The Crimson City authors are giving away a Super-Deluxe Crimson City Action Pack! For contest rules and to see some of what's in the prize package, visit the Contest Page on my website!

I do love Halloween. :-) And as you can tell from the two quizzes I posted last night, I started celebrating a little early. That was actually during a break from cleaning. Sigh. The curtain hardware for all my windows is being installed today, and as I mentioned, I don't know how long it's been since I ran a duster over the top of the windows. I ended up spending forever cleaning everything, and I must say, it looks pretty nice. Except for the boxes that still need to be unpacked in two of my rooms.

I also found out that the city assayer is coming over Wednesday to see the house. I guess so they can figure out how much to gouge me for taxes. Definitely, the thorough cleaning job was required. I even did a load of laundry last night because my new bathmats arrived! Yea! My old one is now in the rag drawer.

There, I think I hit all the exciting parts of my night. Oh, well, it had to be done and it'll stay nice for a few days until I have to dust again.

BTW, does anyone know, is it a glamor don't to leave place mats on the table all the time? I got some really cool aqua ones that look sharp against the table, but after I laid them all out and positioned them just so, I started wondering if it looked tacky.

To close with a real groaner, something borrowed from a commercial: Have a Spooktacular Halloween!

Halloween Horoscope for Capricorn

Your friends see a whole other side of you on Halloween - brash and bold. You make be reserved and conservative most other days, but on the 31st... look out! Costume suggestions: A stripper or naughty priest / nun Signature Halloween candy: M & M's

What's Your Halloween Horoscope?

You Are

An Evil Pumpkin Face You would make a good pumpkin bomb.

What's Your Pumpkin Face?

No cleaning done yesterday. Actually, that's a good thing because it means I was working on revisions all day and not avoiding writing. Of course, that means I'll be running around like a mad woman tonight, dusting all surfaces, sweeping, etc. Sigh.

Anyway, revisions are more or less finished for In the Midnight Hour. I would like to read through it one more time without looking for spots because I found a few missing words, some repeated words and some other errors and I'm sure there's more in there that I could find if I did a read through. I also found a few places where I could streamline or clarify my thoughts.

But this makes me wonder--is this perfectionism or is it avoiding the WIP which has been miserable so far? I've trashed the beginning so many times, I've lost count, and while I do finally, have some pages that don't completely suck, they're still rough and I'm still slogging, trying to get into these characters.

Maia and Creed really haven't been talking to me long enough to feel as if I have a good sense of them. Sure, they both made appearances in Midnight Hour, but the focus was never on either one of them. I have an idea what they're like. Maia is dealing with the fact that Ryne (her sister and the heroine of Midnight Hour) doesn't need like she did before Deke. Ryne had been alone, cut off, and Maia was the one person Ryne could trust, but that's not true any longer. Now Maia is the one feeling adrift. She ceded her powers 7 years earlier and became an outsider to the Gineal, but she doesn't fit in among humans either. But she had Ryne, and since her sister had no one else for years, Maia didn't feel alone. Now Ryne does and now Maia does feel alone. She's going to have to face making the transition emotionally.

Creed is very dark in his personality. He can be ruthless and remorseless. He's going to be an interesting hero to write, I think. It's difficult to know for sure because he is barely passing along any information to me at all. I'm having to glean what I can from his few brief appearances in my head. Right now, I believe he might be the darkest hero I've ever had show up. I think--and I have to qualify it because of his silence--that he's fighting to hang on because his people need him. Unlike other heroes I've had in the past, I don't know if Creed has that core of honor left inside him. He's lied to Ryne by omission and put her in a dangerous position in Midnight Hour and she's mad as hell at him. Yet, facing down evil to protect the Gineal is honorable. I don't know. He's just not telling me enough to get a bead on him.

So the only thing to do is keep slogging through his story and try to figure him out as I go along. Yeah, I'd much rather be working on revisions. Ryne and Deke are familiar and the tough work is done for them.

The Italian Job is my latest movie rental. A group of thieves who steal a hell of a lot of gold bars are double-crossed by one of their own. This is prologue. The main body of the movie is how the gang steals their gold from the double-crosser. Um, not much of a plot summary, I realize that, but that's about the gist of it. BTW, mentioning the betrayal by one of the thieves isn't a spoiler because the summary on the movie mentions it.

I thought the movie was okay, but lacked the excitement and suspense of The Transporter, which I watched last week. The first problem I had was that when the double cross happens, I really don't care about any of the characters yet. Which kind of left me shrugging when it happened. And truthfully, I never really did care about any of the characters at any point in the movie which was part of what hurt the suspense.

Which leads me to the second problem I had with the movie. I never felt as if it were all that suspenseful. Will they get away with avenging themselves against the betrayer or not? That should have been a driving question. There should have been twists and turns and setbacks and surprises, but I didn't really see any of that. The few things that were supposed to raise the suspense level as to whether or not they'd get away with it, didn't really do much to that end. Most of it was fairly predictable.

Overall, it was an okay movie, but lacked the flair and excitement of the really good caper films where the viewer gets to enjoy seeing how ingenious the thieves are as they pull off their job.

My rating: 3 stars

Adventures in Car Repair
I brought my car in to have the oil changed, have some recall work done, and hopefully, get the engine to stop sounding so rough. I ended up stuck at the dealership for a couple of hours, but that wasn't too bad--considering. Plus, I found a magazine that talked about the art/museum scene in the Twin Cities area which is info that might help me with the WIP. Serendipity.

The adventure begins when I get in my freshly washed vehicle and drive off. The car didn't want to stop. It raced forward and I had to ride the brake. I'd be at a full stop at the light, take my foot off the brake and shoot forward even though I hadn't touched the accelerator. I didn't have to press the accelerator at all on a flat stretch of road because it just kept going and sometimes even picked up speed! This was wrong, way wrong. I turned the car around and went back to the dealership. I turned the ignition off and talked to the original guy I'd worked with. He took the car out for a drive and guess what?

Yep, it didn't do it for him!

He speculated it might have been something that happened in the pressure wash. Maybe something got wet or whatever. So I drive back home and the car is perfect. It doesn't do one weird thing. It's as if it were possessed and bringing it back to the car place exorcised the demon. Grrr! I'm supposed to call the car guy on Monday because he's going to talk to some of his master mechanics and see if they have any thoughts on what happened.

That drive, though, was one wild ride I could have done without.

And Other Stuff
The guy who's supposed to install my curtain hardware called on Friday and he's going to come out on Halloween to put the stuff up. Of course, that means I have to clean and in places I might otherwise skip, like above my eye level. ;-) Seriously, I frequently skip dusting the top of the windows, but I'll have to get the old Swiffer duster out and hit them. On the plus side, though, besides the house being all clean and sparkly, I'll have my curtains all hung and that will be one more thing finished. And once the curtains are up, I'll be able to arrange the furniture in my office and in the spare bedroom. I haven't been able to do those rooms because I had to leave the area around the windows open for installation.

