My dad called to let me know that the table has a chip in it and one of the two replacement chairs still rocks. Big, huge, enormous sigh.

Yes, I overslept. Again. The only thing in my favor is the massive rain storm we were supposed to have drenching us wrapped around the Twin Cities, leaving us in the middle of a drier "eye." This is good since I'm obviously not going to be leaving the house early this morning--not when I'm still drinking coffee.

Today is table delivery day. I've got my fingers crossed that nothing rocks since I had so much trouble with two of the chairs.

No Gaelic dictionary yet. I've taken to typing something along the lines of (put Gaelic word here) and moving on. I swear Amazon must have sent this one by pack mule--from Scotland.

And I think my brain is still sleeping this morning. Oh, well. Fortunately, the day job doesn't require any use of my mind. Maybe I'll write more later.

Now that I know Blogger's spell check can fix potpourri if I spell it wrong, I can use it as a title.

Taxes went well yesterday, so I ordered my bar stools for the counter off my kitchen island. It floored me how much these things are, but I found a hell of a deal--2 for the price of 1--but the website said it was only good through March 30th. I'm set now though. The backs of the stools match my table set, but the color of the wood is going to be different. I'm slightly worried about that, but I do like to combine woods.

Here's a picture of the bar stools:


The taxes took forever, though, and by the time I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was go out to an office surplus store to look for bookcases, so I didn't.

Not much else to talk about, but I found a fun quiz on Candice's Blog this morning, so I did that.

You Should Be a Film Writer

You don't just create compelling stories, you see them as clearly as a movie in your mind. You have a knack for details and dialogue. You can really make a character come to life. Chances are, you enjoy creating all types of stories. The joy is in the storytelling. And nothing would please you more than millions of people seeing your story on the big screen!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

I don't know if I mentioned this here or not, but Deke, my hero in the WIP, is a former LAPD officer turned private investigator. I've done some research in the past about the LAPD and read a book on a rookie officer's first year that was really good. (Boot by William C. Dunn) I really didn't think I'd need much info, though, on Deke's time on the force or his job as a PI. Well, I was wrong.

It turns out that I am going to need to know a fair amount about being a PI, so I headed online to find something along the lines of Private Investigators for Dummies. Fortunately, I found a couple of books that fit the bill. Unfortunately, the most helpful book of the lot was cheaper at Amazon than at BN.com, so I ordered it from Amazon. Why unfortunately? Because Amazon's free shipping thing is slow. Very slow. They told me forever ago that my Gaelic dictionary shipped as well as my copy of Liz's Crimson Rogue, but neither shipment has arrived yet. I seriously need this PI book soon, but I can't see spending the money for faster shipping. Yes, I'm cheap. I loathe shipping charges and have been known to cancel an order if they're too high.

So I'll wait, and I'll write and I'll hope that I can guess the proper way to handle an investigation by using my TV PI skills and logic. :-) This could be scary!

Last night, someone posted a link to an intelligence test and I went over there to check it out. There are 33 questions and 19 or more right is excellent. I started filling in the ones I knew. I had 14. I worked at it, came up with some more, had a total of 18. I wanted 19. I wasn't going to bed until I came up with one more answer. It was a long stretch of thinking. ;-) I did, however, finally come up with 19 and I didn't cheat! Unless you count looking up how to spell millennium--I always forget that second N.

I'm off from the day job today to get my taxes done. The guy is way out in St. Paul and because traffic is a bitch, I always make my appointment for after the morning rush hour and so that I get done before the evening rush hour kicks off. I'm actually hoping to get out of there in time to swing by an office surplus store and buy a couple of cheap bookcases. Maybe find a new modular desk for the computer room.

The excitement just doesn't stop!

I was going to title this post potpourri, but I wasn't sure I could spell it right or that Blogger's spell check would have the correct spelling. (Okay, I take back what I said about spell check. I did have the word wrong and Blogger did correct it. Yea!)

I found out on Saturday that Through a Crimson Veil is a finalist in the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence! Paranormal category, of course. They don't have the info up on their website yet, though, so I can't link to it.

The furniture store called yesterday and--GASP--my table is ready to be delivered on Friday! I trust y'all will forgive my skepticism? This is one of those things that I'll believe when I see it with my own two eyes. They're also bringing out the replacement chairs for the two that rock. Let's hope that the new chairs--and the table--are solid and stationary.

I think the scene I need, but have been having so much trouble with, may just be working. I'm almost afraid to type that for fear of jinxing it. Now I'm worried that I'm having too much character stuff and not enough plot stuff. The characters fascinate me, but plot, well, it's necessary. ;-)

And the gas company did send me a check. It arrived on Friday. My next bill arrived yesterday. Easy come, easy go.

Figured out a way to end an earlier chapter. I don't know if I mentioned it here or not, but I had this plan and it didn't work. No matter how many different ways I wrote the scene in the next chapter it was boring. So I gave up and wrote something else which I thought was fun and did work. But that left me with a problem for the end of the earlier chapter--my semi-dramatic conclusion didn't work any longer. After considering this for a while, I finally came up with a new end to the chapter which takes care of the second problem my abrupt change in direction caused. I worried it might be pretty stupid, but my friend insists it's humorous and a nice, light ending to the chapter. We'll see.

I also fixed the problem my friend had with the end of the chapter I finished this weekend. There's something that feels good about having those chapter endings settled.

Unfortunately, I cut everything I'd written on Saturday. It was boring, so it's gone. Time will tell if this new version is more interesting, but at least it has dialogue and not a ton of introspection. :-)

And in a total change of subject, I found an interesting website. Movie Lens has you rate some movies, then it will make recommendations of other movies you might enjoy seeing based on the ratings of other members with similar tastes. I was a little surprised to read the info and discover that it's run by the University of Minnesota. At least some group at the university.

I signed up last night even though I rarely watch movies and did some ratings while I watched the special report on CNN about sleep.

The oil change actually went quickly yesterday! Just over an hour. Usually, they leave me sitting, and I've learned to bring plenty with me to do. Yesterday, I chose to bring the Alphasmart Dana with me, thinking I'd get some writing done--or at the very least, some worldbuilding. It ended up being worldbuilding. There were two men already in the waiting area, Muzak on the loud speakers and a steady stream of people walking back and forth just feet from where I sat. Not a conducive atmosphere for creative writing.

I mentioned that I don't like my Dana much and a lot of that has to do with the keyboard. After a while, though, I started getting used to it and it wasn't so bad. I'm not sure that it's something I'd chose to write on regularly, but I think I might be able to do it now. As I was working, I had two people stop and ask me what that thing was. :-) Good thing I wasn't writing because that would have pulled me out of the groove.

