Before I hunker down and finish novella revisions, here's a little quiz.

You Are Grape

You are bold and a true individual. You are very different and very okay with that. People know you as a straight shooter. You're very honest, even when the truth hurts. You are also very grounded and practical. No one is going to sneak anything by you. People enjoy your fresh approach to life. And it's this honesty that makes you a very innovative person.

What Color Purple Are You?

It ended up being a busier day than I expected yesterday. I was planning to go straight home and get to work, but my freeway exit was closed. Since the next one was almost halfway to the mall and since I needed the fax number for the newspaper to send in the announcement about the book signing that I'm part of, I thought, well, I'll just head to the mall and talk to the bookseller in person. I've been meaning to call him all week, but I don't like the phone and I have to psych myself up to make calls like this. I hadn't managed to actually do it yet and time is running short.

Anyway, the bookstore has a nice display right near the registers of books from me and the other two authors signing with me. And I found out that my bookseller took care of alerting the newspaper which is cool because that's one less thing for me to do. I also found out that he's having a really hard time getting Through a Crimson Veil in for the signing. After all the problems I've been dealing with because no one can find Ravyn's Flight, this was the last thing I needed to hear. He's going to try again, and hopefully, I'll have more than Eternal Nights to sign on September 9th.

BTW, if you're in the Twin Cities area and want information on the book signing, check out my Appearances Page.

Then, since I was at the mall anyway, I decided to walk over to Penney's and see what they had for curtains. I need some kind of drape that will work on a traverse rod. Of course, because it was a home sale, the department was packed and no one was available to help me. Call me undomestic (it's true), but I don't know what kind of drape goes on that kind of rod. Pinch pleat? Gah! I ended up leaving without anything.

Then I needed to put tabs on my car because August is my month for license plate renewal. That's something else I've been putting off for a couple of weeks, so I decided I better get that taken care of while I was thinking of it.

Now, I finally started working on revisions. :-)

I'm on my last pass through, looking for things to clean up, word better, delete or new places to layer in some more stuff. One of my writing buddies read the whole thing for me yesterday and she said it's richer and deeper than what I turned in originally. That's a good thing since this was something I'd worried about, but I wasn't sure if it was just something I'd have to live with because of the length I was working with. Maybe so because I'm up to 100 pages now. :-) There's no way I could have gotten this stuff in if I'd had to stay at 80.

I logged on to a ton of email. I'm not exaggerating! And most of it required an answer from me which is rare. So I started working on that and it kept me going until I went to bed.

I printed out a hard copy of the novella to read today. All the big changes are done, but I'll make one more pass today to see if there are more opportunities to layer stuff in and to make sure I hit everything I needed to. I guess I'll spend Thursday trying to get this thing into some kind of order to email to my editor. This is going to be one of the uglier revisions to send back because I changed so much in so many different places.

I really like Kimi and Nic. Well, I like all my characters, I couldn't write about people I didn't enjoy spending time with. Maybe I guess I should say I like the revisions I made because they brought out more of who Kimi and Nic are. When I wrote the novella back in June, I was pressing hard on another deadline and I thought I only had 80 manuscript pages to work with. (I came in at 87 pages.) It was after I got the contract that I realized I could have had more space, so I didn't worry about that as I revised and I added what I needed to. (I'm at 99 pages now.)

But I wonder, do other writers sit there and think, wow, these are cool people; I'm glad I got to write them? Or is it because I'm such a character-driven writer?

You see, I don't create my characters. They come in as fully-formed people. My only job is to get to know them and to listen to them. I love getting to know my heroes and heroines. Some of them will show/tell me all kinds of things. Some are reticent and I have to push them or quiz their friends and families. I've had characters lie to me. I've had characters refuse to tell me their names. I've had characters who like to play with me. See why my motto is Torture the characters before they torture me?

But despite all the grief they give me, there hasn't been one hero or heroine that I haven't genuinely liked. They're why I keep writing when I'm so tired I'm falling asleep sitting up. I want to know what happens to them. I want to see how they find forever together. And I'm totally fascinated by their different relationships. I enjoy watching them change and grow so that they can accept love and live HEA.

My stories revolve around my characters. If there's something I want to do in the story, but the characters won't do it, they win. (Of course, they refuse to let me move forward if I do something with them that they don't want to do so it's kind of a moot point.) At the same time, if there's something they want me to do that I'm not comfortable with, I'll do it anyway. (Which I did in the novel I turned in back in June. I've also got softer alternatives ready to go for the two scenes that might be too much.)

I read a book a few years back that became an absolute wall banger. It was by an author I'd read occasionally in the past and had enjoyed, but after this book, I'll never read her again. She sacrificed who her characters were for her convenience and to stick to the plot she wanted to use. The hero acted completely out of character, doing something so stupid at the midpoint of the book, I was like, huh? Before this, the man had come across as savvy and intelligent. The heroine, too, does something completely stupid so that the author can have her dramatic conclusion. Throw in a little convenient coincidence just for good measure. Gah!

Bottom line for me is stay true to the characters--always. If it messes up your neatly plotted story, then go back and replot, but do not force the characters to behave in a way that isn't right for them. It's all about the characters.

Probably the title of this post would lead you to believe I'm going to have a political rant. Not quite. At least not the way you'd think. Here's my diatribe: How many more damn political candidates, their wives and supporters are going to come to my house and ring the doorbell when I'm trying to work?

See? I told you it wasn't what you expected.

It's been continual and I'm getting so tired of it. I don't even open the door, I just look out, see the clipboard and start muttering. After Saturday, I'd taped a Do Not Disturb Writer at Work sign on my front door, but I didn't put it up last night. It was raining all day, and while it had stopped by early evening, it was still dismal, so I thought the politicians wouldn't bother me. Wrong. Wife of Politician was making the rounds with her clipboard. Argh! I think I'm going to have to leave my sign out all the time now because I'm tired of the interruptions.

Despite these eager beaver political candidates, I'm actually managing to get work done on my novella revisions. I've got all the problems solved, now it's just a matter of fine tuning and layering. And trying to figure out how to get the changes to my editor when I've made so many of them, some little, some big. Pulling this thing together for him is going to be harder than the revisions, I think. :-/

I can't believe it's nearly September! I have to call the bookstore where I'm doing a signing and get the information on who to send the announcement to at the newspaper. He wants me to do it because they don't print anything he sends, but I have no idea who to send it to or what format to use. Then I have the actual book signing on the 9th and I go to see King Tut on the 11th. It's going to be a short trip since I can't afford to burn too much vacation, so pretty much I'm going to turn right around and come back home. But I can't miss King Tut, right? :-)

I made really good progress on novella revisions yesterday and I thought I had all the heavy stuff done, but something I thought wouldn't take too much work may end up needing to be rewritten. :-( If you detect a lack of enthusiasm in my voice, it's because I'm not thrilled by the prospect. Not because of the work involved, that doesn't bother me, it's because I really like the scene the way it's written. I mean, really, really, really like it. And it looks like human nature is going to make me have to change it. The trick is going to be keeping the dialogue and stuff that I like and still fix the thing. :-(

After working all day, I watched Armageddon. I know, I'm probably the last person in America to see this movie. Does anyone need a summary of what happens? Probably not, but just in case a large asteroid is headed for Earth. If it strikes, all life will cease to exist. NASA needs to send a team to the monster to drill 800 feet down and drop a nuke and they end up sending a team of deep sea oil drillers to get the job done. These guys are misfits and screwups and clash with the military.

