I tried to watch The Bourne Supremacy last night, but I just couldn't get into the movie. I guess I just wasn't in the mood for it, or maybe I had trouble because I'm not a huge fan of Matt Damon. Either way, I'm sending it back unwatched. If I get a sudden desire to see it, I can always add it back into my queue later.

Yesterday, as I cleaned, I had Go Cubs, Go playing on my computer. It's the song they do at the end of every Cubs victory at Wrigley Field. Made the cleaning go a little faster, but I didn't get everything finished that I wanted to do. I sat down to take a break, the Cubs game came on, and the next thing I know, it's 5:30. :-) It was so nice, though, to sit and watch a game without any stress involved. Since the Cubs had already clinched their division and are in no danger of having the best record in the National League, it didn't matter if they won or lost. They did end up winning, BTW.

Storms rolled through about 4am this morning and it's been raining off and on all day today. That's making it really hard for me to get moving. I just feel like vegging out and I can't. I need to get some work done today. What is it about rainy days that makes me just want to curl up in bed and nap?

I usually save the happy dancing Hobbes for when I finish a manuscript and ship it off to my editor, but I had to pull him out today. Last night the Cubs clinched the NL Central Division!!! Hurrah!!!

And now for the big question: Where do you find Halloween potpourri? I have this really cool cauldron and I used to have some orange and black potpourri with a spicy scent to it that I poured in it, but I used that up last year and the store I bought it from is out of business. Not being a shopper, I have no idea where I'd go to buy more. Anyone have some hints?

Happy Friday!

I'm having a tremendous day already. Last night, I finished the proposal I was working on! Yea! Of course, I might get it back again--this thing has bounced between me and my agent so many times, it's like a ping pong ball--but for right now, I can move on.

Next up on my Stories To Do List is the idea that had me reading about quantum mechanics and M theory. :-) I'm both excited about it and scared that I won't be able to pull it off in a logical and interesting way. The hero is still only telling me the truth sometimes; the rest of the time he lies to me.

I can see the heroine, but she won't tell me her name. I even browsed through one of my baby name books after I sent off my other proposal, but she never spoke up and claimed anything I saw. She did let me know when she didn't like a name, but threatening to use that didn't force her to share information. Sometimes threats work, but not this time. Today, I guess I'll really be putting the screws to her. Confess or suffer the consequences. :-) How far do you think that'll get me? Yeah, me too.

Maybe now that I can devote myself to it without distractions, I'll get somewhere.

Cubs magic number is 2. They were very lucky that San Diego beat Milwaukee last night because Miami, one of the worst teams in all of baseball, swept them.

I keep a To Do List, and while I was pushing on deadline for my last book, it was getting long. Really long. I was literally at a point where the question was: What do I have to do today? The thing was nearly a page long.

Yesterday, I crossed the last item off that To Do List!!!

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted. Of course, I have a new list going now, but nothing on it is as difficult as what I had to deal with on the other one. Or maybe it just feels that way because nothing has a real deadline.

Of course, I'm still behind on email. :-(

Random thoughts:

I found a picture of that dress I saw that was perfect for my heroine! Hurrah!

Minnesotans can't drive. They even did a segment on the news the other night entitled something like why don't MN drivers know how to merge?

I wish I had an optical mouse at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). I don't know how many more times this week I can pop out the rubber ball and clean it without losing my mind.

I think the drought in MN has officially ended. We had another hard, pounding rain storm last night. Lots of lightning, too, so I was forced off the computer.

The Cubs magic number is 3, but only because the Brewers lost. Once again, my beloved Chicago Cubs seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of almost-certain victory.

I hate synopses.

I ordered a laptop fan thing recently after reading a discussion about them on one of my loops. You rest your laptop on top of it and it keeps the computer cooler. It's basically a thin, flat surface that houses two fans that blow air onto the bottom of the laptop.

Since my laptop does get hot on the bottom and since I do like to sit with it on my lap, this sounded like something I need. It arrived yesterday.

First thing that surprised me was how small and light the thing was. I expected something heftier and my laptop is bigger than the fan thing, making the balance of the two together seem a little off to me.

The second thing was that when I plugged it into the USB port, I didn't receive any kind of new equipment message. I thought it wasn't working so I unplugged it and replugged it a couple of times before I decided I wasn't going to get a message. I checked the fans, and sure enough, they were blowing cool air.

They had other models of these things, but I chose this one deliberately because its power comes through the USB connection. There were others that involved an electrical cord and I have enough of those to trip over without adding one more.