On the worldbuilding, I hadn't put any of it down before--it's all been in my head--so I think it was a good thing to do. There's something about writing down ideas that solidifies them for me and helps me figure things out. Yesterday, what I started questioning was relationships between these different groups in my magical society. What is each group's function? Can the skills overlap? And that helped when I got home and went to work on my story.

As I was typing up information about the world, time flew by. I was amazed when I heard the car was ready. Not only did they change the oil, but they checked the muffler (nothing was wrong with it) and they found a tire with a slow leak. There are a gazillion nails around my new house, and despite my dad's obsessive effort to pick them all up, I had one lodged in the right front tire. So they plugged that and rotated the tires around.

I didn't get a chance to finish getting my worldbuilding information down, but I think I might pick up where I left off when I go to have my taxes done on Wednesday.

I spent most of the rest of the day writing. I finished the chapter I was working on, sent it to one of my friends, started on the next chapter, and then I got her comments back. She had a problem with the end of the chapter. We discussed that a bit, I trashed what I'd started and answered her reservations at the start of the next chapter.

The only thing about that, though, was that I'd deliberately wanted to skip ahead in time and now I wasn't. There was a bunch of boring stuff in there that I hadn't wanted to cover, but now I was going to have to and I tried to come up with a way to make it interesting. I had the epiphany after I logged off and went to bed. So this morning I'll fix that up and see if it works, then go on from there.

I wish I was the Energizer bunny. I could use the stamina because the work keeps coming and coming and coming. :-)

My goal for Friday evening was to finish the chapter I was working on and then get to bed early. Simple goals, yes, but not achievable for me. I arrived home to find a disk from my publisher with my cover art on it. My zip disk is attached to the desktop, so I fired that up to get a look at it. All I had was the same thing that was emailed to me, but I guess that's my own fault since I asked for files I could open on the PC. The Dorchester art department uses a Macintosh.

Since I was on that computer anyway, I downloaded the email on the desktop account. Yes, each one of my computers has its own email address. I can access all of them from any computer, but I'll only download that address on that particular computer. I hadn't been on the desktop in a few weeks, so not only did I have email, I had virus software to update and an update for Windows.

I wanted to check prices on postcards, but the company I use to make my bookmarks has changed their website and I can't get past the home page without registering. I do that. When I received the confirmation email an hour later and logged on with that, I still couldn't see prices. I hate this version of their website.

All this stuff took about an hour. Then I switched to the laptop to write. Had half a gazillion emails. Do I need to mention I'm hopelessly behind on them again? After answering the ones that couldn't wait, I started to update a page on my chapter's website.

Yes, I volunteered to help with web design. There is a reason for my insanity. I want to get more involved with my chapter, and while I can't do a lot of the things they need help with, I can do web stuff.

It was a quick update, should have taken me like 5 minutes to do. Except my chapter uses a template through their website host and the interface is clunky and more difficult than coding by hand. I struggled to figure that thing out, read the help screens, tested a few things. I discovered every time I hit save, it was publishing the page, ready or not. Sigh. I understand why the chapter wanted to go this direction--they don't want to burn out someone who knows real web design, and this way, anyone can volunteer. Personally, I found it worse than coding, but then I'm pretty comfortable with HTML, so I'm hardly a great judge.

Finally, finally finished with the page--like 2 hours later. I swear, if I was putting that page up on my website, it would have been done in minutes. But I'm sure it'll be easier once I figure out the system.

Now it's about 7pm and it's my day to blog on one of the group blogs I participate in. I haven't given this a thought all day, and I have to come up with something. That took some consideration, but I kept the post nice and short.

At last, I can write. Or rather revise. I have everything I need down in the chapter, it's just punching it up a little bit, doing some adding, some cutting, and reworking the ending.

My early night ended up lasting until 9:45.

This morning, I had the alarm set to go off before 6am because I have to bring the urban assault vehicle in to have its oil changed. I'm tired and I know I'm going to end up sitting. Can't bring a laptop. I've tried that and there is nowhere to plug in and my battery doesn't last as long as they make me wait. I do, however, have an Alphasmart Dana. I hate it.

I hear people swear up and down by their Alphasmarts, Dana or any other version, and I don't get it. I bought it so I could write outside, but I don't like the keyboard and I don't like that I can only see a few lines of text at a time. I'm bringing it with me to the dealership anyway. If nothing else, I can get the worldbuilding details down for the WIP.

I overslept. Bet you're shocked and surprised to see that statement since I've been doing it so frequently lately. And of course, this means I'm in a huge rush. Again. I hate that.

I'm this morning dawdler. I like to slowly drink my coffee, read email, visit a few websites. I like to do the puzzle at Webshots and have time to think about what I'm going to post on my blog that day. A lot of times, despite this thinking time, I'm still fairly boring, but then my life isn't the most fascinating of all time either. I work at the day job, I write, I sleep.

The most exciting thing that happened yesterday was that I watched this show on the History Channel about ancient machines. Like the Romans, in essence, had flush toilets--at least in England when they occupied that area. Will I sound like a total geek if I say I think that's pretty cool? Yeah, probably.

Writing went exceptionally well yesterday. But I was thinking about the end of the chapter and decided I overshot the mark. I think today, I'll back up, cut a little, build up what I have and end it. Then put some of the info in the next chapter. Also worried that the fight scene has zero excitement. I'll have to look at that too.

I've said this before, but the writing process is not pretty and I almost wonder if it's something y'all would be happier not hearing so much about. Does it ruin the magic of reading a book down the road if the author reveals how messy the actual creation is?

I kind of have a love/hate relationship with Amazon.com. On the one hand, I can find all the books I need without having to go to a store. Heck, I can find books that stores don't even stock anymore which is totally great when I need research books on some obscure topic. What are the odds that I'm going to walk into any bookstore in the Twin Cities and be able to choose from a dozen Scottish Gaelic dictionaries? On the other hand, I--like almost every other author I know--hate that blue box that sells used books right beside new copies.

Today, Amazon is in my good graces. I received a notice that my copy of Crimson Rogue shipped. (Bought new, of course.) Not that I can read anything right now, but I'll have the complete Crimson City collection in my hands and that's what counts. I am an Obsessive Book Hoarder (OBH). Although, I have to confess, after loading up the SUV with box after box after box after box of books, I'm rethinking my need to hoard. :-/ Same thing with shoes. I think I've said it here before, but I never thought the day would come when I'd say that about either thing.

Now if my Scots Gaelic dictionary would only arrive, then all will be right with the world. Irish Gaelic would be easier since one of my friends knows someone who speaks it, but, no, my character comes from a society of magic users that has to speak Erse. I wrote this proposal two years ago, thought at the time, gee, this is kind of cool, and was blissfully ignorant that I'd be using more than that one word throughout the book. The only positive note is that because I switched POV characters to my hero, I need less Gaelic than I did when I was in my Ryne's head. But how long is that going to last?

