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Archive for November, 2009

Holiday Hangover

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Not the drinking kind. :-)

Four days off from the Evil Day Job (EDJ) meant too much time on the laptop for me. My eyes hurt, my neck and shoulders hurt, my back hurts, and even my butt hurts. I’m not excited to return to the EDJ, but on the other hand, at least there I can’t spend all my time in one position.

I know, it’s bad for me. I should be moving around more when I’m at home, but I start working on something and I don’t want to move. Which is where the shoulders, neck, back, and butt come in. The eyes hurt because I don’t blink enough while I’m on the computer. This is a problem at the EDJ, too, but there my job has me getting up to walk around and it doesn’t seem to be as bad.

Thanksgiving ended up being nice. I didn’t go out to any stores, but I did do a little shopping online. QVC was selling a pair of weather radios that were cranked for power as well as solar powered. Guess what my mom is getting for her birthday? LOL. My folks don’t have a weather radio and if she wanted something different, she shouldn’t have said “nothing.” My mom is so hard to buy for.

I also picked up an iPod speaker system on an Amazon gold box special deal. This is for me because I’ve had no luck getting a system for my living room, and because the unit in my bedroom is plugged in behind my dresser, moving that isn’t easy. Much simpler to move the iPod.

I’m also contemplating buying my laptop replacement now rather than in January. The plus side is that Best Buy has free shipping today and tomorrow (Monday). The down side is that I keep thinking, wow, what if something even better comes out in January? And something better always does come along in computers.

The Great Holiday Movie Struggle

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

One of my family’s traditions is to watch movies at Thanksgiving and Christmas. You’d think this would be a simple thing to do, but you’d be wrong. Finding a movie we can agree on is a struggle and my holidays are just my parents and me.

We start out with one big strike–my folks don’t enjoy action/adventure movies and these happen to be my favorite. I don’t like “heartwarming” stories about animals, particularly if there’s a chance the animal will die or suffer some other hardship. These are my mom’s favorite movies. I’m not sure what my dad prefers because he’ll go along wit anything, but my guess would be comedy, particularly older comedies where he won’t feel uncomfortable about the language or situations.

Last year was a big fail. I tried a Jane Austen movie. I don’t remember the name of it, but it starred Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet. Both my parents slept through it. I wished I could be lucky enough to drop unconscious. Talk about boring with a capital B.

The year before that we tried a Dean Martin celebrity roast. No one fell asleep, but the humor was very dated and some of it was like OMG, did someone really say that?

I could go back for years with similar stories. We just can’t find something that we all are interested in watching that is actually good. So with this in mind, on Sunday I picked out this year’s Thanksgiving Day movie. I figured the family section on Netflix was a good choice and from there selected comedies. Most of the movies were from the 60s and 70s which really says something about how many good family films are coming out of Hollywood now, but I digress.

I clicked through page after page of live-action Disney movies, many of which I’d already seen. I finally decided on The Boatniks even though I’ve seen that one, too, and I think my folks have as well. It’s Disney, I remember it being funny, and my mom and dad should get a kick out of it. I hope. I’ll find out later.

Happy American Thanksgiving!

Going Obsolete

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

In the past few weeks there’s been discussions on one of my author loops about getting data off of those old 5 inch floppy disks. You know, the big ones that look like coasters for a beer stein? Of course, since no one has those ginormous floppy drives any longer, getting the data off takes time and money.

I was feeling pretty smug as I listened to these discussions. All my work is still on my laptop–I just keep transferring it. With one exception. I’d moved Ravyn’s Flight to CD. This format discussion had me reloading all the files for my first book back on my computer.

And my smugness returned.

Until I started thinking about this new series idea and remembering a fragment of an idea I’d come up with years earlier. Of course, I couldn’t remember enough of it for the thing to be useful, but I could just look at the file

Um, yeah. You see, all these idea fragments were saved *only* to one of the small floppy disks. (I console myself with the fact that I never used big floppy disks.) Problem is my laptop with the small floppy drive died. My old desktop can still be fired up…if I have half an hour to kill while it boots.

That sound you heard? That was my smugness balloon being popped.

I ordered an external floppy drive that plugs in via USB, and when it arrives, I will be transferring everything off the small floppy disks onto my hard drive. Then it will be backed up by Carbonite (an automatic, off-site backup service) and all will be good.

