy of that, but when I checked the current schedule, she wasn’t on it. Bummer.

And with that, I left. Traffic going home was awful even though it was nearly 6:30 by the time I hit Minneapolis. (The signing was in St. Paul.) I didn’t think it would be that bad that late, but I finally made it home and collapsed. Between the lack of sleep and the stress, I was exhausted!

Anyway, I think it went well enough even with the “I’m an idiot” moment, but I’m so glad that that’s over with and I have no more signings scheduled. Hugely, hugely glad.

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Chapter Decisions

Friday, September 26th, 2008

Last night ended up being a busy one for me. Not only did I finish the chapter I was working on in the Work In Progress (WIP), but I had to get everything ready for my book signing this evening. I’m going straight from my job, so that meant packing up tote bags with everything I’m going to need. By the time I finished with everything, it was nearly 9:30–so much for my plan to go to bed early and be well-rested for my signing today.

Anyway, about that chapter–it ended up taking longer than I expected to reach the point where the fight begins. (I ended it at the top of page 18.) Now I have a dilemma: Do I cut it down and try to squeeze in the fight? Or do I do the fight in the next chapter?

I always seem to have room to cut, but there are some important things that happen in those pages, things the propel the suspense part of the story and the meeting between the hero and heroine. That leaves me with the other stuff and a lot of that was put in to ground the reader in the scene. There just might not be as much to cut here as I’d like.

Putting the fight in the next chapter isn’t all bad. It allows me to end the previous one with a bang and lets me have as much room as I needed with the altercation. If I tried to squeeze into the previous chapter, I’d be aware of the page count with every word I wrote and that might make me feel constrained.

Now that I’ve written this all out, I think I’ve decided to put the scene into the next chapter and worry about whether or not I need to cut later. The beginnings of my books always seem to take more work than any other part.

Now if I could only keep my eyes open after all these late nights watching baseball, it might be a great day.

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I’m a Dork

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

What writer doesn’t sit and daydream about selling her first book and doing a book signing? It’s one of the standard fantasies, I guess. I probably daydreamed about them myself. Maybe. I can’t remember, TBH, and I’m incredibly shy. Put me in a situation where I have to meet a lot of strangers and I become a total dork. I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not.

What brings this topic up? Well, I’m doing a book signing on Friday at the Midwest Booksellers’ Association cocktail party in St. Paul, MN. For a half an hour, I will be signing books and chatting with booksellers. Or trying to chat.

I started dreading this two weeks ago. I’ve signed at a bookseller event before and it went fine. I’ve signed at a librarians convention and made a great contact. I’ve signed at bookstores and at big mass author signings at RWA and RT. It’s not like I’m floundering into uncharted territory, yet signings get harder and harder for me each time I do one. I don’t know why. Shouldn’t they be getting easier? Logic says yes, at least to me.

So right now I’m worried about:

Driving through all that traffic on a Friday afternoon. Will I be late?
Getting lost. I’m a Minneapolis girl; St. Paul is foreign ground and confusing.
Finding some place to park. See number 2 about not knowing St. Paul or the area.
Finding the place where I’m supposed to be. Couldn’t find the RWA table at the librarians’ event and was running late because of construction messing up traffic. I made it with seconds to spare and was totally stressed.
Talking to strangers without sounding like a complete idiot. I’ll settle for only sounding like a partial idiot.
Misspelling someone’s name.
Trying to talk while I’m signing. I can’t do this. I always stop and talk and am quiet while I sign, but with only a half an hour and free books, I’m guessing I’ll have to be faster.
Knocking something over. My books, someone else’s books. When I get anxious, I become clumsier and I can be pretty clumsy to begin with.

Well, you get the idea. I’m worrying about a lot of things. Probably most of what I’m concerned about won’t be an issue. Maybe. Getting lost is a very real possibility since I make a habit of that when I go somewhere I’m unfamiliar with.

So if you’re a bookseller coming to the cocktail party at MBA, I apologize in advance for my dorkiness. I just can’t seem to help it.