I also ordered a book called Trigger Point Therapy that's supposed to show ways to deal with chronic pain. From being hunched over the keyboard for both my day job and the writing, my neck and shoulders are really stiff. In fact, it's so tight in my neck that my fingers go numb. I'm hoping this book will show me some simple ways to deal with that. Of course, I'd have to find time to read it. :-( Maybe I can put it underneath my pillow and absorb it through osmosis. ;-)

And in daily life crap, I almost got my butt nailed yesterday morning for speeding. I was in the left lane, cruising at about 15 miles over the speed limit when I saw flashing lights. Luckily for me, (although unluckily for someone else), I wasn't the one being pulled over. He'd caught some guy a few cars behind me. Yikes! And on my way home, there was a trooper in front of me. I need to get going this morning so that I can drive more slowly in. There must be some initiative going to tag more speeders or something because seeing two troopers on the freeway like that is unusual.

For you Crimson City fans, Barnes & Noble.com shows the final book in the series, Liz Maverick's Crimson Rogue, as shipping in 2-3 days! Wow, has the time flown. I can't believe the series is ending already. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my own copy!

I actually have a fair amount to say today. Let's see if I can remember it all and if I have time to talk about it all and still reply to comments. This day job is sucking my time.

First off, the furniture company arranged delivery between 1pm and 5:30. They came at 5:10 or so. Four chairs were delivered and guess what? Two of the four wobble. I was worried about this because the floor model I looked at in the store had the same problem. So the salesman ordered two more chairs for me and they'll deliver them when the table arrives and take back the wobbly ones. Keep your fingers crossed that I don't have to play exchange the chair more than once.

Second, did y'all watch The Unit last night? I thought the suspense was back that had been missing in episode two, but a couple of things bothered me. Why did they send Jonas (President Palmer) off on his own? Maybe things are different in Delta Force, but from what I've read, I thought they worked as a team a lot more than this show has had them together. Every week, one of them is off somewhere else.

The other thing that I've been wondering about is the size of the team. Five men, although because one or the other is always off solo, it's usually four. Army Special Forces teams are 12 men. Granted, there's artistic license. I've taken it in my books, reducing the teams to 7 because 12 just brings in too many unnecessary secondary characters, but 5? That seems really low. Maybe it's just me.

Third on my to discuss list is the WIP. I was wheel spinning again and looking for a wall so I could bang my head against it. Yesterday, as I'm struggling to write during lunch, I realized I was bored with what I was writing. So bored, in fact, I wrote "add more fight stuff here" and went to the end of the battle. After lunch, I was thinking about it and I decided the reason it was boring was I was in the wrong POV (point of view). I'd planned to do the entire chapter in Ryne's head, but I realize that the last half would be more interesting in Deke's. When I got home from work yesterday and sat down to write, I found a point to switch POV and it went much, much better from that point on.

And I can't remember what else I wanted to say. Oh, well, this is probably enough anyway and more than I usually manage. Now I'm going to try to reply to as many comments as I can before I have to logoff to get ready for work.

Blogger appears to be having some trouble again. The front page of my blog won't load, although each individual entry does. I went down and clicked on the "Recently" posts listed. Don't know when this will be fixed, but I think Google needs to invest some money in their blog infrastructure. Blogger has been having many problems for a while now.

Today they are supposed to be delivering my dining room chairs. Not the table--that's still somewhere in Asia. I've found this whole purchase to be hugely frustrating and next time I buy furniture, I'll make sure they can deliver it the same week I buy it. I ordered the table in January. Sigh. I was fine with a Feb 12th delivery date, but now that we're creeping close to April, this has gotten old.

I wanted to watch the baseball game last night between Japan and Cuba, but it was already starting late (8pm) and then it was delayed by some silly basketball game. It's true, I don't like basketball. I find it about as exciting as say--golf or car racing. In other words, right up there with paint drying. So since I was exhausted, I went to bed. Believe it or not, I actually had close to 8 hours of sleep last night! =8-O Since I still feel tired and didn't want to wake up, I'm guessing I could have used more.

And this morning, when I was trying to find a score to the baseball game, I found that ESPN 2 was replaying the highlights. They were in the 9th inning when I flipped over, but I was able to see that Japan won. That's the team I wanted to win.

As you might have guessed, nothing of interest happened yesterday. The Vernal Equinox is one of my favorite days, though. For the next three months, every day will have more sunlight and less night! Yea! For me, this is the official signal that winter (aka hell on Earth) will be ending soon.

I mentioned my parents bought a computer, that I picked it up for them on the 11th, spent 8+ hours loading and updating software for them. That I spent forever having them practice turning it on and off and made them promise to update their virus software. Well, they haven't turned the computer on since that day. I knew this was going to happen.

Yesterday, I spent at least an hour and a half updating the virus protection and loading a firewall. Windows was updating itself too, but that'll have to finish some other time since it was only about 60% done and I couldn't afford to lose any more time.

Writing went okay yesterday. I smoothed out some of the stuff I wrote on Saturday and added and tweaked, then started for the day. I didn't write as much on Sunday, but I hit a fight scene and those always take a lot of choreography, so since I was tired and it was after 7pm by then, I stopped for the day. I need to think some more about what Ryne is fighting. I've got a few details, but not a firm grasp.

And it's back to the day job today. Sigh.

Yesterday, the writing went much easier and the results weren't horrible. As opposed to the scene I need that I kept rewriting and it plain didn't work and was boring to boot. Of course, this scene I wrote yesterday was something my characters showed my while I daydreamed about my story, and that made all the difference. I think. I need to reread it today and make sure it's okay.

Of course, the fact that this worked, leaves me with a problem. I have to change how I ended the previous chapter because clearly, the secondary character no longer shows up then. I also need to wrap up the loose end of Ryne's sister who would have been taken care of in the scene I was trying to write, but ended up not using.

Characters. Sigh. Too bad they're always right. But shhh! Don't tell them I said that.

While I'm talking about the characters, let me share with y'all the pictures I'm using for Ryne and Deke. I like having images to refer to, it helps me stay focused on their appearances and their personalities.

This is Ryne:



And this is Deke:


I don't know the models' names. I wish I did so that I could find more pictures of them taken from different angles and in different moods and stuff.

Next topic of the day is spam. You know how these spammers keep putting in weird/different characters to outwit the spam filters? I'm finding it vastly amusing that some have gone so far that what they're saying is unintelligible! I've had more than a few notes recently that just made me go, huh? I couldn't figure it out. LOL! Bet that really helps them sucker some idiot into buying their stocks/drugs/penis enlargement crap.

