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Archive for August, 2009

Smart Cross Promotion

Monday, August 31st, 2009

I’m not a big fan of the Geico commercials. I think the bundle of money with the eyes is totally stupid, I’m not a fan of the cavemen, and the gecko is okay, but no AFLAC duck. (Although the AFLAC commercials this summer have been pretty lame, so maybe the duck has run it’s course, too, but for a while those were some of the most entertaining and clever commercials on television.) But Geico, despite a series of ad campaigns that I rate as so-so (and yes, it is personal taste, I understand that), hit a great strategy in their last few cavemen commercials and so did the music group involved.

For a while now I’ve noticed this song during the caveman commercials–Let Me Be Myself. I liked it, but I figured it was some commercial jingle and never considered things beyond that. But the more I heard the song, the more I liked it and I started paying attention to the entire commercial when I heard the song. Before this, I would flip away when the Geico commercials came on because I didn’t like them. I even stopped everything I was doing to listen to this 30-second song.

And then the other night I started wondering if maybe it was a real song. Maybe I should do a little searching online and see if I could find out. After all, I loved the Secret Agent Man song in the Chase ads and found out that was a real song. And while I was thinking this, in the lower left-hand corner of the screen a little three-line graphic came up. It gave the name of the song and the name of the band. Jackpot!

I don’t know what Geico paid 3 Doors Down to use their song, but it was a win-win for both band and company. It’s a win for Geico because I actually sat through their ads, something I didn’t do before, and it’s a win for 3 Doors Down because while I’d heard of them, I hadn’t listened to their music. Whoever had the idea to add the musical credit to the commercial was a genius.

Thanks to licensing their music to Geico, I hopped on iTunes and found the song I liked. I also listened to more song samples from the rest of the album, decided I liked them, and bought the whole thing. I can’t be the only one who’s done this, so it’s pushed sales for the band.

Now if there was just some big brand who bought lots of TV air time who wanted to use, oh, say a book in their ads.

Tags: marketing, music, promo
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Where Is That?

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

I wish I was better organized. I love organization. I hate clutter. I try to file things in a way that makes them easy to find again and I consistently fail. And not just with paper either. I have a hard time finding things on my laptop, too. I’m constantly doing searches and hoping that the keyword I picked is actually somewhere in the file.

I’ve tried to read books on organization–not many, just a few. Nothing has been implemented, though, because nothing I’ve read seems to fit my style. If that makes sense. It’s like reading a book on writing and knowing something isn’t going to work for you. Like 3×5 cards. I tried to use index cards, and to this day, I shudder in horror when I see them. I’m not a plotter and plotter tips aren’t going to work for me. So how do I find an organization method that will work for me?

I suppose I could read more books, but I have so much else that I want to read more. Like fiction and research books for projects I’m writing. I can’t afford to hire someone to come in and organize me, and even if I did, what if they organized me in a way I couldn’t keep up?

So I’m left with an office and file drawers that are in shambles. I can’t find anything. It’s frustrating and it wastes time. How do you find an organization method that works without reading ninety different books first? Why didn’t the organizational methods I read about work for me? Is it because I’m a pantser kind of person and these were plotter kinds of methods?

And don’t even get me started on computer organization. I must have every free program (and some paid programs available) and I don’t use any of them because my current method is easier for me. It’s not efficient and I never get old files deleted, but I can usually find things for the Work In Progress. It’s the older books where finding things becomes a problem and if the file isn’t writing related at all, well, that’s nearly impossible because the location options are nearly endless. How do other people stay organized?

Tags: organization
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Why Yes, I Am a Writer

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

I have an overactive imagination–I think most creative people do–but writers…I don’t know, we seem to have more outlandish scenario imaginations. Of course, I don’t know a lot of visual artists or dancers or other artistic types who aren’t also writers. I guess birds of a type do flock together, to quote an old adage.

What I mean by scenario imaginations is that we can take something simple and create circumstances around it. Like someone is late and the next thing I know is I have an elaborate scenario involving car accidents and hospitals and surgery and what all. Then they arrive and apologize because the phone rang before the left the house. This happens to me all the time and it’s why I’m such a worrier. I try not to be, but my brain starts spinning possibilities and the next thing you know, things are out of control.