I forgot to set my clocks back before I went to bed last night. I love the day when Daylight Savings Time ends because I get that extra hour of sleep without losing what seems like half the day. However, I hate that it gets so dark in the afternoons so early and I loathe winter. From now until Solstice, it's just going to get darker and darker. Sigh. Then there's the fact that I wish we'd pick one time and stick with it because my internal body clock is going to be screwed up for weeks as it tries to adjust to this new time.

I'm almost done with revisions to In the Midnight Hour. I still have a couple things left to do, but I haven't found the perfect spot to drop them in yet. I've got some thoughts on where I hope to put them, so that's the plan for the day--find them and finish revisions.

This is a preliminary version of my cover for my next full-length book. Because it's not final, it's a low-res image and I'm only going to post it here. Once I have the final version, I will, of course, be posting everywhere in the known universe (including here), but I thought I'd give visitors to my blog a sneak peek and solicit opinions.

This book is Ryne and Deke's story. When a troubleshooter for a society of magic users rescues a private investigator from a dark spell, she finds more than an ally as she faces down her former mentor In the Midnight Hour.

So what's your opinion of the cover? I'd love to hear!

When I arrived home from work yesterday, I found a surprise. There'd been this Kitchen Aide knife set I'd seen at JC Penney that I really liked, but that wasn't high on my priority list of things to buy so I just kind of said to my mom, wouldn't that be cool? It's a knife set that didn't come in that usual wooden block, but was in a round red and silver carousel. Much more sleek and modern looking than the usual knife block. I'd previously decided to go with red in my kitchen because I thought with the charcoal countertops, the red would look way cool. Anyway, I get home from work, and there, sitting on my island, is that knife set! My parents kept this a secret from me, although when I was thanking them, my mom revealed that my dad had nearly spilled the beans on Thursday. :-)

I'd also ordered some stuff from Linens and Things and a box had arrived from them. Unfortunately, it wasn't the new bath mat I so desperately need, it was one of the other items. I'd ordered a 16 piece plate collection thing. Place setting for 4. It's okay, but not something I'll want to use forever. But they're white plates/bowls/cups with a rim of red around them, so it kind of goes with the kitchen decor.

The only downer to the day yesterday was that I moved wrong and irritated a muscle in my back. :-( I've been popping Advil and using a heating pad, and while it's getting better, it still hurts. The really funny thing is that while I was at work, it never occurred to me to take anything to relax the muscles. When someone mentioned it, I wanted to slap my hand to my forehead and go, Duh! Why didn't I think of that?

I'm up early today--not happily--so that I can get my car in to be serviced. Oil change, recall for something on the cruise control, the engine running rough and that metallic sound I heard on Monday needs to be investigated. :-( I'm trying to figure out what I can bring with me to do (there's no place to plug in the laptop, damn it!) that will keep me busy for all the time I'll be trapped there. It's difficult since I don't have time to print anything out. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll offer a loaner so I can sit at home and work while they do their thing.

My order from Amazon France arrived yesterday! I opened that puppy up immediately and there, nestled inside, were three copies of The Power of Two in French!

It's my first foreign translation and it was hugely exciting. Well, except for the fact that the three books I'd ordered were all a little banged up. Not horrible, but I'm the person in the bookstore examining every copy of a title I want to buy to find the most perfect one available. In other words, I'm totally anal about the condition of my books. :-/ If you look at any book I've read in the last ten years, you'd never know it had ever been opened.

Anyway, I thumbed through one of the books. Cai's name is Kali now, but Jake is still Jake. Beyond that, well, I can't say because I don't know French. I took German in high school/college so I just kind of looked through it and giggled now and then because my book was in a foreign language, and darn it, that's just too freaking cool!

The Firefox browser just had a new version released and I updated. (Firefox totally rocks, and once I got used to it, I loved it! I have a hard time using IE now.) Now I'm trying to get used to the new version. The options panel has really changed, and because spell check is built into the browser as an option, the spell check window in Blogger won't open. At least I think that's the reason. Yeah, you'd think having my spelling checked once would be good enough. ;-)

I'm still working on revisions. My goal was to be finished tonight, but I think I'll still be doing them on Saturday. My agent had sent a email back in July when she read through it with some things she termed nitpicks too, so I'm doing those changes too. Again, nothing major, but it's finding the right spot to put the info in and smoothing it out and that takes time.

I was working on revisions again yesterday and rereading the story has reminded me of how much I like Ryne and Deke. She's prickly and he's such a smart ass that he drives her nuts sometimes. There's something about a few months away from a story that allows a different view of the work. Maybe because time creates more distance for a writer. I've only been reading little bits here or there, scenes or chapters where I think I can slide in the changes I need to make, but there's one change that I still have to do that will involve a bigger reread because I'm not sure of the right place.

Revisions are helping me, I think, with the WIP because both Creed and Maia have roles in this story. I didn't remember Creed swearing so much, but he does. I also heard his theme song on the radio yesterday, Carry On Wayward Son, and after fighting with his story, I had a different perspective on what it meant.

The other thing that's been interesting about the WIP is that the bad guy is a demon. Seth. Yeah, that doesn't sound like a really scary name, but if you visit behind the name.com and look up the second definition, it fits. (And I didn't get to name him. Like my heroes and heroines, Seth told me his name. Have I mentioned how much I envy authors who actually have the power to bestow names and not have their characters fight them?)

But anyway, the thing is that for Through a Crimson Veil and Dark Awakening in Shards of Crimson, I had demons for the heroes and one heroine. And while I did have demons for the bad guys in both those stories, these weren't well-defined characters that were talking to me. Seth is kind of talking--at least enough to tell me what to call him--and it's making it hard for me to see him as the villain and to think of him that way. I guess this is a problem for when I'm done with revisions and working on the WIP, but I keep looking at this and thinking, wow, this is strange.

And speaking strange, My Space is insisting I have 4 messages in my inbox and yet it's empty. I've refreshed, I've cleared my trash and still they insist I have these messages. Now I'm paranoid that they're there, but I just can't see them. Of course, I'm always worried about email. :-/ It's why I have such a hard time when people don't reply because then I worry that they didn't receive it. Every time I email and ask, they always have and then I feel silly for being concerned. I'm trying really hard not to email any of the people I emailed to see if they got my notes.

I saw some poll results on the news the other day about stress in the workplace. 35% of those surveyed cited a coworker as their main reason, the highest percentage of everything named. I can relate. I have Mister Congeniality, the loudest, most obnoxious person I've had to deal with in years. The thing that makes him really unbearable, besides his noise, is that he has no concept of himself. He honestly believes he's considerate and selfless--exactly the opposite of what he is. You can't joke with him or point out something he's done wrong because then he gets all pissy. He is 90% of the reason that I don't like going into work.

