I wrote 20 pages yesterday. =8-O

Once upon a time, I used to be able to routinely write 20 pages on a Sunday, but that was back years ago. Since then 8 is about normal and 10+ is good. I'm all excited about this, especially since I had to cut the 6 pages I'd written on Saturday. Of course, I haven't reread what I wrote yesterday. Maybe it sucks and I'll be doing some more cutting, but for now at least, I'm happy.

I have today off from the day job. Yea!!! So when I wake up (I was writing till midnight last night), I'll do a reread and then start writing again. I'm hoping for another 20 pages. Wonder if I can be so lucky 2 days in a row?

MN Weather Report: 30 degrees. NO Wind Chill. Light snow came down while I was still sleeping, but it seems to be gone now.

Okay, so here it is 5:51 in the morning on the weekend. What am I doing awake and online? I have no clue. I was up late last night and woke up around 4 something. After tossing around for a while, I decided to get up and at least do something. :-( Of course, I'm way too tired to write which is the only thing I should be doing if I'm going to be awake in the middle of the night. :-) The newspaper should be here soon and I'm waiting for that now.

Anyway, pretty much everything I wrote yesterday will be cut when I start working today. It's very frustrating because I can't recall having this many false starts on any other story I've ever written. If it isn't a false start, it's an erroneous path. Either way, it's enough to make me run screaming through the house. Okay, not really. :-) But it is aggravating when I'm not used to having to do so much cutting on the first draft.

Not much else to say. I'm going to go get the newspaper and see if I can sleep in a little bit. Then I'll have to try and write faster than I usually do to make up for all the cutting I've done. :-( Please forgive any typing and/or spelling errors.

BTW, the pun in my title is intentional. Feel free to groan at any time. :-)

Yesterday, while I was writing and desperately looking for something I could watch on TV with the sound off, I tried one of the shopping channels. They honest to God were selling DOG CLOTHES! I kid you not. I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but I absolutely despise it when people dress their dogs up in little outfits. My take on it is that the dogs hate it too and are completely embarrassed to be seen by other dogs. ;-) And it's almost always little dogs that get dressed up. When was the last time you saw an owner put a sequined outfit on a German Shepherd? I don't understand why anyone would want to do this. Gah!

Despite eye strain, a headache and the need to cut and rewrite several times, I made really good progress on the story yesterday. I also discovered there is little doubt that I'm going to run long. Again. Why does it always take me so many pages more to tell a story than other people? I even kept this storyline simple, not like TPOT where I had multiple threads running. It doesn't seem to matter. Unless a miracle happens and some brilliant idea occurs to me, I'm going to go way over again. Of course, I could probably cut out paragraphs here and there in the front end of the story without losing much, but I'll also be adding description and details that I don't have there now. Overall, this will probably add even more pages.

Anyway, I need to reread the chapter I finished yesterday, make sure I didn't go astray in my exhaustion induced delirium. If that's okay, then it's on to the next chapter. I have only the vaguest clue what I want to do here, but then I should be used to that.

MN Weather Report: 28 degrees. Wind Chill: 23 degrees. Coating of snow on the ground when I woke up this morning. :-(

I like to have a baseball game on TV--with the sound muted--while I write. I don't know how I got into this habit, but it's pretty ingrained now. But in winter, there are no games and I have to find a substitute and it has to be something that I can watch without sound, so that I can write. I've become frustrated with the shopping channels, which used to be my off-season choice and I'm not nearly old enough to have the Weather Channel running for hours on end. ;-) So I ended up watching VH1's "I Love the 90s Part Deux" for the last couple of weeks.

In a way, it's been kind of interesting because I've forgotten when things happened and this reminded me. Plus, I can mostly watch without sound, just hitting the button when something looks interesting. It's just a tiny bit too early for a retrospective of the late 90s, IMHO.

Anyway, to get to my point (yes, there is one), I was watching "I Love 97" last night and saw that was the year "Titanic" came out! EEK!!! Now I know I'm not much of a movie-goer, but I didn't realize it's been that long since I've seen a film in the theater. It sure doesn't seem like it's been about seven years. I've now declared it my resolution after I finish Through a Crimson Veil to go see a movie. Maybe even more than one if there's a few that are halfway decent playing.

My problem is that the movie does have to be something that can capture my interest and hold me for the time it's playing. I get bored easily and there are a lot of bad movies out there. I loved "Titanic," and even though it was long, I didn't have a problem. But I've also been to movies that were a lot shorter and bored me to death.

Doesn't matter, though. I'm putting it in writing here. I will see a movie after this book is turned in. :-)

MN Weather Report: 20 degrees. Wind Chill: 7 degrees. Mostly cloudy.

This whole post is going to be about my current problem with FrontPage. You've been warned. :-)

Edited to add: It is a firewall issue. I finally got the image to show up by clearing my cache and returning to the page. What I don't understand is why my other images that link off site aren't blocked out by Norton? Why just this one? Norton is also blocking images on blogger too. Like the little edit image that allows me to go from my blog to the edit screen in one click. Bizarre.

I'm having a major issue loading an image into my website. I have it uploaded to my server the page looks right when I view it at work where we run Windows Professional 2000, but I can't see the image on any of my home computers. Both computers have XP, one has SP2, the other does not. I've tried viewing it in IE and in Firefox, neither work. I do have the same firewall on both computers and I tried loading the page when it was disabled, but still no image.

I've tried coding by hand rather than using FrontPage and then using a different FTP program to upload the page. I've tried saving the picture as a jpeg and I've tried saving the image with a different name. None of this has worked. I loaded another image on my page at the same time and that image shows up just fine. The image that I can't make appear is hyperlinked to another website, but other images that I've hyperlinked to other sites still work.