I’ll also be slower to scoff at authors who don’t have all their data in a readable format. If this discussion hadn’t come up, in a few more years, it probably would be difficult to even find an external floppy drive and I’d be in the same position they’re in now. Technology moves fast, but word processing files are small and hard drives are large. From now on, everything goes on the hard drive and moves from system to system with me.

Review: Saving Grace (the Movie)

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

This weekend, I watched a movie called Saving Grace. It’s a British film starring Barbara Blethyn as Grace and Craig Ferguson as Matthew. It was released in 2000.

WARNING: There will be spoilers.

When Grace is widowed, she discovers her two-timing husband has mortgaged everything to the hilt, including her home. She has no skills to use on the job market except gardening, but that won’t bring in enough money fast enough to prevent foreclosure. Faced with losing everything, Grace teams up with Matthew to help him grow marijuana in her greenhouse. She plans to use the money to save her home, he wants to earn money so he can marry his girlfriend.

Though they don’t know it, the entire small town they live in (it’s set in Great Britain) is aware of what they’re doing, including the constable. Matthew’s girlfriend is pregnant, but doesn’t tell him and she’s afraid he’s going to wind up in prison for drugs. When Grace discovers this, she decides to go to London to sell the pot herself. It’s her dead husband’s mistress who has the connection to a drug dealer who knows a major player, a man high enough up the food chain who could afford to buy all their crop.

Matthew and his friend show up in the middle of the transaction, nearly blowing everything, but just when we think everything is okay and Grace and her friends have left, the big dealer orders his henchmen to follow them.

I’d heard good things about this movie which is why I put it in my Netflix queue. I thought it was okay enough to watch till the end, but I wasn’t blown away. Until the ending, but that wasn’t in a good way. More on that later.

My first complaint about the movie was I had difficulty understanding what everyone was saying. Some of the accents were pretty thick. I’d like to blame it on the fact that the washer and dryer were both going while I was watching, but that might not be totally to blame. I think in America we’re used to a very specific kind of British accent and when we hear other ones, we have a hard time. Or at least I do. I heard a Cockney accent when I was in Europe and I literally didn’t understand more than a couple of words the man said.

Second complaint is the pace of the movie. Yes, we need to understand how desperate Grace’s situation is and see her try all other alternatives to solve it before resorting to growing pot, but it seemed to take a long time for things to really start happening. I did keep watching, but that was more to do with the fact I was doing other stuff at the same time than with the movie itself.

My biggest complaint, however, was the ending. It came so far out of left field, it was truly bizarre. After Grace accidentally starts the pot on fire, it seems as if things are beyond salvation for her. We see a scene of a yard full of high people dancing around or lying around or whatever. The next thing you know, Grace has written a “fictional” book called The Joint Venture and is up for a book of the year award in New York City. She’s also married to the big drug boss who has apparently reformed.

First of all, we see no clue that Grace has even had a small dream about writing, let alone put in the time it would take to become good at it. That was my first, huh?

Secondly, Grace is at a big gala in NYC that is being televised live in Britain. Everyone in her hometown is watching and it’s night in England, too! That was my second, huh? There’s a time difference. Even if everyone in her town wanted to stay up and watch it, would British television really be airing the book awards in the middle of the night? Or how about would British television be airing book awards at all? Heaven knows they don’t show them in America.

Third, the drug lord reformed. Huh? Because he fell in love with Grace? Or had he wanted to go straight before he met her and just didn’t have enough willpower to do it? They don’t outright say he reformed, but it sure came across that way. Apparently, after being on the bestseller list for a year, Grace is making enough to support him lavishly.

There were some bright spots in the mostly dull movie. The funniest part was Grace with a tube of marijuana trying to find someone to sell it to. She’s dressed in a white pantsuit with a white hat and is anything but unobtrusive.

I also liked how she handled the big drug lord when she met him. She wasn’t exactly cool under pressure, but she wasn’t cowed either. Quite a feat for a woman who rarely travels to London.

Overall the movie was okay, but not great.

My rating: 2.5 stars

Guest Blogger: Rowan Larke

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Today, I have a guest blogger–Rowan Larke.

Rowan and I had been online acquaintances for a while–I remember at least one chat room conversation I did that she was at–but it was when we had a chance to talk regularly on Twitter, that we became friends and writing buddies. She’s one third of my plot group, and as well as being an awesome writer, Rowan is sweet, insightful, and incredibly nice.