I thought the movie was good, very suspenseful, and at 2.5 hours, about a half an hour too long. Maybe if they'd cut out some of the training stuff or something. I'd have liked to have seen more of the romance between AJ and Grace, but then there's a reason why I write what I do. I'm very interested in relationships.

It was interesting how the scriptwriters kept making things worse and worse and worse for these poor drillers once they were in space. I mean everything went wrong that could possibly go wrong. It did up the tension, but after a while, even while I was on the edge of my seat, part of me was thinking, oh, come on!

My favorite line in the whole movie was spoken by the Russian. It was something like: Components. American components. Russian components. All made in Taiwan.

There were also some huge problems with the logic in the movie. Some of the space stuff was wrong, at least I'm pretty sure it was wrong. I don't think you can have explosive decompression in space. I decided to overlook all the nitpicky details, though, and just go along for the ride. It was a pretty fun one.

My overall rating 4 out of 5 stars.

I'm not sure whether to label yesterday a good day or not. I made progress on my revisions, but not as much as I'd hoped/wanted to. It always seems to work out that way, though, and my dawdling yesterday morning was really bad, so I got a later start than I'd planned. However, I did get one of the hard changes completely done--I think it turned out well--and I'm about half done with the other hard one. After I finish that, it should be much easier to take care of the rest and to layer these changes I made throughout the rest of the story. For the first time since I finished the novella in June, my head was in the characters and their story and that's a good thing.

The Twins won yesterday, making it a stellar baseball day! I know, I know, but I haven't mentioned baseball here in months! I'm due. They're playing the White Sox--our arch enemy--and both teams are vying for the wild card in the playoffs. Because the Twins had won on Friday night, they had a 1/2 game lead.

Johann Santana was pitching for us and he's a Cy Young candidate. He gave up a couple of runs, but when he came out of the game, the team had a 6-3 lead. Our bullpen is normally totally reliable, but not last night. Both our setup guy and our closer gave up runs, including the tying run. Our manager had no other options in the pen left for extra innings except for a pitcher they normally only bring in when the team is either way behind or way ahead. And this pitcher did it! He pitched two shutout innings and the Twins won in 11 innings. Yea! The team was totally stressing me out last night, though.

One side note, the game was also being broadcast on WGN last night and when that kind of thing happens, I usually like to spend a little time watching the opposing team's game coverage because it can give an interesting perspective. My opinion on the Chicago White Sox announcers is that they were extremely obnoxious and such devout homers that they can't call themselves professionals. Yeah, all broadcast duos obviously lean toward their team, but never to the extent that these two did. Ugh! At least pretend to be semi-professional, guys--you're breaking my journalism major's heart.

Okay, no more baseball talk, although if I had more time, I might have to do a baseball blog during the season. I love to talk about the games. :-)

I mentioned this earlier in the week, but it's a problem I've been dealing with for days. The reprint of Ravyn's Flight is apparently available nowhere except from my publisher right now and stores can't even order it. It's very frustrating for me. People can't buy the book if they can't find it. Even Amazon and BN.com don't have it and they're usually the best source for backlist that the stores don't carry. So I've been in contact with my editor about this and it's gone up the chain of command. I'm hoping something happens to get it fixed, but TBH, I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, I've set all my Order Your Copy links for RF to the Dorchester website.

Title for today's blog is because it was absolutely beautiful here yesterday. Warm, but not humid. Sunny. Gentle breeze. And instead of being outside, I was working on the computer indoors.

There's an interesting blog discussion about cover art from the art director at Tor/Forge that got me thinking about my covers this morning.

On my first book, Ravyn's Flight I spent hours and hours filling out the art facts form I received. I described my characters, their clothes and the scenery in a fair amount of detail. (Lots of detail for the characters, a medium amount on their clothes and sketchy on the scenery. :-) I included pictures of what Ravyn and Damon looked like and described some scenes I thought would make a good cover. None of which involved the h/h in bed.


Here's my cover. Beautiful art, but it didn't match the tone of my book. Cherif looks nothing like Damon who was in the army and had short hair. The woman is much closer to Ravyn, though.

I do use pictures of all my characters as I write. I have to have them before I get too far in a story. To check out the heroes and heroines of the books I've finished, you can go to my Characters Living HEA page.

Now, I'm not unrealistic. I knew there was no way in hell I was getting Lucky Vanous or Kristin Alfonso on my cover, but I did expect a cover that was made for my book. This wasn't. It was already drawn/painted art that my publisher bought the rights to use on my book. I'd include a link to the original art, but I can't find my bookmark.

For The Power of Two I didn't spend as much time on the art form as I did the first time. Still, I did put forth a fair amount of effort, especially describing the characters. Do you see a trend here? I'm not too into the scenery, but very into the people. :-) I did say they were undercover and not wearing their army uniforms. I described their clothing as khakis and whites because it's an extremely hot and humid climate and they'd want to stay cool.


Jake is wearing a military uniform--including a sweater with insignia. Cai is in long sleeves. I think both of them are going to die of heat stroke. :-) I added the red shirt when I did revisions to TPOT because I wanted the characters to match to some extent.

Overall, I really like this cover. The red pops against the bright blue background and if you look closely, you'll see that Cai is wearing a ring on her right hand, exactly as I described in the form I filled out. That was hugely exciting for me and I ran around the office with a cover flat pointing out that ring to all my coworkers. They smiled, nodded, and started looking up the number for a mental health facility. :-)

For Through a Crimson Veil I spent less time on the art sheet, but I included more pictures of Conor and Mika. )Six of Mika, five of Conor.) This is my favorite cover so far. The people are very close to how I envisioned my hero and heroine (he just needs to be taller). I know, I know. Everyone who knows anything about cover art is thinking it doesn't matter if the people on the cover match the characters. I know that too, but I still want them to look the way I see them. :-) This time I mentioned that Mika always wears bright colors.


I added the all black outfit to a scene toward the beginning of the book on revision. BTW, I love this cover so much that I had it blown up to poster size. When I get around to decorating my house, it's going up in my computer room. (BTW, I also love the lettering they used for the title and my name. Way cool!)

One of the things I find interesting is that in the Crimson City series, my book is the only one with both the h/h on the cover. I love that they're both there, but I'm curious why. Is it because in my stories the h/h are always a team against the world even if they have problems with each other? Or am I reading way too much into this and it was just a fluke?

When I filled out the art sheet for Eternal Nights I added more pictures--pyramids, crop circles, military uniforms, insignia and characters.


I really love this cover! The colors are cool, the model is hot (and the longer you look at him, the sexier he gets!) and the pyramid and city give it a real mystical, futuristic feel. IMO. I'm debating getting this one enlarged too, although not to the size of TACV.