When I view the source on the actual loaded web page, the html coding for the picture shows up on the computer at work where I can see the image. On the computers where I can't see the image, that line of code for the picture is missing. I'm totally perplexed right now and can't figure out why it's only this one image. I have no idea why this is happening or how to fix it.

I've also tried loading the image on another page in case it was an issue with the whole file, but that didn't work and this is the image that won't show up in my blog either on my home computers, but I can see the image at work. It's beginning to sound like an issue with the picture itself, but I figure out how or why. The page in question is The Power of Two page.

If anyone has a clue, I'd appreciate it if you could post a comment telling me what else to try. I'm about ready to run screaming through the house. ;-)

Thanks!

I'm still scratching my head over the image I tried to load on the blog yesterday. I'm wondering if it's not a Windows Service Pack 2 issue because I can see the picture on my computer at work. I have no clue how to fix it on the new laptop so I can see images it doesn't want me to see. :-(

But my frustration with images didn't end there. I tried to update my website yesterday afternoon and the picture I wanted to add simply won't go up. I tried it on two different pages in case it was a glitch on the page I really wanted it on. Viewed the source code and the line of HTML that would put the picture in isn't there. I checked my document, the code is in there.

Okay, so clearly something is off. I use a crutch when I'm coding because I need to save as much time as possible, but I do know how to program in HTML, so I did a little hand coding in notepad and tried to load it off another ftp program. Again, every line of code EXCEPT the line for the image shows up. So what's up with that? I finally gave up and just used text. Much easier since I can't figure this one out at all. (And the computer I do my website on doesn't have SP2 on it.)

Edited to add: ARGHHHH!!!! NOW the picture shows up. Or at least the code for the picture. I'd deleted the image off of my server during one of my attempts at fixing things, so now the red X for a missing picture shows up. I'll have to fix it at lunch or when I get home from work. I remain clueless.

My nocturnal demon writing continues. I can't even settle down mentally until somewhere around 8pm which is SO not good. I get up at 4am for the day job and I end up playing a beat the clock game. How much can I get written before my brain shuts down for the night? Yesterday I made it until 9:30. At least I can still write on lunch. After so many years of using that hour every weekday, the habit is so strong even my demons can't resist. :-)

MN Weather Report: 8 degrees. Wind Chill: 0. Forecast: I have no clue which more or less continues my theme for the day. ;-)

Yesterday went to show me how much I still had to learn about the publishing business. Not that I ever felt overly confident about my knowledge base. :-)

So what happened? I found out that my title is NOT Crimson Gate. When I received the email from the editorial assistant referring to the book by that name, I figured it was all set and that I just didn't know yet. Not the case. That was the title they were using in-house, but not the for real title. We worked that out in a couple of emails yesterday. So the official REAL title for my Crimson City story is Through a Crimson Veil. I like this much better!

Of course, I've already been using what I thought was my title, so I had to update my website and change my signature line in email. I have a few computers thanks, in part, to my laptop issues and I can only hope I remember to change the sig line on all of them. :-) At least I was only doing this for a couple of weeks. Could have been much worse. :-)

Yesterday ended up being a way cool day! Not only did I get a much better title for my book, I also discovered that The Power of Two was listed as one of the best books of 2004! This site also gave the book a fab review. :-)

I've linked to this site in the title of the blog and in this image, so if you want to check it out, it's just a click away. And if you want to check out the review TPOT received, I'm going to link to that as well. Power of Two review. I'm going to need to add this to my website tonight too. I definitely won't mind the work.

Edited to add: I can't figure out why the image isn't showing up in the blog after it's published when it clearly shows up in the preview. I don't have time to figure it out either, so I'm adding a link here to the best books page. Best Books of 2004.

Here's hoping today goes as fab as yesterday did!

MN Weather Report: 28 degrees. Wind Chill: 18 degrees. Forecast: Temperatures dropping all day. Predicted high for 3pm is 19 degrees (that's without the wind chill.)

If y'all have visited my website, you know I pick a theme song for each book. It wasn't something I set out to do, it kind of happened by accident. As I was revising my first book before I submitted it, I was playing a DEVO CD in my car and this song came on, Girl U Want. The lyrics just hit me and seemed to fit the book square on the money. From then on, I found Ravyn's Flight and Girl U Want entwined in my mind and when I put together my trivia page, it seemed right to include it. (Link to Lyrics)

I deliberately went searching for a theme song for The Power of Two. It took me a while to find one that fit and even then, it was the title more than the actual lyrics that worked for me. I heard this in the car too, on the 80s radio station I love so much: Corey Hart's Never Surrender.

Finding the song for Crimson Gate didn't take any effort on my part at all. :-) It was just there from the start; I didn't even have to turn on the radio. Again, it's the title, not the lyrics that fit. T-R-O-U-B-L-E by Travis Tritt. And that's exactly how Conor thinks of Mika.

I already have the theme song for my fourth book. That one kind of came on it's own too, although I had to dig the CD out of my collection since I didn't remember the words exactly. Never Tear Us Apart by INXS fits to a tee, but I don't know if in the book I'll ever explain exactly why it fits. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there. I'm not even close to getting back to this story right now.

BTW, on book 4, I'm very interested to see what the title ends up being since I never came up with a "real" title. I call it by one "joke" title and I turned it in with a second one. Have I mentioned how terrible I am at titling my books? It's complete torture.

Edited to add: Am I repeating myself? I just had this terrible sense that I'd picked this topic before. Ah, well. Whatever. I have to go to the day job. :-(

MN Weather Report: 27 degrees. Wind Chill: 18 degrees. Forecasted high: 36 degrees.

I've had laptop issues for so long now, that I forgot what it's like to not to swear at a computer every time I use it. =8-O Not that the switch over to the Vaio has been smooth. I also forgot how much work goes into setting up a new computer. I think I have most things the way I like it now, but it was a long road getting there.

