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Archive for June, 2010

Kindle Upgrade Thoughts

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

I’ve been waiting and waiting for my Kindle to get the 2.5 update that allows books to be filed/organized. The one thing I haven’t loved about my Kindle was the fact I couldn’t sort anything. I could look by author or by title or by download date, but that didn’t help me find a particular book. This weekend I decided I couldn’t wait for Amazon to push the update and I installed it manually.

First off, this was much simpler than I expected it to be. The directions on the website were clear and easy to follow. It was also quicker than I thought. The install only took a few minutes.

Then the real fun began–trying to sort a 24-page list of books into categories.

Defining the names of categories turned out to be moderately difficult. I wanted to slice it down far enough that I could find everything easily, but I didn’t want it so fine that I had 24 pages worth of categories. Since I read a lot of romance, I broke that down into Paranormal, Romantic Suspense, and a generic Romance for anything that didn’t fall into the first two. I also did a Read and Unread for each because Amazon’s designation (bold dots below the book title instead of regular dots) doesn’t exactly leap off the screen and scream Read!

Anyway, I gave Urban Fantasy it’s own folder and then did all of Fiction under one umbrella. I also broke down my research books into Writing Craft, General Research, and Research specific to a particular story/series idea. As I filed books away, I discovered the need to add more categories for filing purposes and made it to 2 1/2 pages worth of categories. That’s more than I’d hoped for, but I guess I’m not too surprised.

Then began the “fun” process of categorizing everything. I’m still not done since I was only able to work on it at odd moments. This ended up being interesting. I discovered books I had no memory of downloading. I rediscovered books that made me go, Oh, yeah, I wanted to read that. It was amazing how much I had that just got buried without a filing system.

Right now I still have about 5 pages of books to categorize. The problem is that I’ve had my Kindle for about 16 months now and I don’t remember what these books are about or which file they belong in. I need time to research them so that I can file them, and right now, time is in short supply.

I think this update to the Kindle software was long overdue. The ability to put books into categories should have been there from the beginning and it was something I noticed immediately when I got it. I’m still not 100% happy, though, with how categories work.

While I do love the fact that a book can be filed in more than one location, I absolutely hate that I can’t arrange my category names in alphabetical order. Grr. Amazon puts whatever category I opened last on top. I can see that some people would like this, but I’d prefer alphabetical order so I can find what I’m looking for quickly and easily. If Paranormal romance is falling in the middle of my list of files, how am I going to find it without paging through and scanning through the entire list? (BTW, if there is a way to do this and you know it, please tell me. I haven’t had time to really explore the update yet.)

So overall, the 2.5 update for Kindle is definitely worth the extra steps to download manually, but it’s still not a perfect solution for organization. Two thumbs up, with a wish that Amazon would refine this filing a little more and give the reader more options.

Tags: kindle
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Adventures With Mother Nature

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Friday night storms rolled through. It’s been raining a lot in Minneapolis–thirteen of the first fifteen days in June had rain and it just hasn’t stopped–but we haven’t had much severe weather. Until Friday.

It wasn’t only one storm either, but three of them converging on the Twin Cities one after another. One of the storms had tornadoes associated with it and it and another one had a history of dropping good-sized hail, some as big a tennis ball. I was not looking forward to having to take shelter in the basement, but I was ready to grab my laptop and go if the need arose.

Storm one wasn’t that bad. Storm two, well, that was another story. It brought high winds that drove the rain sideways. Water started dripping from the wood molding around my patio doors and I had to grab a bowl to catch it. I’ve been in my house four years and I’ve never had rain come in the woodwork before.

Power flickered off and on. Off and on, but it came back up. Whew! I hate it when the power goes out. And still the storm raged on, seeming to last forever.

Finally, it moved on. And as it eased up, the power did go out.

Sigh. I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again, if it was up to me to be a pioneer, America would still be thirteen colonies. I like creature comforts and electricity tops the list.

For a while, I worked on the laptop, but after about an hour, I had to shut down. No television, no computer, no way to read because it was dark outside with the storm and I had no lights. So after an hour, I went to bed. Yep, Friday night, I was in bed by 8:30. There was nothing to do except sleep.

Power came back on at 1am and I had to get up and turn off all the lights that I’d left on. I should have thought of that before I went to bed, but didn’t.