When I filled out the art sheet for my book for Tor, I took the lessons I'd learned from my previous four books. I included pictures, tried to get the tone across, gave a real general idea of some scenes in the book and I'll leave the rest up to the art department. I'll admit to getting excited to see this cover. Tor has done some fab work for their paranormal romances and I'm sure mine is going to be way cool too!

Anyway, I need to get going. I have a lot of work to do today. Bottom line for me on the art, I guess, is that as long as it sells books, I'm happy. But I'm happier if the characters look like I imagine them and if the cover matches the tone of my story. :-)

These results were a huge shock. Not.

Your Taste in Music:

80's Alternative: Highest Influence 80's Rock: Highest Influence 80's Pop: High Influence Classic Rock: High Influence 80's R&B: Medium Influence

How's Your Taste in Music?

I did it. I plogged on Amazon yesterday. Even after signing up and getting my books verified, I still wasn't sure I wanted to do it, but this situation with Ravyn's Flight pushed me off the fence. So I blogged on the RF page about how the book is available new. I didn't dare link to where they could buy the book, so I linked to the page on my website--the one with the Order Your Copy link that will let people buy the book. I'm wondering, though, if this will stay up or if Amazon will yank it since I'm taking business away from the people trying to gouge readers with $10 used copies when they can buy it brand new for $6.99.

I'm still not sure I want to do this and I don't plan to do it regularly because I find it irritating as all get out to be looking at a book and have to scroll past long and numerous entries. But right now I have an entry on RF and on Eternal Nights and I'll probably do one for my other books and leave it at that.

While I'm kind of talking about web things, I added some printable files to my website. Not last night, earlier. One of them is a list of my books in PDF. I debated whether or not to add my upcoming releases or just the books that are out. I decided to go with just the ones that could be bought. When I have some time, I'm going to explore adding some more PDF documents to my website. Maybe y'all would like to see my extensive character sketches. :-) I don't do them for every book, and if I do use them, I don't necessarily fill them out completely, but if I need something thorough, I have it.

Anyway, it's mostly been a boring week. I've been struggling with the major revisions to the novella because I have to write new scenes and the characters aren't really talking to me. Kimi, however, finally gave me some insight last night before I fell asleep. Or I guess I should say that she reminded me of some stuff she'd shown me when I first started the novella and I didn't use it. I only had 80 pages (I thought) and I didn't think I could afford to waste space on it. Now, though, I'll go back and use it. Um, it's going to be another weekend locked away from the world while I immerse myself in this story.

Ravyn's Flight was out of print for two years. During that time, I fielded a ton of emails from readers asking me where they could find a copy. I always felt bad that I couldn't tell them exactly where to get one. I know how it is to want an author's backlist and not be able to find it. (I'm still looking for reasonably priced copies of JAK's McFadden stories!) So I was eagerly awaiting August and RF being back in print.

Last week, I notice that Amazon has RF shipping in "7-13 days." I figured that meant they'd sold out of their initial order and were waiting for more copies to arrive. Okay. Over the weekend, I heard from a reader trying to get RF. Her bookstore couldn't order it, and it wasn't available at Amazon. I directed her to Barnes & Noble.com since they still had copies up.

Monday, I think, Amazon switched RF to "available from these sellers" which means they weren't getting anymore copies. Around this same time, BN.com has the book become unavailable. "A new copy is not available at this time." My first thought is that they couldn't have printed so few copies that the book is already out of print again, right? I check my publisher's website. RF is still available there. Whew! But I drop a note to my editor asking what's going on. Why couldn't Amazon reorder? Why didn't BN.com reorder? Clearly, there's some demand for these books and these online retailers are pretty good about keeping backlist available.

Then I hear back from the reader who emailed me. She can't get RF anywhere and was very frustrated. The only place I know she can get it is from my publisher. I give her the website, I give her the phone number, I apologize profusely for her difficulty and tell her how much I appreciate her efforts. And I'm cringing because no reader should have to go through this much work to get a copy of a book she wants to read.

My guess is there's some glitch that told Amazon and BN.com that RF wasn't available. I let my editor know there's a problem, but I have no clue who else to contact and tell. There are plenty of copies of RF. I have a rough count of how many are in the warehouse. So why the heck can't readers get a copy? Grrr!

I'm through with the easy revisions to the novella now. All that's left now is the stuff that's going to take some work and then layering those changes throughout the story. I've been so tired this week that I was hesitant to tackle the big things, but I'll have to start tonight.

To continue with my frustrations, yesterday I checked email and had the same newsletter twice on two different email addresses. I didn't sign up for this author's newsletter even once. I didn't enter a contest on her website. Nothing. But I am on the same loop with her. I found this irritating because now 1. I had to take the time to unsubscribe--twice. 2. I don't have time to read and answer email from friends and I'm no mail on most of my loops. Now I'm getting not just one, but two newsletter emails from a historical author and I don't read historicals. 3. The newsletter was for a chat. See previous mention of how little time I have. I wish authors would figure out that other published authors are not their target market--especially those of us who hold full time jobs.

Then, right before I head to bed last night, I received a fan email. Yea!!! (Normally, I don't mention fan mail here because that seems a little braggy, but there's a reason why I bring it up now). I hit reply and answered the note--and got a mailer daemon thing. No such user it says. I tried again, sure it was a tech glitch, but it came back a second time. I looked at the header and this is the address it was sent from (sometimes emails will have a different reply to address specified in the header). So I'm not sure why this is happening. I'll try again and hope it goes through. I'd hate for anyone to think that I didn't answer their note. I answer every reader email I receive.

Okay, just popped into email to send it again while I was thinking of it. Keep your fingers crossed for me! Darn, note came back again as no such mailbox.

Anyway, a writing buddy did a "things she's learned since she first started writing" entry on her blog this week. I learned a lot of things since I first sold, (school went into session, fast!) but one of the biggest was that the more books I have released, the more time I have taken up with things that don't actually involve writing. If I ever have time, (Hahaha!!!) maybe I'll work up my own list of things I learned.

It's raining.

I predicted this with more accuracy than the weather people. You see, my dad got back from Chicago yesterday and resumed sod watering duty. It didn't rain even once while he was gone and I never wanted rain more than I wanted it then. Just one day off from tromping through wet grass hauling hoses and sprinklers. But no. The storms went north. The storms went south. The storms disintegrated before they reached the Twin Cities. But I knew it would rain now and it is. Sigh.

After oversleeping yesterday, I never felt awake all day. How weird is that since, in essence, I had an extra hour and a half of uninterrupted sleep? So I went to bed early last night. Creed and Maia came in again and blah, blah, blah.

Okay, so I shouldn't complain. I need them to talk to me since I have to start writing their book pretty darn soon. But I was trying to sleep! :-) Creed, BTW, is using Ryne as bait without her knowing about it which really pisses Maia off once she figures it out. Ryne is her little sister even if she is a troubleshooter.