The thing that is driving me nuts is all the little bubble reminders I get every time I boot up. Windows tells me I should set up automatic updates. Snort! Yeah, right, like I'm going to let them mess up my computer. I'll download the updates when I want to and stop telling me I'm out of date. Grrr.

After I get rid of that message, then another bubble pops up telling me my wireless network isn't set up. Well, that's a big DUH. I don't have a network, wireless or otherwise, and I won't be getting one any time soon. Why belabor the obvious???

It was kind of funny yesterday. I was updating the virus protection and firewall, which take forever, when the neighbor called. He wanted to know if I had power. This was about 4:15 in the afternoon and I was like, wow, your power is out? He said it had been out since noon. So I'm feeling all happy that I'm across the street and on a separate grid. It was less than 5 minutes later that my power went out too. :-( It was nearly an hour later before the lights came back on. I must have jinxed myself.

MN Weather Report: 21 degrees. Wind chill: 13 degrees.

I swore I wasn't going to waste money on another laptop when I had a laptop I really, really liked. All it needed to do was get fixed. Again. Grrr. The backup laptop was fine. No problems. Until the last few days.

The exact same things that I sent the backup laptop in to be fixed for once before have cropped up again. I'm so frustrated. So I did it. I hopped in the car and drove over to Best Buy and got a new laptop. Part of me is unhappy to have to spend this kind of money on yet another laptop. Another part of me is thrilled to have a new toy. I think the happy side will be submarined when the credit card bill comes. :-(

I went with the Sony Vaio, which came as a huge surprise to me. I was thinking I'd go with Toshiba or Compaq. But when I started playing in the store, it came down to the Sony and a Compaq. The deciding factor was the Vaio keyboard was more comfortable, and considering how much typing I do, that was a big point in its favor. I also got the maintenance agreement. Of course. Considering my luck with laptops, could I do anything else?

I'm making backup disks now since Sony doesn't include them with the laptop. That's a big minus in my book. Then I'll start loading the software I need to write and get going again. Setting everything up will be a PITA, but better than limping along on the backup laptop and it's worsening problems.

I gave myself permission not to write yesterday. This is the first time I've done that while on a deadline and I'm amazed I was able to do it without caving in. Of course, the fact I'm exhausted probably made it a little easier, as did the commute from hell I had yesterday afternoon. Once I made it home, all I wanted to do was collapse. :-)

I did read some more of what I'd already written in Crimson Gate. Made more notes to myself where I needed to add stuff and did some crossing out of the repetitive and/or unnecessary things. I still haven't finished making my way through all the chapters, but I really think this was a good thing to do because I'd forgotten a lot. Now I think I have a better idea of the threads I need to tie up in the last quarter of the book. At least I hope I do.

I slept until 10:45 this morning, but I'm still tired. Coffee hasn't added the spark of life yet. :-( But maybe I'll wake up after a shower.

Because I'm sure you're dying to know. We have about 4 inches of snow on the ground and it's still coming down. It took me 1 hour and 45 minutes to drive about 20 miles.

I hate MN.

This isn't going to be too interesting today. Sorry about that. I'm totally and completely exhausted. Beyond exhausted. And incapable of thinking of anything much to talk about. Except the weather. :-)

I was watching the news a couple of nights ago and they showed Miami, FL. It was 58 degrees there and people were putting sweaters on their dogs--Dalmations. Sigh. I found it absolutely hilarious that the people interviewed were talking about wearing winter clothes. You realize if it were 58 degrees here, we'd be running around in shorts, don't you?

But I can almost understand the wimpy attitude in FL. After all, they're used to heat. It's Boston that had me laughing. They showed people running into buildings to get away from the cold. It was -6 with the wind chill. Good grief. Boston should be used to cold, right? And for reasons why I find this so hysterically funny, please check the MN Weather Report at the end of each day's entry. We were having wind chills in the -26 range, and gee, the national news didn't find any need to make a big deal out of that. ;-)

Anyway, I tried to get to bed early last night, but while I put the computer away early, I didn't fall asleep any earlier. My plan for tonight is to sleep like 12 hours--or longer--whatever it takes to get my brain working again and then write like mad this weekend. My chant? It can all be fixed on revision.

MN Weather Report: 20 degrees. Wind chill: 12 degrees. Forecast: 3-5 inches of snow. (I have mentioned winter is my own personal hell, right?)

I downloaded Firefox to use as an internet browser because of some computer issues I was having with the backup laptop. (I won't recap my adventures with computers. Let's just say it's been a arduous few months with both laptops and leave it at that.) It's been in the last few days that I've started trying to use Firefox full time, but I don't know if I'm going to stick with it. There are definitely a ton of features about it that I like, but there's also some things about it that are driving me insane. The biggest is the text size issue. On IE, I would just set my browser to have the text large and it stayed large. On Firefox, I have to adjust it constantly, and here on blogger, while the rest of the page is large text, the stuff I'm writing in here is itty bitty font. With the hours I spend on the computer, both at the day job and writing, eye strain is an issue and Firefox is adding to it.

The other thing that's driving me insane is those Javascript windows some sites use. Firefox just plain won't open them. Yes, I downloaded the extension involved in this thing. I click on the link that should bring up the window and Firefox opens a new tab and does nothing else. I finally downloaded an extension that allows me to open the page in IE. Once I open it in IE, the window opens without any problems.

There are things I really like about it too. I have an extension with little weather icons at the bottom of my screen so I know it's freezing drizzle outside right now and I'm going to need to leave early for work this morning. I also have another extension that lets me add smilies and other faces. I can create tiny URL's and do instant searches on a gazillion different sites.

The big thing, though, is I really love the tabbed browsing. So much nicer than having a ton of windows open, especially since I'm on the ME laptop. Which I hate.