Tags: mba
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Characters Blogging

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

I’m still listening to workshops from National and one of the panelists talked about having one of her characters blog. We did this with the Crimson City series, and while it was weird at first, it eventually became “normal” to write the characters in voice and in first person. Some characters were easier for me to write than others and so they got the screen time even if they weren’t major players in Through a Crimson Veil.

So after hearing this workshop and being reminding of the Crimson blog (it’s still up and available for reading by the way at Crimson Blog), I thought why not do this with my Gineal series?

There are days where I have a hard time coming up with something to say that anyone would be interested in. I don’t talk too much about the books I’m writing any more–partially because of worry over spoilers–and with the current Work In Progress (WIP) I have to be more circumspect than usual or it will ruin Edge of Night which comes out next July. Blogging in character could be a good alternative.

Then I started wondering who would blog? My options were extremely limited because most of them don’t have the interest. Shona from Edge of Dawn was an option, but to stay on the timeline for readers, she’d be blogging before she had any idea magic existed. Not that interesting, I’m guessing for readers.

My next thought was having a blog by a character who’s been in all three books. That leaves me with Nessia, the council leader, or Taber, a member of the Gineal council. Possible, but would either one of them blog? Probably not. Then I thought what if this was Nessia’s private journal? That might work, but I’m never used her as a Point of View (POV) character in any of the stories.

I also thought Seth might make an interesting blogger, but it’s not as if I can rely on him. Besides, Seth would be using the forum to further his own agenda. Still, he’s someone to keep in mind.

Anyway, since no one really popped out at me, I guess I’ll be blogging for a while longer.

Tags: blogging, characters, workshops
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Adventures In Commuting

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

Wednesday morning about 4:30, I’m making coffee when I hear a car race up the street. Even though the speed limit is 25 mph, most people speed through the area, uncaring of small children, pets, elderly people, but because of the construction on the street and the bright orange cones, most people were going a little slower. Not this guy. A few minutes later as I’m stirring my coffee, another car comes up the street more slowly. I remember thinking, man, this is a lot of traffic for 4:30 in the morning. I didn’t think any more about it until….

I left for the Evil Day Job around 5:30 and I didn’t go much more than a block before I saw the police car stopped on the wrong side of the street with his search light on. There was enough room to get by him, so I slowed down and did that. I thought it was strange, but no more than that until I came to the 4 way stop.

There was another squad there with his spotlight on and when I stopped, he shone that light in my face! Ugh! When he moved it away, I went through the intersection and around the curve there’s a road to the left. Another squad car is down there with his search light on, then I look ahead and there’s yet another squad near the T intersection with his light on. I might not be a ball of fire at this time of the morning, but I was able to figure out that something was going on.

I got to the T and directly in front of me was a flatbed tow truck and to the left were another 3 or 4 squad cars with their search lights on. I reached the street that takes me to the highway, and when I near the frontage road that runs alongside it, I see another squad car. This one had his red and blue lights going and he’s parked across the opening of the frontage road, blocking it. I merge onto the highway and as I near the freeway exit, I saw yet another squad car parked on the bridge over the freeway with his red and blue lights on.

By this point, I’m dying to know what’s happened. My little neighborhood area is usually pretty quiet and to see 8 or 9 squad cars there at 5:30 in the morning is a shock. I’ve checked the police department website–no luck. I’ve checked the local paper–today’s edition is reporting police reports through Sept 6. Argh! I’ve searched Google News–nothing. How can something involving 3/4 of my city’s police force happen without my being able to find out what was going on?

My guess about what had occurred (and remember, I have a writer’s imagination) is that the first car speeding through my neighborhood was the suspect and that the second was a police car. At the T intersection, going to the right takes you to a main road and that leads to the highway, but if you turn left, it dead ends. I’m surmising that the suspect didn’t know the area and turned to the left, realized he’d hit a dead end with a squad car coming up behind him, and decided to abandon the car and flee on foot. I happened to hit the area as they continued their search for their bad guy.