Sometimes, though, scenarios can be fun. I made an offhand joke the other week about being able to turn the rain on or off with the control for my lawn sprinkler system. Whenever I turned it on to water my lawn, it rained here. But then I started thinking, wow, what if I really could control the weather from the box in my garage? And then I thought, what if a character in a story had this kind of control? What if he didn’t know he was controlling the weather and all kinds of hell broke loose because of what he did with his sprinkler system? And if anyone uses this, I’ll know where you got it! This is my overactive imagination.

Movies and television shows can get my head spinning sideways, too. It doesn’t even have to be a good movie. I saw one years ago with Richard Grieco (who was totally worth staring at in it) where he plays a high school student who has the same name as a super spy and gets mistaken for this spy. The story was pretty lightweight, but I thought, what if this happened in real life? What if someone got caught up in something out of mistaken identity?

This happens all the time, and while a lot of it never makes it into a book, sometimes it does. In the mid-90s, I jotted down one of these little what ifs. What if a man was trapped in an animated television show about his life? I even knew his name. Deke Summers. And that note sat, unused in a notebook until 2004 when Ryne showed up. For weeks, she told me about the Gineal people, but I didn’t have a hero for her. And then boom, I realized Deke was her hero and that little mind spinning from 10 years earlier suddenly became the backbone of the story.

I hate worrying about people’s health and well being, but I’d hate to lose my imagination even more. I love the what ifs. I love the stories in my head that keep me entertained when I’m stuck in a boring situation. And I can’t imagine (ha!) not having the voices in my head. How empty would that feel?

Tags: imagination, stories
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Adventures With Birds

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Thursday afternoon I arrived home from work and was checking in online. Yes, that is the first thing I do on the days where I don’t drink another cup of coffee. On days when I am having more coffee, the first thing I do is get a cup brewing and then go check in online. Anyway, I’m in my office on the computer and I hear this thumping noise.

After a few minutes, it gets really annoying and I go to check out what it is. I thought it was coming from the front door, but there was nothing there. I check out all my windows–still nothing. It’s not the refrigerator making noise and my next guess, that something is stuck in the center island, was quickly dismissed as well. I walk around the great room trying to pinpoint where the thumping is coming from. I decide it’s on the roof, just off the center of the room.

It’s lightly raining outside, but I go out onto the deck to check it out. I look up at the spot the sound is coming from and see a crow standing there. “Hey!” I yell at him.

The crow flies off the roof, dropping what he’s holding in his beak. It rolls down the slope of the roof and stops just short of my gutter. It’s a piece of wood, maybe two inches or so long, about an inch wide, and half an inch thick. The damn bird was standing on my roof, thumping a piece of wood against my roof. The even weirder thing is that this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this thumping noise, it’s only the first time I’ve figured out what was causing it.

Can someone tell me why the hell a crow was thumping wood against my roof? Does he harbor a secret wish to be a woodpecker? This was truly bizarre.

Tags: adventures, bird
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If Not Now, When?

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

I’m reminded again of the fragility of life. This morning I learned that a woman I work with and have known for years was taken to the hospital yesterday. She’d had a stroke and was continuing to have strokes at the hospital. The last update I’ve received said that she’s doing well and undergoing surgery for a blockage in her neck. I’ve been stunned all day. It was a reminder that none of us know how much time we have on this Earth.

And it reminded me of the “some day” people. The ones who have a dream, something they always wanted to do–some day.

I blogged once on another site about pursuing dreams and was amazed at the rancor that showed up in the comments. Here I thought it was an uplifting and empowering post and I was hearing things that were so negative about the topic that I was shocked. Of course there are limitations. If you’ve always wanted to be an Olympic gymnast and you’re out of your teens, that boat has sailed. Or if you want to be a jet pilot, but the cost of the flying lessons would be a hardship for your family, then of course, you can’t pursue it right now. That’s not what I meant.

Because I’m an author, I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and say, “I’ve always wanted to write a book.” I used to reply with, “then you should!” And that’s when I got the yeah, buts. There are a billion excuses you could put in the blank, but the most frequent was yeah, but I don’t have time. I used to tell them that there’s never time to write, that you have to make it. Like instead of watching some lame reality show, spend that hour writing. There’d be more excuses. Always. And that’s when I stopped trying to encourage people to pursue their dream of writing. When they tell me know that they want to write a book some day, I tell them that’s great and leave it at that.