He was in a meeting last week where he was asked if we could provide a report. So he asked me if I could do it. I couldn't. It's fine till this point, but then he decided that I would spearhead finding out how we could get these reports. Gee, I wasn't at the meeting, I can't answer any questions anyone would have, but he's decided it's My Job and he'll be damned if he'll do it even though he was the one at the meeting and he is the one that can answer the questions.

I've tried not to complain about him on the blog because no one wants to hear about it, but I need advice. How do you deal with an obnoxious coworker who won't allow you to just ignore him? I seriously need some coping strategies because he makes work nearly unbearable.

In a complete change of subject, I have the rest of my revisions for Midnight Hour and it should only take a couple of days to do them. The most time consuming part is finding the right places to slide in a sentence or two. Sometimes the choice isn't obvious and it takes some reading and considering. Then once I choose, I have to smooth out the insertion so it reads seamlessly. I have one addition that's going to take reading through a lot of the book to find the perfect spot. Not all bad since I really need to make notes to help keep things straight for the next book.

I mentioned I was going to trade cars with my parents yesterday since mine was making noise, but I ran short on time so I drove mine and it ran normal. It was normal this morning too. Makes me wonder what it was that I heard on Monday. Anyway, I'm due for an oil change so I'll bring it in on Saturday and mention the noise. I'm sure, hundreds of dollars later, they'll tell me they couldn't find anything wrong. :-/

I keep meaning to mention this really cool commercial I've seen a few times. It's for Liberty Mutual and it shows these people doing a nice thing for someone else, and a third person seeing it and then doing something nice for someone else in this chain that circles around to the guy who starts it. I love this ad, but I don't know how effective it is since I have no idea what Liberty Mutual is trying to pitch. TBH, the only reason I even remember the company's name is because I saw it last night and made it a point to memorize it. I love good advertising, though.

Have y'all seen the latest Levi's ad? This guys steals a pair of jeans off a balcony and then his body keeps moving like the guy whose jeans he took. Like when his girlfriend pushes him out of the way of the TV, the thief moves as if he's been pushed too. Finally, tired of all this stuff, he returns the jeans just in time for the owner to go out, grab them and put them on. I'm really impressed with this series of ads. I should try to find out who the agency is that created them. (It's that ad major background rearing its head! I like to see who's doing work I think is good and I'm not sure why since I have no plans of putting together a portfolio and applying at any of these places--no matter what I threaten after hearing bad radio ads. ;-)

Yesterday, I read what I wrote this weekend and it sucked. I mean completely, totally sucked. But the difference between the sucky stuff I wrote before and the sucky stuff I wrote this weekend is that this work can be fixed. That's what I started working on yesterday and it was a huge, time-consuming struggle. Part of the reason is that the visuals on the scene aren't coming to me. I can't see where Creed is so the reader is completely ungrounded. I worked on that. I also don't know why this creature that he's hunting is just strolling around. Last night, I discovered that Creed doesn't know either and he's hanging back to find out just what the heck is going on.

But Creed himself is my biggest problem. I can't get a grip on him. Deke was a smart ass and his personality just came right through. Wyatt was patient, sweet and honorable. Conor was tortured and isolated. Well, you get the idea. I've always had a good sense of my hero's core, but I don't with Creed. I've been talking with him, trying to figure him out, and while I did learn more, I still don't feel like I know him.

What I've discovered is that he's burnt out. He doesn't really care about too much even though he keeps doing his job. I asked him about that--why didn't he just quit? His answer was that his people needed him, that they didn't have enough troubleshooters as it stood and they couldn't afford to lose another. I asked him why he did this job when his life was on the line all the time, when he was always traveling to handle some situation somewhere. His answer was interesting. I hadn't thought of it, but I should have since Deke said it in the previous book in relation to Ryne. Creed came back at me with questions of his own. Why do humans work as police officers or as soldiers? I got it then.

But I still don't get him.

Maybe part of it is I had an idea of what I wanted him to be and he's not that man. I thought Creed was greedy for power, but I'm beginning to think that isn't true. That his interest in Ryne didn't have so much to do with the extra, but with pulling himself back from the dark forces. Creed thinks he's gone too far and he knows he can't turn. Not only can the Gineal not afford to lose him, they can't afford to send a troubleshooter after him.

So I'm getting all this, but I'm also getting that Creed isn't this selfless, kind person either and he never was which means I can't blame it on external influences. At least not all of it. And that's part of what's making it hard for me to get a handle on him--all these contradictions. I just need to somehow find out what he is at his core. Once I have that, I'll have him. It's frustrating that I can't figure it out.

My day yesterday was pretty frustrating on other fronts too. I checked into cable internet. My ISP had a deal where I could switch for $29.95 for 6 months and $41.95 a month after that. I plugged in my promotion code and the website said, yes, this is still available and you get FREE equipment! Yea! Sign me up, baby! Only after I get to the next screen, I find out that I get three months at the introductory rate, after that my rate will jump to $44.95, and oh, yeah, it's a $3 a month charge for the modem. Excuse me? So I did not sign up after all. Now I have to ponder my options.

Just to make the day extra special, as I turned onto my street on my way home from work yesterday afternoon, the urban assault vehicle started to make some kind of metallic noise. Great. I need my oil changed anyway, but I wanted to wait till the weekend to bring it in. My parents are out of town, so I plan to drive over to their house, leave my SUV there and take their car instead, but I hate driving it. Compared to my vehicle, it rides so low! Now I've got to hope that 1) it doesn't cost a fortune to make that noise stop. 2) that it doesn't take them forever to fix it.

Being a grown up sucks sometimes.

Over on the ReBeL board, they did a poll of their readers' Top 100 Paranormal Romances. It was a huge (or should I say hugh?) thrill to see my name on there twice. Both Ravyn's Flight and Through a Crimson Veil made the list. Whoo hoo!!!! When I see the names up there with me, I'm amazed to be among them.

I watched baseball last night. I know, that's not a shock. I went to bed, though, before the end of the game. I tried to hang in there, but at 10pm, I had to go to sleep. The Tigers were up 3-0, but when I got up this morning, I wanted to see a score. All ESPN was showing was football and more football. Come on, guys, this is the WORLD SERIES. I finally did find out on CNN HN that Detroit won 3-1.

One of the more interesting moments of last night's game was when they accused Kenny Rogers (Detroit pitcher, not country western singer) of having a foreign substance on the heel of his hand and made him wash it off. It did look like pine tar, but if someone is going to cheat, they'd sure pick a better place to hide the stuff than right there on his hand where anyone could see it. And it didn't matter anyway--even after it was gone, no one on the Cardinals could hit Rogers. I think he gave up like 2 hits in 8 innings.