But I don’t know for sure this is what happened. Seriously, am I going to have to drive to the police department and comb through the public records? Obviously the weekly newspaper is not right on top of breaking crime news, so it might be up to me.

Tags: manhunt, police
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Trilogies

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

My CDs from the RWA National Conference in San Francisco arrived yesterday and I loaded it on my iPod last night. I started listening today at work. The first workshop was a disappointment because the title led me to expect one topic, but it didn’t go that direction. I had the sense that the panel went off on a tangent and never got back on track, but maybe I just misinterpreted what they meant to talk about. That’s always possible.

I loved the second workshop I listened to, I even plugged my iPod in on the ride home so I could listen to it! I can’t remember the exact title, something about writing a trilogy by Susan Mallery, but if you have the conference CDs, too, I can recommend listening to this one. She was a very entertaining presenter, and while I instinctively knew most of what she talked about, it was good to hear it 1) spoken aloud and 2) have a good, solid overview of trilogies.

My Light Warrior series is pretty much open ended, but I do kind of have a vague arc that I’m using. Okay, it’s very vague, I know that, but it keeps me kind of centered as I write the stories. I’m also a seat of the pants writer. Maybe not to the degree I was 6 years ago, but I definitely don’t get into the whole plotting in minute detail thing. Ugh! I am, though, trying to improve my plotting abilities.

Now I’m off on a tangent. Anyway, I do have an idea for a trilogy that I want to work on after I turn in my current Work In Progress (WIP) and that’s what prompted me to listen to this particular workshop. The coolest thing for me was hearing so many things in this workshop that I was already doing in my plans for the trilogy. I don’t mean like the logistics of keeping track of everything–I have my own methods of that, plus I’m the teensiest bit obsessive/compulsive about details, I’m not worried about that–what I’m talking about is the structure of putting together a trilogy.

For instance, all three books have an arc with an over-arc for the entire set. I learned that from reading and had it reinforced on the 2176 and Crimson City series. There was also mention of the different kinds of payoffs the over-arc can have. I’ve got the “Big Bad” as Susan Mallery called it. The evil of evil beings.

One of the most interesting things she said was to take your favorite couple and put them in the middle book. I found that intriguing and I understand completely the rationale behind it and it’s logical. But I don’t think it will work for me because my characters talk when it’s time for their story. Liza and Jack are the ones talking, so I don’t know the other two couples to have a favorite among them, and even if I wanted to, I can’t write characters that aren’t yakking away. By the time I can figure out who my favorite couple is, I’ll have all three books written.

There was only one problem with the workshop. It made me want to work on the proposal for my trilogy idea instead of the book I’m under contract for. :-/ I don’t have time to work out the fine points of the arc and think about some of the other things that Susan brought up. I need to be immersing myself in Kel and his heroine’s story. Sigh. I didn’t think I’d get all fired up like this.

Anyway, to sum up. Great workshop and presented wonderfully. Thumbs up.

Tags: rwa_national, trilogy, workshops
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Who Are You and Why Are You Here?

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

I had a new hero show up this weekend. Friday night, I think, although he was pretty covert and I didn’t realize he was there then. It’s only now, as I look back, that I realize it had to be him even then. I’m not quite sure when I realized he was there. It might have been last night or maybe even this morning. It’s one of those things where instead of popping into my thoughts, he kind of glided in.

The when doesn’t matter all that much, I guess. I just know that he was here full force today and talking. I know his name–both the one his parents gave him and the nickname everyone calls him. His first name is…well, embarrassing. He says it wasn’t all bad, that it helped him develop a thick skin and made him tough. All those playground fights, you know. Beyond this, I don’t know much yet. I asked him what he does, where he lives, but I get no answers.

The biggest question of all, though, is what book is he from? No answer on that either. Apparently, he’s not part of my Light Warrior world or any of the ideas I have lined up that I want to work on after I finish this next book. At least that’s what he’s claiming, but I’ve had characters lie to me before.