If they’re not passionate enough about something they call their dream, there’s nothing I can do to change that for them.

I know pursuing dreams isn’t easy and I’ve spent a lot of years in my life not writing seriously or even not writing at all. I understand the fear of pursuing a dream and failing. Or succeeding. I also know that people who do pursue their dreams draw anger and animosity from those who haven’t had the courage to chase their passion. Maybe it’s because they don’t want to see someone taking the chance they’re too frightened to take themselves. I don’t know.

What I do know is that if you’ve always wanted to write, or learn to dance, or draw, or learn to crochet, then you should do it. Now. Life is short. My coworker’s sudden stroke is proof of that.

Tags: dreams, life
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Focus In An Infinite Universe

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

One of the things that I find fascinating about writing is Point Of View (POV) and focus. This has been highlighted for me in the Light Warrior series because I’ve written four books now in the same world from the POVs of eight separate characters (plus a secondary character or two). Different characters notice different things. Different characters react in different ways.

The Gineal world of my Light Warriors is a great example of this. Their world is here and now, but they have the ability to travel between dimensions and those are nearly limitless. It also means that there are inhabitants of these other dimensions who are able to come to our world. What this means is that this fictional world is extraordinarily vast and open to an infinite number of possibilities. It also means that the sheer expanse of this world could overwhelm a story and that’s where POV and focus comes in.

My heroes and heroines have largely been Gineal which helps greatly on narrowing things down to the story at hand. Think about it. When you walk into your house, do you notice the cream walls and the black marble counter tops? No, because you’re used to that–you see it every day and you’re inured. That’s human nature.

It’s the same way with my characters. They grew up using magic, it’s not something they particularly notice or think about, it just is–the same way our everyday world just is for us.

This makes it easy to focus the book on the story at hand. In the first book, In the Midnight Hour, Ryne has two goals: Defeat her former mentor and restore Deke to his life. She’s not thinking about Twilight Time, the Gineal prophecy about the final battle between good and evil. Why would she? Yeah, she learned about it, but it’s there the same way some topic we learned about in school is there, but unused and unnecessary. For me, that would be something like algebra. As I’m going about my day to day life, do I suddenly think about equations or story problems? No. I have no need to think about it. Now if someone mentions their most hated school subject, then yes, math and story problems about trains leaving stations does pop into my head.

Twilight Time doesn’t come up at all in book 1 because it’s not something Ryne cares about or needs to know. That changes in book 2, In Twilight’s Shadow, because Creed, the hero, does have an interest in the prophecy. In fact, he’s studied it extensively and it’s safe to say that he knows as much (or more) about it as any member of the Gineal. Because of his fascination, it comes up even though the story doesn’t revolve around it. Character and perspective.

Book 3, Edge of Dawn, has Twilight Time mentioned in one scene, when the hero’s brother tells him that the appearance of the mage is part of the prophecy. Which Logan immediately discounts because the mage has appeared every couple of centuries and those weren’t Twilight Time.

In the Darkest Night, the fourth book in the Gineal series (April 2010) has nothing in there about Twilight Time at all because the characters have no interest and nothing happens to trigger the memory of it.

But guess what? Twilight Time, whether it’s mentioned or not, plays a role in every book. Most of the characters have no clue about this and that’s why it’s not a part of some of the stories. In fact, somewhere after the end of Darkest Night is when the Gineal Council first begins to suspect that pieces are coming together. It’s not in any of the books and it won’t be. Because as Seth (a villain) says in one of the books: “The council didn’t always tell its foot soldiers everything.” Or words to that effect.

And if the characters don’t know about it, and if you’re doing POV only from their heads, the reader can’t know either. The only way this information comes out is if I do omniscient POV (which I try my best never to lapse into) or I do POV from a council member after they begin to realize something is going on. Which they don’t know during the first four books.