Now for a more formal introduction: Rowan’s always wanted to be a writer. Always. She never thought she’d be lucky enough to make money doing it, though.

She never really planned on writing erotic romance – she thought she’d be writing epic fantasy. However, when her characters came to her and gave her the most unconventional happily ever after possible, she knew she had to write them. Like her children, her characters are full of surprises, and work almost autonomously – Rowan’s just happy to sit back and enjoy the ride.

* * *

Thanks, Patti, for letting me borrow your blog today!

And…Hi! To Patti’s readers.

I’m going to start off with my fangirl hat on tight. Once upon a time, a friend sent me a book. “You’ll love it,” she said. She was right. It was IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR by Patti O’Shea, and I LOVE that book, as well as everything else I’ve read by Patti since. So, I’m quite honoured to be here.

Somehow, in the time since I read that book, Patti and I have become friends. (yeah, I’m actually as surprised by that as anyone, and sometimes I see her books on my bookshelf and think “omg! I talked to her on the phone yesterday!” which makes me sound like a total nerd, but whatever.)

Even more surreal…Patti’s read some of my work.

Now, anyone who reads Patti’s blog is pretty aware, she’s a nice person. Very sweet, and she rarely swears. (tho she’s done it, I heard her!) So I sort of offered her this book tentatively, but I needed some advice, too…and frankly, writers are always hopeful that people will like their work. At the same time, we’re always afraid people will hate us, personally, for what we’ve written. So I offered it up, and then…got scared.

“Patti…it’s dark.”
She said she’d read it.
“But no, really, Patti. It’s got a lot of sex in it.”
She still said she’d read it.
“Patti, it’s got angels who do really naughty things.”

By this point, I was actually a little desperate, because one thing you might not know about Patti from reading her blog – girl is stubborn.
She wasn’t giving in.

So I sent it, terrified she was going to realize I’m not such a nice girl after all.

I chewed my nails. I paced. I tried working on my next book (a much lighter book. A paranormal romantic suspense, more along the lines of what Patti writes.) and I waited. And I ate chocolate. And waited.

About three ‘o’ clock I got an email. “I’m almost done…. I had to print out the last ten pages to read!”

I think that’s good. I mean, I wanted to think that was good. I went back to pacing.

Finally, another email. “Oh, honey, that was awesome.”

I died a little with relief, and played it cool “you really and for-true liked it?!”

And because of all that, I’m here today, to invite you to read a book Patti liked, although I’m going to give you the same warnings I gave her:

It’s dark

There is a lot of sex – and not all of it sweet, or gentle.

There’s a lot of swearing. (*wince* I might have erased a few words while writing this post, even.)

There are BDSM themes.

So with those warnings in mind, here’s the blurb, and buy link for my book A Love Neverending, available now at Loose-Id (http://loose-id.com):

Death took Jason from Clarissa, and she blames herself. Night after night, she throws herself into the arms of other men—men who abuse and pleasure her, but never take her far enough. She is waiting for the one who will take her over the edge and into death, so she can be reunited with Jason.

Death didn’t take Jason far enough. Every night, Jason watches. His immortal self is trapped inside the club Clarissa owns, and he longs to be with her once more.

Death is a dark angel. A handsome man. The promise of violence in his eyes draws Clarissa to him. Will a single night in bed with Death be all it takes to destroy Jason and Clarissa’s love neverending, or will it be just the beginning?

Publisher’s Note: This book contains explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable: BDSM theme and content, violence, voyeurism

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

For about five months or so now, I’ve had these characters in my head. I knew who they were, I knew they belonged together, I knew which world they belonged to, but I didn’t have a story for them. All my vague ideas were too close to something else I’d already written and I hate to repeat myself. There was no great rush, though, to figure it out since they were third on my list.

I mailed off project number one to my agent, now I’ve got a rough draft done on project number two, which meant it was time to figure out these two characters and what their story was. Only nothing helpful was coming to me.

This had me putting together an email summing up what I knew for my two writing buddies and hoping to bounce some ideas off of them. Nothing I came up with for the email as far as story goes was exciting, but I sent it off and figured we’d talk about it at some point.

And then I went to bed last night…

This particular hero took over and I saw the scene from his point of view, heard his internal monologue, and got his thought processes. I also heard him talking to the heroine and the two of them finally gave me their story! Woot!

I think pulling all my information together for that email got my subconscious working, and while I was unaware of what was going on, it was pulling together a plot. How cool is this?