No heroine for him yet. No story. No time to write him even if I did have this information. I’d explain to him I have a deadline for another set of characters except that he’s not pushing me to write about him. In fact, he’s kept it pretty low key. Unlike other characters I’ve had which have come in and made demands. Ryne immediately comes to mind, although at least she never interfered when I was actually writing Cai and Jake’s story.

Tonight, I tried to find a picture of this new hero. I know what he looks like–dark hair that’s a little long, about 30, soul patch–but I couldn’t find anything that worked. I’m not going to waste a lot of time looking, but he’s so clear in my head at this moment that I thought it wouldn’t be too hard to find an image that looked like him. I was wrong.

Tags: characters, heroes
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Moon Walking

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Some of the video podcasts I downloaded this week involved NASA and the space program. Specifically, the Apollo missions and how we landed on the moon. It was fascinating viewing.

I guess I take landing on the moon for granted since I don’t remember a time when we hadn’t been there. These short podcasts interviewed some of the astronauts, engineers, and specialists who played a part in getting us to the moon. Incredible stuff and I was glued to each of these podcasts.

One of my favorites–and I loved all of them–was an interview with astronaut Alan Bean. He was the 4th man to walk on the moon on the Apollo 12 mission. The part that really grabbed my attention, though, was that he resigned from NASA, deciding to let others fly the space shuttle, so that he could paint his experiences in space. He says something in the interview like if he didn’t do it, no one else would. From what I saw, he was an accomplished artist and the paintings were cool!

Another podcast interviewed the mission leader and a third one of the engineers that helped get Apollo 13 down. Another podcast was with a woman who became one of the first female astronauts and there were many more.

These were ALL available on iTunes for free! I love free. I think the Discovery Channel also has podcasts available on their website, but I wasn’t able to find the space ones, so I’m not linking there.

You know, switching from a plain old MP3 player to an iPod was such a good investment! Now I can watch video podcasts, something I couldn’t on my old player, I’ve discovered a ton of information on a wide variety of things on iTunes–from podcasts to video podcasts, to college classes–and I’m educating myself with something different every day. How cool is that?

Tags: podcasts, science, space, video
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Gadgets, Gizmos and Doodads

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

I checked out the new Apple products today when I got home from work. They had a big presentation today, which I only know about because I follow Mac Rumors on Twitter, and unveiled all kinds of stuff. No new computers, I guess, at least I didn’t see any on their home page, but I did see a movie demonstration of the iPod Touch.

If I tell you I drooled, will that give you an idea how much I want one? TBH, I want an iPhone, but there is no way on this earth that I’m paying that monthly fee. Not unless I win the lottery, and really, how often do people who don’t buy tickets win? Anyway, the iTouch is a viable alternative although I would have to be someplace with wifi to use the internet. I can live with that.

Gadgets, gizmos, anything computer related and I want it. Never mind that I might not get a lot of use out of it, I just like the shiney stuff that does things.

But I run into another issue which kind of reins me in–I hate to buy something, say a new computer, when I know something better is on the way. I need a new laptop. There’s nothing really wrong with the one I have now except that it’s developing a few hiccups that are minor annoyances, but it’s 3.75 years old and it’s showing it’s age. I’ve been monitoring its potential replacement for a few weeks now, but I haven’t bought it even thought it’s tempting. You see, I heard there’s this new chip on the way and that it’s appreciably better than what’s available now.

I know that there’s always going to be something better coming in the computer world, but it’s so hard to commit when you know it’s out there. Waiting until I’m locked in to something else. It’s happened before. I bought a desktop computer like a month before USB ports were introduced. If you don’t think that became a problem, you’d be wrong–I keep my desktops 6-8 years before I replace them.

I suppose it could be worse. I could be into cars, and as expensive as gadgets and gizmos are, cars are worse. But it’s so hard to watch these demonstration videos and not want to pull out the credit card. Ah, well.

Just an update to my last post. My agent read the synopsis and passed it along to my editor without my needing to revise it first. Hurrah! I’ve started in on the story now, but it’s hard to really get into it when I know I’m supposed to have revisions on the last book this week.

Tags: gadgets, ipod
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