So couldn't fall asleep right away and then I wake up before 3am. Grrr! I don't know if that's because my body is so used to such a small amount of sleep that it just automatically woke up or if I was subconsciously concerned about oversleeping again. Then the storms rolled through.

Oh, BTW, y'all be thrilled to know that my dad gave me the stamp of approval on my watering efforts. He officially told me I did a good job, which I think might have shocked him because he knows I have a patience problem and that I'm indifferent at best to the outside of the house. :-) He, of course, did an inspection within a few hours of arriving home and he hand watered the edges of the yard because the sprinklers just don't get them good enough. :-)

This should be about the end of the lawn watering stories now that it's not my responsibility any longer. Just so you know it should be pretty safe after today. What can I say? Keeping that sod alive was my life for five days.

You Are a Seeker Soul

You are on a quest for knowledge and life challenges. You love to be curious and ask a ton of questions. Since you know so much, you make for an interesting conversationalist. Mentally alert, you can outwit almost anyone (and have fun doing it!). Very introspective, you can be silently critical of others. And your quiet nature makes it difficult for people to get to know you. You see yourself as a philosopher, and you take everything philosophically. Your main talent is expressing and communicating ideas. Souls you are most compatible with: Hunter Soul and Visionary Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

I hugely overslept this morning. Maybe the worst in many, many years. I woke up about five minutes before I need to leave the house, so I jumped in the shower, got dressed and raced out the door. And a couple of blocks from home, I couldn't remember if I'd shut the garage door or not, so I turned around and went to check. Yep, I'd closed it, but that pretty much obliterated any hope I had of making it on time. Still, I punched in only 5 minutes late, so I think I did pretty good, and now that I've had coffee, I feel human again. Or at least I'm getting there.

Last night, I finished making notes on the novella. When I get a revision letter, I read through the whole story, then I take the letter and go through with that and mark up the hard copy where I want to incorporate the suggestions. At least that's how I'm handling it this time. I honestly can't remember how I do revisions on a full novel. Sigh. Anyway, I made the last markups last night and comments in the letter that I didn't think were going to work, suddenly made sense. :-)

I don't think the changes I need to make are going to be too bad, but I won't really know until I start writing. And because I overslept, I forgot to grab the laptop or my handy dandy mini-laptop, so no writing at lunch today. I've got a couple of other things I need to work on, though, and I'll do those.

Still no rain. Still hauled hoses/sprinklers around last night. Enough said.

I know no one cares about this except me, but they finally, FINALLY finished the bridge over the freeway near my house and reopened my street! For about a year, I've had to weave my way through other neighborhoods to reach the main thoroughfare and it was getting old! Now if they'd just finish the freeway construction, life would be good.

I think that's it for today.

It happens every time I get revisions. I look at them and I think, OMG, I can't do this? How do I do this? I can't remember how I did it last time!

For some reason, I can never retain how I tackle my revision letters. I don't understand it, but it's like every letter is the first. But I know the near-panic will recede and somehow I'll manage to figure out how to do it and what to do. That's the nice thing about having a few books out--the fear can't really take root because I know I've made it through this exact same situation on my earlier books.

I printed out my revision letter, after I made the font bigger. (10 pt font? Gah!) Five pages in 12 pt font. Not too bad. :-) Of course, the story did come in at 87 pages. I should figure out the math somehow, but I think I'm happier believing it's not too much when, on a percentage basis, it's probably worse.

My normal Minnesotan interest in the weather has become an obsession. I'm constantly watching the Weather Channel now and that's just sad. Last night before I went to bed, I see this huge patch of green off to our west and it's headed right for the Twin Cities! Yea!!! I swear I happy dog danced. Then I saw the forecast--scattered showers.

Scattered?!? How can they be scattered? There's a big, huge, enormous patch of green out there. It has to rain!

It didn't. I turned on the Weather Channel first thing this morning and the radar showed my beautiful patch of green disintegrating. :-( Which means I'll be back outside dragging the sprinklers/hoses around this evening. I'm seriously looking forward to my dad getting back into town so I can happily abdicate this duty. It does give me a huge appreciation, though, for his effort. Who would have thought that new sod would be such a pain?

I didn't think I was on space patrol yesterday, but apparently I was because I totally forgot about the mail. Forgot, heck, mail didn't even exist in my world. Until about 10:15 last night. Then I went, oops! We've had a few issues with mail being stolen out of mailboxes in my city, so I hunted up a flashlight and traipsed outside to get it. Usually, Saturday is a very light mail day and I was surprised that I had to keep pulling things out of the box, including a very large, padded envelope. Hmm, I wondered as I walked back to the house, I don't remember ordering anything. Maybe it's an award certificate--I know I have at least one more of those coming.

So I get inside, ditch the flashlight and my shoes and start sorting through the mail. The big envelope is from Tor. Then I remembered. Anna, my thoughtful and sweet editor, had emailed to say she was sending the catalog with my book in it!

It looks beautiful! First of all, it seems as if my title is going to remain IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR. Second, I now know my ISBN numbers. And third, I know when my book is coming out. Watch for it August 2007. Whoo hooo!

I know I'm posting way late today, but then I slept way late. :-) Kind of. I was up the first time around 6:30, stayed up for an hour, then went back to bed and slept until 11. I feel so much better now, but half the day appears to be wasted because I'm just getting around to blogging, haven't had a shower yet and I have a lot of work to do today.

Still no rain in sight, so I was out hauling hoses again last night. I started earlier with the intention of finishing earlier, but that's not how it worked out. Since I had extra time, I decided to water the part that had been seeded, but not sodded. That's the very back of my yard. Big mistake.

This is another piece of evidence I was on space patrol. The dirt was dry, bone dry, and I figured the grass seed could use a light sprinkle. I wasn't going to give it the amount of water I'd been giving the sod, just a little bit. I completely didn't think about my having to walk back over the now muddy ground to retrieve the sprinkler. Gah!

I think I did more damage to parts of the yard than the lack of water would have caused. It was last night, while I was in bed, that I figured out how I should have set up the sprinkler. If I'd set it on the edge of the sod, it would have shot over into the seeded section and I wouldn't have had to walk in the mud. Next time, I'll know.

My moccasins, BTW, are completely ruined. :-( I've had the darn things forever, but I totally love them. They're easy to slip on and off and great for quick trips to the mailbox or the store or wherever. Not any longer. They've been absolutely soaked three days in a row. I don't think they're dried out yet. Now I'll have to buy another pair, but you know they won't be as great as this pair for a long time to come. These are worn in and mine. :-(

I ended up working on the proposal yesterday, but I think I'm switching to my novella revisions today. I'm not sure about where I want to go next in the proposal pages and this will give me time to think. I did try to do some mulling about this last night, but Creed and Maia were talking. I'm not complaining about that, believe me! That's the next book I have due and I was getting a little panicky about not having much to go on for them. All I have to say is thank you Kansas! (The rock group.) It was hearing their song Carry On My Wayward Son in the car one day that got me thinking and one thought led to another until I have a big plot idea that not only should carry this book, but if I wanted, it could carry a lot more. Yea! Now to work out the details. :-/

I don't know why my full posts have been truncated on Bloglines. I do have it set up to send the entire thing; I just double checked that. I use Bloglines myself and I know I get annoyed if I have to click over to read the day's post on someone's blog, so I am sensitive to this. I hope whatever the issue is between Blogger and Bloglines gets resolved soon.