Saturday night, Mother Nature came back for an encore performance. This time, however, I was lucky and the bad stuff went north and south of Minneapolis. The power stayed on.

Tags: adventures
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Please. Stop.

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

I love to shop online. It’s quick, it’s convenient, and whatever I buy comes straight to my house. It’s nearly perfect.(Except more sites need to offer free shipping. I’m not paying more to ship something than the item costs.) In my internet shopping journey, I’ve signed up for newsletters and here is where my blog topic begins.

There are etailers out there who send me an email four or five days out of the week. It’s ridiculous! These are not sites that tout their daily newsletter. I am signed up for one of those and I’m fine with that because I chose to get email from them that often. If I wanted, I could unsubscribe and get a weekly email from them instead. For right now, daily is good. From this one etailer.

But there are sites out there who don’t know when to stop bugging me. I get an email saying: Sale This Week! Okay, awesome, but I don’t need anything right now. The next day: Six More Days On Our Sale! A couple of days later: Four Days Left! And it continues, right down to: 12 Hours Left On Our Super Sale!

Please. I don’t want to hear from you that often. I don’t need a daily reminder that you are having a sale. You have a sale every week and every week I get bombarded by your emails. Stop.

I’ve unsubscribe from a bunch of newsletters that were bad. Deep Discount and Dragon Naturally Speaking aka Nuance are two that immediately come to mind. I couldn’t take the frequency of their emails any longer and I was getting to the point where it made me mutter every time I received something from them.

There are a few more that I’d like to unsubscribe from, but don’t because even though they’re annoying the hell out of me, when I do want to buy, the email offers are too good not to have. Still, this only goes so far. At some point they’ll tip me over the edge and I will quit. Once a week is more than enough, but even less than that would be better. Much better.

Some merchants get it right. Corel (the makers of WordPerfect, the best writing software ever) only send out emails when they have a new product coming out or for an occasional sale. Caribou Coffee is another that only sends out occasional newsletters.

The newsletters that come four or five times a week? I delete them without opening them 99.9% of the time. I know it’s cheap for a business to send an email, but they send so many, that I ignore them most of the time. This is wasted time, effort, and money. And because of how annoying this is, they’re eroding any good will I feel toward their business.

On the other hand, I open and check out every email Caribou Coffee sends because I know when I get one from them, they have something to share. They’re not simply sending out an email for the sake of sending it. It makes a difference. Too bad more sellers don’t get this.

I’d like to segue into a complaint about the newsletters I get that I never signed up for, but that’s another topic and I think I’ve gone on long enough. But you know what? You send me a newsletter I didn’t request and I tell Gmail you’re spam. It’s that simple.

Tags: newsletters, shopping
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Secrets

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

I’ve bemoaned my characters keeping secrets from me before and it happened again. This time my heroine was the culprit and she had two little bombshells for me.

With my heroes and heroines, I’ve gotten used to knowing something was in their backgrounds that impacted their lives, but not knowing exactly what it was. That I can work with. I can foreshadow as I write because I know it’s there, I’m just in the dark as to what–precisely–the problem is. What I hate is when they don’t give me anything.

In all fairness, I was aware something bothered her and I even knew what it was, so the first bombshell she dropped shouldn’t have been a hit. I should have known that her issue extended into everything she did. Unfortunately, I got hung up on how much she didn’t like this one aspect of her job and figured she only went through the motions on this unimportant requirement. That wasn’t right at all. Liza might not like it, but she wants to be the best and that means every facet, no matter how she personally feels about it. This was a head-thunk moment for me and I swear you could have seen a light bulb go off above my head when I finally got it.

Bombshell number 2 is a different story.

If I complained to Liza about this, she’d probably shrug and say it’s not her fault that I didn’t think about this part of her personality. She’d tell me that would have revealed it if I’d poked just a little bit. She’s not wrong, but this wasn’t something that I realized needed to be poked at. How can I ask the right questions if I’m not getting any hints?

But it completely made sense once she revealed it to me.

This type of thing always frustrates me, but what really has me kicking myself is that when she finally shared bombshell 1, bombshell 2 still didn’t occur to me. They’re intertwined and I should have figured out the second part on my own. I didn’t.

Now if I can get it all on the page and convey it smoothly, things will be good. I’m not sure I’m there yet, but I can revise until I have it right.