So I’m lying in bed and my brain is spinning. This is a prime reason why I sometimes get insomnia–my mind is churning and I’m trying to remember everything. I decided to get up and send a quick email. I went back to bed and expected my mind to keep working, but instead I was asleep about two minutes later. Wow. I ended up with about 6 hours of sleep and a storyline.

All I have to say is I love it when a plan comes together.

Noise

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Not that long ago, it used to be that advertising was confined to predictable locations. You’d see it on TV, hear it on the radio, see it on billboards and on the sides of buses. Now advertising is everywhere, and with all the noise, the target audience doesn’t even see most ads let alone remember them or the product.

It used to be that only minor league baseball teams had advertising on their walls, now all the big league teams do. It used to be that if you saw a truck with writing on it, it was the name of the company that owned the vehicle, now it’s just as likely to have ads on the two sides and the rear. It used to be that you could put down your tray table on an airplane and just have a plain, beige surface, now there’s an airline that sells that as advertising space. It’s gotten so bad, there are even public restrooms with ads in the stalls.

The kick off for the football game is usually sponsored. The replays of home runs are sponsored. Driving down the freeway this summer while the PGA was in town, I saw a Mercedes that was discretely labeled as the official sponsor of the tour.

And the thing is as new and more places are used for advertising, it takes more and more views before the product registers. If it ever does.

It all becomes noise. It’s like walking into a crowd of people and since everyone is talking, you can’t hear anyone. I was an advertising major in college and I have an interest in it, but even I’m burnt out on the plethora of ads that surround me. It’s overload and I know I’m not alone. The sad thing is that they’re talking about putting advertising in even more places–like inside books, both electronic and print.

I just have a single comment on that. No.

I want one place where I can escape the noise.

Adventures With Socks

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

I have this problem with a sock disappearing when I do laundry. The first time it happened, I didn’t consider where it might be, and later that week, I got dressed and went to the Evil Day Job (EDJ). As I’m walking down the aisle to my cube about mid-morning, one of my guys asks me, Is that your sock?

No, I say, I’m wearing my socks. He insists. Then it dawns on me–it’s my missing sock! It had been stuck in my pants leg and had worked its way loose as I walked around the office. Oops. That was embarrassing.

After this, whenever a sock vanished, I’d shake out my clothes and the sock would always turn up. If it didn’t, it was because it was stuck in an item I forgot to check.

Then three weeks ago I had a sock disappear. I shook out all the clothes that had been in the washer and dryer with the socks. Nothing. I checked the items that had gone in the washer/dryer in the next load, thinking that maybe I’d missed pulling it out with the rest of the dark clothes. Nothing. I checked my clothes again. Still nothing. Where could this sock be?

I entertained the idea that maybe the sock had gotten stuck in my pants leg, and that despite my checking for it, that I’d somehow missed it. That it had fallen out as I walked across the parking lot at the EDJ, and that since it was dark and I was running late, that I didn’t notice. I checked the lot the next time I walked through it, but didn’t spot any black socks.

Now I’m mystified. Were aliens and a UFO involved? Had it gotten sucked up the dryer vent somehow? Had it washed over the top of the barrel in the washing machine even though I had the water set for a small load? Where else could it be?

I’d hoped it would turn up the next time I washed. It didn’t. The mystery deepened and I was starting to become obsessed. Where was my sock?

Last Saturday, I had a sudden thought. There’s almost no room between my washer/dryer and the wall/cabinets, but there’s a little bit. I checked on the left side of the washer and low and behold, there was a black lump. It required a yard stick to get it out because the space was so narrow, but I’d found my sock!

I guess I’d gotten a little enthusiastic tossing stuff in the washing machine that weekend and didn’t notice the sock flying over the side and onto the floor. Mystery solved, but that crushed my alien conspiracy theory.

How’s the Book Going?

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

One of the hardest questions I get is How is the book going? The person asking is probably doing it along the lines of Hi, how are you?, but this isn’t as easy to answer as they think it is and it requires me questioning them in return.

Which book? Do they mean Edge of Dawn, my book that came out earlier this year? It’s a little early for sales results and I find the royalty statements confusing anyway. Hey, there was a reason why I majored in Advertising Copywriting in college–math is not my strong point.

Or are they asking about In the Darkest Night, the book I finished writing in March and that will be released April 2010? This book is completely finished on my end. I’ve gone through copy edits, I’ve checked the page proofs, I have a cover. All that I have to do now is promote it.

There’s a chance this person is asking about what I’m currently working on. This makes it even more difficult because I’m in the proposal stage where I’m contemplating about three or four different projects seriously enough to maybe mention them. I could mention my proposal for my next paranormal romance is with my agent. I could mention that I’m working on two more ideas set in the same world as my short story, Blood Feud in The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2, or I could talk about the romantic suspense idea that is still in the planning stage.

So this question the other person thinks is simple is really complex and involved as I try to figure out which particular story they’re asking about. Writers are always juggling multiple projects. Last Friday I was working on my paranormal romance idea. On Saturday, I was organizing notes for the romantic suspense. Sunday I started writing a proposal for the vampire world from Blood Feud. Monday I was making notes on a second story in that vampire world and worked on the synopsis for the first one. That’s four days, four stories, four sets of heroes and heroines along with assorted secondary characters.

Now, granted, this is a little crazier than usual. If someone had asked me last February how the book was going, I would have assumed they meant In the Darkest Night because it had a March 1st deadline and it was the only thing I was working on then. And even if they’d meant, say, In Twilight’s Shadow, they still would have heard about Darkest Night because I couldn’t think about anything else except that one story. (BTW, I totally heart that hero, Kel.)

Writers and Word

Monday, November 9th, 2009

The one thing that continually surprises me is how many writers are unfamiliar with computers–even the word processing software they use! Now granted, some of the things in Word that aren’t accessed often are not easy to figure out, but we’re talking simple stuff here like creating headers or getting word count. How can you spend hours on a computer every day writing and not know some of these things?

It’s not only writers, I know that. I work with people who can’t figure out how to do anything new on a computer unless you hold their hand through it. And my cousin, who has an MBA, emailed me to ask how to upload a photo to Facebook! What? Sigh.

Writers loops, though, can be even worse. There are people who can’t figure out Blogger or WordPress. I’m not talking about something more complex like perhaps changing a theme or adding plug-ins. I mean they can’t figure out how to schedule a post in advance. It’s enough to make me weep. And knowing the smallest things about their websites? Forget about it!

It’s not that I’m an expert. I’m not. There are things I don’t know how to do because I’ve never had a need to learn them and other things I could be making better use of, but the basics of my programs? Those I know. And what I don’t know, I make a point of learning.

One of the first things I did after selling was take a class on web design. I signed up for and finished HTML 1 and 2, CSS, and took a class on Paint Shop Pro so I could manage my graphics. I can’t create my own graphics–a sad lack of artistic talent–but I can work with photos and do rudimentary images. I can update my site on my own, I can find things that are wrong and fix them, and if I have to, I can create new pages. Since I had my website redesigned by a professional, though, I let them make new pages because it saves me time.

A lot of the questions I see asked aren’t only easy, but simply pulling down a few menus would show them how to do what they want to do. They don’t pull down the menus and try things. I have a writer friend whose desktop computers are constantly being repaired and replaced because they die on her. (She’s a self-confessed techno-dummy (her term, not mine.)) I’ve had one motherboard burn up and need to be replaced, but all my computers still run. They might be slow and old, but they work. I can only assume that it’s how she uses them that causes all the issues because she’s not buying inferior brands and the odds of always buying the lemon has to be low.

I think it’s fear that holds a lot of people back on computers. They’re afraid they’ll mess something up and not be able to fix it. I’m nearly fearless. Which might not always be a good thing, but I always go with the supposition that if worse comes to worse, I can wipe the drive and reload everything. It’s never reached that point. :-)

I think that statement just scared a few people. Hey, you should wipe your drive every year or two and reload. It’ll get your machine running faster again, so in a worst-case scenario, it’s only a short-term inconvenience. However, I will confess that I’ve only wiped my drive and reloaded once. It was just too much work to get all the files off and then put them back on again. In fact, some of the files never did make it back on that computer.

Anyway, writers, pull down menus and the help menu are your friends. Use them. Googling how to do something is another good alternative. There are even sites with free tutorials. Take advantage of them and get to know your software.

Shortly, I’ll be putting my money where my mouth is. I’m going from Office 2003 to 2007 and it’s drastically different. I have a pretty good idea that I’ll end up frustrated and using the help menu frequently. So maybe y’all will be having the last laugh when it’s all said and done.


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