I'm not sure what to start out with today. There are two things of equal prominence in my mind--one is writing related, one isn't. Maybe, since I've spent so much time talking about the writing lately, I'll start with the other.

It didn't rain yesterday! I know, you're thinking, oh, hell, she's going to talk about the weather again. Kind of, but only in relation to watering my darn sod. (You can skip down to the writing stuff if that's what you're interested in. I do go on for a little bit about my yard and the rain.) You see, I was counting on the rain to hit the spots I know I'm missing as I try to water my brand new lawn. It's difficult to tell what's wet enough to be good watering and what's damp, but still needs water. Besides, my shoes get all wet, I get wet as the sprinkler hits me and it's just plain a PITA. I have brand new appreciation of my dad doing this for me for six days. Clearly, I need to get him a gift for all that work.

So all the weather geeks have been swearing up and down for days that we'd have rain on Friday. I was counting on this rain. The first storm was huge and it was headed right for us. Hours of rain. I sighed in bliss. No need to water.

It dropped south and missed us entirely. Iowa stole our rain.

But there was another storm off in North Dakota and that's the one the weather people said we'd get. It's not as wide and as wet as the first storm, but it was still rain. It would be here around midnight. Okay, so I water on Friday and I can take Saturday off. I can deal with that, plus Saturday will be a heavy duty writing day anyway, so if I don't have to waste precious time moving sprinklers around, this can only be good.

The first thing I did when I woke up this morning is look out the window. It didn't look very wet out there. Heck, it didn't even look damp. My heart sank. Maybe, I thought hopefully, it rained and quit early enough that it dried up already. Hey, you have to be an optimist to be a writer! All that rejection--even once you're published--takes someone who eternally believes that the sun is around the corner.

I turn on the television and find a local station showing the weather. My beautiful rain storm went north of the Twin Cities. Duluth stole our rain!

The rest of the forecast is for dry, sunny weather. :-( So I'll be out every day hauling sprinklers and hoses around.

Okay, for those who've waded their way through my rain/yard story, here's the writing stuff I promised.

I received my revisions for the novella yesterday and I have two weeks to get them done. The timing isn't the absolute worst it could be. It's only pretty bad. I really was going to town on my proposal. The arc overview was done. The synopsis was done. And I was writing story at a pretty good clip. I wanted to finish it this weekend, at least the first draft of the proposal pages, and mail it to my agent next week some time.

This leaves me with a dilemma--do I keep writing the proposal this weekend and start on the revisions on Monday? Or do I drop everything and work on revisions now?

The revisions aren't huge ones, but they could end up being time consuming because of the tweaking I'd need to do throughout the story. They're also going to require writing a couple of new scenes and adding to several others.

On the other hand, if I drop the proposal and work on revisions to the novella, I'll be delayed two weeks. I also expect revisions on my novel any day, so that could mean more than a two week delay. We could be talking deep into September before I'd be able to pick up Flare's story again. By then, my connection to the characters and story would be cold, and even with my notes, I wouldn't be 100% sure exactly what I'd meant to do next.

I'm leaning toward writing my butt off this weekend on Flare and then moving on to the novella on Monday whether I have the proposal done or not.

But then I think, wow, what if I get revisions for Ryne and Deke and the deadline is tight on that. I'll be sorry then if I spent 2 days working on the proposal when I could have gotten stuff done on the novella.

In other words, I'm completely torn. What would you work on if you were in my place?

It rained here yesterday morning, but not enough to let me out of watering the new sod around the house. :-( Let me tell you, getting the sprinklers in the right position wasn't easy. I had to make sure I got as much sod as possible wet without soaking the street. It took nearly three hours to get most of the yard and I still missed a couple of patches on the north side. Sigh.

BTW, my dad wrote out instructions on how to do the watering and at the bottom, in all capital letters, he writes: I hope it rains! I'm thinking he doesn't have much confidence in my yard care skills. He might be right. ;-)

So while I'm running around, watering the yard, my dad calls from Chicago. NINE TIMES! I had nine voice mail messages. Not because he talked all those times, but because he didn't hang up the phone until after the beep. Arghhhh!!! He knew I was going to be outside because I told him when I dropped him and my mom off at the airport. I'd also told him if he didn't get me, not to leave a message, to just keep trying. Nine voice mail messages. I hate the phone.

Despite my dad's attempts to drive me insane, I got a lot of work done yesterday on my proposal. The synopsis is revised and basically good to go. All I want to do now is print it out and look for more typos and missing/extra words. I'll still miss some, I always do, but it'll be as clean as I can make it. I also have the arc overview document almost ready to go--barring one of my writing buddies taking it apart.

My editor asked for a 7-10 page synopsis for the book. What's she getting? A 9 page arc overview document explaining what's been happening on Earth and on J Nine, introducing the characters from the three books and a short summary--complete with book goal--for each of the three stories. The synopsis came in at 11 pages. It was 12 after I revised, but I cut it back to 11 again. So this totals up to 20 pages, double what she asked for. Um, is there any question now why the print in my books is so small? ;-)

I also managed to write 5 or 6 pages of actual story last night, but that was the last thing I did and I kind of petered out toward the end. But considering how tired I was, how much mental energy I'd expended on the synopsis and arc and how much time I was wasting running around the yard, dragging hoses and sprinklers, I think I did pretty good.

Yesterday, as I was driving home from work, a song came on the radio that I haven't heard in a good long while--"Carry On My Wayward Son." I don't even remember who sings it, but that sparked some ideas for my next book--the one I need to start writing very soon. :-) If I could finish the arc proposal, I could spend more time thinking about Creed and Maia, but this idea shows a great deal of promise, and if it's as strong as I hope, it could spark more books in this world.

To wrap up, I'm praying rain for this afternoon (and there is a story behind why I say praying rain instead of pray for rain, but it's from something I read and it's long so I'll skip it). There's a big storm off to our west, so fingers crossed.

Boring title for today's blog, but I think I've mentioned I suck at naming things. And if you think this is bad, you should see the titles I put on the poor books in my futuristic proposal. :-(

I finished a first draft of the synopsis yesterday. I was shooting for 5 pages since I have the overview arc to go along with it. I believe the synopsis came in at around 11 pages, which would put it at more than double what my goal was. I honestly don't know how this happens, it just does. Today I'll polish it up a bit, maybe manage to do some streamlining and get it down to 10 pages, and work on writing the story.

I did about four pages of that last night before I went to bed. I'm not sure whether or not it's working. It's that damn balancing act between grounding the reader in where they are and not boring them to death with the world. And IMO, this balancing act gets worse in connected books. I mean, it was easy in Ravyn's Flight--or relatively easy considering I loathe description--to give the reader enough info to visualize for themselves. It was harder in Eternal Nights because I had a third factor in the balancing act--readers who were familiar with RF. Now I'm dealing with that factor times 2 in Flare's story.