Tags: characters
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Looking At the Glass Half Full

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

I’m a glass half empty kind of person by and large. I blame my parents for this because they’re glass-half-full people and someone had to point out the pitfalls. They would look at the ocean and say, “it’s so pretty.” And I’d mention, well, yeah, it’s pretty, but remember there are sharks beneath the surface and rocks and don’t forget there are storms. Someone had to remind them, right?

Sometimes, though, I need a reminder to see the good things and not only think about the half-empty part. I got that reminder last week.

I had to swing by the clinic on my way home from work last Wednesday. In the waiting room was a younger couple. They both looked healthy and I didn’t think much about it until I sat down and noticed there was a folded up walker between their chairs. Not very long after that, an elderly couple came through from the examining room side to the lab side. She shuffled along and he barely shuffled along with a walker.

If that wasn’t enough to make me grateful, a family came in while I was waiting. It looked like a husband and wife, her mother, and their son. The wife had a walker with one of those fold-down seats and oxygen tubes coming out of her nose. The older woman who I took to be the wife’s mother wheeled her oxygen canister behind her and the husband checked her in. I don’t know what was wrong with her, if she had cancer or emphysema, or some other disease, but she looked as if she were in her 40s. Not that old to be hooked up to O2 and so weak she had to immediately put down her fold-down seat and sit.

And that’s when it was driven home just how very lucky I am.

It hadn’t been a great week. My tendonitis hurt really, really bad and so did the thumb that I’d injured in a car accident. I’d had allergy issues all week and headaches that left me crabby. Seeing this woman made me realize just how minor those complaints were.

Even my parents who are getting older and having health issues are lucky. My dad had his kidney out a couple of years ago, but he’s still a little dynamo and very active. You have to be quick to keep up with him because he’s always moving. My mom isn’t that fast, and she’s had several issues including a small stroke last December, but she can get around on her own, too.

When I drove out of the parking lot, all I could think was thank you. And I saw my glass was probably more than half full.

I know that this reality check will fade in time. They always do. But it’s good to be reminded that I have things pretty damn good and to be grateful for that.

Tags: life
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Windows 7 and Word 2010

Friday, June 18th, 2010

It’s a good thing yesterday wasn’t a blogging day or y’all would have been subjected to another rant about authors who can’t handle the simplest computer thing. Come on, people, you’d expect your surgeon to keep up with the tools of his trade and not use a scalpel if he could perform a laser surgery instead, right? So why don’t you learn to use the tools that go with your job? Um, stopping here because this is becoming a rant already. Since I don’t want to do this, I will review the elements on my computer that pertain to writing either directly or indirectly.

Windows 7 Operating System (OS): Awesome! Yes, authors, it is different than XP, but give it a chance. Buying a new computer and loading XP because you’re afraid of Win7 is not a good idea. Either roll with the technology wave or the ocean will move past you and you’ll be left alone in the desert. Win7 is much easier to use than XP. Really. It’s also more intuitive. IMO, it’s the best Windows OS yet and I’ve used most of them.

I could understand loading XP to avoid Vista, but not Win7. BTW, while I’m not a Vista fan, I never had any problems with it and I just turned off the things that annoyed me. But then I’m a power user and not afraid of getting into areas that novice users and technophobe authors should avoid.

So what is awesome about Win7 aside from how it looks? (And it is pretty.) I love that I can pin the files I use all the time to the program. That means all I have to do is right click the program pinned to my bottom bar and the files I’ve chosen to pin are there. (Pinning a file is as easy as clicking your mouse. Not at all difficult to do.) I frequently have WordPerfect files for projects I’m not actively working on at the moment, but that having quick access to would be nice and now I do. I just pin them. No more clicking down list levels to find the story I began six months ago and dropped to work on something else.

I also love how easy it is to add a folder. I am a folder whore because I don’t want to scan through fifty million files to find the one I want. It’s also more organized to have folders. For example: Writing–>WordPerfect–>Light Warriors–>Darkest Night–>Synopsis All my synopsis attempts are in this folder and I can instantly find any version I want because they’re all together. Windows 7 offers the “Create Folder” option right at the top of Windows Explorer. This is fab.

What I don’t love about Win7? I absolutely loathe the thumbnail feature. With this feature, if you put your cursor over an open program on the bottom bar, it will show you a thumbnail of all the open files in this program. I hate this with the fire of a thousand suns. It’s solely related to how I use my computer. I don’t want to see the cursor when I’m working in a program, so I’ve always dragged it down to the bottom bar to keep it off whatever I was looking at. When I do it now, those stupid thumbnails show up.