I don't suppose anyone else is a big baseball fan? I'm trying to find out who won last night's game in the World Baseball Classic, Japan or Korea. I was too tired to stay up till the end and I haven't found a score yet. BTW, in honor of the heroine of Through a Crimson Veil--Mika McCabe nee Noguchi--I was rooting for Japan.

I trashed the scene I was working on for the third time and came to the conclusion that it just isn't going to work. It's boring and doesn't highlight what I find fun about this book--namely Ryne's determination (or stubbornness) and the fireworks between her and Deke. The problem is that there's a key piece of information that this scene is supposed to supply and it sets up the entire urgency of the storyline.

I have another scene, though, that's been teasing at my mind now that I'm daydreaming my book again. (I missed this! Why did I let life cut me off from this?) I'm going to write that, then see where I can pop in the information I need. I have an idea, but I need to write other stuff before I try that.

This book has held a few surprises for me. First, my heroine hints at something that I knew nothing about. Although it was in one of the versions of the scene that got cut and I have no clue exactly what she was hinting about. Second surprise was how much Scottish Gaelic I need. I ended up ordering a dictionary that's supposed to have some modern words in there, so I'm hoping that includes what I want to use. If not, I'll have to come up with some reason why the language is butchered. :-/

This is the first weekend in a while that I have nothing I need to do except write. I'm hoping to get a lot done.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I found a great quote this morning too:

"St. Patrick's Day is an enchanted time - a day to begin transforming winter's dreams into summer's magic." - Adrienne Cook

Oh, if only that were true in Minnesota. We've got 11 inches of snow on the ground, and summer feels a long way off.

It looks like I'll be trashing the chapter I'm working on--again--and starting all over--again. I hate when that happens. A friend suggested I make Ryne a bit more defiant to enliven the scene. I thought about it, made sure it fit the character--and it does--so I'm going to try it. Right now, the scene suffers from TMI. (Too Much Info).

Last night, as I was flipping around the channels, and I stumbled across Curb Appeal on HGTV. I've seen the show before, but it's not something I watch regularly, but I was like, Whoa! last night. The family whose exterior was transformed? Their last name was Noguchi like Mika from Through a Crimson Veil. I have no idea if this is a common name or not. After I was into Crimson Veil a ways, it finally dawned on me to do a search of the names I was using and I discovered that there was a Japanese woman wrestler named Mika Noguchi--which became the basis for a joke between Conor and Mika that went all the way through the book. I watched the rest of the episode and was just tickled every time the host said "Noguchi." I know. I'm easily tickled. What can I say? I'm a geek.

Oh, and the gas company overcharged me by $246! Can you believe it??? Anyway, I should be getting either a refund or a credit to my account. I'm hoping for the check because that will pay for my foyer rug. Which still hasn't shown up yet despite being shipped on the 13th. Maybe it was on the Fed Ex plane that slid off the runway at the Minneapolis airport yesterday morning. :-/

I had a couple of fun/interesting things happen yesterday.

First, and most exciting, I found out that Through a Crimson Veil is a finalist for Best Paranormal in the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence! That was definitely cause for a happy dog dance! I always feel stupid on the phone, though, when a coordinator calls. I'm a quiet person and I don't shriek and carry on even if I am turning back flips inside. I always wonder what these poor women think when I say, "Cool!"

My second piece of news is that Eternal Nights is now available for preorder at Amazon! This is my fourth published book and I can't help but wonder when does the excitement wear off about it appearing on Amazon? Or Barnes & Noble for that matter. Part of me says, hey, you should be used to this by now, it's not like the book showing up is a surprise or anything. Another part of me is like OMG, my book is on Amazon! I'm going with the side of me that enjoys the small things. :-)

That is pretty much where the excitement ends. I went to bed at 7:30 last night and slept like the dead. But I haven't had enough sleep all week (again) and I knew I was going to need to get up early today because of the snow. Yes, a big green blob is directly over the Twin Cities. Sigh. I wish I could sleep until April!

Overslept. Again. That's beginning to be my standard line.

We have another winter storm heading our way. Looks like we're going to have more snow in one week than we've had all winter. I'm wishing it away from here like crazy. I want spring, not more snow. Sigh.

I watched The Unit last night. I didn't find the second episode quite as engrossing as the first one, but I'll still try to remember to watch next week. Because I wasn't paying as close attention, I missed something. When the terrorist jumped out of the plane, was he wearing a parachute or was it suicide? And am I the only one that thought President Palmer should have known that guy was up to something? I mean I'm sitting at home thinking, he's trying to pull something, and I don't have the years of experience that these elite warriors are supposed to have. :-)

For a couple of days now, I've been thinking about the fact that I haven't daydreamed about my stories lately. When I wrote Ravyn's Flight those characters were in my head 24/7. I'd wake up with them there, go to sleep with them there, and they were there every minute in between. I did daydream this story I'm writing now when I first worked on it and for a while afterward too, but then I wrote a couple of other books and the characters stepped back to let others come to the fore.

Then yesterday, I received an email from a friend and she talked about daydreaming her stories, and I figured that was a message for me. A way to drive it home that daydreaming time is important. I've been trying. I just keep falling asleep before I can spend much time on it. :-(

Yesterday I bailed out of here early because of the snow. I needed the extra time to get to work. The weather was terrible! Snow was blowing and visibility was poor. There were a few moments where I wondered if I'd see the highway before I was on it, but everything went okay. And once I was on the freeway, visibility improved since hills were blocking the wind. That's kind of where things went south.

I only went about a mile before traffic in both lanes of the freeway came to a complete and utter standstill. No one was going anywhere. After sitting for about 10 minutes, I knew even if it cleared out in the next few minutes, I wouldn't make it to work on time. I was very close to home, so I called in and took a vacation day. And then I sat. And sat. And sat.

I could see the flashing lights from where I was, so I must have been fairly close to the accident, but I have no clue what happened. For 45 or 50 minutes, we sat there. I heard traffic report after traffic report and not one mentions that a major freeway is closed, but no one is moving.

Finally, at 6:09 (I'm supposed to start work at 6am) one lane of traffic opens up. Still couldn't see what had happened since it was largely cleared out by then. I went to the next exit and went home. Crawled back into bed and slept till 11am. Yikes! I didn't want to sleep so long. The plan was to really kick on the writing, but apparently I was tired.

When I finally did get up, I trashed the entire chapter I was working on and started the scene over. It went better, I think, but I wish I'd gotten farther than I did.

What a wild and exciting life I live--parked on the freeway. Sigh. Anyway, I need to leave a little earlier today too since it's hard to say what the roads are like this morning. Side streets still looked pretty bad yesterday evening.