How much is too much? How much does the reader need versus how much slows the story? Is there a better way to get the info across without leaving the reader lost?

The struggle with these questions will continue today. The goal is to have this package wrapped up and ready to mail by the weekend. If not the weekend then on Monday. Revisions are coming. (And doesn't that sound ominous?)

I had to get up early today because I have to take my parents to the airport before I go to the day job. I've been tired all week and this is just making that worse. This also leaves me with sprinkler duty for the new sod. I know, I'm spoiled, but my dad is obsessive about my yard, and in all honesty, I don't care much what the outside of the house looks like. Of course, I'm not going to let all that brand new grass die, so I'll diligently water, but it's going to be such a PITA. I've been told to move the sprinklers every half hour and that I have to turn the water off on the south hose before I do that because it uncouples from the sprinkler otherwise.

This basically means that while I'm trying to write a story that I'm struggling with anyway, that I have to stop every half an hour, go outside and spend 5-10 minutes jockeying the hoses. Um, yeah, sounds really conducive to writing.

And just to put something non-writing related on the blog for a change, why are all the movies so long? Everything I've gotten from Netflix has been over two hours! What happened to 90 minute movies? I've had Armageddon for like a week now, but it's hard for me to commit 2.5 hours of my life to a movie. I don't know when I'm going to get around to watching this thing.

My goal for yesterday was to finish up the overview for the three book arc and get to work on the synopsis for book one or start writing pages--one of the two. I failed miserably on both scores. :-(

I can see the opening scene of the book. Flare's on his front porch, he just got in from nearly four weeks outside the city walls, he's tired, wants to relax and then Wyatt shows up and tells him Alex ordered them to an early morning meeting. Somehow, though, I can't seem to get this on paper (or screen) in a way that's interesting and it's leaving me frustrated.

Oh, I'm used to the scenes in my head not matching what I actually get down in words, every writer is. I think this is why we keep writing, in the hopes that one day we'll actually capture perfectly what we see/hear/feel/sense. This is different. I almost wonder if it's because I'm trying to do everything in this draft the first time I write. By this, I mean that I know I have to set up that we're on another planet, give the reader some sense of place and time and still tell a story. Maybe I'm trying to do it all on one pass through and I should be concentrating on one layer at a time.

The other thing that's leaving me frustrated is trying to convey the three book arc. I know basically what's going to happen in book one, my writing buddy and I talked it out. I have an idea what's going to happen in the other two books, yet when I try to write up a short, few paragraph summary for the overview, it sounds lame. Worse than lame, it sounds too vague. I at least wanted to get that done yesterday. It's three books, a few paragraphs per book, maybe a page, or at most, a page and a half worth of writing.

I just couldn't get it done. Amazing, I think. I've written entire books in four months and I can't one page done in four hours. :-(

So y'all know what the goal is for today, right? ;-)

I've probably been talking about this project and its characters for too long now. It is my focal point right now, though. I know revisions are coming on the two projects I turned in earlier this year (June) and I need to get this done before the revision letters arrive in my inbox because once I'm done with them, I have to get hopping on the book that's due in January. That's also why my lack of progress yesterday is so disappointing.

If you missed the chat at Writerspace last night, there's another chance to chat with me tonight at Coffee Time Romance. I'll be joined by Susan Grant and Robin Owens and we'll be talking about our new books. The chat starts at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific and I know we'd love to see lots of people there!

Yesterday, I was working on my synopsis for the futuristic proposal. It's getting there. I have a little bit to do on the overview of the three books and then I need to do the detailed synopsis of the first book's plot and that'll be done. Of course, I still have to actually write some of the story. This just strikes me as hugely bizarre and wrong that I'm working on the synopsis before the story. That's not the way I usually do things.

But I never spend a great deal of time worrying about stuff like this. An experienced and wise writer told me after I sold my first book that the process will change and don't fight it. It's been the best piece of writing advice I've received because the process seems to change for me on every book. So I'll do the synopsis first then write the pages and hope it all works out.

One of my big problems with the synopsis was solved yesterday when Z finally talked to me. Z is the hero in the third book and both he and his heroine have been very uncooperative. (Which reminds me, his heroine changed her name on me. Again! She's still Jas, but now her last name is Landreaux. Gah! Let's hope this one's it.) So I'm trying to fill in some info about their characters, but I don't know much about them. Then Z started sharing. I didn't believe it was him at first, not really. I mean he's quiet! So I kind of cut him off and talked to Wyatt from Eternal Nights. (Yes, I talk to my characters just like they're real people.) He was of some help, but not hugely, so I asked Flare. He knew things that made me confident that this really was Zach talking to me so I went back and listened to him.

I thought the internal conflict/need to change would be his because of his job--he's a sniper on a Spec Ops team. It's not. Jas is the one who's going to need to change. Z gave me an earful. He was not happy about his heroine. He called her "brain dead." Um, I said, she's an expert on laser technology, she's not brain dead. Then I got a long explanation on why he called her that. The crux of it is that she's so focused on successfully completing her projects (like the laser thing), that she never lifts her head up to see the big picture, to look at how her work affects the world.

Z as it turns out is very much a big picture guy and quite Zen. Or at least very contemplative/meditative. He told me straight out that if I expect him to fall for Jas she was going to need to change--a lot. That she had to think about the consequences of her actions, not mindlessly move forward. He's in the war, behind enemy lines, he sees these weapons firsthand, what they can do to people. He wants her to understand what she's doing too.

It's not that he's opposed to new weapons, he was adamant about that. Z said he's a soldier and he wants this latest damn war over too, but that doesn't mean that the scientists and engineers can go through life brain dead.

He was quite passionate about this. I'm thinking still waters run deep and it would be interesting to see how stirred up he gets about other things.

This was all completely unexpected, BTW. I had zero idea about who Zach was before yesterday. Now I know part of him. And I know his head's screwed on straight--to quote both him and Flare. It has to be, Z assured me, or he couldn't do his job.

So did I bore y'all to death today? This is what it's like inside my head sometimes. Conversations with imaginary people, sometimes arguments with them, name changes, etc, and in the middle of all this, I'm trying to write. :-) TBH, though, I wouldn't trade the noise in my head for anything. I like the characters--even when one or more is being a PITA.

Last week, as I was thinking about the futuristic proposal I'm putting together, I realized that if three members of Wyatt's team were going to be heroes, the odds were darn good I'd need to know the names of the guys who weren't going to be heroes. Someone was going to talk about them or talk to them or something, right?

That's when the Troll showed up. You can guess that the team calls him Troll for the obvious reasons--the man is drop-dead gorgeous, easily the best looking man on the team. His background is multi-ethnic and he's quiet. Not as quiet as Z, but still pretty close-mouthed.

I have to finish this proposal this week. I absolutely can't count on more time than that before my revisions come. I've got half a million other things to do too, including a chat a Writerspace tonight and another chat at Coffee Time Romance tomorrow. I do not have time to talk to the Troll or to find out about him. Heck, I don't know Z well enough or his heroine and if I'm talking to anyone, it should be those two.