Overall, I liked the laptop fan thing. It did keep the laptop much cooler (I checked the bottom of it several times to check on it) and it kept the heat from my legs. It's quiet, so it didn't bother me when I worked on a couple of synopses last night and the light weight keeps it from feeling like a burden.

There was really only one thing about it I didn't like and that was the small size. I wish it had come larger to fit the bottom of the laptop. Maybe I'll get used to balancing it, but it just felt off last night. I think they kept it small for travel.

That's my review service for the day. Definitely worth it, but I wish I'd found a bigger size with a uSB hook up.

Cubs lost. Milwaukee won. Magic number remains 4.

Dad story. Over the weekend, he began the process of putting some shelves up for me in the garage. Before you think I'm working the poor man to death, I should explain that he doesn't sit still well. He always needs to be doing something. If it wasn't putting shelves up for me, it would have been something for his lodge.

Anyway, he had some old shelving units that were rusty, so he bought some cream-colored paint for the metal shelves. He sprayed them on Saturday. Then on Sunday, he decided to put backs on the shelving units, only now his paint for metal won't work because the backs are some other kind of material. Unbeknownst to me, he decided to paint those, too, and went to the store to get some different type.

This is when I found out what was going on. He came over to my house and explained that they wanted to charge him $10 to mix a quart of paint to match the color of the other paint, and if he bought the premade color, it was like a buck something. He wanted to make sure that this was okay because it was a brown color.

Uh, these are the shelving units in my garage; I don't care what color they're painted. Heck, I didn't even care if they were painted at all. It took a little while to convince him that the color didn't matter.

Then Sunday night, when I went over to my parents' house for dinner, he wanted to find out what I thought of the color. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I never even looked at them, so I assured him they looked great. When I got home, I finally checked them out. It's a brown that will hide the dirt nicely. Besides, the shelving units are in the garage.

You'd think that would be the end of it, wouldn't you? But nope, he asked me again on Monday if the color was okay. Sigh.

And now for something completely different.

In Sunday's paper here, there was an article about fashion week and there were pictures of some of the dresses. There were two that I wanted to save because they might work for one of my heroines. I thought about scanning, but not only was the picture newspaper quality, but one of them was too long for my scanner. No problem, right? Quick little internet search and all would be found.

I was half right. The dress that I thought would be hard to find was easy since it was right on the front page of the What's New section on the designer's website. It wasn't easy to save it since it was posted in flash player. Luckily for me, I knew how to get around that, and while it took a little work, I have that picture.

What I couldn't find was the sea-foam green, Greek goddess dress. The reason I thought it would be quick to find was the fact that it was the largest picture on the page. Surely, that meant there'd be dozens of pictures of it on the net by now. I started with local paper's website. Nada. I noticed the article was reprinted from the Washington Post and I registered for their website. Nada.

Next up was an online search. Tons of dresses came up, but not that one. On to the designer's website. This dress was part of the collection for Spring/Summer 2008, and she only had the two collections for 2007 up. More searching online using different search terms. Nada. I gave up and resigned myself to keeping the newspaper article.

Yesterday was the autumnal equinox--one of my least favorite days of the year. From here on out, the days will be shorter than the nights and it's a long way till the spring equinox where life begins to become beautiful once more. Yep, it was 84 degrees here on Sunday and I'm already whining about winter.

The magic number for my beloved Chicago Cubs is 4! The Cubs won yesterday and Atlanta beat Milwaukee, so it was a super fabulous day for baseball. The Brewers are now 3.5 games back. Yea! And that's what I did Sunday instead of writing. I flipped between the Cubs came and the Brewers game. The Brewers game was looking pretty grim, but then a miracle happened. Thank you, Atlanta. :-) Anyway, that's one really nice thing about not having a deadline; I could veg out yesterday and only feel slightly guilty. :-) Of course, it wasn't total lethargy. I did do laundry, but only because I had to.

I've mentioned adding a new garden to my yard. My dad blocked it all in and I'll have the stone done to match the tree ring (to the left in the picture) next spring. I have to have somewhere to put all the flower bulbs I ordered. :-)



That plastic cube in the foreground? The tree peony is inside there. It had to be protected from the vicious killer rabbit. :-) The new garden area looks a little bit like home plate, doesn't it? Not that I have baseball on the brain or anything. The original plan was to make a rectangle, then it became a triangle, and finally, home plate.

This shot was taken from my deck so the new bed will be facing the back of the house and I'll be able to enjoy it if I'm sitting outside or if I'm inside writing.