I didn't hear the alarm this morning. That wouldn't be a huge issue since I woke up in good time except for one thing--the weather. Today was a day I needed to be up at 3:30, not 4am. It started raining last night, that was supposed to change to snow and we're supposed to end up with accumulations in the 8 inch range. The most irritating part of this whole thing was that we'd just melted off most of our snow and now we're right back where we started from. I loathe snow. So now I'm in a huge rush because I have no clue what the roads are like out there and I want to drive really slow if I need to.

Worked on the WIP yesterday. Struggled. As I was getting ready for bed last night, I figured it out. I had a secondary character doing something he wouldn't do. Every time I try to make a character do what I want them to do rather than what they would really do, I end up spinning my wheels. So I had a little talk with him last night and worked out what the problem was, and since we were chatting anyway, I decided to delve deeper into his head. I didn't make it too far before I fell asleep. Oh, well, at least I got the really important stuff and I'll fix the scene accordingly.

I watched television last night. The History Channel's How William Shatner Changed the World. I figured it would be about how Star Trek changed things, and I was right. They talked to scientists and inventors who were inspired to create what they saw on the show. It was interesting, but not as cool as it might have been. What I found most fascinating was the view of what they didn't have in the 60s. They also covered the other Star Trek shows, namely Next Generation, and how it inspired other scientists and inventors.

I've got to run. I just heard the snow plow go by and that means we have enough snow out there to have them out on the streets. Sigh. Have I mentioned that I hate Minnesota?

I did make it to my chapter meeting yesterday and our guest speaker was a SWAT sniper. He's in the sheriff's office, and besides spending all those years on SWAT, he's also worked with the feds on a joint task force to roundup the most wanted criminals. He was a very entertaining speaker and negated some of the myths TV has created. For example, in Cops, the officers will bend a suspect over his car, search him and ask him questions. Our speaker said you hook them up first, then you search them. He also talked about two officers who were killed out east because they pulled the visible gun from the front of the suspect's waistband, but didn't check the small of his back. He had another gun there, and even though he was in handcuffs, he was able to kill both officers.

I brought a pad of paper along, but didn't take many notes since a lot of what was said was anecdotal. He said he'd scoped us all out before he ever came into the room. That he'd scoped out the building and the rooms around them, and that even while he was speaking, he had the entire room and the doorway in his peripheral vision.

Another story that was interesting was that he and a team were doing surveillance on a murderer and wanted to nail him and every cop was driving a brand new Lumina! He said they'd wonder if they should switch off and he said something like, what? you want the green Lumina to trade with the blue one?

The other thing that was interesting was that he's a martial arts expert. He said he doesn't know the pretty stuff, but the stuff that will keep him alive. The guys who know what he knows are banned from the martial arts tournaments. He also said that he never fights.

The time went much too quickly! He was an excellent guest and I wish we could have heard even more stories.

The rest of the day was spent on computer stuff. I went with my dad to pick up his new computer and then I started setting it up. Hooking everything up was the easy part, then came loading and updating. I hate this practice computer companies have of making you burn your own backup disks now. What a PITA! I had to have my dad run over to my new house and grab some blank CDs--he came back with mostly filled disks. He had to go back and this time he brought everything. :-) I was able to finish burning the backups.

I was shocked that for the $40 it cost to install the modem, they didn't load the drivers. You'd think they'd make sure it was ready to go immediately for that cost. But nope, I had to load the drivers. Also took care of loading the printer drivers.

So far, so good. A little time consuming, but not horrible. But now it was time to update the virus software. Apparently, this computer had been built a while ago because it had Norton 2005 on it and it showed a date of Oct 2005 on the virus definitions. Live Update kept freaking at the size of the file I want it to update. I finally had to go to the website and download the files from there. It took hours on dialup. Literally hours.

While I was waiting, I loaded Open Office (thankfully, I'd downloaded that a while back and had the install files on my jump drive). This might be a mistake since I'm not familiar with Open Office Writer, not like I am with Word or WordPerfect, and I'll have to figure out things before I can explain them to my dad. I just hated to have him spend the money for Word or Excel when he probably won't use it that often and Open Office is free.

I also loaded a few other programs I had on my jump drive, and then waited. Ditzed around with a few other things. And waited. Set some preferences. And waited. It was after 8pm when I finally got the virus stuff up-to-date.

Then remedial lessons began. I had my parents turn on and turn off the computer over and over and over. Neither one of them can operate a mouse. OMG! It would have been hysterically funny to watch them if I wasn't tired and ready to be done. My mom would turn the mouse all around, so that the cord was facing toward her because she thought the top of the mouse had to point the direction you wanted to go. My dad had to use two hands, one to move the mouse, then hold it in place while he clicked with his other hand.

And they would lie to me! I'd say, don't click yet (as a menu or something popped up) and they'd say, "I didn't click!" The evidence was right on the screen; I don't know how they could deny they clicked. This happened so many times. Sigh.

At least we got them signed up with cheapest ISP I knew about. They only get 100 hours a month, but I doubt they'll ever get close to that number. You wouldn't believe, though, what a hassle it was to come up with user names and passwords.

Me: What do you want as a user name?
Dad: What's a user name?
Me: The name you use to logon to the ISP. It will also be your email address.
Long explanations follow here with many questions and attempted explanations. At last I get an answer:
Dad: Smarty.
Me: What?
Dad: Smarty.
Mom: No, you're not using Smarty.
Dad: But that was going to be my clown name. (He always wanted to be a clown for the Shriners, but it never really worked out. I used his makeup at Halloween when I was a kid.)
Mom: Pick something else.
Dad: Old Fart
Mom: No! You can't use that.
Dad: But this man in Arizona--
Mom: I don't care about a man in Arizona.
Me: Can we just pick a user name? (whimper)
Dad: How about Lilly O? (No one calls my mom Lilly, not even my dad.)
Mom: No, not Lilly.

Anyway, you get an idea of my ordeal, yes? It took like half an hour just to decide on a user name. Then there was the password. =8-O

It was 9:20 when I said, okay, that's it for me. I'm still not quite done. I have a few other things to update on the computer, but after 8 hours, I was ready to call it a night.

Today, I'm taking me time and trying to catch up on a gazillion notes. Then I'll tackle the writing and try to get a lot done. I want a nap already, though.

I didn't get me time yesterday. I took my dad to buy a computer. My parents are absolutely clueless about them, and God help me, my dad is reading stuff and asking questions. Which would be fine if he understood the answers. He doesn't. We were taking about RAM--the computer came with 256, which is low--and he thought that was connected to how many documents he could save. Then I had to explain hard drive versus RAM.

Anyway, the computer is successfully purchased. We were able to bring home the monitor and printer that were in the package right away, but because we were having more RAM installed and a modem card, they had to keep the CPU overnight. They were backed up on work or something.