But damn the Troll is every bit as intriguing as Z and besides, since I'm not doing his story, talking to him would be just for fun. Talking to Z or Jas is work. That makes all the difference in the world.

Join me tonight at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific time at Writerspace as I chat about Eternal Nights. Other Love Spell and Leisure authors will also be there, although I'm not sure who.

I received a great review for Eternal Nights yesterday. It's from Keely Skillman at SingleTitle.com. She gave EN five stars and said:

Eternal Nights by Patti O'Shea is a spine tingling adventure through an un-chartered jungle where learning to love is the most important lesson.

The supporting characters are developed to an emotional level not often seen in romances let alone a complicated science fiction suspense romance like this one; this adds an astoundingly rich depth to the feel and flow of the book.

I have to admit that I am very impressed with Ms. O'Shea's talent on many levels; enough so that I will be keeping an eye peeled for anything penned by this spinner of spellbinding tales.

How cool is this??? Read the full review at SingleTitles.com.

I also had a great reader review show up on Amazon for Eternal Nights too! I know, I shouldn't be visiting my books over there. That only leads to pain and frustration, but I can't seem to help myself. I've cut out visiting most message boards--the two remaining are both very author friendly--and I don't search my name or book titles anymore, but checking Amazon and BN.com are still daily events for me.

I've got two chats coming up and a couple of book signings. I'll post more about them here later. Enough that I think I'm going to add an appearances page to my website temporarily. I'm going to work on that as soon as I finish this blog post, then I need to get to work on my synopsis for the three books set on J9.

It's really been a busy weekend so far, although I don't seem to have a lot to show for it. I went to my chapter meeting yesterday and it was a lot of fun! We talked about the conference and it was interesting to hear other people's perspectives, especially the first timers. My first conference was in 2000 when RWA met in Washington DC, but it was interesting to discover that the memories that are still vivid for me are the same types of things that these women mentioned.

When I arrived home, my MobilePro 790 was there. The box was marked "Fragile," but the post office didn't let that stop them from mutilating it. The mail carrier recommended opening it very carefully, and if there was any damage, to bring the entire thing to the PO.

I have to admit I was hoping for the best, but fearing the worst as I opened the box, but luckily the eBay seller had wrapped things up really well and there was a lot of packing and cushioning. Everything looks good and I've done a few tests to see if it was running okay, but I'll put it through more tests before I let the postal service off the hook.

I think I'm going to like this machine for writing much better than the Dana. The keyboard is a little squished to me, but it's got the feel of a laptop keyboard so I think I'll get used to it, and while the screen is small, it's full color and familiar. The other thing I think I'm going to really like is how light it is! My God, it's amazing! I mean, I know they said it weighed 1.7 pounds, but I didn't realize it would be that light! Makes me wonder how heavy this laptop is.

This morning, I started laundry before I started coffee. I know, shock! But I wanted to get it over and done with early. I also have a ton of email to get through today since I didn't look at them yesterday.

Oh! Mr. Congeniality, one of the most annoying people I work with, had a job interview on Friday. If it's for a position where I don't have to deal with him anymore, I'm so hoping he gets it! As bad as the atmosphere is at the day job--and since I work for an airline in bankruptcy, it's really terrible--Mr. Congeniality is the one that makes it hard for me to go to work every day. If he's gone, then I'm happy and bouncy all day long and if he's there, it's all I can do to drag myself into the building. I know, I shouldn't give away my energy like that, but I haven't figured out how to stop it yet. Please join me in thinking positive thoughts that MC gets a job that keeps him far away from me! ;-)

I think that's it for today. Have a fabulous Sunday y'all!

This morning I decided to bite the bullet and join the Amazon Connect program. It was one of those "all the other authors are doing it" things and I'm certainly not going to be as chatty over there as some writers are because it really irritates me when I'm looking at a book and have to scroll past plog entry after plog entry. I find that so annoying! I think one blog entry there will hold me for months and months and months. The thing won't go live until my books are verified by my publisher so no need to rush right over there. ;-)

Today, my local writing chapter meets and I'm going to the meeting. I've got a little time yet to dawdle this morning, though, and I plan to use it. I don't know why I'm so slow to get moving in the mornings, but I am.

After the meeting, I need to run to a couple of stores. At one, I need to exchange one shower rod for another. I want to go with the curved one rather than straight. When I was in Atlanta, the hotel had one and it was way cool. I also need to buy another curtain panel and valance for the kitchen windows. That's what the lady from the blind company recommended when she was out because she said it needed more fullness. That, of course, was something I bought at a different store than the shower rod.

I'm still thrilled every time I think about having grass in my front yard. It's so cool to have something other than dirt and weeds after all this time! For pictures, check out the link to House Gallery 10 from yesterday's blog or click on Patti's House Pics in the links to the right.

There isn't much else to say since I posted all my exciting stuff yesterday. I've got to learn to pace myself! ;-) I need to get going, though, too and start getting ready.

First, here's the pin that I received when Through a Crimson Veil was named Best Paranormal Romance in the Booksellers Best Awards.

The picture didn't come out as well as I'd hoped it would. There's a little pair of glasses on the right and the bookmark says "Booksellers Best."


Now on to the yard. The lawn guys finished putting in the sod today. Yea! Much of the backyard was seeded instead of sodded to save money, but the front yard looks beautiful. Check out House Gallery 10 to see the pictures.

My PITA next door neighbors were at it again. Sigh. These would be the same people who trimmed some bushes in their yard and threw the refuse in mine. They were bitching and moaning about the yard guys. And we didn't go all the way to the property line on their side of my house and now the woman thinks those four or five feet are hers. Good grief. In one of the departments I've worked in, the joke when someone was being a dink was that they needed to get laid. (Forgive the crudeness.) I'm thinking there's one couple on my block who's been celibate for way too long. ;-)

Anyhow, I'm trying to not let them ruin the experience of owning my first house. They're making it darn difficult, though.

So blinds are taken care of, yard is in, now if I could only get my dad to finish a few projects inside the house for me. :-)

Y'all be thrilled to know that the character formerly known as Carly and I have reached an agreement on what her name is. She really made me work for it, but her name is: Jasmine Quinell. She goes by Jas.

I started work on the synopsis for the J9 books yesterday. It's an interesting situation trying to do three books in one proposal--and that's how I'm shooting to do it as opposed to the way I put together the packages for my other multi-book ideas where each had a separate synopsis. The reason why I want to do this one as a single unit is because of the major plot arc that goes across all three books. My thought is to follow the arc and through the synopsis and detail each book when I reach its point in the timeline.

The other thing that's interesting is trying to get a handle on six characters at the same time. Flare, who'll be the hero in book 1, has been talking right along, but then I spent time with him for Eternal Nights so he's familiar. Sasha, his heroine, not talking so much. Last night, Nadia, the heroine in book 2 started sharing info, but her hero? Well, Digger is damn quiet. The characters in book 3, Z and Carly are complete enigmas right now except that she's piped up to say that her name ISN'T Carly. But do you think the character formerly known as Carly will tell me what her name really is??? Of course not. Despite all this, I think I'm making some progress, though, I'm not quite sure why I believe that. ;-)

Still no titles, working or otherwise.

The sod guys came yesterday and they did a lot of work. It amazed me. Um, keep in mind that I basically turned this entire landscaping project over to my dad and I didn't realize that he'd decided to have my yard redone so that the water would run farther away from the house. He really didn't like that lake that formed in my backyard even though it wasn't close to the house at all. He also had them pull out a couple of dead evergreen trees and knock down the hill on the north side of my house. That was a steep dropoff!

No actual sod is down yet, but they're supposed to do that today. I'll take pictures because I know y'all can't wait to see my yard with actual grass as opposed to dirt and/or weeds. :-) Actually, I'm curious to see my yard with grass down too now that it's been resculpted, but I'm not looking forward to having to water that sod. I'm already praying rain. ;-)

And my spell check is working again on Blogger! Yea! I wonder if it has anything to do with accidentally clearing all my cookies off the computer yesterday evening?

When I got back from Atlanta, I mentioned that one of the women in my chapter had this really cool gadget. Half-PDA, half-laptop, it combined the best of both worlds and looked perfect for writing. I learned the name, it's an NEC MobilePro and it weighs less than 2 pounds, but it has a nearly full-size keyboard. Now how much better would this be to drag around than the laptop? So with her guidance--she's been following the MobilePro on eBay for a while--I bid on one. It even has wifi access so if I can find a hotspot, I can connect and the thing comes on immediately so no waiting for boot up. I hope it's as slick to work on as it appears to be. It shipped last night, so hopefully, it'll arrive quickly.

Then after I got home from work yesterday, the woman from the blind store came over. I went with the double honeycomb blinds for my bedroom, computer room and the scrapbook room. I did blackout for my bedroom because I like it dark when I sleep and regular for the other two rooms.

I wasn't sure I was going to do the scrapbook room, but it wasn't that much more money (relatively speaking) and I figured at least this way I would have all my windows done and I wouldn't have to worry about it again.

She also helped me with the hardware for the windows. My dad really can't put that up for me and I asked what they'd charge for labor to do that. She's going to check and get back to me, but unless it's outrageous, I'm going to have them do it. Again, I just want it done and the way I'm keeping the curtain rods up now isn't real sturdy.

It'll be about 4 weeks till I have the blinds. I didn't think that was too bad. I picked some real neutral colors to go in my three not neutral rooms. :-)

Anyway, the woman was very nice and very helpful. I'm so hopeless when it comes to things like this, so it was great to work with someone who was willing to guide me through this and offer suggestions about the mounting and stuff.

Today, the lawn guy is coming to start putting in the sod. I guess I should have titled this my expensive WEEK instead of day. :-/

No writing work done yesterday. Sigh. I brought my folder full of information for my proposal into the kitchen to work on while I waited, but I never got to it and the appointment for the window things lasted three hours, so I was too tired afterward to look at anything. I just ate dinner, opened the deluge of email and watched a little ball. I need to get some serious work done on this proposal today. I wonder if I can. My dad is going to supervise the lawn guys so I should be clear there, but....

My wasp woes continue. I'd checked my windows when I returned from Atlanta, but since they were all clear after a week away, I figured I'd zapped the wasp with insecticide and that all was right with my world. Yesterday, however, I felt compelled to make another check. Imagine my dismay when I opened my bedroom window and grass fell. Again. Sigh.

So I went and got the wasp killer and sprayed the hell out of the top of the window. Then I moved to my next bedroom window and opened it. She flew into the top corner of the window. I fired. (I was still armed with wasp spray). That wasn't enough to deter her, she came back again. I fired again. I don't know if I hit her or not, but I hope so. I also sprayed the top of that window. And of course, I now have streaks of wasp spray running down the glass. I've mentioned before if my choice is messy windows or wasps, I'll take the messy windows, but today the lady from the blind company is coming out and my bedroom windows are one of the two I want to get covered. Sigh.

BTW, the unbelievable part about the wasp is that this is not the same wasp I shot at before I left for National. That one was big, but not as long as this one. This current wasp has to be 2 inches counting the stinger hanging off the back end. Ick! I just hope I hit it with the spray, but I'm beginning to feel besieged.

I made some more notes yesterday for my futuristic series during lunch, but when I got home, I started writing. I won't keep any of these pages, I'm pretty sure about that, but I feel like I know the characters better after I write them. Of course, Sasha was the one I needed to know better and it was Flare's POV I was in. :-/ Maybe I won't keep what I wrote here, but I think I know how Flare and Sasha meet again and it's a bit more dramatic than what I was thinking originally.

BTW, I love Flare to bits! He's so tough on the outside and so wounded on the inside, although wounded differently than my guys ususally are--with the possible exception of Conor. The part I think is going to be so interesting is that Sasha inadvertantly caused some of the pain herself without realizing it. That adds a layer between them that I wasn't expecting.

I think that's all I have. Of course, there will be blind and wasp reports tomorrow. Although, TBH, I'd just as soon forgo the wasp part of the deal. :-/

I managed to procrastinate yesterday until it was time to go to bed so I'll really have to put in some time tonight to make up for it. The thing I think that's causing me trouble is the alien technology for book 1. It makes it kind of a psychological deal instead of straightforward action and I don't know how to write something like that. :-( I wanted to think about alternatives last night, but I fell asleep too fast.

It's going to be a busy week for me too. The sod guy is coming out on Thursday/Friday to put that in. No, I still don't have a yard, but I will shortly. I was hoping to wait till fall because we've had such a dry summer, but my dad arranaged everything for me and this is what he set up.

I also have a woman from a blind store coming out on Wednesday. (I almost said the blind lady was coming out, but then I figured that it might confuse everyone as to what I was talking about.) I'm only looking to put up honeycomb blinds in two rooms right now, but the temporary stuff needs to go soon and my bedroom needs something on the windows. Of course, the computer room is still loaded with boxes and I'm going to have to shift those things so she can get to the window to measure it. Gee, more work that isn't related to my writing. Does it ever stop?

In a weird side note kind of thing, I visit Webshots almost every day. I get bored easily with my screen background and XP doesn't offer a lot of options. I also have the quote of the day on my page because they usually have some good ones. The thing that's weird is the daily horoscope they post. Nearly every day it seems directed right at me.

Now, while I find astrology to be eerily accurate to a large degree in an overview of my personality kind of way, I've never felt the same way about the daily horoscopes. Those always seem to be coming from left field. Not the one on Webshots, not for me. It's actually getting freaky the way it seems to be talking to me.

Oh! For the first time ever, Writerspace didn't have me listed for the Leisure and Love Spell author chat! Even on my first book they had me listed. I couldn't believe they forgot me! I sent the woman who did it last October a note to let her know I'd be there, but I don't know if she still handles the chats and she didn't reply to my email. There's always one more thing for me to obsess over.