It has been one long day. I had to get up at 7am for a 9am appointment, sat for about an hour while my oil was changed, and edited my proposal. Then came a trip to Home Depot where I picked up cedar mulch, weed killer, a respirator so I can spray the spiders dead outside my house without killing myself, and a cover for the peony tree so it can stay nice and protected all winter. There was some other stuff, too, but those are the highlights.

My plan for the day was to work in the yard, but my mom decided she was going to come over today and balance my checkbook. I know what you're thinking, but my mom needs something to keep occupied. My dad and I have tried a million things she can do other than sit in front of the TV. Most of them haven't worked, but this (and reading my galleys) does because she feels like she's helping me out. Which she is. So anyway, I had to find all the statements. That proved to be a challenge.

You see, the last time my mom tried to balance my checkbook was last February. It was almost a year's worth of statements at that time (I know!) and she never did get it to balance. She wrapped up all the statements and gave them to me to put away. I did, but today, I couldn't find them. They weren't where I thought they were.

Let me explain the difficulty of this problem. I had boxes I didn't unpack from when I moved a year ago. They've been shifted between the spare bedroom and my office several times. The statements could be in any of those boxes. I started unpacking them into my new filing cabinet, certain I would find them at any minute. I gave up around 7:30 after 6 hours.

In between my search for the missing statements, I had to make continual visits to the yard to okay what my dad was doing. He's laying out where the new flower garden is going to go. My outdoor plans included helping him with this, but that didn't happen.

So I emptied a bunch of boxes. Yea! And never did find my bank statements. Boo!

This is really bugging me now because I know I had them. I remember holding that bundle of statements. I just can't remember where I put them. I'd like to continue going through boxes tomorrow, but I need to write.

Bottom line, one long and busy day.

So yesterday pretty much ended up being a bust for writing. I did a little tweaking during lunch, maybe added a quarter of a page or so, but I got nothing accomplished when I got home. I'd barely checked email when it started to lightning, so that meant off the computer. The severe thunderstorm warning turned into a tornado warning when a funnel cloud was spotted not that far from where I live. Lucky me, my city was in the path, so I dragged the laptop (life support! It has all my books on it.), my purse, and my car keys to the basement and settled down to wait out the 45 minutes of the warning.

Talk about a waste of time, but better safe than dead, and the weather was pretty rough for a while. There was even hail and I had standing water in my tree ring.

That was pretty much the most exciting event of the day, and for a while with the tornado sirens screeching, it was more than enough.

So I got a new gardening catalog on Wednesday, and this one had some different stuff than the company I ordered all my other bulbs from. I've got at least a dozen pages dogeared and I'm sooo tempted. I really shouldn't order any more, but some of them are beautiful and they even have a garden layout (including a plant collection to buy) that's designed especially to attract hummingbirds and butterflies. Now how cool would that be? Plus, I wouldn't have to play designer, they have it all laid out for me.

When I mentioned it to my dad, he threatened to take my gardening catalogs away from me. :-) Okay, so I tend to be just a tad compulsive and gardening is my latest thing. It doesn't mean that everyone won't enjoy the beautiful flowers I'll have next spring, summer and fall, right?

BTW, the Milwaukee Brewers have a player named Corey Hart. Every single time I hear that name, I think Never Surrender. :-) And wasn't he the Sunglasses at Night guy, too? Or am I confusing him with that other singer from the 80s?

I was up late last night watching the Cubs/Reds game. Now late is relative. For some people, going to bed after 10pm isn't late; for me, it is. I have to get up at 4am for the Evil Day Job (EDJ), so that's really shaving off my sleeping time. But I digress--as usual.

So I stayed up to watch the Cubs game. I was hoping they'd be up like 14-0 in the third inning and I could go to bed early or at least early-ish, confident in their victory. It didn't work out that way. The score was deadlocked 2-2 in the eighth inning, and when my beloved Chicago Cubs did score, it was only 1 run. Since 3-2 wasn't a safe lead, I was forced to stay awake and vigilant until they won. :-) And after such an exciting game, it was difficult to wind down.

Okay, I see the eyes glazing over as I gush about my Cubbies, but I've restrained myself all season--almost. Besides, I'm going to swing this around to my books.

All my books have inside jokes in them. Some have a lot, some have a little. Some can be figured out, some you have to know what it is I'm talking about. The most continual inside joke is my love of baseball and it's usually the Cubs.

Ravyn's Flight has Alex overhearing a discussion aboard the rescue ship between his men as they debate whether or not the Cubs curse has been lifted.