The part, though, that really chapped my hide was that they charge $40 to put in a modem card! They have got to be kidding! That's a five minute job if you have to open the computer. With the box already open to put in the memory, it's like a grand total of 2 minutes and that's if the guy goes slowly. When I commented on that, the kid who was selling us the computer said well, the tech is certified. Hell, I want to go to computer school and get certified. If I had a job where I earned $40 for 5 minutes worth of work, I'd be ecstatic! That works out to $480 per hour. Obviously, I'm in the wrong job.

Anyway, because I don't have enough strength in my hands to seed a card firmly enough into the slot, I had them add it to the bill. I used to try to swap out modem cards on my first computer, back when modems were still getting faster, and I never could get that darn thing in right. But man, it hurt to pay that!

They're supposed to have the computer ready for my dad to pick up this morning. I made the kid cross his heart and hope to die. :-) I know, I know, but I'm still waiting for the table that I ordered, the one that was supposed to be delivered the week of Feb 12th!

I'm going to my chapter meeting this morning. The speaker is a SWAT guy, I think. It was someone I was interested in hearing, I do remember that much. Then I'll spend the afternoon loading software and setting up programs for my dad. Probably giving him a tutorial on how to use it as well. :-/ Should be an interesting day. Gah!

* * *

Check out the blog-only contest to win a copy of Ravyn's Flight. Rules Here.

Yesterday ended up being one of those hectic days. I did take my "me" time, but the rest of the afternoon and evening disappeared fast. The worst part was I still got to bed late last night and didn't get everything done.

The highlights of my day include ordering a rug for my foyer. I had an email telling me this place had 20% off their rugs and it was too good a deal to pass up. I just wish now that I'd waited before ordering my big area rug. I could have saved more than $100. That was back around Christmas time, so I doubt they're going to give me the sale price now. Oh, well, at least I got free shipping back then.

My mom has decided to buy my dad a computer for his birthday and she wanted my input. This is guaranteed to create more work for me because my parents are pretty clueless about computers and I'll be expected to provide tutorials. How can I say no when they've both done so much for me, especially with this move? So I'll be going with her this afternoon to buy it. I guess I can add consultant to my list of titles. ;-)

Here's the interesting thing about the computer. There's one on sale for really cheap that would be perfect for my dad since he doesn't need a lot of bells and whistles. It even comes with a printer and a 17 inch monitor. But there is no modem installed. Those are easy to install, although I think we'll let the store do it since I can't exert enough pressure to seed those things correctly (I've tried in the past). The question is, however, are all computers headed this direction? Where the manufacturers only install high speed internet hardware? I'm sorry, but I'm not spending $50 or $60 for cable internet and my parents certainly aren't because they wouldn't use the computer enough to justify the expense. And why aren't these broadband prices dropping? I would pay $10 more a month for high speed and I bet a lot of other people would too.

Off to work. I have to pay for the new rug. :-)

Well hello blog-readers! It's Jade Lee popping in to say a big hello to fellow Crimson City author-extraordinaire Patti and a massive hello to all of you readers. For those of you who have NOT been paying attention, Patti wrote the amazing Through a Crimson Veil (book 3 of the series). And I wrote, Seduced by Crimson (book 5) which has gotten awesome reviews and was an RT Top Pick. (Hint, hint. That means it's good so go out and buy it, okay?) It's also sensuous and action oriented and sexy and has interesting characters and is very spicy and...hmmmm, am I repeating myself? Anyway, we both wrote fabulous books, so go out and buy them! Mine just hit the stands on March 1.

Okay...so that was the over-enthusiastic opening that I really had to do because...you know...you just do. The following is the pure unadulterated truth of what I'm feeling RIGHT NOW. Are you ready? Here it comes. I'll put it in bold, so everyone will know how I feel. Promotion sucks. I know, I know, you all are rolling your eyes and thinking, well duh. Writers write. They don't really want to spend their time pressing the flesh and kissing up to readers. But you see, that's where you're wrong. I'm an EXTROVERT. Not just an extrovert, but a LOUD, EXUBERANT IN-YOUR-FACE EXTROVERT. Patti can attest to this.

Frankly, I love doing book signings, conferences, and speaking engagements. Those are AWESOME!!!! I've got five conferences scheduled this year, will be traveling all over the place, and that's not counting the times I just go drop into bookstores. I love meeting people and will hop in a car for the stupidest reasons. Yeah, I get tired. But at home I'd have to fight with my teenagers and cook dinner. Who wants to do that? I want to be out in the world!

That's not the part of promotion that sucks. Even this chatting on a blog is kinda fun though I don't meet any of you face to face. I still get to babble away and people e-mail me to tell me I'm brilliant. (Hint: that's your clue to e-mail me or comment on this blog to say...Jade! You're brilliant! I loved your blog and will now go buy all your books! My e-mail, btw, is jade@jadeleeauthor.com) This is fun!

Here's what sucks: I just spent all morning setting up arcs (advance reading copies) for my June book, Burning Tigress. It's a good book. Actually has a bit of humor in among the dark sensuous Asian tantric sex stuff. And the love story is clever, IMO. Hours, I am working on this. HOURS. And I finally hit Print. What happens? I get half of it and then the printer dies. UGH!

Plus, you know what I had to do this past week? Bundle up 800 sets of 10 bookmarks to send to bookstores. Is that a big ole waste of time or what? I know, I know it's important. Bookstores love bookmarks. It will help people learn about the book and then they'll go buy it because everyone will be able to tell from my fabo bookmark that this will be a fabo book...right? Okay, well, I'm praying that's true. Otherwise I might just have to go drown myself in 15,000 Burning Tigress bookmarks. (yes, I know the math doesn't add up, but I needed extras for my conferences.) Anyway, I ended up paying my daughter's boyfriend to do this for me. And since it actually got done, I'm thinking that was many hours when the teenagers were NOT doing something I didn't want them to do.

But now I have to mail these suckers. Do you know how much 8,000 bookmarks weigh? I do. ACKKK! So...here's my grand plan. Are you ready? Every one of you readers are going to be so impressed by my blog (and not my website since it hasn't been updated in months...yet another promo thing I HATE). Anyway, you're going to be so impressed by this rant that you think, what the heck, her book is going to be worth my time. You're going to rush out there and buy Seduced by Crimson then tell all your friends how fabulous it was and make them go out and buy it. That's my plan.

Of course...that might not be your plan. Hmmmm...this could be sad, but don't disillusion me! Please, lie to me. Tell me that you bought the book, loved it, and have now bought it for 10,000 of your friends. Please. I love to live in fantasy worlds. Why else would I have loved working in Crimson City?

Okay, I now have to go pray to the techie god (ie my husband) that he can either (a) fix my printer or (b) wants to gift me, the love of his life, with a new printer. What do you think the odds are? Never mind. If I wanted the truth, I wouldn't be a fiction writer, right?

