I found out yesterday that Through a Crimson Veil won third place in the Laurel Wreath Awards! Nice way to end the month of November!

A not so nice way to close out the month is with our weather. On Tuesday we were in the mid-50s. This morning, the temperature with the wind chill is a balmy -6 degrees. The straight temp is 8 degrees. And this change actually happened in less than 24 hours because it was damn cold yesterday morning already. My only consolation is that I don't live in that wide swath of the country south of here where they're getting freezing rain, a foot of snow or both. Okay, I know. No one cares about the weather. It's a Minnesota thing and maybe a Midwest thing.

Yesterday was a very frustrating day again at the EDJ. I'm helping another department update its manuals because they're way behind and noticed that a couple of their binders were broken. Knowing I'd get little help from Tech Pubs, I went and found two replacement binders on my own, located the spine labels and found tab dividers--kind of a self-serve situation. But for the spine labels, I needed smaller labels that said what manual it was and what volume, so I asked someone in Pubs for them. I was given a blank sheet of labels and told to type up my own. "You know how to use Word, right?" Geez. There are a couple of helpful people in that department, but otherwise it's a frustrating endeavor to try and get any assistance. I can tell you that didn't happen when I worked over there.

I shouldn't let this kind of crap bother me because it's just the day job, but it did leave me steamed enough that I was stewing about it when I went to bed last night. I'll have to make a point of thanking the two people in that department who do help me when I need it and tell them how much I appreciate it. I've been taking them for granted.

To end on a positive note, yesterday I was checking email at work and I had a note that the moccasins I ordered had shipped! Yea! I figured I'd have them by the weekend, but there they were by the door when I got home. Now that's service! I tried them on right away and ran into exactly what I expected--there's going to be a breaking in period. I had my old pair of moccasins so long that they're really perfect. Soft. Conformed to fit my feet. Sigh. The new pair will be like that some day too, it's just going to take a lot of work to get them there.

You are the World

Completion, Good Reward.

The World is the final card of the Major Arcana, and as such represents saturnian energies, time, and completion.

The World card pictures a dancer in a Yoni (sometimes made of laurel leaves). The Yoni symbolizes the great Mother, the cervix through which everything is born, and also the doorway to the next life after death. It is indicative of a complete circle. Everything is finally coming together, successfully and at last. You will get that Ph.D. you've been working for years to complete, graduate at long last, marry after a long engagement, or finish that huge project. This card is not for little ends, but for big ones, important ones, ones that come with well earned cheers and acknowledgements. Your hard work, knowledge, wisdom, patience, etc, will absolutely pay-off; you've done everything right.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Brain schism moment. Yesterday morning I put my coat on, grabbed my purse and tote bag and headed out into the garage--only to discover that I'd never closed my big garage door the day before. Gah! =8-O I can see how it happened. I was tired and I had my hands full. I'd ordered a book on mythology and had it sent to my parents' house and I'd stopped by after work. The book was huge. Incredibly thick and tall and all that, so that's probably why I forgot. I'm used to closing the door as I go up the stairs and this time my hands were full and by the time they weren't, I'd forgotten. Nothing was missing (my dad has all kinds of stuff in my garage, sigh) and I did have the deadbolt thrown on the door between the garage and the house. Freaked me out, though.

It rained most of the day yesterday. The temperature was in the 50s, I think they said 56, and the trees were bare. As I was driving out of work, I thought, you know, it really feels like winter. Then I started thinking about spring when it can be 56 and the trees can still be bare and it made me wonder why that rain can feel so hopeful and this rain yesterday felt so depressing. Is it simply because I know that the high temp today is going to be 23 degrees so I was aware it was the last hurrah? Or is there a difference to rain in fall versus rain in spring?

Yep, I really do think like this sometimes. Scary, isn't it?

My French books came yesterday for The Power of Two. I received 5 copies which is more than enough since I don't speak French and I only know one person who does. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the extras. But that's a problem for another day. Right now, I still have room in my basement. :-)

I heard about this really cool site where you could click the places you'd been and get a map for your website that shows your travels. I did it and posted it here, but I had to take it down because it hosed up all the formatting on my blog and I didn't have time to go through the coding and figure out why. If you want to try it yourself, the site is TravBuddy.

And I think I've run out of stuff to say. Enjoy your day!

Yesterday was a frustrating day at work. I'm helping out another department by filing manual revisions for them--they're way behind--and one of the packets is missing about half its pages. Tech Publications is on my floor so I went over there and asked for a copy of the revision. They didn't have it.

I used to work in that department, in fact, the manual I needed the revision for used to be my book. I said, What? What do you mean you don't have it? They only keep the current revision and one previous now (which meant they should have had the one I needed because it was the one previous, but that's another story). I pointed out how ridiculous that was (and I speak with authority because I did that job). The response? I know, but Jeff said.... And I was only doing what I was told.

Please allow me to bang my head against the wall now. Call me a rebel, but when someone tells me to do something I know is stupid and it's someone I know I can't argue with, I smile, nod my head and ignore them. Seriously, what is Jeff going to do? Conduct a file drawer search to make sure his orders are being carried out? I doubt it.

Sometimes the smart thing is to ignore the rules and do what you know needs to be done. This applies to writing as well as the manuals area at the EDJ. That's the one thing that drives me nuts is when someone is told they have to do something in their story or can't do something in their story because it doesn't conform to the rules. Contest judges seem to be the most fierce in this endeavor at conformity.

An example of the types of rules I'm talking about is the hero and heroine have to meet in the first three pages. (Or two pages or five pages. The rule changes depending on the judge.) My h/h in my latest book don't meet until the very end of chapter 2. My editor didn't ask for this to be changed.

If you've ever entered a contest for unpublished writers, you probably know what I'm talking about. This need of some judges to follow imaginary rules wouldn't be so bad if so many writers didn't take it so deep to heart. They'll come on a loop and say whatever rule the judge spouted and then say why it won't work for their story.

Not too long ago, a writer on one of my loops was ready to submit her work and wanted to know if she should cut her dream scenes because she heard that editors/agents/God Himself doesn't like dream scenes. It just so happened that her story had a character flashing back to a past life and was using dreams to show it. I mostly lurk on loops, but I had to post about this one. Eternal Nights has a character flashing back to a past life through dream sequences and guess what? Neither my editor nor my agent commented on it.

Now, I'm not saying ignore every rule just for the sake of doing it your way. Some things, like the HEA ending, are genre expectations. What I am saying is be smart. Ignore the rules you know are stupid. Or that might not even be rules, just one person's idea that it's a rule. C'mon, don't be afraid to be a rebel!

I've been watching the news and hearing about that former Russian spy in Britain who was poisoned with a radioactive isotope and thinking, wow, this is like something out of a book. I'm sure spies and former spies have been killed before, but I'm guessing the assassins make it look like an accident or something, but this is playing right out there on the news for all the world to see and it's not exactly common or something that could ever be considered accidental.