Eternal Nights has two of the bad guys discussing the All Star game and most of the secondary characters have the names of baseball players. If you know the game and who was in the playoffs in 2005, you'll be able to figure out which teams I was rooting against. Hey, it's not easy to come up with throwaway names, so having two teams with 24 players each was a treasure trove.

In the Midnight Hour has Deke pointing out to Ryne that she shares her name with Ryne Sandberg, Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame second baseman.

And In Twilight's Shadow, my June 2008 book, has more baseball references. Including the fact that Creed, the hero, has dreamed of playing for the Chicago Cubs. :-)

The two books I didn't mention (The Power of Two and Through a Crimson Veil) might have baseball references, too, but I couldn't think of them off the top of my head. Both books, for sure, do have inside jokes in them. :-) You know, I should probably write these things down as I do them because I'm already beginning to forget what I did. :-/

I know some other authors do slip stuff into their books, too. It's fun! It's even more fun when people catch it. Like with Eternal Nights when I got an email from a reader who nailed all my baseball names. I loved it! Usually, no one comments (although one person at the EDJ caught the jokes that related to that in TPOT) and I never know if that means no one caught them or no one let me know they caught them.

In other words, if you discover one of my jokes, email me and let me know! It makes my day almost as much as hearing someone tell me how much they've enjoyed my stories.

One of the things that continually amazes me is how writing works best when it's a habit. Most of the time that isn't a problem--I always seem to be writing something--but I've finally had a nice long break and guess what? I'm out of practice. Synopsis writing doesn't count because that's a lot more left-brained than right, so I haven't done any new writing since I turned in my revisions July 1 for In Twilight's Shadow. I'm really feeling it now.

All I need is one scene, ten measly pages. Even at two pages a day (a mere 500 words), I should have it done in a week--easy. The damn thing is I'm struggling to get anything down on paper. Tuesday I managed 1 page. One! Most of it is the two month plus break from writing, but the other part is the year that this proposal has been sitting, waiting for me to have time to work on it again.

A year is a long time. It's time for the characters to fade into the background as other characters have clamored for my attention. Time for me to forget what I wanted to do with this scene and why I thought the original version was good (it's not!). So far, I tweaked the first 50 pages--easy. Then I tweaked and reworked portions of the synopsis. Not as easy as the first task, but not a killer either. These ten pages, though, are making me contemplate cleaning my house. Now that's bad!

So the h/h have just arrived at this party--that's the beginning of the scene. I know how it ends. The problem is everything in between. Chapter goals remain vague. I'm becoming frustrated with myself. I think I'm going to need to join my chapter's Club 100 writing loop and give myself permission to write crap. I hate that. I like to write close to finished the first time--this is why I'm such a slow writer.

Anyway, the fight continues today. Anyone have a sure-fire way on how to get my head back into a story I haven't touched for a year? Especially when I haven't done any story writing in 2.5 months?

A spider story. I loathe spiders--there aren't words to describe how much. I bought a bug vacuum a few years ago primarily because of spiders (they don't suck up box elder bugs, anyway) and I just want all spiders to stay far, far away from me and my house.

With that as a prelude, imagine my pleasure to open the door into the garage Monday morning on my way to work just in time to watch a spider rappel from the top of the door frame. Of course, I was running late for the Evil Day Job (EDJ)--I always am--and he comes to a stop about 8 inches from the ground. I didn't have time to wait, so I brought my foot up and tried to drive him to the floor. I thought I had him, but I couldn't find a body. I checked my pants and my shoes, but I didn't see anything. Another check of the floor, but still no victim. I didn't have time to look any more and I hustled out the door.

And I spent the entire drive to work feeling creeping sensations on my legs. I kept reaching down and brushing at them, worried that the damn spider was crawling on me. I did a more thorough search of my clothing when I reached work, but all was clear, and when I got home from the EDJ yesterday afternoon, I examined the floor more carefully--even shaking the rug. No spider. So where the hell is he?

Writing didn't go real well yesterday. I read through the scene that I want to replace and cringed at how bad it was. I can't believe it took this long for me to see all the problems. I didn't have an immediate idea on how to fix it, so I worked on scene goals last night. The list isn't finished yet--I need to think on it some more--but I do have a better grip on my h/h and how they'd really be behaving as opposed to what I wrote. I hope to get some more thinking in today, and with luck, some writing done during lunch.