Jade

Jade Lee / Kathy Greyle
www.jadeleeauthor.com / www.greyle.com

NEW from JADE LEE and Leisure books:

Desperate Tigress, Nov 2005
Seduced by Crimson, March 2006
Burning Tigress, June 2006
Cornered Tigress, January 2007

For the past while--I'm not sure how long it's been--I've been struggling. I'd logon to the computer with every intention of working, but instead I'd procrastinate and feel guilty the entire time I was doing it. I had no real zeal or energy. I've been oversleeping--usually just a tiny bit, but sometimes a lot--almost every morning. I could hardly drag myself to work or back home again and then the cycle would begin again. To say it was discouraging is putting it mildly.

I mentioned yesterday that I'd been following a discussion on one of my published author loops about something very similar that other writers were going through. And one of suggestions for combating it was guilt-free me time. Wow. I hadn't done guilt-free me time in, well, probably four years. Even when I collapsed after the marathon of finishing a book, I felt guilty for not immediately writing. But after the way I felt Tuesday morning, I decided it was worth trying.

I'm happy to report that "Me" time was a huge success!

I took a half hour. I didn't logon to the computer, but did something just for me that had nothing to do with email or anything else electronic. It made a huge difference in my attitude and in my writing. By taking that half hour off, I got more done than if I'd struggled to get writing. After I read email, I was actually eager to get to work!

Before I sold TPOT, I always used to give myself Saturdays off. That was my day to do nothing writing related. When I signed on for my second book, though, I had to give up my day off, and taking a break has never been guilt-free since then. Even when I had surgery and was sleeping 20 out of 24 hours, I thought I should be writing in the few hours I was awake.

So I took my half hour, I was eager to write again for the first time in probably eight or ten months, and I finished the chapter I was working on! Yea! I started the next chapter, just a sentence or two, and when I got up this morning (on time) I felt more energized than I've felt in forever. I'm excited again, not just about my book, but just about life in general. Me time stays in the schedule.

Last night was the premiere of The Unit. This is an hour long show about an Army Special Forces team (Namely Delta Force, although they never used that name during the show). It stars President Palmer from 24. I don't remember the actor's real name and he'll always be President Palmer to me. :-)

I don't watch much television. It rarely holds my interest and the only show left that I watch is Two and a Half Men. I was a little worried about The Unit. Even though David Mamet was involved with the show (and wrote last night's episode), I feared I was going to see a 2006 version of The A-Team sans Mr. T.

I was wrong. This show was wonderful! Tense, exciting and I cared about the characters. Well, at least the men. There were a couple of times where I wanted to shake the new guy's wife because she was so dense, and I was not happy to see another wife sleeping with her husband's commander while he was off on a mission. But President Palmer and the new guy--along with all the tension--were enough to keep me riveted (and that's hard to do since I lose interest easily when it comes to TV.)

Anyway, I give The Unit a thumbs up. If the show can sustain what it did last night, I might have a new favorite television show. For sure, I'll be tuning in next Tuesday.

Sometimes I feel like I'm struggling to not fall any farther behind. Like yesterday. I spent hours catching up on email, blog comments (on three blogs, not just here), updating my website and an assortment of other things and I feel as if I haven't made an appreciable dent in anything. Notice, too, that the word "writing" does not appear on this list. There's a reason. I didn't have time to do any.

I keep thinking there must be some way to handle my time better. I know I tend to be a dawdler and that I can procrastinate with the best of them, but even so, there has to be some way to do everything that must be done.

On one of my writers' loops, they're talking about burnout. It's an interesting discussion, but so far I've only seen posts by full time writers. They talk about doing their heavy writing by lunch (or 2pm whatever works for them) and then taking care of all the other details of being published and having a life. At 2pm, I'm still at work. :-(

I bought a book on time management for the creative person a few years ago. Talk about a waste of money! This guy's suggestions boiled down to this: Delegate it to your secretary/clerk. Excuse me? I am the clerk--make that Support Associate--delegation isn't an option for most things. Besides, how many creative people run an office with a full staff to delegate to? Unfortunately, the arts aren't exactly high paying for the vast majority of artists.

So I've been running at full throttle--or darn close to it--since I sold Power of Two in 2003. I'm not complaining--exactly. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to write and sell my work. Hugely grateful. I just thought that the non-stop pace would ease up a little by now.

But I've decided, though, that I need to take a little guilt-free me time, even if it's only half an hour a day. Something that doesn't involve trying to answer email or check out something online. Maybe meditation. :-) I used to be part of a meditation group.

Anyway, enough of my complaining. I'm just really tired today, but of course, it's time to logoff and get ready for the day job. Probably, I'll feel less out of control after I've had about 10 hours of sleep. ;-) In the meantime, any suggestions on how to cram more in my day?

Edited to add: I'm sorry about the downer post. Yesterday wasn't a fab day. The low point was my parents getting in a car accident. I had to drive over there and I was still shaking hours later. They're fine, but I was too tense to sleep. :-/ With the lack of sleep and everything else yesterday, I wasn't feeling all that chipper this morning. I'm better now. ;-)

* * *

Check out the blog-only contest to win a copy of Ravyn's Flight. Rules Here.

Here's the post I wanted to put up this morning, but didn't have time.

The Prize: An autographed copy of Ravyn's Flight

To Enter: Comment on one of my blog posts

The Details:

• Every time a person comments on one of my blog posts from March 6th until March 31st at 3pm Central Time, their name will be entered to win the book.
• You will be allowed to enter more than once, however: Only one comment per blog post. If I post twice in one day, you can comment on both posts and be entered twice. One post means only one chance to enter.
• Can you comment on older posts? Yes, with this caveat: If I only posted once that day and you comment on 3 old posts, you'll only be entered in the contest once. Number of entries allowed per day will equal the number of times I posted on that day.
• Any question about the contest does not count as an entry. (I know, but I'm working on 3 hours of sleep here; odds are good I'm not being as clear as I could be.)
• Winner will be announced on the blog on April 1st. If their blog profile does not have an email address, it will be their responsibility to email me. If I do not hear from the winner by April 15th (tax day), a new winner will be chosen.
  

Did I forget anything you need to know?

Yep, I did it again. I overslept this morning. I blame the Oscars. Even though I rarely watch movies, this is the one awards show that I pretty much never miss. I love to see the dresses most of all, but I do watch the presentations too. This year, the show went pretty fast--they were over before 11pm my time--but it was still plenty late for someone who gets up at 4am. Okay, someone who is supposed to get up at 4am.

There was a funny bit with Tom Hanks thanking everyone in the known universe and the orchestra coming right on stage to get him to quit. I know they focused intently on speeding the show up (and they needed to!), but there were still people who were thanking everyone they ever met.