This is that latest story I could find on the spy's death and it also mentions the other people who've conveniently died since Putin came into office.

I don't have any insightful commentary, but as a fiction writer, I find this fascinating. Seriously, if you read about a spy being killed with polonium 210, wouldn't part of you think that the author was stretching the bounds of credibility? When I first heard this story on the news, I was like, huh? And the more I heard, the more stunned I was.

I should probably try to get past the aspects that make it seem like some kind of James Bond movie. A man is dead and if Russian dissidents are being murdered, this is a huge issue.

One of the newscasts I saw had someone who suggested that this man's death (forgive me for not using his name, but Russian names are difficult to spell) was done in such a way as to deliberately draw attention and to setup Putin. And this theory just makes it more surreal. Wow. Can you imagine being a pawn between the Kremlin and some other unknown group out to discredit the Russian president? How frightening would that be?

I probably shouldn't have blogged about this on a Monday morning at 4:30, but I'm held rapt by how this is playing out and wanted to discuss it and see if anyone else was as amazed as I am. Sorry if I mentally wandered all over the place. I'm not at my best at this time of day. (BTW, I would have titled this post "Stranger Than Fiction," but there's a movie by that name and since I've been reviewing what I've seen lately, I thought for clarity's sake, I should pick another title.)

The first review for Shards of Crimson is in! Romantic Times Book Reviews gave it 4 stars and said:

Fans of the successful Crimson series will be delighted to revisit the dangerous city, where vampires, werewolves, humans and demons all vie for supremacy. Four of the original series authors are back and delivering sexy thrills and chills with their enticing novellas.

Whew! It's always a relief to have the first review good review come in, especially from RT.

Last night, I watched Transporter 2. I liked the first movie, about a guy who drove, no questions asked, a lot so I decided to take a chance on the sequel even though the Asian actress from the first movie wasn't in the second.

In this movie, the transporter is working in Florida, and as a favor to someone, he's acting as chauffeur for a family, driving the little boy to and from school and to appointments, stuff like that. He's asked to take the kid to a doctor's appointment, but when he does, it's a set up. The bad guys have killed the real medical staff and taken their places in order to inject the boy with a deadly virus. The transporter manages to escape with him, but in the end, the bad guys kidnap the kid.

Of course, the cops think the transporter was part of the gang because he was forced to do some driving when the hench woman held a gun on the boy. So when the transporter calls to tell what really happened, they don't believe him. What follows is our hero trying to unravel the plot and rescue the kid and a lot of other people.

I did like this movie, but not nearly as well as the original film. The action here was taut and suspenseful--probably more so than in the original--and the fight scenes were almost as fun as the original as well. Yet something fell short for me. The plot was a little over the top and far fetched, but that normally doesn't bother me, and in essence, this is a martial arts movie, so it should have worked. The chief bad guy does take time to explain the situation to the hero, something that irritates me in movies and books. (I've tried to avoid this as much as possible when I write my own books, but geez, sometimes there's no other way to get the info across and it's sooo tempting. But I digress.)

After giving it some more thought, I decided what kept me from liking this movie as much as the first one was that there wasn't any romance in it. Not that the original Transporter had much romance either, but there was some and I thought the relationship between the transporter and the woman he rescued was great. I liked their chemistry and I would have loved to have seen them still together in this movie. I know that likely the actress had other commitments, but I did miss her.

The French inspector did make an appearance. I enjoyed him immensely and he added pretty much the only humor to this movie. That's another thing I missed from the original film--it had more amusing moments in it than this one did. There was almost a quirkiness about it that made me believe that they were all just having a great time filming it. Instead in T2, the only moments of lightness are the very few with the inspector, and IMO, he wasn't in nearly enough scenes.

The police, who in essence were working against the hero, were also not well defined. It would have been nice if we could have gotten a few more scenes from their POV in order to make them feel more real as characters. That probably would have increased the suspense as well.

There were a lot of things I did like about the movie. The actor who plays the transporter (I don't remember names real well and these people aren't stars so forgive the lack of accreditation) is engaging and enjoyable to watch. He's got the martial arts movie hero down really well and I think he could be a star in this subgenre.

The driving scenes are absolutely fabulous! This is one area where they surpassed the original movie. There's one stunt, where the transporter has to get a bomb off the bottom of his car, that is total genius.

The fight scenes are also well choreographed, and while they're not quite as quirky as in the original movie, there is one scene that combined humor and action really well and was one of the highlights for me.

Overall, I liked this movie a lot, but not quite as well as the original Transporter. I would watch a Transporter 3 if they make one, and would love to see the Asian actress from the original back in a second sequel with a little more romance between our driver and the woman. (And wouldn't it be cool if she kicked some butt as his partner in a third movie?!?)

On the NetFlix scale, I give Transporter 2 3.5 stars.

I had to work at the EDJ (Evil Day Job) yesterday. It ended up being an okay day, though. I was the only one there until after 7am and there were only three of us on my floor, so it stayed nice and quiet. The day actually flew by quite quickly and that was good too.

At lunch, I checked email and I had a note from Pay Pal. They had a deal offering free shipping from select stores when you paid with their service, and there was an online shoe store with $10 off in addition to the free shipping. I checked it out. Clicked on casual shoes and discovered Minnetonka moccasins for sale.

I have a pair of moccasins that I just loved, but they were getting old and worn, and then I wore them outside to water the sod after it was put in and that was just too much for the poor things. They ended up soaked with water and one of the shoes started coming apart at the toe. Clearly, it was time to replace them, but I didn't have time to go looking. I had checked online at one of my favorite online shoe stores, but I couldn't find exactly what I wanted and the price was a little high too. I wasn't expecting a whole lot when I clicked the brand name at this online store. And sure enough, as I paged through the shoes, the pair I wanted wasn't there--at least not in the color I was looking for.

There were a couple other pairs of cute moccasins, so I clicked on one of them and discovered that you could choose your color in that style from a pull down menu. Hmm, I thought, I wonder if I clicked on the shoe I'm looking for in another color if I could find the one I wanted. I gave it a try, and there was my moccasin! Hurrah!

So without having to battle any crowds, I shopped on my lunch hour and came away with a hell of a deal. $10 off a pair of shoes I'd been looking for since August and free shipping!

On my way in to work yesterday, I had to drive past several small malls--they're right off the freeway. One had Kohl's and Toys R Us and another had Best Buy and Borders. The parking lots for both were jam packed before 6am. I don't know what time Best Buy opened yesterday or if they were just that crammed with people that not everyone could get inside, but I saw a line up of people in front of the store. I'm not quite sure why anyone puts themselves through this. There is no bargain so great that I would battle crowds like this in the pre-dawn hours. And when I left work at 2:30, both parking lots were still jammed. I don't know if you could find an open spot to leave your car. I happily continued on home, content that I wasn't frazzling my nerves to spend money.

I'm awake. Not happy, but I am awake.