I was sitting in my great room minding my own business the other night, when I heard this noise. At first, I thought my dad had come over even though I'd said not to bother, because it sounded like he was putting the key in the lock. Only the door didn't open. It unnerved me thinking someone was out there trying to get in, so I did what any author who writes kick-butt heroines would do--I turned on the porch light from inside the laundry room and called my dad. :-)

Yes, he came over and checked it out for me. The only sign of something wrong was the small rabbit on the edge of the porch. It didn't move when my dad was out there or while we were discussing it. I thought it was dead, but it wasn't because it disappeared while my dad was going to the garage to get something to pick it up with.

After he walked around the house to make sure no one was lurking, we discussed the noise. We're guessing that some kind of night predator was after the rabbit, it raced onto my porch and they tangled there. Then I flipped on the light, scared the predator away, and the rabbit was too stunned to move for a while. Or maybe too injured, although there wasn't any blood on the concrete. I need to remember this the next time I complain about how boring my life is. Boring is good. :-)

Sunday night I watched Design Star on HGTV. They were announcing the winner. I didn't vote online, although I did actually see the final design challenge the Sunday previous. The problem was I couldn't choose between Todd and Kim--I love them both! I became a huge Todd fan when I saw his room with the giant wave and the smashed up furniture and Kim is so likable, comes across as genuine and she did the best design in Hawaii for the final challenge. I was torn, wanting both of them to win. I guessed I'd be happy and disappointed no matter which one came out on top, and sure enough, I was. BTW, the winner was Kim.

I think I have the synopsis finished for my next proposal, now I just need to rewrite one scene (I scrapped the old version entirely), polish that new scene up, and it should be ready to go back to my agent. Of course, I haven't written new stuff for a while, so buckling down and producing keepable work--especially on a story that's basically been sitting for a year--is not going to be easy.

Yesterday, I managed to finish one of the big items on my To Do List. With that taken care of, I moved on to editing one of my proposals. This is one that's been back and forth to my agent a few times now and has been revised a lot. It's a stronger story now, I think, but I'm starting to get a little tired of it. The first 50 pages, though, are ready to go now, but I have one more scene and a synopsis to go through.

That scene, well, it's wrong. I think. I haven't read it in a year, so I'm going by memory, but I think I'm going to throw out the whole thing and start over. I think I'll keep the same setting and the same end to the chapter, but I don't know about the rest of it.

You see, the idea is to change it from the hero's story to the heroine's. If y'all have read Through a Crimson Veil, you'll notice that it's Conor's story told primarily from Mika's Point of View (POV). That's what I'm trying to shift to in this story and it hasn't been easy. There are two scenes in the first 50 pages from the hero's POV, and I wasn't able to transition either one of them to the heroine's despite weeks of trying. Since their POV is split about 50/50, the problem isn't the heroine's screen time (so to speak), but that the hero has the stronger personality.

I've considered that, too and part of it is that she's a chameleon, an observer. She wants to be low key. That means that the hero is the one that stands out more. I can't change her personality, that's not how my characters work with me, but I thought I could give her a scene from her POV that makes her take center stage. That's why I want to rewrite this final scene in the proposal because she's still in the role of observer. Might have to shake her up a little--whether she likes it or not.

This morning shortly after I arrived at work, someone joked about another person being a "cereal killer." I could only roll my eyes. It was funny when Susan Elizabeth Phillips used it in Nobody's Baby But Mine, but that was ten years ago. Now, it's so old, all you can do is roll your eyes.

I started thinking, though, when did the SEP book come out? Has it really been 10 years? That just doesn't seem possible. Nobody's Baby is the book that made SEP a must-buy author for me and it's still my favorite of her titles. So, wanting to check out just how old the "cereal killer" humor was, I popped over to Amazon and I was right--the book's been out for ten years.

But what really amazed me was that there were people who didn't like this book. Oh, I know that there's no way everyone in the world is going to love the same things, but this is Nobody's Baby! I checked out a couple of these low-rated reviews and I had to wonder if they'd read the same book I had. Wow.

I was introduced to SEP at a conference a few years ago and I probably came off as a complete idiot because I had no clue what to say to her. Okay, yeah, I'm shy so I usually have trouble meeting people, but this was worse because this was SEP! I was so tongue-tied, I don't think I even managed to tell her how much I loved her books. Probably, though, I would have looked even more idiotic if I'd started gushing because I never do that well.

Now I'm thinking, I should reread Nobody's Baby But Mine and then after that I could reread Susan Andersen's Head Over Heels, another favorite book of mine and one that I read over and over on my last real vacation (Jan 2002, right before I sold my first book). Of course, I don't know when I'd squeeze the rereads in, but it's oh, so tempting.