Five more games to go until a long, long stretch without ball. :-(

I have to wrap this up on that note. It's 4:56 and I have to logoff to get ready for work. I'm sure whatever I would have written next would have been brilliant and fascinating, but we'll never know because of the EDJ. :-)

I made this for my My Space page. Isn't this cool?

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

I couldn't come up with anything good to blog about today, so I was procrastinating. Yes, it's true, I even procrastinate when it comes to writing here. To entertain myself, I started doing some Googling and found something that's left me in a dilemma. Over on My Space, someone has a profile page posted that has passages from Through a Crimson Veil on it. This isn't fan fiction, this is outright copying from my book.

On the one hand, it's just four paragraphs on a My Space page that the author hasn't visited since September--she's role playing with some Buffy/Angel people--and clearly she read the book and liked the story enough to use it. On the other hand, copying what I wrote is wrong. Therein lies my quandary. Do I waste time on this or do I just forget about it? What would you do?

Last night, I watched The Transporter. There wasn't any baseball on. :-) In this movie, an ex-Special Forces soldier (Frank) is a getaway driver/transporter who lives by a few simple rules. I can't remember his first rule, but his second is: No Names. And the third is: Never look at the package. Only he breaks rule number three and finds a beautiful Asian woman who's trussed up and stuck inside a large bag. He still delivers her as promised to the bad guy.

Only this guy wants no witnesses and when the hero finds out he's been double crossed, he heads back to the mansion to kick some ass. The bad guy isn't there, but Frank takes out lots and lots of henchmen before stealing a car. Guess who's hiding in the back? Before you know it, our disinterested, dispassionate hero is joining the heroine's fight to stop a slavery ring. The bad guy, you see, is part of a cartel shipping men, women and children from Asia to Europe to be enslaved.

I really, really liked this movie! Lots of great action and martial arts scenes, without the icky trademark moves that some martial arts actors have--like breaking the elbow backward and other gross out stuff like this. In fact, with the music score accompanying one of the fight scenes, it was nearly humorous. I think that one of the best things about this movie is that you can tell everyone was having a good time making it.

There was just enough relationship stuff between the h/h to keep me interested, but I would have liked more. I also wish that the relationship would continue in the sequel, which I promptly added to my NetFlix queue after seeing this movie. Unfortunately, the actress's name does not appear in the credits for Transporter 2.

I didn't like the fact that the heroine screamed so much and stood by helplessly when she showed such ingenuity in other ways. She ruins her own escape attempt by screaming and there were a few other moves she made along those lines. It would have been cool if she was more his equal.

If you like action/adventure, suspense and martial arts, I can give this movie a big thumbs up. In fact, I liked it so much, that I watched it again with the commentary on to hear what the director (?) and Jason someone (hero) had to say. That was mostly uninteresting, but there were a few things I glommed onto.

First, was the fact that the Asian actress pretty much didn't speak English, but between the time she was hired for the movie and the time they filmed it, she'd learned a lot. Second, this woman had appeared in the Chinese version of Charlie's Angels for Sony Japan (?) and she wanted her character to be stronger and not a damsel in distress. The director wouldn't let her because it was supposed to be the hero's movie. Since one of my peeves was the fact she did stand around helplessly, I was like, cool, she wanted to do more.

My rating: 4.25 Stars

My neighbors across the street are having some construction done. First guess was that they were going to expand their single-car, detached garage into a double car, but that doesn't look like what's happening. From what I could see between the house and garage, the backyard is getting torn up. Maybe they're putting an extension on the house, or if it is a garage, it must be a brand new one going in the back of the house and then the driveway would curve down to the front. Interesting. This house once upon a time had a tuck under garage, but a long time ago, it was converted into a den/rec room kind of thing and the detached built. Anyway, there's been a lot of beeping whenever the bobcat backs up. I can hear it in my house when I get home from work.

Another neighbor, decided to use some loud piece of power equipment at 8:30 this morning. Sigh. He was done by 9:30 or so, and I'm not sure why he couldn't wait a little longer to make that much noise. It's mornings like this that make me wish I could find a house in an isolated spot in the mountains. :-) Or better yet, own my own tropical island.

Most people who knew me had no clue that I wrote until after I sold my first book. You see, not only was this something intensely personal to me, if it turned out I sucked at it and was going to fail miserably, I preferred that no one be aware of the death of my dream except me.

It started to change a little bit in 1999 when I first admitted to an online friend that I wrote. In fact, she's the only one who's ever seen the first draft version of Ravyn's Flight because I never sent it to anyone else. And I did admit what I was doing, what I wanted to do to a few really close friends, but that was about it.

I ended up getting a little more exposed with another group of online friends. At this point, I was working on my first round of revisions to RF, and during a chat, they coerced me into sending them the first chapter. I believe there were five of them. I still remember how nauseous I was after I hit send. I paced the house from one end to the other, certain they were going to critique the hell out of the chapter, that I'd see a sea of red pixels on return emails, that while no one would say anything, the message of pity would be clear. (The poor dear thinks she can write.) And I was hugely relieved when the first email came back and she liked the chapter. Yet I still went through the tortures of the damned every week for five or six weeks before I became accustomed to these women reading my story.

After that, though, I routinely and regularly sent out my chapters to this group because something became clear over the course of RF--they spotted things I didn't. I didn't always agree with their comments, but it made me think about why I was doing something and it strengthened the story immeasurably.

But I still didn't tell my parents, family, acquaintances or coworkers until after I had an offer for RF.

Last night, I had a conversation with one of my writing buddies about the WIP. I had this list of questions I felt had to be answered and we discussed back and forth for more than an hour. She raised some problems I hadn't thought of and helped me brainstorm solutions. These types of discussions really help me get a handle on my stories.

And that's what had me remembering when I didn't have a critique group and why I'm so glad I have trusted friends now.

I don't think it's all bad that I was completely on my own at first because I had time to develop confidence in my decisions and in myself. I think some beginning writers get in critique groups too early and end up gutting their stories to please their peers because they don't have that faith in themselves. And I think keeping myself isolated helped develop some skills I otherwise wouldn't have acquired until later.

On the other hand, I also think it's a shame I didn't come clean a little earlier. I wonder if I would have sold one of my earlier books (maybe the one the editor had gone through for me and post it noted all up with suggestions?) if I'd had people making me think about the story more. I probably did wait too long.

But everything happens for a reason and we're where we're supposed to be when we're supposed to be there. So obviously I wasn't ready to be published before RF came out. And I think that's what some writers lose sight of in their desperate pursuit of their dream--sometimes you're just not ready no matter what you believe. Looking back, I'm grateful I didn't sell one of my earlier stories. I've grown so much as a writer and as a human being and what I'm writing now has more depth.