Am I up at this ridiculous hour to hit the mall? Nope. My beloved day job took two holidays away from me and one of them is the day after Thanksgiving. The other is New Year's Day. Let me tell you, I am far from thankful about this. The only bright spot--and I use this term lightly--is that no one except others in my union are going to be in so it will be nice and quiet. There are 3 of us on my floor. That doesn't mean they didn't take vacation time. I thought about it because I knew I wouldn't want to get up today, but I decided I might need to save this time off for later. You see, the beloved day job also stole a week of my vacation and I don't get it back for something like seven more years.

Yesterday was a nice day. I spent a few hours with my parents and then came back home. The weather was warm, in the 50s, and the sun was out. Maybe that's why the workmen were busy at the neighbor's house. They were there most of the day too putting down sand/rock or whatever needs to go underneath asphalt. They're widening their driveway to two cars. Anyway, I felt bad that they were working on Thanksgiving, but in MN, I guess you have to take the good weather when you can find it--especially at the end of November.

Last night, I saw a really cool commercial. It was for Puma and I guess that's more than half the battle since I've only seen this ad once, but I remember the product. This woman fights off ninja warriors. Great action and some fabulous fighting moves. I wanted to download it to watch again because some of that choreography would work wonderfully in my stories. I found the ads on their website, but the only choice offered for download was iPod format. My MP3 player is not from Apple because I got a lot more memory for a lot less money by going with another manufacturer. I downloaded it anyway in case the iPod format was something my computer would play, but alas, it isn't. All I received were error messages when I tried to open it.

While we were cooking Thanksgiving dinner (I made Stove Top Stuffing--about the extent of my culinary ability), there was a dog show on TV. I always cheer for the Husky, Malamute and German Shepherd dogs because I've had two Siberian Husky/German Shepherd crosses. The poor Huskies never seem to do well at these shows. :-( But they also advertised a dog show for all breeds, even mutts and my parents and I were laughing about entering Kody.

Kody was my last dog and the pet of my heart. She died years ago now, but we were imagining her at a dog show. Kody was terrified of other dogs because my brother's stupid poodles tormented her as a puppy. We'd go to obedience school and she'd hide behind my legs. When we did the sit and stay, she could hardly stand it and most times I didn't even make it across the room before she bolted for me. She was just so scared.

But Kody also had the Siberian Husky temperament, which meant she was independent and did what she wanted to do. Dog Whisperer would have had his hands full with her. :-) I like to believe I'd established myself as pack leader, but she didn't always care about that, and she found ways to covertly give her opinion of that. Or maybe it wasn't so covert. LOL.

I have to run. Traffic should be bad today because I have to go past the Mall of America to get to the evil day job.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American visitors! I thought I had a really cute animated gif to put up, but I can't find it, so I'm guessing I forgot to save it when I saw it.

I know this is the time across the blogosphere where everyone posts about what they're thankful for. I've avoided doing that for the first two Thanksgivings, but I think I'm going to succumb today. I'll be brief, though, I promise. It's just that I tend to be a glass half empty kind of person, and if someone points out a silver lining, I'm the one mentioning the gray cloud around it. Because of this, I thought it might be a good thing to mention some of the positive things in my life. I won't list them all.

I'm thankful I have my parents and that they're mostly in good health. They adopted me when they were older, so I'm dealing with them aging way before I'm ready to. My mom is the only one left in her family in her generation, my dad only has a younger brother left. With the death of my aunt this month, it's made me doubly grateful my parents are still around and that my dad is willing to handle so much for me.

I'm thankful I have true friends who've stuck with me through thick and thin. Friends who've listened when I've needed to vent, whine, celebrate and have kicked me in the ass when I needed a good, swift kick.

I'm thankful I finally was able to buy my own home. I love my house, and while I do wish I had a little more room and more time to finish unpacking, it's home. I like having the space to put all my things without being smooshed together and I like the openness the floor plan has. I'm especially thankful when I think of all the people who don't have any home, the hurricane victims of 2005, particularly Katrina, who still aren't home. I do know how lucky I am even if there are times I feel overwhelmed.

I'm going to stop here and not talk about writing and being published. That gets to sound like bragging and I'm from Minnesota--we tend appreciate modesty. I need to work on that since self-promo would undoubtedly help me.

This day tends to get hectic as all family holidays do, but I'd like to suggest that everyone take a moment and remember the things in life that they're particularly thankful for and it doesn't matter if you're in the US and celebrating a holiday or in another hemisphere. It's always nice to take time out and focus on the positive. I know I don't do it often enough so this is a good thing for me too.

Enjoy your day!

Here it is, almost 5am and I'm just getting around to blog. This is like 20 minutes later than I like to get over here, but I couldn't get up this morning which pushed me late on everything. :-(

Actually, I've been really tired for the last couple of weeks and I've been trying to think of why because I have been going to bed early enough. I think I came up with the right answer. I've been waking up several times a night for the last few weeks. I don't know why. Sometimes I'll be having some vivid dream, and when it ends, I'm awake. I look at the clock, see I can sleep some more and do until the next dream wakes me up.

Then there's the lose all sense of time thing. I'll wake up, sure I'm late for work. I look at the clock and it'll say 10:00. You'd think that would reassure me and that I'd realize it was 10pm since no light was coming in around the shades, but for some reason, I'm uncertain whether it's morning or not. I'll consider it for a moment, then reach for the television remote, trying to verify if it's AM or PM. Does this suck or what?

So I'm tired, and when the alarm goes off in the morning, I can't get out of bed. I hate that because I get stressed when my morning schedule gets pushed like this.

The most interesting thing that happened yesterday was that I was nearly part of an accident that would have encompassed 3 lanes of traffic on the freeway. Some kid who looked to be about high school age when I glared at him after the fact, was speeding. I mean really, really, really speeding. Faster than most people speed. And because the other lanes weren't going fast enough for him, he decided to shoot up the right hand lane. Unfortunately, someone was merging on, thought they had enough room and pulled into his lane. This is where it starts to involve me. The kid began to swing into the middle lane to shoot around the merging traffic, but there was a car there and he began to swerve into the left lane where I was. Me? I've got a cement barrier to my left, so I'm slamming on the brakes. By some miracle, though, the kid changed his mind and stayed in the right lane and the driver next to me stopped only partially into my lane. Whew!

Do you think that teenager learned his lesson and slowed down to the usual 10-15 mph over the speed limit that most people were going? Of course not. He continued on going really fast, cutting in and out of traffic. I rarely wish a traffic ticket on anyone because I drive fast myself, but this kid was unsafe and he needed to be pulled over.

There were a lot of idiots on the road yesterday. I wonder if it's because of the holiday that so many people were driving like bats out of hell? And like I said, I don't drive slow, so these people must have wanted to go 20-25 mph over the speed limit. Ah, tailgating on the freeway. Ya gotta love it.

Yesterday morning, I was running late, but not so late that I shouldn't have been okay on getting to work. Except I got stopped by the train. I hate the train. It's light rail--Minneapolis has one line--it goes from somewhere in the city down to the Mall of America, which of course, takes it right past the building where I work. Because of how I come in, I have to cross the tracks twice. Once when I get off the freeway and once when I turn onto the NWA property.

One of the things that doesn't help is that there's also an airport terminal on this road. Not the big MSP airport, but the Hubert Humphrey Terminal. It used to be just some charter airlines that flew out of there, but now some discounters do too. This means we have people driving others to the airport who are absolutely clueless about where they're going. It makes me insane when they don't turn left, just kind of sit there. "Turn!" I scream in my car, "Damn it, turn before that %$&# train comes!" Because you see, it's all about that stupid train.

If my timing is off by just a couple of minutes and I get stuck by two trains, I'm late. One morning, I even got stopped by three! That's never happened again, thank God. What makes things even worse than the actual train is the fact that the traffic lights are hosed. For some unknown reason, at some places, the light will turn red on all sides when the train light starts flashing. Even the traffic running parallel to the train gets stopped. Then, when the train goes past, the lights resume their normal cycle. Which can mean that the light will turn green just long enough to let one car through. Argh!

So while traffic can end up backed up onto the freeway from the off ramp, the train goes by with two or three people on it. :-( It's much busier later in the day, but before 6am when the mall won't be open for hours yet, no one has any real reason to head that direction. But of course, the train runs with the same frequency it does later in the day anyway--and it royally hoses up traffic.

But back to yesterday. Despite the people afraid to take the left hand turn onto the street, I made it off the ramp. One barrier overcome. But these same drivers go like 25 mph on the road and the speed limit is 40. This slowed me up enough yesterday that I couldn't make the left turn arrow onto NWA. I was the third car in line when the train light started to flash. I think I turned the air inside my car blue with profanity. I really hate that train.

I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it on time, but I rushed across the parking lot anyway (on foot!) and almost got run over by a car who was racing in while I was rushing. The lights were out in the parking lot (again) and I wear a dark jacket, but the point is that the train hoses up a lot of people, and depending on who your manager is, you could be forced to take a tardy. Pfft!

I ran into the hangars to punch because it's faster than waiting for the elevator, riding up to my floor and punching in. It's 5:59, the absolute last minute I can punch in and still be on time. I swipe my badge through, being quick, but not too quick because if you go too fast, the time clock won't read your magnetic stripe. As I'm swiping, the clock turned to 6:00. I have no clue whether it recorded me at 5:59 or 6:00.

When I got logged in to my computer, I checked. 5:59. Whew!

Have I mentioned how much I hate that expletive deleted train???

I have to be brief this morning because I'm really running late. It's all Joely's fault. She posted a great de-motivational poster on her blog and I had to go over and read what else was available from this place. This poster is so darn perfect for writing. Too bad it doesn't go a little farther and talk about what happens after our hearts have been cut from our bodies, but then I think these are geared for business, not for authors. :-)

Yesterday was a pretty decent day. I got a lot of writing done and a lot of cleaning. That basically means that while the writing didn't come easily, at least something came out on the page. Hopefully, today will go well too.

I'm running a contest right now for people on my newsletter list as of Saturday. It's a simple contest. To enter, all the subscriber has to do is tell me which one of my characters is their favorite and a sentence or two why. I know there are some people on there who are from a sweepstakes site back a couple of books ago and I thought they could at least figure out how to cheat on this contest. All they have to do is go to my website, pick an excerpt and read far enough to get a character's name and some reason why they might like them. Less than five minutes worth of work. I've already had a couple who haven't bothered to put in that much effort. It's a sad world when people can't even bother to spend the time to fake it convincingly.

My parents returned from Chicago yesterday and I had to drive to the airport to get them. It was early-ish in the morning, just about 9:30, and the freeway traffic was still fairly light. Normally, I'm racing to work and I thought, you know, I'm just going to have a nice, leisurely drive to the airport. A couple of extra minutes isn't that big a deal. I hardly had that thought when on the other side of the interstate, I saw a cop in an unmarked SUV had someone pulled over.

I timed my ride, BTW, and I discovered that driving just a few miles over the speed limit only put me 1-2 minutes behind Patti's Wild Weekday Ride. Makes me rethink how fast I drive into work. If it's only saving me a couple of minutes, is it worth the stress? If I can leave the house just five minutes earlier, I can shave a lot of tension off the commute. The problem will be getting out of the house earlier. No matter how hard I try, my time to get ready always expands to fill the time I have left. If that makes sense. :-/

But I digress. So as I continue to the airport, traffic became really heavy and I'm like, whoa! Then I had an epiphany; the Mall of America. And it's almost Thanksgiving, which is the start of the holiday shopping season. I was right. Once I passed the two exits for the megamall, traffic dropped right off again and there was hardly anyone at the airport. I love that. The airport is often a hairy snarl that leaves me tense and using profanity. :-)

I made the return trip at a leisurely pace too. And you know what? At the on-ramp right before the one where I get off, there was an SUV parked on the side. I glanced over and I saw the police patch on the driver's left shoulder. Yep, the cop was still there. I'm amazed, though, that he hadn't pegged any of the drivers that had zoomed past me. They were driving 10-15 mph over the limit (like I usually do. blush.), but maybe he was waiting for bigger fish. Minnesota drivers do go really, really fast and I'm sure it was just a matter of time until he found someone going even farther over the limit.

After trying to write all day (I got stuff done, but it was a struggle. But then this whole story has been an awful fight from day one. :-( ), I put Rome into the DVD player. It's my latest NetFlix rental and a television series from HBO. I was sure I'd enjoy it and it came recommended to me from someone who had HBO, but I didn't like it. I held on for about 15 minutes, waiting to become interested and I just never was. Finally, I decided there was no point wasting my time watching this and I stopped the disk and watched a repeat of VH1's Top 100 Songs of the 80s.

Yesterday morning, just like I always do, I locked the door between my utility room and the garage, turned off the light, stepped out into the garage and pulled the door shut behind me. I walked to the driver's door and reached into my jacket pocket for my car keys. They weren't there.

I think I was stunned immobile for a split second. I always drop my keys in my jacket pocket. I have another split second where I realize the door to my house is locked. I try desperately to remember if, for some odd reason, I'd put the keys on my counter in the utility room or somewhere else. Nothing is coming to me. I dig deeper into the pocket, sure I must just be missing the keys. It's a deep pocket.

Nada.

Now panic starts to set in. OMG, my parents are out of town! They have my spare set of keys, but my keys to their house are on the same key chain as my house keys and my car keys. It's not like I can just call them on the cell phone and say, "Help!"

I frantically begin searching my purse. Maybe I stuck them in there for some strange reason. I try to remember the last time I had my keys. Thursday afternoon when I unlocked the door to my house. After that? Who knows?

They're not in my purse. I begin thinking of what the heck I'm going to do because OMG, I can't find my keys.

I don't know what prompted me to check my left jacket pocket. I'm right-handed, and while I do a lot of things with my left hand that most righties don't do, using my keys aren't one of them. The panic immediately deflated as my fingers touched metal.

I have absolutely no idea why I put my keys in the other pocket, but I was so happy I had. From now on, though, when I step out of the house, I'm going to have my keys in my hand. That was too big a scare to go through again. And the thing is, if my parents had been home, it wouldn't have been that big a deal, but they weren't.

Somehow, despite this panic, I did manage to make it to the day job on time. I had to punch in the hangars because the damn train messed up traffic back to the freeway and only one elevator was running, but all that matters is that 5:59 badge swipe.

Thankfully, after one day of chatter, my Polynesian heroine has gone quiet. She intrigues me, though, and so does her hero. Of course, characters from the book I'm not working on are always more interesting than the story I'm writing. For one thing, they require no work and have no stress involved. :-) I like the lack of tension. But for now, I'll just not play any Polynesian music and focus on the WIP.

I discovered that my home page when I logon to the net, will give me news about the baseball teams I follow. How cool is that? So now I can keep up with the off-season trades and other stuff. Although Atlanta doesn't seem to be reporting anything. Oh, well, at least I have the Cubs and the Twins on there. I didn't realize the Cubs were for sale. When I have time, I need to read that article. I just looked at the headlines.

Speaking of articles, one of the guys at work posted an article on our bulletin board. It was mostly about the proposed US Air takeover of Delta Airlines, but there was some speculation in there about NWA. This is from the Star Tribune:

Not everyone believes Northwest is vulnerable to an unwanted takeover, however. Airline analyst Michael Boyd, based near Denver, said the reputation of the Eagan-based carrier's executives could scare off anyone they don't want in the room.

"These are people who don't cook their meat before dinner," Boyd said "You don't mess with them. You leave them alone."

Want to bet our Execs were proudly beating their chests over this quote? Anyway, I'm hoping that if there is any taking over to be done, that it doesn't involve my job moving out of state. Before I got my house, I wouldn't have cared too much, but now I'm rooted. :-/

Last Saturday, I got up early, made coffee, and as I was standing in the kitchen, I looked around and I thought, you know, I really like my house. And I do. I've done some of it slowly, but now that all the curtains and drapes are up, it's nice and it feels like home. I guess that's what really counts.

My Polynesian heroine--whoever she is--showed up again yesterday. One minute I was minding my own business, the next she was there. I know how it happened. I hit "play any track" on my MP3 player and it chose a track from Horizons. I bought a CD of the music from the Polynesian Cultural Center on my last visit to Hawaii. I can't remember which song it was or which island, but it was enough to bring her back.

Her. Sigh. I still don't know her name. I'm not sure if she's from a story I already know about or if she's from a brand new story. I keep seeing this one scene over and over--her with her hero. He's part Polynesian as well, but for some reason I don't know about, he insists he's American. I'm guessing there must be an interesting reason why he denies his heritage, but I don't know it. He--whoever he is--hasn't talked to me or bothered me in any manner. BTW, he's pretty hot. :-)

But back to my heroine. She promised not to interfere while I write the WIP, but she's already disrupting me. I know her book has some paranormal elements, although I've no clue if it's a straight paranormal or a futuristic story (or some other subgenre). So there I was last night, searching Amazon for books on South Pacific mythology. I found one that looks like it might have the information I'm looking for and I also found a big book that covers the mythologies of the world in an encyclopedic fashion. I figured that might be a good reference as well. I also spent the entire afternoon at work listening to Horizons.

Do plotters have people show up out of the blue like this and start talking to them? Disrupting them when they're trying to write about different characters? If not, then being a plotter is starting to look a little better. Just a little. I mostly love the voices in my head--even when they get in my way. I wish, though, that I had a little bit more control on who was talking loudest.

One of the things that I found interesting was the way the heroine was goading the hero about his denial of his heritage. Not so much that she was doing it because she struck me as having an edge, but the fact that she pointed out that he's hotter for her than he's been for any other woman and it has something to do with the fact they're both descended from the same people. I don't get that, but I think it might have something to do with the paranormal element--whatever that is.

See my frustration? Not only do characters continually do this to me--pop in when I'm working on another story--but they give me just enough information to tantalize me and not enough to satisfy that curiosity. Argh!

Progress slowed down a bit yesterday because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do in the chapter and I had to feel my way into it. This would be one of those days where I wish I was more of a plotter with a nifty little outline of what I want to do and in which chapter. Of course, plotting that minutely would leave me completely bored with the story and be frustrating beyond belief for me, but it's getting to be just as frustrating to have these fits and starts. There has to be a more efficient way to balance plotting and pantsing than what I'm doing now, though.

This is where I need a clone or two. One that can go to the day job, one that can clean and unpack the boxes which are starting to drive me nuts, one that can do family stuff and take care of other errands. Oh, and one that knows how to do scarf valances! ;-) This would leave me to sleep and write, the two things I need to do.

Checkpoint Charlie was dismantled at work on Monday. During the mechanics strike, we had to stop and show our badges before we could get onto company property. It was kind of a pain, and during shift change, could back employees up on to the road. Sometimes even back onto the train tracks, which is dangerous because that damn train comes through constantly. Anyway, now that the mechanics have ratified their contract (more than a year after they went on strike), we can drive right into work again. Now if they'd just open the side gate to relieve some of the traffic from the ramp guys.

Yesterday, I also lost time playing travel agent. My aunt died (my dad's sister) and my parents need to head down for the funeral. They haven't been flying on my passes for a while because they have a very low boarding priority and they actually want to get where they need to be without being bumped. (Ah, the joys of flying standby.) But a last minute fare is double what they were paying when they advance booked, so I checked flights and they were open enough to risk it. Of course, the lovely service fee (plus tax!) my employer charges us for the privilege of using our passes and being bumped really drove up the cost. But I'm not going to get started on that.

Wrote lots. Stayed up way too late. Drank too much coffee yesterday evening. Am dead tired this morning. Creed's finally talking to me, so I guess we will have some scenes in his POV after all.

I thought about ending it here because I really am tired and I've forgotten what I thought of last night to talk about here this morning, but I can report a few things. Yahoo Groups finally coughed up a lot of my digests last night. These were from Friday and Saturday. I don't know if I received everything, though, because one of the notes I know didn't make it through was lecture five from my online workshop. I ended up going to the site and forwarding it to my email so I can have the complete collection.

I was strenuously cursing dial up last night. I had to research two quick items and the connection was taking it's own sweet time which left me frustrated. I did eventually prevail, however, and came up with some stuff I needed. The computer, I guess, had the last laugh since I ended up crabby. I have to wait till I finish this book to get the high speed thing, but I've definitely got to do it--for my sanity if nothing else.

The times they are a'changing. I remember back a few years ago when one of my coworkers gushed on and on about her vacuum cleaner. I thought she was nuts. Who cared that much about a vacuum? Well, apparently, now that would be me. Last night, I saw a demonstration on television for an 8 pound vacuum that came with a hand-held unit that weighed 5 pounds. All kinds of cool attachments. I stopped writing and turned up the sound. I was literally glued to the television for the length of the demo. Sigh. Curtains, valances, pots and pans and now vacuums. What's next? Am I going to get all excited about cleaning products or coupons? Shudder.

My parents came over again yesterday to help me hang the scarf valance in my bedroom. I actually wanted to wrap two of them--one raspberry and one orange, each 216 inches long--around the pole to add a little more color to the bedroom, although there are no doubt people who believe I already have too much color. :-) Anyway, it didn't seem like that difficult a proposition. They do it on HGTV shows all the time and it looks simple to do and very cool.

We started by putting the two valances back to back. My mom and I tried winding them together before hanging them up, but that didn't work very well, so we undid that. My dad had ladder duty and he wasn't following instructions on the wrapping around the pole so I got up there and did the end. Not great, but it didn't look too bad.

It went downhill from here.

Wrapping around that pole was hard, especially when I wanted the fabric to swoosh in front, but only so far down. I made it to the middle portion and around the center support before it started looking really, really, really bad.

Okay, pull everything we did and start over.

This time, I thought, why don't I start at the middle and work my way to the two ends? 432" of slippery fabric didn't want to cooperate. My dad's trying to hold the fabric on the pole so it doesn't slide off, I'm trying to keep my balance while standing on my bed, and my mom is offering suggestions from the floor.

What if we did one valance at a time instead of working with both of them? That didn't work any better. After fighting with all this fabric for nearly an hour, we conceded defeat, folded the valances up, and I put them in the linen closet. Clearly, I won't be trying out for HGTV's next Design Star competition. :-) So we moved my bed back against the wall where it should be and called it a day. Foiled by two pieces of fabric. Sigh.

At least the writing went better yesterday.

Yahoo Groups is driving me mad this weekend. I've had all kinds of notes not show up. I know I'm missing a digest from one of my groups because I have the one before it and the one after it. I could be missing from other groups as well. Either that, or they are very, very quiet. I'm doing an online workshop right now, and I had to go to the group home to get one of the lectures that never showed up. I checked and I'm not bouncing according to Yahoo Groups. I also checked my spam folder and nothing was there that wasn't really spam. I'm hoping all these missing emails show up.

Yesterday ended up being a very long day. I did make it to my writing chapter meeting, I voted for the new board and stayed for the business meeting, but I ducked out before the speaker arrived. My dad was going to come with me to the lighting store, but when I stopped by his house to get him, he wasn't there. You see, the lodge needed him.

We did--eventually--get to the lighting store and I picked out a new fixture to replace the one dropping glass sheaths like a tree dropping leaves in fall. It didn't take too long to pick out something new. I'm very into contemporary style and so much is traditional. There was one fixture that I just thought was the coolest thing ever, but I couldn't figure out how to get the glass off of it to change the bulb and it looked inconvenient. This is the one I didn't get, but liked:


I did find a couple of others I liked, and once I narrowed it down to two, it was fairly easy to pick. I couldn't find the exact lighting fixture I picked, but this one is close:

My lights face down instead of up, but they're similar.

When I got home, I had to put my curtains and drapes up. The drapes took forever, but now I have drapes that actually draw open and closed. Yea! And despite working till 8pm last night, I still didn't accomplish everything I set out to do yesterday. I couldn't believe it, especially since I had my parents helping me.

I also had a conversation with a writing buddy last night. I've been having horrible trouble making my bad guy demon bad. I know I did it in Crimson Veil and in the novella, but I also had a demon or half demons as the h/h. I kept softening the bad guy in my mind, finding excuses for him and that just wasn't going to fly here. So my friend said, why don't you make him a warlock. Hmm. A human with powers who wants more power. That solves my problem of wanting to soften him.

Today needs to be a heavy writing day, so I better get going. Lots to do again.

I almost forgot to post here this morning because I thought I already had. My mind becomes more and more like a sieve with each deadline. :-(

Just a reminder, the Super-Deluxe Crimson City Action Pack Contest continues. For information on the prizes and how to enter, visit My Website.

Today is going to be a busy one. I want to go to my chapter meeting (writing) because I didn't make it the previous couple of times. I meant to go last month, but I ran late and didn't feel like rushing since I do that every day of the week. But today we're electing new officers for 2007 and I probably won't be able to make a meeting after this until after the WIP is finished and turned in.

I also have to go out to the lighting store where I bought the bathroom fixture and pick out a new one. I had a little problem with the glass sheaths around the bulbs falling out and shattering. The manager said he could send someone out to fix it or I could pick out a new one. I opted to go with the new one, because even with the light fixture repaired, I'd always be wondering if this was the day they were going to fall out again. Plus, every time I changed a bulb, I'd have to reinstall the sheaths, which pretty much guarantees they'd fall eventually. Better to go with a new light, one I can trust won't be a hazard.

The patio panel I ordered for my window arrived yesterday. It's thermal so it'll keep out some of the cold over the winter. I want to get the pins in there and hang that today too so that my windows will be basically done--at least until summer when I'll want a sheer patio panel. :-) I also want to iron and put up the scarf valance in my bedroom so I can move the bed back against the wall. I've had it out for months waiting for the blinds to be installed, then the curtain rods. Now I have to find instructions somewhere on how to drape the valance. This isn't an area I have much talent in.

I better get going or I'll find myself running late for the meeting again. Where does the morning go?

Readers and writers might find this fun!

Your Vocabulary Score: A+

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

I'm almost finished with my character sketch for Creed. There are a few questions I skipped and I might not go back to them. I created a form with nearly 90 questions on it, but not all of them are pertinent. Some of the items I borrowed from character sketches I've found in writing books and others come from job interview books. Trying to get these things filled out, though, can be interesting because I seldom have cooperative characters and some of their answers... I'd ask what I did to deserve smart ass characters, but I know--like attracts like, as the saying goes.

TBH, I'm not sure how much help the character sketch was/will be, but I have learned some more about my hero and I guess that's the bottom line. Creed's really, really contained. This should be...interesting to write. :-/ How do I get across his personality when he has himself so locked down? I felt so disconnected from him that I had to do the character sketch to figure him out, so I'm struggling with how I get the reader to connect to him.

I've had contained heroes before. Conor for one, but Mika immediately knocked him off balance and kept him reeling during Through a Crimson Veil, so I didn't have to deal with this problem. Even Alex from Ravyn's Flight and Eternal Nights wasn't a problem. He was a hard ass and while his men didn't necessarily appreciate him, I knew him. Alex cared too deeply and had lost too many people in his life, that's why he was the way he was.

Creed, though.... Sigh. He's burnt out. He really doesn't feel all that much anymore and he doesn't particularly want to feel anything. He's cold, arrogant, contained, aloof, mercenary. His motto is: The end justifies the means. Toward the end of In the Midnight Hour he did something vindictive to a friend for no real reason other than he was pissed that Ryne had ruined his plans. Creed is dark and he's not all that sympathetic.

But he's also the hero. He does care about his people and he believes they're approaching the final war with the dark forces. He's a warrior, a troubleshooter and Creed's been fighting for much too long. That's what burnt him out, left him so cold. Plus there's this dark force attachment/connection thing he has. He doesn't realize that it's influencing his actions and reactions, but he's never seen anything like it before. I don't know if any of the Gineal have.

I've always wanted to stretch as a writer on each book and I have. Each story has challenged me in a new and different way, but this one is killing me. :-(

I ordered some books and they arrived yesterday. I got Jenna Black's Watchers In the Night, a Karen Marie Moning book, and two Anne Stuart books, including Cold As Ice. (That is her newest Ice book, right? I get confused when all these titles are so close to each other. Like Nora's In Death books--I have to remember them by plot because the titles all blend together for me.) I just wish I had time to read my haul!

That's one of the things I really miss--reading. Before I committed myself to writing, I used to read a book a day. Actually, I think my voracious reading helped me with the writing because I internalized so much. I'm not big on consciously analyzing books because it leaves me paralyzed. This is the same reason why I avoid in-depth craft conversations because I never think I do what they're talking about and then I can't write because I'm worried I'm doing it wrong.

The 90s were my biggest decade for devouring books. I was on Prodigy Classic with a great group of readers and writers and I found so many great books that I would have missed without all the recommendations. Of course, these women are also responsible for the explosive growth of my TBR pile. I went from less than half a dozen books I had in the wings to read to hundreds and right now my list of books I want to read is over 1000. :-( And it's only getting bigger since all the times I used to read have been converted to writing time. About the only place I can sit down and just enjoy a book is when I'm on a flight.

I used to take vacation every summer and go to a cabin in Wisconsin. There was no telephone, no television and the only radio station we could get in there played polka music (not something I like). I'd bring a huge tote bag full of books down with me and I'd read and read.

It was so great! I'd get up when I felt like getting up, eat when I was hungry and go to bed when I was tired. No clocks. No schedules. I found and read some great, great stories while I was there. :-)

I remember the planning of the trip. The biggest thing was trying to decide which books to take. I had to have a choice because I didn't know what kind of story I'd be in the mood to read, and since I would go through 15-20 books in that week, the decisions were critical. I'd study my TBR pile. I didn't just want to take favorite authors, I wanted to take new-to-me authors too because I wanted to discover another must-buy writer.

Hours later, I'd have my books ready to go. I spent more time packing them than I spent packing my clothes, but then I wasn't going out while I was at the cabin, I was only there to read.

The cabin is gone, the group that owned it sold it to a developer and I'm sure the lake is surrounded with homes by now. Of course, if I went their today, it would be with my laptop to write for a solid week without interruption, not read. There's always another short deadline up ahead or recovering from a short deadline. I have a hard time reading while I'm mentally exhausted and I usually just stare at the television in a partial vegetative state. :-) What can I say, I burn out a lot of brain cells.

Sometimes I wonder how writers who work full time manage to squeeze any reading time in. I know some do and I figure they must be more organized than I am or maybe they're faster writers and they don't need as much time as I do to write a book.

This new opening is finally sticking and I think I'll be keeping it. Considering how many times I trashed that thing, this is cause for celebration. Yesterday, I mentioned doing a character sketch for Creed and I started that. Progress has still been slower than I'd like, but I still feel as if I'm finding my way with this story.

One of the things a wiser, more experienced author told me after I sold RF was that the process will change from book to book and I found that to be true. The one constant I've always had was that the beginning was always clear in my mind and I'd get that vision down before things would slow up. This story, though, changed that. I hope I never have a book that's this difficult to get started ever again. Wow. I never thought I'd have a struggle like this.

My dad came over to replace the two glass shields that fell and broke from my bathroom fixture, but when he got up there, he discovered that two of the remaining three were barely hanging in place. It seems these shields are held in place by one tiny screw pressed into the metal ring. It doesn't even go into the shield. He didn't like how solid they were and ended up taking down the remaining three. Then he called the lighting store, talked to the manager and it looks like I'll be picking out a new fixture.

One of my fabulous, wonderful editors sent me copies of the Advanced Reading Copy for Shards of Crimson! That was soooo cool to open the package and find those bound ARCs. Of course, now I'm worrying about my story. The joys of being a neurotic writer.

I'm cautiously optimistic on the WIP. So far, it seems to be going well and I haven't felt any need to trash my pages yet. I did some thinking on it, about why the story seemed to come alive (finally!) when I switched to my heroine's POV (I did try this before, without these results). My thought is that while I know facts about Creed and his life, I don't really know him. Certainly not at his core. Since I write by listening to the characters, this is a problem. I'm going to dig out my character sketch forms and fill one out for him. Hopefully, this will be the answer.

I don't understand why these characters can't cooperate more. It's always something with them. :-( And last night, when I went to bed, I tried to corner Creed and get some questions answered and you know what? He lied to me! He's not the first one to do it either. I got even, though. I fell asleep on him. :-)

In house news, I discovered the the curtains I want are referred to as patio panels. There weren't a whole lot to choose from, but I did find one that had some thermal thing going on and will, hopefully, block the worst of the cold as we approach winter. The panel I really wanted--the thin, non-protecting, but cute sheers--were on clearance, but my free shipping promo wasn't good on clearance items and they wanted more than $11 to ship! No way. So I found another panel that was $30 more and got free shipping. ;-) And I did realize it before I ordered, but it's some weird mind set thing I have going on. I can't pay for shipping, which seems to be nothing more than wasted money to me.

Today is election day. Make sure to vote!

Every writer has their favorite part of the book to write. The part where it seems as if they struggle less to get it down, the part that's the most fun for them to work on. For me, it's always been the first three chapters of the story. I might have to do more revision work on them after the fact than I do on other parts of the book, but at the first draft stage, the words just tumble out and I have a grand old time getting to know my characters. Not this time.

For the first time in my life, the beginning of a book has been the biggest bitch ever. I tend to mention how my writing's going over here a lot, but I haven't lately. That's because I've trashed everything I've written on this story over and over and over again. I did it again this weekend--twice. And I literally mean everything I've written, not just a few pages or a chapter or whatever. Every single word has been cut multiple times.

I've been trying to figure out what the problem is, but I'm not sure I have the answer. How it usually works for me is as I'm finishing up a book, the next characters will come in and start talking to me. Then while I'm taking a break, they'll continue giving me information and let me see some scenes. This always includes the opening of the book. That's not what happened this time. :-( Creed and Maia did not start talking to me as I finished up Ryne and Deke. They didn't talk at all until a few weeks ago and they haven't been giving me scenes from their story. Very frustrating.

Left to fly blind, I've been trying to come up with the start of the story on my own and it hasn't been working. Everything I've tried has been boring (although my writing buddies assure me it's not that bad, just heavy on back story). But it's more than that. If it were just a problem of barfing on the page, I could fix that. The biggest problem has been that nothing I'd written had me emotionally engaged.

I'd tried starting from Creed's POV over and over. I tried from Maia's POV once, but that didn't work either. As I was talking to a writing buddy this weekend, we both decided that starting with Creed hunting a demon wasn't the right place because it wasn't working for me and we both came up with a very similar idea at about the same time. Call Creed in front of the council. My brain started spinning with ideas.

While we talked, though, I also remembered way back to when I was writing the proposal for Ryne's story. The scene I saw then that told me that Maia and Creed had a story and were a couple was in Maia's POV and involved her opening the door and finding him standing there. We decided that if the first idea didn't work, that I'd go back to my original view of the story.

So yesterday I started writing out the scene where Creed is facing the council. He's in trouble, but doesn't much care. I spent hours and hours on this scene--and around 4pm, I scrapped the whole, entire thing.

Same problem. I wasn't engaged in any way.

I started over. I switched to Maia's POV, but instead of her opening the door, I thought what if Creed was already inside the house, just kicking back and relaxing? What if she'd had the day from hell and just wanted to come home and relax? For the first time, I felt the emotion. I heard my character. I was engaged with the scene I was writing.

It's too early to tell if this is going to stick. The words did come out fairly fast and furious, but I was tired from writing all day on the scene that didn't work and I only got a few pages down. For the first time, though, I feel optimistic that I'm on the right track. I just hope I'm right.

Who Should Paint You: Salvador Dali

You're a complex, intense creature who displays many layers. There's no way a traditional portrait could ever capture you!

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?

I have a cousin who's desperate to get married and/or be in a relationship. She's been this way since she was in her mid-20s and it's embarrassing to watch. Heck, it's embarrassing to be around at all. I went out with her and a few other cousins to a bar years ago, and as I watched them interact with the men, I became desperate to get out of there. If you've seen those Arby's commercials where the guy has a neon hat over his head announcing that he's thinking Arby's, you'd have an idea what my cousin is like. She had a neon sign flashing "Desperate" over her head.

The area, though, where the desperation really seems to be most evident is writing. There are so many writers who are so desperate to be published that it leaves me stunned. I'm as insecure and neurotic as anyone, but this is one offshoot that I never experienced and that I never quite understood. In fact, when I look back at my earlier writing, I feel like sending thank you letters to the editors who rejected me. :-)

Maybe that's why I don't understand the mindset. If someone sells before they're ready and readers pick up the book and go Blech! that reader is lost forever. They might give authors they've enjoyed in the past several tries before writing them off, but a new author has to attract and hold a reader immediately--there is no second chance.

I do understand that all these desperate-to-be-published writers believe they are ready. I thought I was ready with my first completed manuscript and the second and the third. I wasn't. When I look back at that stuff now, I can see it plainly. But I'm also a believer in we're where we're supposed to be when we're supposed to be there. Maybe that's why I never got that frenzied desperation. Or maybe it's because of what happened after my first story was rejected.

I was in my mid-20s, I think. I do know I was out of college, but not for all that long. I received a rejection letter for my first completed mss, and because I had no idea that RWA or my local writing chapter existed, I didn't realize I'd gotten the second best rejection a writer can get. (The editor wrote a very detailed letter telling me what I needed to work on.) At the time, all I knew was that I sucked, and if I was that bad, I wasn't going to waste my time writing. After six months, though, I missed writing down my stories. So I asked myself a few questions one of which was: Even if you knew you would never, ever get published, would you still write? The answer was a resounding yes! I began working on correcting the problem areas the editor pointed out.

I still wanted to be published, that went without saying, but it was the writing itself that was important to me, the stories, the characters. Being published was a dream, a goal, but it wasn't everything. That's where I think the desperate people are. Being published to them is more important than the writing, than the story, than the characters. It's a way to garner self-validation for them, a way to boost their self-confidence.

It doesn't work.

Not in any facet of life. If you can't find your sense of self-worth inside yourself, there is no external situation that will give it to you. Ever. I've seen this with a couple of women at the day job. One got her self-worth from her job (she was a clerk) and the other through items she bought. The thing is, this kind of self-esteem doesn't last. Like an addict in need of another high, the dose needs to keep going up and up and up to give the same level of flying. The woman who needed things went from needing a bigger television to wanting to add on to her home. (with a few increments in between, of course) But they couldn't afford to do it and she became dissatisfied that her husband wasn't earning more.

I wonder if these writers who have such a vehement need to be published realize they have neon signs over their heads flashing Desperate? I wonder if they realize how unattractive it is and how--no matter how hard they try to hide it--probably a good 90% of the people they have contact with can see it? I wonder if these writers understand that if they're not balanced before they sell, that it's going to be a million times more difficult for them afterward?

It's an emotional rollercoaster ride after selling. Some people have calmer rollercoasters than others, but everyone boards one. I don't care how much you think you know, how much you've learned from authors you know who were published before you, no one is 100% prepared for what lies ahead.

I wish I could tell these people to calm down, to work on their self-worth issues and to find a balance within themselves, but the problem is that I don't believe most of these people realize that they're desperate. They assume it's someone else, not them. They're ready to be published, they're just working toward their goal, and anyone who says something to them is jealous because they're so close. I had one friend I talked off the ledge dozens and dozens and dozens of times. I don't think she ever appreciated just how much I did for her. For sure I never was thanked for my efforts. But I don't think she realized how frenzied she was and I think she still doesn't know.

I've heard stories of writers cheating to get published and I just shake my head. What good does it do them? When their sell through sucks and no publisher is willing to take them on because their numbers are so bad, what have they gained? The right to hold up their book and say "I'm published"? Selling once doesn't guarantee a second sale. Look at all the authors who've had one or two books out and disappeared from the face of the earth. And how satisfying can it be to get published by cheating? There can't be any real sense of achievement because they didn't sell because they were good enough, they sold because they're more dishonest than the next writer. Or better at being dishonest.

Now that I've sermonized today (well, it is Sunday!), I'm climbing down off my soapbox and gonna go do something. I know this post won't do any good for the people that need it, but I've been thinking about this since I heard about the contest thing and just wanted to point out a few things.

My parents came over last night. My dad helped me hook up the new VCR/DVD recorder--or maybe I should say that he was trying to figure out the instructions while I hooked everything up without reading them. What can I say? The quick connect procedures were only sent in Spanish--a language neither of us is familiar with--so rather than look at the big instruction book, I examined the back and started connecting cords. So far, everything is working just fine--I tried a tape and a disk--but since I don't have any recordable DVDs, we weren't able to test that function.

This isn't the joy part yet. After we finished, I went into the master bathroom and stepped on something. It wasn't very big, so I figured it was just a piece of grit or whatever. After all, I've had all these