This was an interesting year for the Oscars. As much as I don't go to the movies, I'm usually at least familiar with a few of the Best Picture nominees. This year, the only one I'd heard of was Brokeback Mountain. I didn't even know what Crash was about or who was in it. I also missed who won for best actor and best supporting actress. I'm not quite sure how that happened.

So I overslept, and woke up to discover it snows which means I have to hustle. I'll have to work on posting the rules to the Blog-Only contest later today. Please check back for that.
I really meant to get that up this morning, but of course, I didn't plan ahead. :-)

I forgot to mention this on my earlier post.

Late last night, I was checking email on Yahoo (long story since I pretty much don't use that account) and saw an avatar box. I clicked on it, and discovered you could create and dress your own person--either male or female. Of course, I immediately thought of it in terms of characters. :-)

Anyway, I had loads of fun and it's worth a Yahoo account just to play with the avatars. (Okay, so it smacks of paper dolls, but who says I have to grow up?)

They have special event outfits and backgrounds too. This avatar came from the Oscar Night grouping.

Have fun playing at Yahoo Avatars and share the results!

I posted my thoughts on writing methods--and my doubts about my own--on the 2 B Read blog this morning. Other topics at 2 B Read this week are characters, dedications and pleasure reading, so head on over and check it out.

Yesterday I was unpacking boxes of research and reference books in the computer room (I think I want to start calling it an office. That sounds more professional. :-). It was an unending project of box after box. I swear it didn't look like I had this many books in my old office. All I did was throw them on the shelves in no order whatsoever. I'm trying to figure out how to arrange them so that what I need is easy to find. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Sorting by topic? Except what about overlap and stuff? It's daunting.

My dad looked around a couple of rooms in the house yesterday and said, "how did you fit all this stuff into one room?" Or words to that effect. I have a lot of scrapbook stuff and a lot of writing things as well.

While I'm asking for people's thoughts, how about this for the Blog-Only contest to win a copy of Ravyn's Flight? Every person who comments on the blog from Monday till the end of the month is entered to win. One entry for every comment during the month. How does this sound to y'all? I'm thinking of starting tomorrow, so I'd appreciate any thoughts--both pro or con--about this plan.

BTW, my mom was helping me and now I don't know where those found copies of RF are any longer. :-) I can only hope they'll turn up again by April 1st, when the contest will end.

I didn't get any writing done yesterday because of the all the unpacking, so today will be a day to focus on the WIP. I still have half a gazillion emails to answer, but since these poor people have waited for so long already, I'm thinking another day won't matter.

I skimmed through a fascinating blog entry over at Creating Passionate Users titled How To Be An Expert. The thing that excited me so much about this article is that it refers back to a scientific study that verifies a theory of mine. :-)

Some time ago, I started thinking about why I could write, but couldn't draw. I loved the idea of sitting down, picking up a pencil and a sketchbook and making pictures. Unfortunately, I didn't have much talent as an artist. A few years ago, though, I was talking with a guy at work who has taken art classes. And he said something that triggered an epiphany: Maybe I wasn't a good artist because I wasn't passionate enough about it to put in the time it took to become good.

With writing, I was willing to put in hour after hour after hour at it. When I was a kid, I filled notebooks with my stories, and when I went to college and got my first computer, I started filling disks with stories. I knew my stories weren't perfect, but I also knew I could keep working at them and make them better.

Could I have done the same thing with art? Yep. Did I? No. Because I was passionate enough about writing to sit down and do it, but not passionate enough about art. Or crafts for that matter too.

Creating Passionate Users says this:

Most of us want to practice the things we're already good at, and avoid the things we suck at. We stay average or intermediate amateurs forever.

Yet the research says that if we were willing to put in more hours, and to use those hours to practice the things that aren't so fun, we could become good. Great. Potentially brilliant. We need, as Restak refers to it, "a rage to master." That dedication to mastery drives the potential expert to focus on the most subtle aspects of performance, and to never be satisfied. There is always more to improve on, and they're willing to work on the less fun stuff.

Yes! We need to that drive to put in the time. Writing is work, lots of work, but for me, the passion outweighed what writing required from me.

More from the blog:

Where this ties into passionate users is with the suck threshold and kick-ass (aka "passion") threshold. Your users will typically fall into one of the three categories in the graphic: expert, amateur, or drop-out. The drop-outs decide that during that "I suck at this" phase, it isn't worth continuing. They give up.

This has been my other assertion, that a lot of talented writers give up too easily and too early. No, not everyone is who works at it hard is going to be published, but there are good writers who could be more--if they didn't walk away from it. But I have another theory for this as well: If someone isn't passionate enough to keep writing, maybe they are meant to do something else.

To use myself and art as an example, I quit drawing when I was a teenager. I wasn't good enough, so why bother? But who knows what I could have become if I had been (and if I WAS) willing to sit down and work at it? But I wasn't meant to be an artist, I was meant to be a writer. If I had devoted all the time necessary to art, would I have had the time to work on my writing?

I think we all need something we feel passionate about, something that excites us enough to work at it even when we're bad. What is your life's passion? What outlet do you have that brings you joy even when it's hard work?

Email was down for hours and hours and hours! My ISP must have had a huge glitch because I can't ever remember a time when I was without email for so long. By the time it came back up, I was ready for bed, so now I have even more email I need to answer.

I finished the chapter in the WIP that I've been writing damn near forever. Or at least it feels like darn near forever. It lacks the depth I'd like to see, especially in the hero's POV, but then I'm still getting to know him. He's revealed a few more things about himself and I'm hoping that will help me get better into his head as I fix the scene today.

I emailed in my dedication/acknowledgements for Eternal Nights. I hate writing those things. I never know what to say or how to say it and I hate to sit and dither about it forever. Some writers manage to sound so heartfelt when I read their dedications. I only wish I had their capabilities.

I'm supposed to blog over at 2 B Read tomorrow. At least I think it's tomorrow; I need to check the calendar. I had planned to talk about characters, but two other authors did that this week. Then I thought I'd talk about writing a dedication, but another writer touched on that this week too. I think I'm going to make that tinfoil cap for my head because clearly my ideas are leaking into the collective unconscious. ;-)

Today, aside from doing my own writing, I need to come up with, and write, a blog topic. And hope that whoever is scheduled to blog today doesn't write about it. :-)

My email is down. I think I'm going through withdrawal. I can't even access email through web mail. The ISP is working on it. They have to work faster! :-) My addiction needs to be appeased.

Computer issues raised their head in other ways too. Yesterday, the POS laptop that I keep locked up at work wouldn't acknowledge that it was plugged in and it only would run on battery. I had this in to the shop when it was under warranty. I brought it home last night, plugged it into