I never, ever want to see the thumbnail and there’s no way to turn this off. I checked. I did, however, go into my registry (Novice users do not do this.) and adjust it to take about 10 minutes to trigger. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. I wish Microsoft would give me a way to turn this off. It’s annoying that they don’t.

This is a minor annoyance in an otherwise good OS. If you’re getting a new computer, get Win7 and do not load XP instead. Once you get used to it, you’ll love it.

Word 2010: Yes, I upgraded because I had an offer through work. I have the entire Office suite, but I haven’t used any program extensively except Word since I put it on, so can’t really review them, but of all the Words I’ve been forced to work in, 2010 is about the best. Again, 2007 and 2010 are different than 2003 and earlier, but once I got used to it, I liked it.

Visually, 2007 is more appealing to me than 2010. I also find Outlook 2010 even more frustrating than Outlook 2007, and I wasn’t fond of Outlook 2007, but this is about Word, not my email troubles.

What do I like so much about Word 2010? It’s much, much, much easier to convert my WordPerfect files before I submit my projects than in any other version of Word. Yes, it’s all about me. WordPerfect is still far superior to any version of Word, but unfortunately most of the world is locked into Microsoft Office and so I’m forced to use it, too. Before someone suggests it’s only the fact that I’m unfamiliar with Word that makes me dislike it so, let me mention that I routinely work in Office at my day job, and not only have I had classes for Word, I work in it all the time. The only thing Word does better than WordPerfect is labels. Truly.

But I digress. Again. Word 2007 and 2010 are so different from the previous versions that sometimes it’s not easy for me to find the way to do the things I’d like to do, but the help function is actually, believe it or not, helpful! I know! It shocked me, too. But it’s extremely easy to learn how to do something and I made liberal use of it yesterday when I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

It’s kind of a pain to click around to the different tabs on the ribbon, but I’m used to tabbed internet browsing, so even though I get frustrated when I’m on the wrong tab for what I want to do, I can deal with it. Yesterday, I needed to convert a WordPerfect file into Word and it did it. Without messing up my formatting! This was awesome. Now if Microsoft would just give me the option of creating my own cover page, it would have been even better. I could only find templates to drop in and Create Your Own wasn’t one of them. If there is a way to do this, please let me know.

Anyway, I can recommend 2010 for an upgrade. I like it better than 2007, which was better than all the previous versions of Word IMO.

I’ve already geeked out about how much I love OneNote, but I haven’t had a chance to play with this yet in 2010 (I just upgraded 2 weeks ago). It’s supposed to have some cool new features, so as I research my next project, I’m going to explore it more fully.

To sum up: Microsoft is making some real progress in its core programs and the latest in OS and Word are big steps forward. This is all my opinion, and believe me, I’m not a huge Microsoft fan, so I’m not shilling for them. Besides, clinging to old systems (Word 2000? Really? That was like the worst version I’ve used) isn’t helpful. Not upgrading because of cost is one thing, but to buy a new computer and load old, old software on it because you’re afraid of new stuff…. Well, this is why I get so frustrated with some authors. Technology is changing. If you don’t keep up with it, you’ll be left behind. End of mini-rant.

Tags: computer
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My Email Woes

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Answering email has become a huge problem for me. I haven’t been good about it in a while. Okay, a long while, but in the last six months it has gotten much, much worse.

What happened? I bought a new laptop.

Here’s the thing. Windows 7 does not have Outlook Express (OE), which is what I’ve always used. Instead, it’s Live Mail or something like that. So I decided that I’d use Outlook. I have Outlook 2003 at the Evil Day Job (EDJ) and it’s fine. Some features I like better than OE, some features I like less, but overall it’s a wash. I loaded Office 2007 and prepared to transfer my email over to the new laptop.

This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. OE uses a different file type than Outlook, so I couldn’t simply move everything over. First, I needed to import everything into the Live Mail program. Second, I had to export everything over to Outlook. Aggravating since they’re all Microsoft email programs, but only a little time consuming.

And then I discovered I didn’t like Outlook 2007 for email.

I don’t know why, but for some reason, it’s like I don’t see the email anymore once it’s inside the program. I’ve tried adjusting things. I know the basics of the program well enough since I use a version of it at the EDJ, but no matter what I changed or how I arranged things, I didn’t like it. I still download my email, read it, and forget it’s even there. With OE, I used to keep my email program open all the time. With Outlook, I almost never open it and this might be part of the problem I’m having answering email. It’s hard to reply when the program is closed.

Clearly, I need to do something about this problem. I remembered there was a website that had old versions of software available to download and I headed over there, hoping to find a version of OE. Only I discovered that OE has never been separate from the computer’s operating system, and to get OE, I’d have to download XP and run two systems on my laptop. I don’t want to do that.

I thought I’d give Live Mail a try after all. And discovered that to transfer my notes into that program, I’d have to put everything on jump drive, import it on my old laptop to OE, then export those files back to the jump drive, and import them to Live Mail. That seemed like a hell of a lot of work and what if I don’t like Live Mail any better than Outlook? If I spent all that time to make the transition and ended up not using it, I wouldn’t be happy. Microsoft, why aren’t you compatible with yourself???

Next, I thought hey, maybe I can find another free email program. Thunderbird immediately sprang to mind. I’d tried it before and didn’t like it, but it must have changed since then and maybe I’d like it now. I didn’t.

I checked into other email programs, but after looking at screenshots of the interfaces for multiple programs, I wasn’t impressed. Plus, some of the free versions make you have ads. Uh, no. I’m not putting up with ads in my email just to use their program. So I’ve been stumbling along, the email piling up unanswered inside Outlook 2007.

A couple of weeks ago, I upgraded to Office 2010. My hope was that Outlook 2010 would be more Patti friendly than 2007. It wasn’t. In fact, I like it even less than 2007 and that’s going some distance.

Do I go through the conversion process to use Live Mail and hope that I like it? There’s some question whether I can even convert unless OE is on the same computer, which rules this out. Or do I get out my Office 2003 disk and load Outlook 2003, which I like a lot better than 2007/2010? I’m not sure that Microsoft will let me do this. Or do I try to like Thunderbird? Which might not be possible.

My solution for now is to order Outlook 2010 for Dummies, hoping that if I can configure the program differently, I might remember I have email. I don’t know if this will work, but I have to try something. I can’t not answer people–that’s rude. Anyway, if you’re one of the people waiting for email from me, I’m sorry. Really sorry.

Tags: email
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Parallel Worlds

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

I’ve been listening to audio books on my iPod at work. It’s a great way to pass the day and recently I listened to a really awesome book. Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku.

This book is non-fiction and it’s about physics. Yes, I am a total geek. Computers, physics, only moderately functional in social situations. Sigh. Anyway, the book talks about physics, but the really cool part of physics–black holes, wormholes, time travel, multi-dimensional space, string theory, and M theory. My eyes light up whenever I hear M Theory–it’s incredibly fascinating stuff.

The author is a physicist himself and the book is broken into three sections. As a listener, I thought of the book in two parts, though. One part dealt more on what had already happened. For example, Newton and his work with gravity or Einstein and his work with relativity. Then part two was more on theories, things that were still unproven and unknown. Ideas that physicists are hoping will either be proven or disproven by things like the Large Hadron Super Collider in Europe or LISA, a space probe set to be launched in a couple of years. I believe its mission is to measure gravity waves, but the book was long, so I could have remembered incorrectly.

Personally, I found the first half of the book fascinating. I was geeking out all over Twitter about how awesome it was. The second half was less compelling to me, but still interesting and I think it’s because I was more into what was pretty confidently known versus what was still unproven theory.

If you’ve read my time travel short story, The Troll Bridge, you know that I used a large atom smasher to create a wormhole which sent my heroine forward in time and to another planet, Jarved Nine. This was all based on things I’d read earlier about M theory and the Hadron particle accelerator.

I can’t even begin to tell you how tickled I was when the book mentioned the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. One of my favorite lines in my story was when the heroine thinks something like, “the Einstein-Rosen Bridge might close instantly, but her wormhole was the Troll Bridge, and it had been open for business.” Okay, so I’m easily thrilled. What can I say?

Um, but I digressed. If you’re looking for a book that explains theories of physics in a straightforward way that a layman can understand, I can recommend Parallel Worlds. When I was researching these principles before I wrote Troll Bridge, I had trouble wrapping my mind around all of it. Dr. Kaku spells things out in a way that is not only interesting, but makes it comprehensible to non-physicists.

Two enthusiastic thumbs up!

Tags: books, reviews
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It Really Was Crap

Friday, June 11th, 2010

So in the last Woot Off I managed to get through and buy a Bag of Crap. For those unfamiliar with Woot and their Woot Offs, every once in a while, Woot.com, which normally does one deal a day, runs item after item until they sell out. The highlight of the Woot Off, though, is the Bag of Crap (abbreviated as BoC). No one who’s buying knows what they’ll get in the BoC until it arrives, but sometimes it’s awesome things like an XBox or a TV. The cost is $8.99 including the shipping.

I’ve “won” a BoC once previously and my haul included a digital picture frame that cost more than $100 and a camera case. I didn’t have one of those and it’s been nice to be able to carry my camera inside something to ensure that the back screen doesn’t get scratched in transit.

Well, in the last Woot Off, I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d made it in on time. My computer hung up, processing my BoC order forever and I was too lazy to go back to the site later and check my account. Yeah, I know, but I’m so busy most of the time that it’s just one more thing to do that I don’t have time for.

Yesterday, the box from Woot arrived, telling me that I did get a BoC. It was a small box, so I knew there wasn’t a TV or XBox in there, but surely there must be something cool, right?

Too eager to even bring it into my kitchen to get the scissors to slice the tape, I used the edge of my key in the laundry room (It opens into the garage, so it’s the first room when I enter my house) to open it. I moved aside the packing material, trying to see my haul. Another box. Okay, cool. I open that with my key, too. Some kind of Disney software. Six of the exact same Cinderella thing. Oh.

Now I look at what else is in the box. A package of Disney AAA batteries. I only have one thing that uses AAA batteries in my house, but eventually I’ll use them. Another package of those round batteries that are about the size of a nickel. As far as I know, nothing I own uses those. The last item? A green bag imprinted with the word “Wine.” It appears to hold two bottles of wine for transport. I don’t drink wine, but hey, if I’m invited somewhere and someone asks me to bring wine, I’ll have something to carry it in, right?

I have no need for the six copies of the Cinderella software, so my first thought was to offer it up as prizes. A little closer checking of the box nixed that idea. The software only works with some special Disney movie camera. The odds against anyone who follows me owning that particular Disney camera as astronomical, so I’m going to donate it to one of the charities that sells stuff—Goodwill, Salvation Army, ARC or the Vets.

A disappointing BoC to be sure, but I’ll try again next Woot Off because sometimes you do get lucky.

Tags: shopping
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Dropping the F Bomb

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

I’ve been thinking about the swearing my heroes do. My heroines, too, to some extent, but they never seem to sink into the depths of profanity that my guys do. When do I curb them or do I curb them at all?

No one’s said anything to me, but the hero in the proposal I’m working on now goes farther down the road than any other hero I’ve had. It’s not so much the frequency as his choice of words. I’m used to hearing the F bomb from my guys–they all use it, although in my first few books, I censored them. If you see a line that says, he cursed, you can pretty much just insert the F word there.

Some of my guys censored themselves for me. Jake from The Power of Two wouldn’t use the F word in front of Cai, his heroine. So there was a lot of Fu– in the story as he stopped himself. And Wyatt from Eternal Nights was raised not to swear at all in front of ladies, so the few times he does drop the F’inheimer around Kendall, it grabs her attention.

Logan from Edge of Dawn just plain doesn’t swear much at all, but I did go with the he cursed thing again because I was curious if I could still write a book without using the F word. I didn’t bother to rein in Kel from In the Darkest Night, but while he swears more than Logan, his brother, he’s a far cry from Deke and Creed who both swore constantly. Sigh. They were a trial to me. We all survived, although for me it was barely.

Now I’m working on Jack and Liza and Jack not only uses the F word, he uses MF.

This raises questions for me. Will a publisher put out a paranormal romance with a hero that says that word? I can cut it back to F’er if I had to, but this is how he talks. I’ve written three chapters for my proposal and he’s used it twice so far.

I’m not asking for advice because I’m pretty much decided to submit it to my agent with the language intact. If she thinks it’ll be a problem for a publisher, I know she’ll tell me and I can fix it then. I have contingencies in mind already if the need arises, but it does make me wonder where the language line is in the romance genre.

Tags: characters
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