Even looking back at my unpublished book, the one I wrote after RF, I'm sooo thankful that I ended up withdrawing it. Obviously, it was a story and characters I felt I needed to do, but it makes me cringe to look at it now. Maybe someday, I'll rewrite the whole thing, but more likely, I'll just move on and keep moving. Because since then, I have continued to change and grow. That's what a writer should be doing on each and every book.

I have to take my parents to the airport this morning, which means I needed to get up early. My alarm was set for 3:30. I didn't hear it. Not until just before 4am--the time I get up normally. Now I'm going to be rushed today and there was no time to just lie in bed and acclimate myself to the morning.

Last night, I checked phone messages and was utterly amazed. Someone had gotten my voice mail and left a message. It was a wrong number or at least the person he wanted was no longer at this phone number. Maybe she was the one who had it before me? Anyway, he apparently wanted to order something from "Laura." He gave me his name, his credit card number, the three numbers on the back of the credit card, and his expiration date. This man has no idea how lucky he is that I'm an honest person.

And on the phone front, some chick is giving people the wrong cell phone number. I never use my cell--it's primarily for emergencies and to call people I'm supposed to find at conferences ;-)--so I figured those 9 voice mail messages were wrong numbers. I was right. It wasn't just one person calling the wrong number, it was like four or five different voices, and since one of them was this woman's kid, I'm guessing she's giving people the wrong number by mistake. But man, it's irritating to wade through messages for someone else and it's not like voice mail lets you delete them before you listen to the whole thing. I've settled for speeding them up. Judging from the messages I've heard, I'm glad I don't have this chick's life.

Last night, I needed to do more research and it involved image intensive sites. I seriously need to get high speed internet. It was such a huge waste of time waiting and waiting for these pages to pull up.

Gotta run.

The phone company fixed the line before I got home from work yesterday, so I'm relieved to report that I'm connecting to the internet again at the incredible speed of 46.6 again! Yeah, but compared to 1200, this is lightning fast.

Which is a good thing because I realized my non-visual mind needs to know what Creed's condo looks like and what kind of view he has of Lake Michigan. Unlike most Gineal, Creed can tolerate being surrounded by humans like this. I'm not sure why, but I have a feeling he's not as sensitive telepathically/empathically as most of his people. (Or maybe he's better at blocking?) And because he travels all the time and is rarely home, a condo made more sense for him than a house. But I wanted to know what it looked like. An image search turned up a few things, but most weren't particularly helpful. On the second page of results (out of 2), though, I found hits from a real estate site and I visited it. I did a search and ended up with an incredible number of results. The only catch? If I wanted to view them, I had to register.

So I signed Creed up. Hey, I wasn't giving them my name! 245 search results showed up. I didn't realize there were that many condos available between $550,000 and $2,500,000, but apparently there were. Along with gaining access to the results, Creed was assigned a personal real estate agent and promised that when new listings that fit his criteria became available, he'd receive an email. Okay, I thought, that would kind of be cool and how often can million dollar condos in one particular area of Chicago go up for sale anyway?

Then the deluge began. Creed's name might have been on the sign up form, but I used one of my email addresses. Two email arrived immediately. I opened one, found the opt out link, and used it. I went back to searching through the results, trying to find the right fit for a dark, troubled character. And more and more and more email arrived.

Maybe this was a different type of correspondence, one not covered under the opt-out link I already clicked. I opened another email prepared to opt out again and there was no link provided! They weren't going to let me opt out of these.

These notes are now going directly to my spam folder. I had a ridiculous amount come in last night and I woke up this morning to see that even more notes are in that folder. Sigh. I guess a sale in Creed's price range is just too tantalizing to honor any kind of opt-out agreement--or something. ;-O

This site did have a bunch of listings, but a lot of them didn't have pictures or just had that virtual tour thing where there's some kind of video of the condo. Still pictures would have worked better for me because I want to click and save them for future reference. I didn't find any one place that will work for my hero, but I'll patch a few of them together to come up with what will work. I also have pictures from a hotel that looks out over Lake Michigan and that fits what Creed is looking at better than the yacht club views I found last night.

I don't know why he couldn't just have a nice home where I could find dozens of usable pictures online, but I have a feeling Creed is going to be trouble all through this book. More than my characters usually are (and that's saying something)!

I thought once the phone company finally got around to burying my cable, that my internet speeds would stabilize. And they did--for like one week. Yesterday, though, I reached new lows: 1200. Gah! I don't think we've seen speeds that low since the beginning of time. I tried three times to connect and got that speed over and over and over. I picked up the phone, and not only was there some kind of echo on the line, I could hear other voices faintly in the background.

Great. So of course this meant a phone call to the phone company. Fortunately(?), I had just received my bill, so I had their phone number handy. Can you believe that when I tried to file a trouble report, they tried to sell me DSL? I do have plans to go to high speed, but cable internet, not DSL. Cable will be faster and I'll be able to keep my ISP which is cool since I do not want to change email addresses again, but before I go cable, I want to network my house so I can access it on the laptop no matter what room I'm in.

But I digress. Finally, I get a hold of someone who isn't pitching and she tells me that they'll have it fixed by 8pm Tuesday night. This is around 4pm Monday. 28 hours? What?

Speed has picked up a little bit. Right now, I'm connected at 24.4, but it totally sucks. I seriously have to get networked ASAP so I can switch over and ditch the phone company.

Now that I'm done complaining, and believe me, slower than usual dial up internet can keep me going forever, I can talk about the positive stuff that happened Monday. I already posted about my French edition which is like the coolest thing! I'm still psyched about that. But my dad also came over yesterday and we hung my paintings. I should take a picture, but at my connection speed, there's no way in heck I'm taking the time to upload a photo.

Anyway, these two paintings were bought when I was in Hawaii in 2002, but I didn't have anywhere to hang them until I moved. They were sitting on the floor next to the wall, waiting and waiting for my dad, but finally he did it. They actually hung nicely, but I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with them in this room. They're very blue paintings and they're on a very blue wall. I think it's too much blue, but I'm not taking them down and I'm not looking for different paintings so I'll just have to get used to it.

The other thing my dad installed for me--without any assistance from me--was my magnifying mirror. I had one of these in my old bathroom and I totally loved it! It's great for plucking eyebrows, applying makeup, finding zits. :-) So I bought a new mirror for my new bathroom July 2nd and I've been trying to get my dad to put it up for me ever since then. Three and a half months later, he did! I think, though, that I might have made a little error in judgment. My other mirror was a little too high for me, so I chose a lower spot, and unfortunately, it might just be a little too low. Since he already drilled holes in my wall, though, it's staying where it is. Like the blue Hawaii paintings, it's something I'm going to need to get used to. :-)

Oh, yeah, and I actually managed to write a little bit in the new book yesterday and it didn't totally suck! Now that is the best news of all!