Anyway, I'm going to keep trying to get used to this thing because it has security advantages over IE too, but the two drawbacks I listed are pretty big annoyances for me.

I suppose I should mention writing. Okay, I totally freaked out yesterday and am still hyperventilating when I think about my demons. My optimism has plunged; I'm now sure the book totally sucks and I don't know who I'm trying to fool anyway. It's probably best not to share just how neurotic I am right now.

My best news of the day? I discovered that the Boomtown Rats will have "The Fine Art of Surfacing" and "Mondo Bongo" out on CD February 7th. I preordered from Amazon. I lurvvvv The Boomtown Rats.

MN Weather report: 18 degrees. Wind chill: 9 degrees. Freezing drizzle.

Like the hypochondriac who had, "I told you I was sick" inscribed on his tombstone, I feel like saying, "I told you I was tired." ;-) I didn't hear the alarm for nearly an hour this morning and now I'm really, really running late.

Finished the scene (and the chapter) I was was working on yesterday and I'm now on the final stretch in this book. There is light at the end of the tunnel--but it's called revision. Things are fabulously bleak between Conor and Mika, there's been a murder, and there's a nice, moody scene in Conor's POV. At least I hope it's nice and moody.

Read through the first 5 chapters yesterday and they might not totally suck. I made notes in the margins for stuff I wanted to add and/or fix or think about some more, but for the most part, I think it's a solid start. And I feel like hitting the backspace key, afraid I'm jinxing myself by typing that. =8-O

Edited to Add:

MN Weather Report: 17 Degrees. Wind Chill: 1 degree. Wind 18 mph, gusting to 26 mph.

Quick note.

I visited the Ravyn's Flight page today at Amazon.com and holy cow! Someone is charging $17.95 for a copy of the book! =8-O Yikes! And there's a waiting list of 3 people.

Um, if anyone is looking for a copy. Bookstore Junkies. They're a group of readers (and some used book store owners) who look for books for other people. When someone finds a book, they charge only what they paid for it (usually about half) and shipping. Much better deal.

I'm trying to remember all the things I needed to cover and/or add to this chapter I'm working on and wish I'd started another list. I know I'm going to forget something. I'll probably end up going back and adding stuff later and I've already got two items in this category.

On yesterday's dilemma, I just decided to finish writing that stuff and then go in the direction that took me. It doesn't take up that much room and I can always cut later.

Very tired. Words don't even begin to describe how exhausted I am today. Two nights in a row with little sleep are making themselves felt and I keep thinking, why can't I win the lottery? I mean aside from the fact that I never buy a ticket. :-/

MN Weather: 4 degrees. Wind chill: -12 degrees. Forecast: 1-3 inches of snow mixed with sleet. Winds 20-30 mph.

Okay, so here's the thing. I'm writing this scene and recapping something that happens offstage. It's not a huge deal, but if I were a reader and I didn't hear what happened, I'd be looking to see if I'd missed pages. On the other hand, it's not that big a deal and I hate to waste a page or two on it, although it does reveal characterization and a bit about the state of the relationship between Conor and Mika. So I'm torn.

I have thought of the third alternative--to be really sketchy--however if I were the reader, I'd want the details I've put in. Guess I'll finish writing it and see how it fits in overall to the story. I can always cut later. Write and cut. Sigh.

I printed out all the finished chapters for Crimson Gate this weekend and I'll start reading through them tomorrow. I haven't reread anything since I finished chapter 2, I think, so this might be scary. Usually, I reread a lot more than this, but I just haven't had time. And yeah, I know I shouldn't be here posting again, but I'm thinking and sometimes it helps to think out loud. So to speak. :-)

Speaking of thinking, I've had my paranormal on my mind lately. My other paranormal since I guess CG qualifies in this category too. It's at least a book and a quarter down the road since I have to finish CG and the spin off from my first book (I call it RFS for Ravyn's Flight: The Sequel, but that's not the title I turned it in with. Um, that's another joke title, Temple of Dreams as in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I hate coming up with names for books. But I digress.)

Okay, so I've been thinking about my paranormal. I totally love this story. I came off Power of Two completely burnt out, I mean I was toasted, but Ryne had been talking to me for weeks as I pushed to finish TPOT. (Fortunately, not interfering with the writing of TPOT.) All I wanted to do was crash after I mailed that book off. And I couldn't. Ryne pushed hard, so instead of resting like I should have, I was sitting with the laptop, writing. Once I got about four pages or so down, then I was able to take a couple of weeks off, but I was right back on this story immediately afterward.

I've never had a story pushing at me like that. Maybe it's because Ryne is over-the-top kick-ass. That's her issue. But there's some great stuff between her and her sister too. And her learning to stand with someone instead of always in front of them, defending them. See? I'm getting excited about this story again and it's at least a year out, minimum. Plus, I want to finish revising my romantic suspense proposal too. I've been wanting to write this story for more than 10 years. So many stories, so little time. :-(

And on that note, back to thinking about CG.

Had another great writing day. Did a little over eleven pages. I could have written more, except it was late and I have to go to work today. :-( The scene is pretty dialogue heavy, I think, but I'll layer things in later. This is one of those scenes that covers a lot of ground, but has to have enough depth to each subject raised to feel complete. Anyway, I was able to torture Mika and Conor all day yesterday, so I had fun even if they didn't. :-)

I also realized something that worries me. I seem to write better (and faster) late in the evening rather than during the day. This wouldn't be a big problem except that I have the day job :-( and the alarm goes off at 4am. :-( So starting to write at 7pm and going for three hours isn't good. I was able to write on TPOT earlier in the day without any difficulty, I wonder why CG is proving to be different?

MN Weather Report: -8 degrees. Wind chill: -21 degrees.

Yesterday was a totally fab writing day! Ended up doing about 14 pages, which is a lot for me. I'm a slow writer and tend to take time trying to think of how I want to word stuff or what I'd like to happen next (and by next, I mean in the next paragraph). Usually, 8 pages is good on a full writing day to give a little perspective. I took Conor from contentment to suspicion and set things up for the next scene. Let the full scale torture begin. :-)

Actually, while I am looking forward to what happens in this next scene, writing it is going to be difficult. It's one of those pivotal parts of the book and has to be handled right which means I'll be doing more thinking as I write. I'm still hopeful things will go well today.

MN Weather Report: -6 degrees. Wind chill: -17 degrees. Sunny.

I have a confession to make. I'm a horrible font slut. It's not a new problem, but computers have made it much, much worse. I have more than half a dozen font sites bookmarked and I routinely have Microsoft Works throwing messages about having more than 500 fonts.

This, however, is not my dilemma. I have no desire to kick my font habit and it's nice to have choices when creating graphics for the website. Which brings me to my problem. I'm trying to change colors on some of my web pages. I've already switched the Ravyn's Flight pages to olive green in order to match the book cover. Now I want to change The Power of Two to blue. Not just because blue would match TPOT's cover, but because Crimson Gate should have the crimson background I used for TPOT, right?

Here's where the dilemma comes in. I have to redo the title for TPOT and I can't remember which font I used. :-( That on its own wouldn't be that big a deal. I have a nifty free program called Font List which puts every font that's on your computer into an html document. Then I just scroll through and find what I want. Here's what the problems are. I don't remember which computer I used to create the graphics. :-( Again, not an insurmountable difficulty on its own, but it's compounded. Both my desktop and my "good" laptop have had their hard drives wiped.

I saved all the fonts off my laptop before I sent it in to be fixed and reloaded them, but the font isn't in that group. Okay, that must mean it came from the desktop. I wiped that one myself to do a clean install of XP. I'm not sure if I saved those fonts or not. I might have decided not to since I have so many on the laptop. I also have a 500 font disk. Loaded that and the one I want isn't there. I also have about three graphics programs and that's where it starts getting really ugly. Is this font from one of those programs? This is at least a finite number and I know right where those disks are. I'll check them later.

The worst case scenario is it's a free font that I downloaded from somewhere on the internet. All of the font sites I have marked have huge collections. So which of those sites did I download from or did I find it on some site that I didn't bother to bookmark? And if it is on one of those sites, where do I find the time to scan through their fonts? What if I miss it because of fatigue? Or because they used a different set of letters than what I used for TPOT? See how horrible this is becoming? I tried Identi-Font. That didn't come up with the name of the font for me either.

I finally got smart and started using the name of the font in the title of the graphic because it's pretty obvious I'm not going to remember and if I write it down, I'll never remember where I put the paper. But this doesn't help me with things I've done in the past. You'd think I would know better than to ever trust my memory. :-(

Edited to add: I found the font! Hurrah!!!

In brighter news, the scene that I had to cut and redo does work. Or at least I think it does. And I've moved on to the next scene in the chapter.

MN Weather Report: Temperature -12 degrees. Wind Chill: -24 degrees. I am so happy I don't have to go anywhere today!

So I've been seeing ads for Panasonic's Toughbook laptop. This thing looks like it can really take a beating and keep working. I'm apparently kind of hard on my laptops, probably just from the amount of typing/time I spend on them. I'm actually pretty careful not to drop or damage the computer. In fact, as I mince my way across the icy parking lot at work, I've even thought about how to fall so that the laptop was safe. :-) Hey! MY STORIES are on it! I visited the Panasonic website and did a little pricing on these things. GAH! They're about $1000 more than a "normal" laptop. A few hundred dollars, I'd probably go for it, but $1000? Nope, can't do that.

Cutting the legend/book stuff out of the scene yesterday seems to have helped. I won't have the final verdict until I reread it. I'm hoping to do that after I finish with this note. It doesn't have to be perfect, the rhythm just has to work. I fleshed out a few of the beginning parts too and I need some description-type details, but blech. I 'll wait and do it on one of my revision runs. The second scene in this chapter needs some work/fleshing out too, but at least it's only a couple of pages, so I didn't go too far astray. This is a scene I've been waiting and waiting to write, so you can bet characters are being emotionally tortured. heh heh heh.

Speaking of tough enough, your MN Weather Report: -11 degrees (yes, minus) Wind Chill: -26 degrees. It's one of those days where I wish I were a bear so I could just sleep until this hell is over.

Sigh. Here we go again. I'm going to end up cutting pages out of a scene I thought was finished on Tuesday. I read through it and it just bothered me. Something was off, but I couldn't figure out what. It finally came to me last night as I was lying in bed. (I lose more pages in my mind before I fall asleep!) The legend stuff had to go.

It was a good idea when I was trying to think of what I wanted to do in the scene, but it just doesn't fit. It slows everything down and is pointless. I cringe at the thought of cutting more, but sometimes we have to do the painful. Who says authors aren't tough? :-/

More snow yesterday evening and I'm going to have to leave the house early this morning. Again. And we're about to go in the deep freeze with high temperatures that won't go above zero until maybe next week.

MN Weather Report: 21 degrees. Wind Chill: 6 degrees.

The title of this post is in reference to the post office motto. I feel like that today. Only mine would say something about neither lack of sleep nor killer sinus headache or sleet and freezing rain preventing me from writing. :-) Gah! I don't even know if what I wrote yesterday makes sense because by the time I got home from work, I could hardly see straight. I'm still not seeing straight and I have to leave the house really early for work because we have freezing drizzle outside now. Is there anything more fun to drive in? Especially through a freeway construction zone?

I'm trying to prioritize email right now. I have half a gazillion--or so it seems--that I either need to reply to or send. I'm not getting to all of them before I have to leave for work, so who can wait and who can't is the question.

Anyway, I'd appreciate y'all keeping your fingers crossed that the sinus meds actually start working (they didn't yesterday) and that what I wrote is not only coherent, but at least somewhat interesting. To add to my joy, it's staff meeting day at work. Sigh.

MN Weather Report: 28 degrees. Wind Chill: 21 degrees. Freezing drizzle.

I frequently whine about the weather, but then I live in MN and it's January. Need I say more?

So far it hasn't been a horrible winter, but apparently that's about to change. It snowed yesterday--about an inch. It's supposed to snow today--maybe 2 inches. It's supposed to snow tonight--2 to 4 inches. Tomorrow we're rewarded with freezing rain, sleet and snow. Then, to add insult to injury, the temperatures plummet with our longest protracted cold snap since 1997. Friday the high is supposed to be -10. Note the MINUS sign in front of the 10. That's the HIGH temperature. Without wind chill. I feel like running away from home.

I wasted time yesterday updating the pages on my website for Ravyn's Flight. I've been getting lots of email asking where people can find a copy. I used to direct everyone to half.com, but as of last night, they didn't have any copies and the used booksellers on Amazon are gouging, asking for $9.99 and up for the book. So I changed my links on the book from Amazon to a page directing them to Bookstore Junkies, Half or eBay.

While I was at it, I changed the background color on the page which meant I had to create matching graphics and change the scrollbar as well. The bad thing is that I really like playing with the website. A lot. Enough that I can spend hours and hours tinkering and not write. Pretty much what I did yesterday. Although I was kind of stuck and this was a nice excuse not to deal with that. I talked to a friend last night, though, and I think I know what I'm going to do now. I also tweaked chapter 11 so that I could send it and chapter 12 out to my writing buddies. What I really, really need to do is find time to print out what I have and reread the thing in its entirety to see how repetitive I am. And to see what's missing. Add and cut. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm extra tired this morning even though I didn't go to bed all that late. :-( And I have to leave the house early because of the damn snow. All I want is the weather pattern for the entire US to change--is that too much to ask? I don't see any reason why MN shouldn't be warm enough year round for palm trees. Off to work. :-(

Sunday was another day with computer issues. Have I mentioned I hate Windows ME? I'm still working on the backup laptop because the "good" laptop is still having keyboard issues and I don't have time to waste another hour on the phone trying to convince someone hundreds of miles away that it's a hardware issue, not software. So yesterday I decide to try a different virus protection program because Norton live update hasn't worked in weeks. I've been going over to their site and manually updating every day, which is kind of a pain. Only once I get this new virus program up and uninstall Norton, I can't get any email. :-(

Rebooting and the million other things I tried didn't help, so I dig out my Norton disk again and reload. And believe it or not, this time live update is working. =8-O Of course, I also have to do all the updates to my software which took forever and required half a gazillion reboots. It was then that I discover my ISP is having email issues. It wasn't the virus software. This is like the second time in years on this ISP that I've had a problem and the first that it was systemwide like this. But finally I started receiving email and all is right with the world again. I'm just not sure if I'll be able to handle not going to the Symantec site every day for updates. ;-)

I still managed to revise the end of chapter 12 to include the stuff from chapter 13 and still write 7 new pages. I wanted to write one more, but I ran into another "powers" issue for my demons and had to stop and think. Plus, it was almost 9pm and I decided to sleep. I still have no answers for my question, but on the positive side, I feel better than I usually do on Monday mornings. :-)

MN Weather Report: 9 degrees. Wind Chill: 0 degrees.

It was a great writing day yesterday. I did 8 pages and I didn't even start until after 3pm, so I was pretty happy. Except the reason I didn't write more than 8 pages was because the scene was working out to be extremely short. I figured it was because I was tired and I'd hit it again this morning. Only last night, while I was trying to fall asleep, I worked out what the problem is. I need to move those pages at the start of chapter 13 to the end of chapter 12. And shorten them up by cutting out about 2 pages.

All right, let's face it, anyone who's seen the length of my books (and the small type face that they were set in) knows that I can certainly afford to cut. Despite my best efforts, I know I'm going to come in long again on Crimson Gate too. I honestly don't know why I always end up with so many pages, but my writing buddy says it's because I'm really into characterization and that takes room. Well, I am into my characters; they're the fun part about writing. :-)

But I hate to cut pages because of my schedule. I need to do 4 pages a day, every day to stay on track and have revision time. Of course, more pages are always better. It's a silly reason to hate cutting. I know when I start revising, I'll be doing a hell of a lot of trimming. (Unfortunately, a hell of a lot of adding too.) I have a list of things I need to add and then, of course, is the dreaded description/details.

Anyway, I budgeted my time for 400 manuscript pages, so it'll be interesting to see how many pages OVER that I go when the book is mailed in to the editor. Maybe I should do a pool! Ravyn's Flight went in at 412 and I added the epilogue on editor requested revisions for a grand total of around 420 pages. The Power of Two was mailed in at 423 pages, and after editor requested revisions and revisions I wanted to make, came in at a hefty 463 pages. =8-O

So does anyone want to hazard a guess on Crimson Gate? I'm betting on around 430 pages mailed in. Of course, maybe the story will move faster than I think since we're nearly to the point where all hell is going to start breaking loose. On the other hand, I always write more than I think I'm going to write.

MN Weather Report: 25 degrees. Wind Chill: 15 degrees. Freezing drizzle.

I had a friend point out last night that Crimson Gate was due on the Ides of March and saying that was a bad omen. I had to laugh over that since I am so looking forward to finishing this story and having a couple of weeks where I don't have to worry about deadlines. I am enjoying these characters and the story, even when they're driving me nuts, but I'm tired of not being able to do anything except write. I'm already making a list of things I want to do once the book is turned in.

Buy shoes! Okay, so I am a shoe slut, but I really need a pair of extra comfortable black flats to wear at conferences or at work. I only have one pair that fall into this category and I need a second.

Visit the scrapbook store. We have a huge store here, several of them actually, called Archivers and they're all about scrapbooking. I seem to have gotten into this in a big way, at least as far as materials go, and I'd love to see what other kinds of supplies are available.

Scrapbook! I've had zero time to scrapbook since March 2004. I haven't finished putting together my Ravyn's Flight book and now I have a ton of stuff for The Power of Two. I need to at least get the first scrapbook finished.

Go to a movie. The last movie I saw in the theater was "Titanic" so that should give you an idea how seldom I go to movies, but I want to just lose myself in a story for a while and let it sweep over me.

Read books. I was trying to think of the last book I read and couldn't come up with a title or a time frame. The problem is that I used to read on lunch while I was at work or when I got home from work and those are now writing times. My TBR pile is backed up to hell and gone and I've stopped buying anyone that isn't a must-buy author. I have friends' books backed up in the pile too and I feel embarrassed that I can't say I've read their latest.

I have other things on my list that are less fun than this. The problem is that I only get a short time off and then I'll be working on my next book. I'm not sure I can squeeze everything in that I'd like to do, especially when I'll be exhausted coming off this deadline. I'm already exhausted. :-( But dreaming about free time is making me happy right now, so I'm going to keep coming up with ideas on how to spend my two weeks. The Ides of March seem a long way off.

It's been one of those weeks where everyone seems to be conspiring against me. Or at least conspiring to steal my precious writing time. It's been every day this week, but the big days were Wednesday and Thursday.

Wednesday was the email requesting information for the cover to Crimson Gate. Now there is no way I'm not putting my two cents in about this, even if I mainly care about how accurate the characters look, but this ended up being quite time consuming.

Thursday was worse. I had 10 emails in my inbox, I flagged all but one as being important to answer. Basically, it means not chatty emails from friends, but business kind of emails. That was before I got home from work yesterday. My load increased then. Including a note from my agent requesting I update my bio. Not the one for the books or my website, but the one she sends out with my proposals to editors.

Can I tell you how much I hate doing bios? I'm boring. Still, it was mostly written already. I just had to do a tiny bit of tweaking. Until I reached my publishing credits. I needed to add Crimson Gate and the spin off to Ravyn's Flight. This ended up being an ordeal that took a couple of hours of trial and error. And since it was miserable work, I was in avoidance mode which means screwing around, visiting all kinds of websites. I finally finished it some time after 10pm.

I still have four flagged notes left in my inbox--there was just no time to get to them--and I shudder to think what will come in today's email.

Unfortunately, I made an appointment to get my haircut tomorrow. It's reached the unbearable stage and I thought it would be safe to take a couple of hours off from writing to get it done. That was before I was deluged.

MN Weather Report: 8 degrees. Wind Chill: -5 degrees. We might get all the way up to 22 today. Hurrah!

Yesterday I found out what my title for my Crimson City story is going to be. Crimson Gate. I thought it was going to be something else since I liked the editor's original suggestion, and with it being his idea and all, I figured it was a done deal. Guess he changed his mind. :-)

I liked the other title better, but I'll have to let this one settle in my mind for a while and see what I think then. Good thing I didn't post anything on my website until I received official word.

Last night, I also needed to work on the information for the cover art. I'm not a visual person. I rarely "see" anything when I write and get almost everything by "hearing" the h/h. That's why I always try to find models out on the internet that match the character. I may not see them, but when I find the right picture, I always seem to know it. This time Mika was the easy one to find and it took longer to find the right Conor.

So my idea of giving them art information is to pass on pictures of my h/h, describe them in detail, including attitude and what they like to wear. The art department likes setting information too so I try to pass that along, but that's another one of those things that's a challenge for me since I don't see stories.

And it's a challenge to write because when I read, I skip description almost entirely. It's also something I go back and add to my own stories on one of my revision runs before I turn the book in. As a reader, I want very bare bones description/detail because I create my own scene in my head and I hate it when the author's vision interferes with my vision. :-)

My first draft appalls my writing buddy who loves detail. The finished version of my stories has more detail than I like as a reader. Since I still hear detail people complaining about my sketchiness, I guess I'm still not adding enough, but it's almost more than I can stand. I like to reread my books to revisit with the h/h and I skip the description in my own stories. :-)

MN Weather Report: 6 degrees. Wind chill: -5 degrees.

The back from the holidays craziness continued yesterday. I was running around for about five hours after I got to work yesterday, trying to get stuff done. Finally, got the maintenance specialist off to his meeting and then it calmed down a little. The afternoon was back to normal. I'm hoping it stays that way today.

Yesterday was also one of those days where things kept conspiring to keep me from writing, but somehow I managed to get my scheduled pages in. I was hoping to do more, though. :-( Maybe today, although I should be reaching another sex scene and those take me forever to write.

MN Weather Report: 3 degrees. Wind chill: -12 degrees. But I'm not complaining. The weather guy said this cold air kept the snow to our south. Parts of Iowa received 12 inches.

I don't know what it is about the first week after the holidays, but people go insane. Last week, it was a nice, quiet week. No phone calls, no requests that left me harried. Then, boom! I know a lot of people had last week off, but not everyone. (The airline industry is a 365 day a year operation.) So were these people just saving this stuff up, waiting for the new year?

From like 10:30 on yesterday I felt like I needed to hand out numbers, and of course, everyone needed their stuff ASAP. Sigh. On top of my usual lack of sleep on Sunday night and my killer headache (I still blame AC/DC), I was wiped out early. I ended up just heading for bed about 8:30.

I did, however, make progress yesterday with the demons. ;-) What I figured out as I lay in bed Sunday night turned out to work wonderfully and I made up the ground I lost over the weekend. Didn't gain any ground, which would have been nice, but after the day I had yesterday, I was satisfied. I'm hoping to do a few extra pages today. I know two more things I want to cover in this scene and I know--or I think I know--how I want to end this chapter.

What's hard to believe is looking at the calendar and realizing that in about a month, I should have the first draft done. =8-O If I stay on schedule. That would give me about five weeks to revise and I already know I'm going to have a lot of work to do. I'm actually looking forward to it, believe it or not, and for someone who normally hates revision, that's an interesting turn of events.

One of the things that's hard for me is I fall between two different kinds of writers. There is one type that revises as they go, and when they reach the end, they're done. I wish I could do that, but it's never going to happen. Things just pop up as I write that I don't know about at the beginning of the story and I have to revise to foreshadow them or to bring them in earlier. Or I just plain forget stuff. I have a pad of paper that I jot down notes to myself on as I go along of all the things I need to add and/or do on revision.

The second type of writer just spits out the first draft in a matter of weeks and then goes back and revises. I can't do that either. I do a lot of thinking as I write and I do a bit of revision as I reread a scene. I also do go back and revise if one of my writing buddies finds something that I consider major. That would be anything that would affect story structure or characters. I can't just spit out a draft in a matter of weeks. Actually, on a work day, 4 pages as a goal is really pushing it for me.

Normally, I try not to compare myself to other writers, but there's been a lot of chatter on a loop right now about exactly this, and since I don't fall into either camp, I'm freaking out every time I think about it. And I do mean freaking out to the point where I have to take deep breaths and tell myself the kind of things I said in this post. It's one thing to get it mentally, but apparently this is some emotional trigger thing. :-(

MN Weather Report: 14 degrees. Wind chill: 3 degrees. High Temp for the day: 18 degrees. Glaze ice/snow continues to cover neighborhood streets.

I can't believe it's Monday. Again. Sometimes I wonder if I'm not caught in some cruel "Groundhog Day" kind of loop where every morning is Monday morning and I have the whole work week to get through again. And again.

The alarm went off this morning before 4am and the sadistic radio station was playing AC/DC "Back In Black." How can anyone play that song at 4am? And I'm so tired that it takes me half the song to figure out it is the radio and not some horrible nightmare that I have to endure. I hit the snooze the instant my brain woke up enough to figure out I could stop my own torture. ;-) Now, however, I have a massive headache and I'm sure it's from heavy metal in the morning.

It doesn't help any that I want to stay home and write today. Of course, it's the scene where the truth comes out that I want to write, not what I'm working on now. I lay in bed last night and I was getting all kinds of stuff. I'm sure by the time I actually reach that scene, I won't remember any of this. Um, TBH, I'm not sure I remember much of it now. :-( I'm hoping that's just an early morning brain dead thing and I'll get some of it back.

I've had a few people ask why I don't just skip ahead and write what I'm getting, then go back and write the stuff in between. It doesn't work that way for me. Everything my characters do and say builds on what came before. When I was writing my first book, I would hurry up and scribble out a scene that was later in the story only to discover when I reached that point that I either couldn't use it at all or I could only use it with massive rewriting. Since it only costs me time, I don't do that any more. I will jot down some bare bones kind of thoughts, but not the detailed, actual scene.

Yesterday was an absolutely crummy writing day. I thought I knew enough about what I wanted to do in the scene I was working on, but after I went to bed last night, I realized I didn't and that was why I'd had such a problem. I also figured out where to cut and start over. Of course, this was about 11pm and I couldn't get back up and work on it. Another reason to resent having to go in to work this morning.

MN Weather Report: 7 degrees. Wind chill: -2 degrees. High temperature: 17 degrees. Side roads still covered with snow and ice.

It took me until 10:30 last night, but I finally made it to the end of the chapter. And Mika and Conor finally got to come. :-) The scene is rougher than hell and I'm going to have to do a lot of work on it, but it's there and I have something to work with. That's the important thing.

I should say "poor" Mika and Conor, but I'm not going to. They made this scene a living hell for me and they deserve all the frustration they received. Ha!

Have I mentioned before that I have this little motto when it comes to my characters? It's goes something like, "Torture them before they torture me." I think we were mutually torturing each other through this scene. I, however, get the last laugh because I know what's coming a chapter or two down the road. Conor and Mika better enjoy this while they can. (Insert evil laughter here.)

Edited to add: I figured out how to put LINKS on my blog! Hurrah! I added a link to my website (of course), a link to the Crimson City site, a link to one of my favorite romance reader bulletin boards, a link to my publisher's romance page, a link to one of the funniest movie shorts I've seen. It involves an airplane and a freeway. Great stuff IF you have high speed internet. If you're on dial up like me, well, do you have a friend with high speed? And my last link is to a site that has some very general information on Army Special Forces (AKA The Green Berets). I thought I'd add this since I've written 2 books so far with heroes from this branch.

MN Weather Report: 15 degrees. Wind chill 1 degree. Sunny. Roads (and lawns) are covered with ice and snow.

I slept and slept and slept!

No parties last night, I didn't even make it until midnight. But I did sleep for nearly 12 hours. I wasn't even aware I was that exhausted until I woke up and saw the time.

Now I'm having a hard time getting myself started this morning. Okay, I admit it, I have a hard time getting myself started ANY morning, but I feel more sluggish than usual. Probably from all that sleep.

Nothing too interesting to share. I wrote about 7 pages yesterday and Mika and Conor still didn't have sex. I hadn't planned for the foreplay to go on for this long, but whatever. :-) Hopefully, they'll get down to it today and I'll finish the chapter.

MN Weather Report: 22 degrees. Wind chill 10 degrees. Snow/sleet/freezing rain.