Tags: writing
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Rugby and the Haka

Monday, August 17th, 2009

This weekend I was back into the Work In Progress (WIP). As it turns out, my hero is a rugby fan, particularly the New Zealand All Blacks team. Since I don’t know thing one about rugby, I’ve had to do some research. I still don’t know the game, but I did discover that the All Blacks do the haka before each of their international matches. It started in the late 1800s, if I remember correctly. If not, it was right around the turn of the century, so it’s a tradition that goes back a long way.

There are a lot of cool videos of the All Blacks doing the haka on You Tube including some where the Somoan and Tongan teams do their own version of the haka right back at them. I’m afraid I didn’t learn the names of their dances in my research.

I’m going to share one of the videos of the haka here. It’s short, just slightly over one minute, and the quality is pretty good. The best part, though, is that there are subtitles at the bottom that explain what the players are saying and giving a little context on the dance.

Tags: haka, polynesia, rugby, WIP
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Copy Edits – The End

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Copy edits are done and I’m tired. My only goal for the day is to get to bed really early and catch up on some sleep. Not a lofty aim, but a necessary one.

I mentioned this before, but I always forget how much work copy edits are. They come and I have 2.5 weeks and I think, wow, I won’t need all that time. I’ll get them done early and get back to the WIP. Then in the first few days, I realize that mailing time comes off the 2.5 weeks, but that’s still 2 weeks. I still should be able to get them done early and 2 pages of copy editor (CE) queries aren’t that much.

I start with an initial read through, making the easy/quick changes that the CE has mentioned. That took care of about half the queries, which is good, but I start to get an inkling that I’m not going to get the manuscript turned around in a week, especially when the one day I think it will take expands to three days.

Next, I needed to add the changes I’d made to the story after I’d turned it in. Nothing impacted the plot or the structure, but there was some tightening up, some changes of phrasing. I expected to have this done in one day, too. Again, I was wrong. I think it ended up taking 2 days, but only because there was a big stretch without many of these little adjustments.

The next run through was to hit the harder copy editor queries. By this point, I’ve got five days left before the copy edits need to be sent out. So much for early, right? This ends up taking 2 full weekend days, leaving me with only 3 days for a final polishing read through. I used all of those days. I swear, I don’t know why I can’t not use a few words/phrases every sentence. Okay, slight exaggeration, but wouldn’t it be nice if the word processing software would throw a window up that says, You’ve used the word “still” fifty times, are you sure you want to use it again? Then I would realize what I was doing and cut the word. I have a few of those kinds of words and I spent a lot of time crossing them out. Sigh.

I finished last night, the night before it needed to go to Fed Ex, around 7:30 or so. I had to write a dedication/acknowledgements page, too. Okay, I didn’t have to, but I wanted to. That’s hard for me.

Oh! And all along with the copy edits, I’m sharpening and resharpening my colored pencil because the point would get too blunt too quickly and I needed a sharp point so that the changes I wrote in were clear. On previous books, I’d searched for colored mechanical pencil lead, but only came up with red, which I’m not allowed to use because that’s what the CE uses. Well, Wednesday I only did a search for colored pencils on Amazon–not lead–and discovered there’s a collection of colored lead mechanical pencils with built-in sharpeners. Argh! If only I’d found them 2 weeks ago! I ordered them, but watch, my publisher will change to electronic copy edits for my next book and I’ll never use them. That wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Tags: copy_edits, darkest_night
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The Heat Is On

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

It’s home stretch time for copy edits. I need to be finished with them by tomorrow evening so I can get them packaged up and ready to Fed Ex back to NYC on Thursday during my lunch hour. I’m on the final read through of the story now, making minor changes for smoothness or to get rid of duplicate words. These are really hard for me because they read so naturally and sometimes there is no synonym that conveys the right tone the same way the word that’s duplicated does.

Take settle for example. The bad guy wasn’t going to settle for this existence. Okay, find a word that means the same thing and shows his determination and resolve. I couldn’t and I ditzed around with both sentences for awhile trying to reword/rework them so that I wasn’t using settle twice on the same page. I can’t remember if I decided to leave it as it was or if I finally came up with some way to eliminate one of the usages. I went through a lot of pages and hit a fair number of things like this.

Of course, this leads me to wonder if the connotation I give to words is the same that most people associate with them. Do others attach the same implications/emotions to settle? I don’t know. The other question that arises is do most people even notice something like this when they read? Do they care that I spent half an hour on a single word? Something to mull over, I guess.

Anyway, the hard work on the copy edits was done this weekend. I only have one copy editor query left to answer, but it’s not a difficult one as far as changing the story goes. It is difficult for me, though. I can’t make a decision. Do I put it back to the phrase I had? Do I leave in the word the copy editor replaced it with? Or do I rewrite it entirely to something different? I’m not sure yet. I guess I’ll make the decision when I reach that point in my reread.

Time pressure continues along with copy edits. Email is backed up, comments are going unanswered on my blogs, I stayed up too late last night and overslept this morning and that puts me farther behind because all the email I take care of in the morning didn’t get handled before I left for the Evil Day Job (EDJ).

Two more days, counting today.

Tags: copy_edits
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Adventures In Weather

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Before I start, apologies to the people who’ve commented on my blogs. I’m racing against time right now on my copy edits and I know I’m falling behind. I’ll probably fall farther behind since I only have 3 more days that I can work on them.

So last night, I checked the Weather Channel around 7pm or so and the radar was completely clear for my area. We must not be getting the rain they said was headed our way, I thought. This wasn’t a huge surprise since 1) the weather people are wrong all the time and 2) it’s so dry here that a lot of the storm fall apart as they come in. Satisfied that all was fine, I switched the station to a baseball game and went to work on copy edits.

I noticed it got dark early and I was silently lamenting the loss of daylight and summer as I closed the drapes. Back to copy edits and my game.

About 8:30ish the power went out for an instant, came back on, went out again for a longer stretch before coming back on to stay. The laptop stayed on since it runs on battery, but my cable box takes forever to recycle when the electricity is gone. And I thought I heard something. I cocked my head like a dog trying to get a better read on it, but the house was closed up tight, the air conditioner running, and the laptop fan isn’t quiet. I couldn’t decide for sure and then the phone rang.

I groused as I went to answer it because I was sure it was my dad and I was busy with copy edits. It was my dad, but he was calling to tell me there was a tornado warning.

I had trouble believing it. Radar had been clear not that long ago and it wasn’t even raining or anything. I tried to get the cable box to come online faster, but it took it’s own sweet time. Since a tornado had actually been spotted and the storm was apparently headed right for me, I started gathering up things to haul to the basement. Copy edits and the laptop I use all the time to write went down first. Then went the netbook, the other laptop, the Kindle ebook reader, and the iPod. Um, yeah, I started realizing I have a lot of gadgets.

I forgot the flashlight, something I didn’t realize until about the same time the storm was predicted to be in my area. I decided to chance it and raced upstairs to grab one. I have an old boombox in the basement that I listened to last year during severe weather, but last night it would not work. I fiddled with it, trying to get some news. Nothing. Dead.

The laptop and my connection to the local TV stations’ websites were my only way to track the weather. (There’s no television in the basement.) As I watched the storm approach, I Twittered about it and a lot of great people replied. (Thank you!) I started shopping online for a weather radio. Clearly, I needed one–preferably a model with a crank so that if the batteries were dead, I could still get it to work.

I waited and waited, but heard nothing. No rain. No wind. No hail. I refreshed the radar loop page, and it looked as if the storm had pulled just far enough north to miss me. I wasn’t ready to leave the basement yet. Just because the orange/red wasn’t directly above me didn’t mean there couldn’t be a funnel cloud, right? And the warning was still in place so I waited some more.

After what seemed like forever, but was probably about half an hour, I went back upstairs. The storm had passed to the east, it was clear again, and I’m not even sure it rained here. Maybe it did, but lightly enough that I didn’t hear it in the basement. ::shrug::

I reached two conclusions while I waited. First was that I needed to buy a chair of some sort for the basement. The folding lawn chair I was sitting on was not comfortable. Second, I needed to set up my new chair in a different place than where I was sitting. You see, I was within 10 feet of the water heater. Not a smart place to be sitting. Three years in the house and I just figured that one out. Talk about a great big duh!

That was my Saturday night weather adventure. Actually, it was more of a misfire than an adventure, but hey, I’m very glad I can say that. The tornado caused damage north of me, in a suburb where one of my coworkers lives. I’m hoping he and his family are okay.

Tags: adventures, weather
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