Anyone else have any favorite books that you love so much, you can't understand how come everyone doesn't love them? Seriously, I do know we all don't have the same taste in books, but is there one book where most people agree?

Yesterday I was on a mission. I wanted to be able to share files and printers between my laptop and my desktop and I'd sought out--and found--instructions. I was getting this setup accomplished!

The first hour passed in a blink. I didn't get anything to work yet, but I felt as if I'd made progress even if I was running back and forth between my great room and my office to do things on the two different computers. The frustration level was low at this point and victory seemed close at hand.

Hour two brought my first win--I managed to get the desktop to read files on the laptop! Hurrah! The second hour passed in a blink, too, and I had a ton of stuff to do that didn't involve the computer, but hey, I was halfway there and it would only take a couple more minutes to get the laptop to read the desktop--I was certain of that--and most importantly to be able to print to the laser.

Hour three saw my frustration level growing. I was resorting to online searches to figure out why every time I tried to access the desktop, I received an "access denied" error. My problem was bigger than I thought because there was a time out when the laptop tried to ping the desktop. The router pinged and I could ping the laptop from the desktop. I managed to get this fixed. Now everyone can ping everything else. Surely, I must be thisclose to being able to print from my laptop.

Hour Four. Frustration level is soaring off the charts. Online searches are turning up instructions that say go to programs-->adminstrative tools-->security options and I DON'T HAVE SECURITY OPTIONS AS A CHOICE! I try to find more instructions. Nothing helps. I've since moved the laptop on the desk next to the other computer so I can search on one while I tinker with the desktop, but even this doesn't help.

Time wasted: 4 hours
Other priorities/obligations completed: 0
Final result: Still can't print from laptop and access to the desktop is still denied.

I went to bed.

When I ordered my flower bulbs last week, I signed up for some email newsletters from a couple of nurseries as well. I'm not exactly a master gardener and I figured that I could use some of the information they'd pass along, and hey, finding out about deals beforehand would be cool.

I didn't realize that I'd opened myself up to the flower pushers! Take this morning for example. I have an email offering me two dahlias--huge ones--for free if I bought a dahlia collection. Free flower bulbs. The temptation rose. So what if I don't have room for the flowers I already have on the way? You can never have too much life and color in the yard, right?

The only thing that saved me is that the bulbs have to be lifted for the winter and there's no way I'm doing that.

I can so, though, that if I'm continually tempted this way, it's going to be a problem. I mean sooner or later they're going to try to push bulbs that I can leave in the ground through a Minnesota a winter, and then what? Can I hold out against the lure?

Yes, I have considered unsubscribing from the emails, but I'm not ready to do that just yet. I'm betting that when winter rolls around, I'm going to love reading about flowers and seeing the bright, happy pictures will help relieve the cabin fever. I guess I'll have to see how well I do saying no. :-)

So it was an interesting weekend--I guess. On Saturday I went to my chapter meeting and was asked to run for VP of Communications. To say I was surprised would be understating the matter. After thinking about it overnight, I said no and now I'm feeling hugely guilty.

The thing is I don't know how I could handle it. I know other published authors who work full time have, but I don't think I'd do half as well as they have. For one, I'm a slow writer and it takes me forever to get a book written. For another, I'm disorganized. I didn't used to be that way, once, many moons ago, I was overly organized. I don't know when I lost that and I don't know how to reclaim it. The final factor is that when I become overwhelmed, I get paralyzed. Literally, the only way I can function is to write a To Do List and focus on what I have to do that day.

Heck, when I'm pushing on a deadline, I might go three or four months without even attending a chapter meeting. I don't think board members can do that. And I keep thinking what would I do if some crisis hit in the final month before a deadline? Besides, would it be fair to the other members of the board? They handle other stuff, too, chair committees and what not. I couldn't do any of that, which would put a bigger burden on them.

I still feel guilty and I'm trying to convince myself not to feel that way. :-/

In other news, I saw the tail end of a show on The History Channel that was way cool! Something about the Bermuda Triangle being on the exact opposite side of the globe from the Dragon's Triangle. I missed most of the show and I'm sorry for that, but I didn't think there'd be anything interesting. I mean how many times can anyone hear about the missing training flight from Ft. Lauderdale? Besides, I haven't had a huge interest in the triangle since my days in grade school.