The Power of Two is now available in French! It went on sale yesterday. This is my first foreign translation so this is like way cool!

The other books in the 2176 series had covers that I'd seen before, although one of them was a cover that ended up not being used. I don't know where the heck this one came from. Cai never wore something that looked like that. And Jake is in a sweater again--on the Raft Cities, a tropical climate. Oh, well, this is still exciting!

I wonder if the publisher is going to send me copies or if I need to order from Amazon France?

I finally managed to find out the score of the Mets/Cardinals game this morning and it wasn't easy since there were so many darn football scores. I didn't stay up to watch the entire game since the Mets were having so many problems lately, and as a die-hard Cub fan, I am duty-bound to loathe the Cardinals. It didn't seem worth the lost sleep to watch. However, I just heard that the Mets kicked butt. Yea!

Okay, now that my baseball fixation is addressed, I can move on. Yesterday, I actually managed to get a fair amount of writing done. It came pretty easily too, and although what I ended up with isn't perfect, it's something I can work with. I'd be in raptures, except for one thing. This isn't the book I'm supposed to be working on. I know. But that one is giving me fits and making me clean the house. I even stayed off the internet and didn't watch television until I finished the pages I needed.

That's when I found out about the earthquake in Hawaii. Again, I can't find any updated news on this so far this morning. What the heck is up with that? By now, I expected to have a lot more information available, but none of the news stations had anything when I flipped through.

I'm a news junkie to a degree. Probably that journalism major in college. I love to watch how they handle big stories so I ended up glued in front of the television for hours. The last report I'd heard said no fatalities, thank goodness! I also had a phone call from my dad letting me know that my cousin and her husband were in Kona and fine. I'm keeping the people of Hawaii in my thoughts and hope that things turn out as well as they sounded last night.

I've never had writer's block, at least not how I think of writer's block. To me, it's when no words come at all and that's something I've never had to deal with. I do, however, have a problem finding the groove.

I love the groove! Sometimes I call it the zone, or an altered state or other things, but it's when you fall into the book. The characters are talking, the scene is clear and I can't type fast enough to keep up with what's going on. I wish I could find this place immediately when I start a book, or if I have a book going, find it as soon as I open the file. When it's coming fast and furious like this, I don't stop to edit myself. It's what I refer to as barfing on the page. Yeah, pretty image, I know, but I've been using this term for years because it fits perfectly.

The last three months writing In the Midnight Hour were like this, but I deserved it because I fought and fought and fought through the first two months of this book. I have the bruises to prove it. ;-)

That's where I'm at right now with my new book. I'm slogging my way through brambles and struggling to get what I see in my head down on the page. It's ugly. I've trashed everything I've written more than once. But while I'm pulling the words out of myself one agonizing sentence at a time, I'm also hopeful that today will be the day I find the groove again. Writers are either masochists or eternal optimists--I'm not sure which.

I'm still looking for some magical way to skip this part and just jump into the groove. It's torture, the most miserable point in a book, and yet I do it over and over and over again. When the writing is like this, it's real easy to find other things to do--like cleaning. Or mah jong. Or surfing the net. Anything is more fun.

I was talking to a friend last night and she has the same problem. It made me curious if any writer avoids this place of struggle and procrastination or if we all suffer through it. Does anyone jump right into the groove and never fall out of it? Is there some way to put yourself in the groove without the days/weeks/months of struggle? I'd love to hear tips on how to avoid (or shorten) this stage. So far the only thing I've found is to just keep writing until I clear it.

I like to collect quotations that I think are cool or that speak to me in some way. Before I sold my first book, I used to include a quote at the bottom of each email as a signature. Now, of course, my signature line is my current and upcoming books. I'm on a board, though, that's very small and intimate and they know me and when my books are coming out, so I use a quote there. Right now, I'm posting with:

"Maybe this world is another planet's hell." - Aldous Huxley

I'm not using that quote because I feel negative, I'm using it because I find the concept intriguing. And wouldn't it make an interesting story premise? I have no ideas or plans to use it, at least not right now, but it still makes me wonder what if?

So my plan for today's blog post is to share some of the quotes I've seen online and share them. And yes, that means I couldn't come up with anything particularly interesting to say today and I'm relying on other people. :-)

"Everyone has a talent; what is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads."--Erica Jong

"You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. " - Charles Buxton

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy." ~Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)~

"The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory." --Chinese Proverb

"Competing in sports has taught me that if I'm not willing to give 120%, somebody else will." --Ron Blomberg, baseball player

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." --Goethe

"Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will." --Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of India

"The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person." -- P. J. O'Rourke

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

There you go, some thoughts for the day. :-) Now I have to go get ready for my chapter meeting. I missed September, so I'd like to get to this month's gathering.

I got my new phone yesterday! I needed one for my bedroom since it's on the opposite side of the house from the other two phones. Best Buy tried to sell a maintenance agreement on a $12 phone! Say what? At that cost, if the phone has a problem, I think I can manage to buy a new one. Good grief.

Anyway, I put batteries in it and tested it out--only the caller ID function didn't work. :-( My dad was over because he plans to put up my pictures today (I'll believe it when I see it) and he wanted me to tell him where to put them. So I call him over and I'm like, it doesn't work. His first question? Do you have all the batteries in the right direction? I was like, of course I do! There are little pictures on the inside of the battery case. How hard can it be to put them in correctly?

Apparently harder than it looks. After much testing, he opened the battery case and pulled them all out. Yep, two of the four batteries were the wrong direction. Sigh. I'm blaming it on exhaustion. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Amazing, how nicely the caller ID function worked after that.

We also have post it notes on my great room wall denoting where I want the pictures to go. It's actually kind of funny. My dad brought a stud finder over, we found several, and after I finally make a decision (because the studs weren't located where I wanted the picture centered so I had to compromise), he says he won't have to put holes in the wall because he has these hanger things. Um, then why were we looking for studs if we don't have to anchor the pictures into them?

He also has plans to put in my magnifying mirror and the shower rod in the guest bath. I really am hopeful that he'll get these things done (July 2nd! That's when I bought the mirror), but I'm not going to bet big on this.

While I'm talking house stuff, and I have enough time to do it, here's my Scooby Doo clock. This isn't something I would hang in the main part of the house, where people could see it, but in my bathroom, it's kind of cute. (Walls are green, BTW, although more of a mint, rather than the bright green of the flowers.)



In writing news, I still have one place where I want to add a couple sentences explaining why Deke was called that and not Dan, but otherwise I finished revising on the name thing. Most of it was find and replace, but there were a few places where they say something about names and I needed to change those with actual writing. :-)

I received my revision letter for In the Midnight Hour yesterday. Not all of them--there will be more to follow--but getting part of them was a huge relief. Especially since my editor included all kinds of compliments about the story and my writing! We writers really, really love to hear things like that. Of course, I can only speak for myself, but I can't imagine anyone feeling differently.

The biggest change I had to make (so far) was my hero's real name and what my heroine calls him. This was actually okay, since my hero doesn't use his real name, doesn't even think of himself by that name. Everyone has always called him Deke. If I'd been asked to change the Deke, that might have been a problem, but changing his real name--Deke just shrugged. He didn't care. His name was Irish, Daire (think diacritical mark over the a), he's now become Daniel, but he was called Deke because his dad was Dan. I did a search and replace, but now I'm going through, looking for little things that have to be adjusted. There's a scene in LA that I want to change to explain how Deke got his nickname as a baby.

Then there's what my heroine calls him. Daire is pronounced Daw-ra, so she called him Daw in the book. Or she did. Thanks to find and replace, she now calls him Deke too. :-) This was actually something I debated for more than a week once I sold Midnight Hour and started writing it again--what she was going to call him. I was this close (holds fingers a quarter of an inch apart) to having her call him Deke, but I stayed with Daw, but both me and Ryne were both ambivalent about it. It really helps when the characters are cooperative. :-)

So I worked on this yesterday instead of writing new stuff and I think this was beneficial, not just because I was getting my revisions done, but because it reminded me of things about the Gineal that I'd forgotten. Since my next book involves Ryne's sister, this is a good thing. There was also a very useful discussion on one of my loops involving writing a series. What I got out of it was that notes are invaluable. :-) So that's what I'm going to do as I read through Midnight Hour--make notes. I use some Gaelic words, so I'm writing those down as I come across them and I have to remember to write down other important points. I have loose leaf paper, a ton of three-ring binders and if I can get my hands on some tab dividers (I'm sure my dad has some), then once I have notes, I can separate them out by book, by character, by culture--whatever works best.

Actually, notes would have come in handy while I was writing Eternal Nights. I can't tell you how much I'd forgotten from Ravyn's Flight, and I spent a lot of time thumbing through RF, looking for details.

I don't know how I lost so much time this morning, but it's 4:45 and I only have 15 minutes to blog! Usually it takes me 25 minutes or so to write here. Yeah, I know, most of my posts usually don't look like it took me more than 5 minutes to write them, but they really do. Maybe because I'm always so tired in the mornings. Shrug.

I also took a picture of my Scooby Doo clock yesterday, cropped it, reduced the size to something manageable and uploaded it. But I don't have time to go to the site, get the code and post it here. It's the dial up thing. By the time the page for the other site (medium on the graphic intensity scale) comes up, I login, my page comes up, I copy the code, etc, it'll be much later than I'd like. You see, it's raining here this morning and that means I need to be out of the house early or I won't make it to work on time. I have to move getting high speed up the To Do List. This is really getting ridiculous.

So what do I have to talk about today? Not much. I had to stay late at work yesterday because I left early on Monday to go to the dentist. It shocked me that traffic was better at 3:12 in the afternoon than it is at 2:30. The day job is still mind numbing, my obnoxious coworker is still obnoxious and Loud Vendor Guy showed up yesterday, giving me the daily double on the noise-factor scale. I tried to start my new story on lunch, but struggled. I can see the scene--kind of--but I was worrying about action and the word choices I was making and I ended up getting bogged down in the fact that I needed more active words. It didn't matter how many times I told myself it could fix it later, I wanted it right the first time. I'll try again today.

I think I'm going to stop here since I don't have anything much to say today. I'm wearing my winter jacket and hat and bringing my mittens to work. I can't tell you how thrilled I am.

I hung my Scooby Doo clock in the bathroom last night. I know, but it's a cool clock. Very 70s kitsch. If I think of it, I'll take a picture so you can see just how cool it is. Somehow, I managed to get it perfectly centered on the wall too--without measuring! It's a little hard to gauge the time, though, since there are no numbers, but hey, it's Scooby! Hanging him made the bathroom feel just a tiny bit homier and he also hides the part where I kind of ripped a tear into the top layer of sheet rock. Now, if I could just get my dad to install my magnifying mirror....sigh.

I also started hooking up my desktop computer last night. I rarely use it so this wasn't high on the priority list after the move. Oh, sure, there were a few times it was inconvenient, but not bad enough to force me to battle that mess in my office. Last night, though, I was exhausted from a weekend with little sleep and my mouth hurt from a trip to the dentist. Perfect time to tackle a gazillion cords. :-/ I'm not quite sure what I was trying to hook the monitor cord into on the back of the computer, but it didn't fit. :-) It was blue, though, matching (or close to matching) the blue on the cord. I finally did find the right hookup.

Making this whole thing more challenging were all the boxes under the desk, next to the desk, around the desk. I really need to unpack those, but I have to go through them first--and find somewhere to put the stuff. I don't have enough storage. And I can't really put everything out yet because I'm still waiting for the blind store to come back with my curtain rods and hardware.

Anyway, I think my revising of the proposal is done. I heard back from one of my writing buddies, she didn't see any plot holes. If my other writing buddy gives the thumbs up, I'm printing this thing out and mailing it back to my agent. I have to get going on my next book--Creed and Maia beckon.

PS: It's 37 degrees here. I'm cold and I don't like this.

As I was waiting for coffee yesterday morning, I noticed that Asian beetle was still on the ceiling next to the light. Hmm. I come up with what I believe to be a brilliant idea. I'll get my Swiffer sweeper, knock it to the floor and step on it. I put on shoes, I get my sweeper, I attempt to knock the bug. I missed on the first couple of swipes, but the ceiling is high and it was a stretch to reach his location even with the sweeper thing. Finally, I knock it. I follow it's descent, prepared to leap into action.

I forgot these beetles can fly. In my defense, it was morning, but still, you think that might have occurred to me at some point, yes? Anyway, the thing is freaking out, flying into the ceiling over and over and over again. Coffee finishes, I turn to get my caffeine and when I turn back, the beetle has disappeared. Now, somewhere inside my house, I have both a beetle and a box elder bug. :-(

This wasn't the highlight of my day. That was going to Target. I adore Target and try to limit my trips there because it's easy to ring up incredibly large totals in a short period of time. I needed a new phone. I have two, but they're both on the other side of the house, and when I'm in the bedroom, it's turned out to be a long distance to go before voice mail picks up. Do you think, though, that I could find a simple, corded phone? I'm not even talking with caller ID, I mean any simple, corded phone? Of course not. It was all cell phones and cordless phones. I did, however, find a ton of other stuff I needed.

I have storage now for all the cleaning supplies that I'd tossed on the shelf in my laundry room closet. Since this is also my closet just before I go outside, this was not good. They're now all in a clear box on the shelf. I have a tray for my boots so the snow doesn't melt onto my closet floor and I have a caddy for all the cleaning sprays.

It looked pretty good. I admired everything for a while after I put it away and then I went to work. Um, still no ending and the giant asteroid crashing into Earth seemed a little extreme as a conclusion to a novel. I had maybe 2 pages left to write in the synopsis, so at this point, knowing how the book is going to end was critical. I wrote a couple of sentences. I decided to test out the cleaner I'd bought to get the marks off my walls. (It worked slick as spit!) I tried to work some more, checked to see if anyone had friended me on My Space, decided to use the new hooks I'd bought to mount my calendar and clock.

I put up the hook in the computer room. That went well. I went to take down the old hook for the clock. That didn't go well. It was one of those "don't do anything to your wall" hooks? Well, guess what? It took off a layer on my sheet rock. :-( Fortunately, I noticed before it ripped the piece completely off and my dad thinks he can fix it with glue. (I had to put in an emergency telephone call.)

Okay, now I better work before I tear my house apart. I think I had a sentence, maybe two, down before I decided I had to clean the bathroom. Heck, I didn't just clean one bathroom, I cleaned both of them. That's when I realized I was in heavy avoidance mode. You see, cleaning the bathroom is my least favorite thing to do. That I found it more fun than writing should give you an idea how bad my day was.

I hate synopses. I hate writing synopses. Why isn't "and then some stuff happens and it all works out and they live happily ever after" a valid synopsis?

But it's worse than just writing a synopsis. I was revising a synopsis. My scathingly brilliant original conclusion to the story had a huge logic flaw. :-( The problem was that there was no good ending that fit the characters and the agency and the story. I finally had an idea somewhere around 3:50. Yes, I managed to procrastinate nearly all day. I emailed it to my writing buddy. I felt hopeful for the first time in a long while. Maybe this would work.

I was checking email at my parents' house when she shot that idea full of holes. :-( And no, the synopsis still wasn't done, even with the unworkable idea. But while I was over there, I thought, what if? I emailed her this idea and she thought it would work, but that Tyler, the hero, wouldn't go along with it. I was like, aha, but he isn't going to know until well after the fact! Now, I have an ending.

I got home around 7pm. I finished the synopsis at 9:50 and went to bed. Now I wait for reaction to the new version. I'll review it today too and make sure I've addressed all my agent's concerns. Hopefully, this is done so I can print it out and send it back to NYC. It's time for me to get to work on my next story. Creed and Maia. I'm looking forward to it because they're both finally talking to me.

Yesterday morning, I was minding my own business--drinking coffee and making my morning internet rounds--when it happened. It was a picture on one of the sites that did it. The shot? A tribal tattoo on the small of a woman's back. That's when she came. Yep, another character showed up.

In all fairness, I knew there was a woman hanging around the fringes of my consciousness for a while now and I knew she was at least part Polynesian, but she was staying in the background and not bothering me, so I was content to let her remain there. After all, I've got plenty of other characters hanging around my head right now and they're all high on the priority list. Why did she put herself front and center? That damn tattoo was the trigger. She has one just like it in the same location.

I'm not exactly sure who this character is or which story she belongs to. She claims that she's Z's heroine (the third book in the J9 proposal that I'm still trying to find time to finish), but she lied to me about a few other things and I can't trust that she's Jas. However, I was forced to look for a picture of her. Do you know how slow dial up is when looking for pictures? I had a hard time even coming up with search parameters to find potential images.

I think she's Tahitian, which means she's probably been hanging around since the beginning of June because when I wrote Dark Awakening (novella in the Shards of Crimson anthology), Mika and Conor were in Tahiti and unavailable to help Kimi.

Anyway, that shot my all day writing marathon in the foot. And yes, I know, I could have done my writing and looked for pictures of her after I was finished, however, I'm not that disciplined, and besides, I still don't have a new ending for the proposal I'm revising. Everything else is done now except for the last couple of pages of the synopsis. I told a friend that I plan to have an asteroid crash into Earth, causing most of the species (including humans) to become extinct. The End. ;-)

Last night, I was sitting in the great room, working and watching the Dodgers lose, when I hear this noise. I'm like what is that? I put the laptop down and get up to investigate, trying to pin down exactly where it's coming from and what it is. As I moved away from the couch, I zeroed in on its location. I look up at the vaulted ceiling, specifically at the recessed light almost directly above my head and I see it. A box elder bug is attacking the light. The noise I was hearing was its shell hitting glass. Since this is also the light almost at the top of the vaulted area, there's no way I can kill him. I shift position for another angle, and what do I see? A weird bump on my ceiling. I shift some more. Not only do I have a box elder bug dive bombing the light, I also have an Asian beetle parked next to it. On the ceiling. Too high to reach. Argh!

Now I have to figure out a plan of attack because I don't want to be living with these things indefinitely. This morning, the beetle was still next to the light fixture and I don't know if its ever coming down. The box elder is nowhere to be found.

There is a wonderful article about romance books and their readers at: Desire Surges for Romance Novels! Romance seems to take a bashing so many times in the media, so when a positive, well-written article is posted, it's cool to share!

And yes, as you can tell from the title here, I've still been playing with glitter. Here's my latest effort. What do you think?


I'm getting faster at it, but that also makes me want to create more and more graphics. I can't, though--too much work to do.

So I promised a movie review. Underworld 2. I think the subtitle was Evolution, but I'm not sure and I already have the disk sealed up to go back to NetFlix. Um, I wasn't paying strict attention to the story since I was learning to make glitter fonts while it was on, but the gist of it is that one evil son of the first vampire is trying to free the other evil son and the key is the heroine because her father had built the prison hundreds of years earlier.

Overall, I liked the first Underworld more than this one. Underworld 2 was really gory and I'm pretty squeamish so that was a problem for me. The romance between the hybrid Michael and the Vampire played by Kate Beckinsale was pretty much non-existent, although there was a few moments while they were in bed together that were pretty good. :-) I'd have liked to have seen more of the relationship explored and less of the blood and guts.

My rating: 3 stars
I liked it, but didn't get all excited the way I did about Underworld 1.
Next up on my NetFlix queue is Transporter. Heaven only knows when I'll get around to watching that after it arrives. :-)

My phone line was finally switched over to the buried cable yesterday, believe it or not! Considering the length of time that thing sat in the yard, I was thinking it would still be there next spring after the snow melted. ;-) Now the cable company just needs to get theirs taken care of.

You'll probably end up thinking, um, no, you really didn't have to share this, but hey! I'm so darn proud of myself, I can't help it. You see, I'm art/craft challenged, and when I do anything along these lines that turns out well, I'm elated. Here's my latest project:



You don't want to know how long I worked on this. Really. And even if you do, I'm not admitting to nothing. It's Friday. I did laundry. I watched a movie (which I'll attempt to review tomorrow). I found a tutorial for glitter fonts. It's been a busy night.