But they had some new stuff they shared and it was the kind of thing that had me thinking: I have got to use this in a book. Somehow. :-)

Maybe the ever-cooperative Ethan can deal with this in his story. (EG)

My hero without a name finally coughed up the information. It took a threat, though, on my part to get the information. I told him if he didn't share what his name was that I was calling him Immanuel, and since his last name is Kent, that would have made him Immanuel Kent, like the philosopher Immanuel Kant. My would-be hero was not amused, but I was. I told him if he didn't provide a name, I'd pick one for him and I liked the humor. It's amazing how quickly he came through then. :-) I even got the last name of his best buddy. Sometimes threats work.

His name is Ethan. The jerk had me looking in the R's when I was searching the baby name books. I can see already how much fun he's going to be to work with. Gah!

I know most people who visit the blog don't comment, but for those that do, you'll notice that I've switched comments to moderated status. Some spammer has apparently figured out a way around the verification system that keeps them from posting crap. I happened to be online the two times the spam comments were made and deleted them quickly, but
that might not always be the case. I thought about turning off anonymous comments to foil them, but I didn't want to force anyone to register with Blogger who didn't want to do that. So best I could come up with was to moderate what gets posted. With a little luck, the Blogger experts will come up with a brilliant idea to solve this and I can turn moderation off again.

I managed to squeeze in reading most of In the Midnight Hour. I always like to read my books when they come out because usually by this point, it's like someone else wrote it. :-) Found a couple of things that made me nuts. Like the missing word. Sigh. I read the galleys twice, my mom read the galleys twice, and a proofreader for the publisher read through them and none of us saw that. I checked my copy to see if it has somehow magically disappeared between galley and book, but no. We just all missed it.

Then there's the thing that's making me nuts every time I think about it. In a scene in chapter 5, I talk about the heroine using "keyless entry" to get in her SUV. In the book, it's "keys entry." WTF? So I looked that up in my copy of the galley, too, thinking there was no way I'd miss that, and I was right, it was keyless entry in there, so who the heck changed it? Now the sentence makes no sense whatsoever. Argh!

Despite having no sleep for 4 nights, I still couldn't fall asleep last night. That's so frustrating! As soon as I tried to go to bed, though, my brain started whirling and for some reason, it suddenly became imperative that I know the first name of this character that's hanging out in my head. I got up three different times to search through the baby name books. I still don't have his given name, but I did finally fall asleep. I think it was self-defense. :-)

I would have liked to lounge in bed longer, but today is my local chapter meeting and I like going to those when I don't have a book due. The speaker today is Echo Bodine who's a psychic, ghostbuster and healer. I took a psychic development class from her a while back and she's a really interesting speaker. Plus, I think this idea that involves the hero with no first name is going to have psychic stuff going on so a refresher wouldn't hurt. I suppose I better round up a pen and a pad of paper before I go.

It's official--I have insomnia. Sigh. Four nights with little sleep. I think it took me this long to figure out because I've had nothing to really worry over for most of the week. Don't know what's up with that. I'm having a second cup of coffee--for the second day in a row--or I won't be able to keep my eyes open.

Yesterday, I ordered my weeder that my mom found in a catalog. I did a search online and found a TV station in Utah had done a test of it and said it performed well, so that gave it the green light for me. :-) The search also turned up a company that was selling it for $6 less than the company that had the catalog my mom saw, so I got it for $8.50. Of course, that's not all I got. They had this duster system for people who have vaulted ceilings and I've been planning to get one of those since I moved into my house. I also picked up a cover for my air conditioner. I figure anything that keeps the snow and debris out has to be a good thing for my purse in the long run.

The other thing I did yesterday was have a strategy session with my parents about how to lay out all the flowers for my garden. I finally added them up, and while I didn't order that many types of flowers--certainly not the amount I wanted to order--I somehow ended up with 104 bulbs. Gah! I ordered the smallest amount available for each type of flower, too.

I've been thinking about adding a flower bed with decorative stone around it to the front yard in a year or two, but I wasn't planning on doing it now. I might stuck, though, whether I like it or not. I don't know what else I'm going to do and I'd like to order more in the spring. :-(

How do I get myself into these situations?

What is going on with MySpace friends? I know they were cleaning out the deleted profiles, but yesterday about half the number I lost started to magically reappear. There hasn't been an announcement about that as yet--at least not that I've seen.

I heard back from my agent yesterday about the synopsis I sent her and had some small changes to make. I wanted them done last night, but I got hung up on one item and didn't quite make it. At 10pm, I finally went to bed. And again, my mind didn't shut down leaving me with yet another night short on sleep.

Oh, I almost forgot! Those of you who are regulars know my coffee table saga. Here's the latest installment. I went back online to the Coffee Tables Galore site to see if they had anything new in, and on the home page I see this totally fabulous round table! I loved it! All excited, I click to check out the details--and discover the table is 39 inches in diameter.

My hopes--my excitement--were dashed. The coffee table of my dreams is too big for the space I have. I measured it out anyway, wanting there to be some way that it would fit. There wasn't.

I checked out the matching end table, hoping that maybe that would work. Unfortunately, it didn't. It was only as wide as the ottoman and that meant if I had my laptop down on it, there'd be no room for my coffee cup. My search will have have to continue.

Since today is the last day to get the early bird discount off the flower bulbs I want, I spent last night online putting in my order. Why not save $35, right? And I was planning to order anyway, the discount just pushed up my time frame a bit.

I ended up buying some really unusual things. The Christo Tulips are major cool and then there are tulips that look like peonies! Although, I suppose I could have just gotten real peonies from my mom since she said she needs to thin out her bushes anyway. Ah, well, deer don't like tulips--let's hope rabbits don't either. I ordered two different daffodils and some giant hyacinth in multiple colors. I got hardy gladiolas and this really unusual looking peach-colored lily. I also got some flowers that will come up early in spring and I'm hoping I hit a wide enough variety to have blooms all season long next year.

There were more flowers I really, really wanted to order, but they were either too expensive or the smallest quantity that could be ordered was too big for my yard. TBH, I really only have my tree ring for flowers and I might have to do some improvising on where to put them. I'd like to get a really huge planter for the front of the house and fill that, but I haven't even looked yet. Oops. Guess that is going to jump higher on the priority list.

I ended up joining some gardening club thing. I'll get issues of some gardening magazine, which I won't have time to read; be able to join an online site for members only with bulletin boards, which I either a) won't have time to read, or b) won't understand what they're talking about. For all my chatter about my flowers, I basically planted them and forgot about them except for one weeding excursion and my never-ending battle with that wascal wabbit. As a member, I also get discounts at all these different flower bulb sellers, which will be cool because I plan to order some more stuff in the spring--as soon as I dig up more of my yard to add more beds.

I'm making fun of myself and the fact that I'm such a novice when it comes to flowers, but I really enjoyed watching my lilies bloom this summer. I liked the tiger lilies I got from my parents, too, but it wasn't the same was watching my flowers come alive--if that makes sense. So I want to fill my tree ring and add some color to the front of my house for next year and just enjoy them all.

I also found some really cool flowers that are supposed to attract hummingbirds. I'm thinking of putting them on my spring 2008 To Be Bought List.

I didn't get a lot accomplished this weekend. My notepad that I planned to use for world building remains blank. I do, however, have three notes jotted on a notepad at work. Two of them were made before the weekend, and one of them I wrote down this morning. I am hugely backlogged--again. :-(

World building can be interesting. (And I'm talking about paranormal/futuristic world building here.) On the one hand, I want to know everything I can about the world I'm creating because it's going to impact the characters and their actions throughout a story. On the other hand, I don't want to read too much about anyone's world no matter how fascinating I find their books. Since I hate a lot of description anyway, I tend to go light on the details when I write my own stories.

My own personal bias is also toward the society rather than the technology, although I suppose the type of gadgets and gizmos in widespread use would influence culture. I think I'm going to be running into this with this next world/idea since I "see" some advanced tech stuff. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

From past experience, the tech stuff that I use tends to come up from necessity as I write and isn't something I always know ahead of time.

My other problem with world building is the authors who feel the need to spend forever setting up their world while nothing really happens. I've judged some of these entries in the unpublished contests and they're misery to read. Get the story started!

If you read my latest book, In the Midnight Hour, I do a lot of world building in the first chapter. And no, I'm not contradicting myself. :-) As the heroine fights an evil wraith (hopefully an exciting suspenseful scene), the reader is also getting the vital information they need to make sense of the world.

Which leads me to another point--starting with action before the reader gets to know and care about the character. I've seen this a lot in unpublished contests as well. The trick is to give the reader a chance to like the characters before putting them in jeopardy. If I don't care about them, all the action/suspense/jeopardy in the world isn't going to make a difference. I can read with indifference because I have nothing invested yet.

Um, I think I had a topic when I started, but I've wandered off and can't seem to find it. Since I've only had about 4 hours of sleep, I'm not too surprised. I think I'm going to stop here before I ramble forever.

Through a Crimson Veil was released in French this week! It's up at Amazon France and I totally love the cover for this book! I can't wait till my copies arrive so I can see it up close and personal. I'll let y'all judge for yourselves: