It was more research yesterday. I found the Actors Equity union website, and as luck would have it, they have their contracts posted in PDF files! Yea! So now I have a general idea what kind of money my heroine would earn as a dancer. That's a huge help because I was absolutely clueless and this will play a role in what kind of home she owns.

I didn't read the entire contract, but it was really interesting to see what kind of things it covered. Costumes, who cleans them, how often they're cleaned, who provides dance shoes, etc. One of the really surprising things for me was how little these performers make. I really thought that if they were good enough to be hired at that level that they'd be earning more. Wow.

But that's really good information to have. Now I know that my heroine isn't going to have a lot of extra money and that this probably isn't a job she's going to stay at forever. Of course, now I need to figure out what position a Polynesian dancer would aspire to hold.

More research to follow. :-)

Wednesday wasn't nearly as exciting as Tuesday. Thank goodness. :-)

I was able to see the A380--the really humongous plane from Airbus--again yesterday. It was parked right next to the hangars not that far from where I park my car. I was able to see it from nose to tail, and with the lighting on it, the plane looked way cool! It left today for Los Angeles and I was able to see it take off again, too. I got lucky both days on seeing it--somehow my timing on that was just perfect.

I had a surprise when I got home. As I went up the street, I hit the button for my garage door and turned in the driveway to see my dad standing there--and the door was going down. I was like, huh?

After a minute, the door opened again. It turns out that my dad and one of his lodge buddies were checking out my garage. You see, the electrician didn't put any switches for my garage lights inside the garage. Yep, I know. I never thought to look for them because who would put the only switches inside the house??? Anyway, my dad's friend can do electrical work and he was checking it out to add switches for me.

The story, however, doesn't end at 3:30 in the afternoon. About 7:15 or so last night, the phone rings. Now my parents have developed this awful habit of calling me constantly for nothing and I figured that's what this was, too. I was close. It was my dad, but it wasn't nothing. His lodge buddy was coming over in about 20 minutes to put a new bulb in my garage door opener. Of course this meant I had to pull the SUV out and give the thumbs up on the new bulb wattage. It turns out that the guy who installed the door put in a candelabra bulb instead of a real one. No wonder my garage was so dark!

My plan was to go to bed really early last night, but they were still out in the garage, actually doing stuff for adding switches. Finally, around 8:30, I was allowed to pull the car back in the garage and my dad said he'd lock up and shut off all the lights if I wanted to go to bed. I did.

So I'm almost asleep and the phone rings. It's my mom. She's looking for my dad because he has a couple of phone calls. Gah! Now she's developed an awful habit of no matter where Dad is or what he's doing, if that phone rings, she'll go and get him. What's up with that? He could be in their backyard, trimming hedges, and she'll leave the person sitting and walk all the way out to bring him in. I don't know how many times I've told her to just take a message instead of bothering him, but she won't. Last night this really bit me. Looks like I'll be having another conversation with them about calling my house whenever they feel like it for no good reason. Sigh.

I guess I should just be relieved that nothing resembling a crisis happened. :-)

Yesterday I finally made some progress on chapter one. This version--maybe--might just be sticking. I've got my fingers crossed tightly.

However, I hit another setback. I don't think the name I'm using for the heroine is the right one. Anyone who's read this blog regularly knows I spent weeks trying to figure out her darn name--and that's not an exaggeration. I've decided to keep moving forward with this name, but the problem is that I keep slipping and thinking of her by another heroine's name. Good grief. Anyway, if she wants to use another name, she better speak up soon or forever be known as Chaya. :-) I'm not wasting any more time on that.

Okay, I have an adventure to share. Last night, I went over to my parents' house for a steak dinner. My mom put the meat on and asked me to watch it while she did something else. When it was time to turn it, the timer dinged and it was clear we'd had it in the broiler too long. I mentally readjusted the time my mom said we'd use for each side, flipped the meat, and set the timer again.

In a moment of true serendipity, I decided to wash my hands and grabbed the kitchen towel that was hanging on a handle above the oven we were broiling in. Instead of putting it back, I draped it over the back of a chair and then sat down to read the paper.

I hear a noise. It sounds like wind racing down a tunnel. I glance over and see flames shooting out of the oven. "Fire!" I yell.

I'm trying to decide what the hell to do. My parents' fire extinguisher is way out of date and probably worthless. And keep in mind that I freeze up in a crisis, so I'm probably the worst possible person to be left with this problem. "Fire!" I yell again more loudly.

Somehow I get the idea to close the oven door. I was working on the theory that fire needs oxygen and there wouldn't be much inside the oven. I open it again to check and see how that worked. The flames had died down, but when I opened the door, they whooshed back up. I shut it again.

Finally, my dad arrives. By then, the fire was mostly out. All I could think was thank God I'd moved that towel. As dangerous a spot as that is, we've always hung the kitchen towel on the handle of the upper oven (it's a double unit). It scares the hell out of me to think of the towel igniting and how fast that blaze could have spread. Talk about needing to say a few thank yous to the universe. Whew!

And to think, my original story was going to be about how I watched the Airbus A380 take off from the airport on Tuesday. I thought that was exciting, guess I learned differently.

My holiday cards arrived yesterday, so it's all okay. They turned out nice, now I just need time to write them up and send them out.

The UPS guy also brought copies of Through a Crimson Veil in French. I think I got 5 copies and they're really banged up. Good thing I ordered from Amazon France when the book first came out. Not only did I get cleaner, nicer looking copies, but I also got them much sooner. Not that I can read French, but one of my writing buddies is a French teacher, so she can read it for me. I still think this is like the coolest thing ever. I should see if my friend will write up a contest thing for French speakers and they can win one. Heaven knows what I'll do with this many copies. Of course, then I'd have to figure out how to read the entries.

In other news, I didn't throw chapter 1 away yesterday and start over--yet. I'm taking this as a good sign. :-) I ended up doing a lot of research today, and darn I wish I could find better pictures of Port Canaveral. Most of what I found involved the big cruise ships and I'm interested in the docks for the charter fishing boats. I finally ended up plugging addresses into Google Maps to try and figure out where the big ships were in comparison to the fishing vessels, but I still need to know where the parking lot is and what kind of view someone sitting in their car would have of the water. This is why futuristics are easier--I could just make up a port and set it up however worked for me. Instead, here I am trying to use a real port.

So Saturday night, I cut the entire first chapter of the proposal in progress. Again. I've lost track now of how many times I've been forced to do this. I know it had to be done otherwise it would take far too long to get the story rolling, but I'm not sure if this new way is working either. I'm on page four and so far the heroine is just sitting in her car. I hope I've added enough tension to make it work, but...

I guess I'll find out when I either a) cut the chapter again and start over or b) send it to my writing buddies and hear them shriek in horror.

Over the long weekend, I also watched a lot of animal shows on a variety of channels. The highlight was March of the Penguins although I managed to miss most of it. The thing is do these shows always have to be so depressing? I've seen dead penguins galore. I've seen other birds attack baby penguins. I've watched baby turtles drown and watched a wolf run down a baby caribou or gazelle or something. It gets even worse when they talk about how man has treated animals. Just once I'd like to see an animal show where they don't show them dying, being hunted by man or other animals, and where I don't have to hear about how their numbers have been decimated.

Don't even get me started about the damn whale hunters.

I know. It's the way things are, but I still want to see the Disney version of nature just for a break from the endless loss of life.

It's been so long since I've done a movie review, y'all probably forgot that it used to be a regular feature here. :-) I'm hoping to get back on track now that baseball season is over. Just a warning, since this movie is from 2005 there might be spoilers. If you don't want to know what happens, stop reading here.

This week's movie is Just Like Heaven starring Reese Witherspoon as Doctor Elizabeth Masterson and Mark Ruffalo as David Abbott.

Elizabeth is a doctor/workaholic who's putting in 24 hour days in the Emergency Room. She really does care about the people she's treating, though. Her older married sister has set her up on a blind date, and because of a patient, Elizabeth is running late. It's okay, though, because the guy she's been set up with hasn't shown either. On the way over to the house, her car is hit by a truck.

David is looking for a furnished apartment in San Francisco, but his real estate agent is taking him to these bizarre places that he can't stand. A piece of paper with the information on a unit that's open to be sublet literally hits him in the face. He loves the view and the furniture and agrees to the month to month arrangement. What he's doing to earn money is anyone's guess since all he seems to do is drink beer and lie around. Then Elizabeth shows up and wants to know what he's doing in her apartment. When he insists he lives there, she goes to call the police--and disappears into thin air.

As it turns out, David is the only one who can see Elizabeth, and since she has no memory, she wants him to help her figure out who she is and what's going on.

The movie is a comedy and a romance. There were actually a fair amount of funny moments, but the romance between Elizabeth and David was rather weak and happened pretty quickly. I totally guessed what the deal was with Elizabeth, but I'm not sure it really mattered since the film isn't trying to be The Sixth Sense, which is a good thing since I guessed all the secrets pretty early.

The casting was believable, but there wasn't much depth to the secondary characters. And I thought the ending was okay, but I would have liked more. There is an alternative ending on the DVD Extras and I loathed it--I'm definitely glad they went with the one they did over that one.

Overall, it wasn't a horrible way to spend a couple of hours.

My rating: 3.25 stars out of 5

While thousands of people across the country shopped the day after Thanksgiving, I took a better approach--I shopped online. :-) I figured out what to get my parents for Christmas--they're notoriously hard to shop for--and picked that out when I got home from their place on Thursday night. It took a little doing, but I found a great digital camera for them at a good price and with free shipping. I absolutely refuse to pay for shipping this year since all the news shows have said so many online stores are waiving it.

As good as I did on Thanksgiving, though, I did even better on Friday--although it was inadvertent. My dad called a little after 10 and said the plumber was coming out around 1pm to look at the guest bathroom toilet. (We were forced to turn the water off because it wouldn't stop running.) Anyway, we'd been waiting a few weeks for this guy and yesterday was the day--whether I liked it or not. Fortunately, though, my dad volunteered to come over and handle this and suggested I could go to their house and write.

First, though, I needed to do some cleaning. I ran through the house dusting and vacuuming everything. The place looks good if I do say so myself. :-)

Thursday when I'd been over at my parents' house, I'd been looking at their TV stand and thinking that wouldn't make a bad coffee table. Okay, so I'm getting desperate! I've been looking and looking and haven't been able to find anything that's a small enough size. The few things I have spotted have all been black or some other dark stain and that's totally not me or my house.

So while I was at my parent's place, I began searching for the TV stand. Best Buy had it and the price was right, but they only had it in black. :-( I started doing some online searches, trying to find the same brand, but in a wood tone--and without paying $60 in shipping on a $90 TV stand. Somehow, I ended up at Target.com. They didn't have the unit I was looking at, but I thought since I was there I'd do a little search for coffee tables. They'd had one I'd almost bought last summer, but it was a really dark stain again and I didn't love it. And Friday, as I'm paging through the hits my search turned up, I spotted it! A coffee table that I liked!

I didn't let my excitement get too high, after all, over and over again I'd seen something I really liked only to find out it was too big for my small space. Except this time, this time it was perfect. Both length and width fit my maximum requirements. Only drawbacks--the table wasn't available in the store and they wanted me to pay for shipping. And like I said earlier, I'm not paying for shipping, not even for furniture. :-)

So began my online quest to find another reputable online outlet that wasn't charging shipping and wasn't jacking up the price of the furniture. And miracle of miracles, I found one! Yes! Their prices were slightly lower than Target and shipping was free. Happy dog dancing. It truly was meant to be. I wasted no time ordering it and two matching side tables. It isn't the coolest coffee table I've seen, but the one that claims that title was almost as wide as my entire living area. :-) This is my favorite table that fits in my small sized living room.

You're dying to see what this table looks like, right? Well, even if you're not, I'm sharing anyway after the year and a half long search, I deserve to show it off a little.

Coffee Table

Side Table

Accent Table
My biggest wish for the coffee table--aside from its size--was that it have a shelf and a drawer(s). Now I'll have room to put my reference books and manuscripts while I work and I'll be able to fold up the step ladder I've been using as a table and put it away. Hurrah!

The only downside? I didn't get any writing done today and my goal was to really pound out some pages.

And the other big news for Friday was that my dad asked the plumber to put up my shower curtain rod in the guest bathroom and he did! I bought the shower curtain before I moved into the house so we're talking about 18 months here and I was beginning to wonder if it would ever go up.

Sexy & Romantic glitter graphics from S e x i l u v . c o m

I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving so far. :-)

Today's the day where bloggers across the internet are talking about what they're thankful for. It's always good to reflect on the positive things in life, but I'm only going to mention one thing here.

It was 5 years ago this month that my first book came out. Ravyn's Flight had a release date of Nov 12, 2002 and it's been a hell of a five years since that point. Since then I've had five books and a novella released and my sixth comes out next summer. I've learned a lot and met some wonderful people. It's been a hell of a ride; thank you for sharing some of it with me. :-)

Happy Thanksgiving

I was minding my own business yesterday, just standing in the restroom at the Evil Day Job and watching them do construction at the back end of the parking lot when boom! It happened. A new character came in and started talking to me. She gave me her name first--it's not her real one, but it's the one she's using now. You see, she's not human and she changes names from time to time. Then she started filling me in on herself and what she does. I made notes this time, not like with In the Midnight Hour where I relied on my memory. :-)

Do I have to mention that I'm suddenly much more interested in this new story than in my Polynesian h/h? I mean, come on, I'm still floundering with that story and have cut chapter one like three times now and started over again. Heck, if the prologue wasn't done and something I'm really happy with, I would have ditched this couple hours ago. What can I say? New ideas are always much more fascinating than the old.

I think I even have the information on this new heroine's hero. Maybe. No names for him yet, but I'm not worried about that since it's the women who I've been struggling with on that front. I'm also not sure how their romance would wrap up given their respective, um, situations. :-) But I want to spend more time with them, not fight with my current heroine. Sigh.

I blame Carolyn Jewel for this. Yes, Carolyn, you! This was the barest glimmer of an idea from months ago and something I hadn't planned to pursue, but clearly reading Carolyn's blog post about channeling characters brought Liza in. (Yes, God help me, she told me her name was Liza. Sigh. I suppose this is better than struggling to come up with a name, but honestly, do I sound like someone who'd write a Liza? Maybe she'll change her mind.... Well, I can hope, darn it!)

So how did Liza communicate with me? First person narrative. That's unusual for me, although not unheard of. At first I thought she wanted me to tell her story in first person, ::shudder:: but I think that was just how she was transmitting information to me because a little bit later I had the opening of the book in third person. Anyway, I started asking her questions and received a few answers--at least until women started entering the bathroom and disturbed my communion with my heroine. :-) That did it for the day, but I hope to reestablish the connection soon--even if it's my Tahitian heroine I need to have talking to me instead.

As God as my witness, I'll never go back to dial up ever again! (To paraphrase Scarlett O'Hara.) OMG, I had to use dial up to test load times on various versions of my banner and it was absolutely excruciating. I love broadband and I can't believe it took me so long to get it. Of course, I still believe they charge way too much, but I think I'd beg on street corners before going backward.

Anyway, the original banner took 1 minute and 30 seconds to load. Absolutely unacceptable. I messed around with gifs and jpgs and compression until I came up with what's currently loaded. I lost quality--boo--but it's loading in about 30 seconds. Still too long, but much better than the original. I'll have to mess around again over the long weekend to see if I can trim the load time some more, but for the work week, I've done as much as I can do.

This, of course, took far too much time and I didn't finish until nearly 7pm. :-(

I volunteered to approve comments on the group blog that I'm a part of and I have to say that I absolutely can't believe the amount of spam that comes through. We've heard about car sales from Socrates and assorted other dead Greek and Roman guys. Fortunately, pretty much all of it ends up in the spam folder, but good grief. Do these people not have better things to do than build spam bots to go around touting used cars? None of it makes it through, so what's the point?

My red amaryllis is growing nicely. It's really actually kind of fun because they're coming up so fast, I can see the difference overnight. When I have flowers, I'll take pictures. Of course. :-)

I redid the banner on my website this weekend. Unfortunately, I think it's loading far too slow for anyone on dial up. I'll have to double check that when I'm at my parents' house, but as I watch the way it loads on broadband, I can only fear the worst. I'll have to mess around with it some more and see if I can't make it smaller so that it doesn't take so long. I was too tired to do it last night.

While I was working on it Saturday night, I watched a really interesting show on the National Geographic Channel about the Galapagos Islands. They showed the different animals that call those islands/rocks home. And it made me feel hugely guilty for cheering for all the el ninos we've had. The poor seals (or were they sea lions?) and lizards who live there lost nearly 50% of their populations. Of course, the show ended with man messing up everything by coming in with their cruise ships and disturbing the creatures who call the area home.

The writing did not go well this weekend. Drat it all. The problems started with how late I slept on Saturday--I didn't get up until nearly 11:30. Not good. I dug out my extra winter blankets, washed them, got the bed all set up and had a bizarre dream on Saturday night. In it, someone was sitting on my lap while we rode in a car and I felt like I couldn't breathe. When I woke up, I realized it was probably the weight of all those blankets that triggered the dream. :-)

But back to writing. I think the problem is that I'm not 100% clear on what I want to accomplish in the scene. Oh, I have a general idea, but I think I need to sit down with my notepad and come up with a list of goals. I know how I want to end the chapter, so that's one plus. And I know some of the information I want to convey, but I'm stumbling around, trying to figure out how to get there. I guess I just need to sit down and write and worry about getting it right later.

Another plus, I might--maybe--have my heroine's name--still. I'm not ready to say it's for sure a done deal yet, not until I've written more in her POV than I have already, but I'm hopeful.

It's that time of year again, and again, nothing like waiting until almost the last minute to think about buying holiday cards, right? Well, it's not quite the last minute, but apparently many other people were leaps ahead of me as you'll find out in my story.

Last year, I started buying holiday cards with my name printed in them. It solved a dilemma I had--do I sign my full name or just Patti when I send cards to NYC? It seems kind of stupid to sign my full name. Why send cards to someone who doesn't know who Patti is? On the other hand, I like to send a card to people at my publisher who I might not have a lot of contact with throughout the year to thank them for their work on my book's behalf. If I knew the envelope was going to make it with the card to the person I was sending it to, they could check my return address label, but I can't be certain of that. So it seemed like a brilliant idea to get the cards preprinted with Patti O'Shea and then just sign Patti. Personal and yet it's clear who the card is from. :-)

Last year, I just went to the place I normally get my card/stationery stuff from and picked out a card and all was well. The problem, though, is that they have an extremely limited amount of cards to choose from and last year's choice was pretty much the only one I liked. There were no new styles added this year.

I did a quick search on the web, turned up sites that were charging $300-$2500 and more for cards--clearly targeted at big corporations--but I didn't take any time to delve further.

Then, last week, when I was over at my parents' house, my mom showed me a catalog she'd gotten from some wildlife charity. Not only were they selling card that could be printed, but the prices were less than $20 and there was a sale that made the cards I liked about $15. As soon as I got home, I went online and found more cards than were in the catalog and I liked a lot of them--which was a good thing because my first three choices were sold out. See why I say I was late ordering cards? My fourth choice, however, was available and I ordered. My confirmation note arrived and all was well.

Until three days later when I received the second email telling me my order was canceled because the cards I'd ordered were no longer available!

Last night, I decided I better get it in gear and find some darn cards since next week is Thanksgiving already. Again, I turned up the really expensive card sites geared toward big business, but I persisted and did find some places with moderately priced cards. There was one site with the best selection and prices that were about $8-10 lower than the other places I found. So after looking through 56 pages worth of cards, I made my choice and ordered.

Oh, if only it was that easy. I put in all my information, go through the process, and press the button to finalize my order. I get an error window--a pop-up--asking me to dial an 800 number because my order didn't go through although my credit card was charged.

Hmm. I immediately became suspicious. (I like to think of it as being internet savvy rather than having an overactive writer's imagination.) But after checking things out, I decided the odds were good it was legitimate. I dragged the phone over to the computer, pulled the caller ID box onto the floor (sigh), and dialed the number. It rang for a long time before it was picked up and I couldn't really understand what the guy said when he answered. He didn't sound like a professional phone order processor. My antenna were waving wildly as I tried to decide if this was some hacker scam. (And I was beginning to wonder if my holiday cards were cursed this year.)

We ran through what I wanted to order, what saying on the inside of the card, and the printing I wanted, then came the moment of truth--passing out my personal information including my credit card number. The guy had sounded nice and he had sounded professional as he took the information--wouldn't a scammer say something like they had what I was ordering from the incomplete web transaction and just go for the credit card info? I decided to risk it.

When I received the email from the guy I'd talked to in order to verify what I wanted, it turned out that I'd been talking to the owner of the company or maybe one of his sons. :-) What he was doing answering phones at 8:30 central time on a Friday night, I don't know, but I'd been right to trust this guy. (And it was a huge relief because I was sitting there, wondering if I'd been stupid when the email arrived.)

With a little luck, my holiday card curse has been broken and I won't be charged three times (I hit finalize order twice, plus my phone order) for a box of 25 cards. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Last night I downloaded another program that's supposed to help keeping notes--including snips from websites. I say another program because I have like three--or is it four--that I've tried and don't use. All of these previous programs had been recommended by other writers so I figured they'd work for me, too. They didn't.

This one is free as well, although only because it was the giveaway of the day on Thursday. Normally it's a fifty dollar thing and I wouldn't spend that much to make notes. :-) I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I've got my fingers crossed that this one really will be the solution for me. Right now, I just save stuff to files for each book and sometimes it's hard to find what I'm looking for--especially since I have the picture/web page file and then the file for emails. It just seems as if there should be an easier way. The demo looked cool, so hopefully this is it. We'll see.

I reread a proposal last night that was sent to one of my editors yesterday and discovered a missing word. I didn't see it the other ten times I read it, but after it was off, then it leaps right out at me. Sigh. I guess that's just the way things go, huh?

In other news, one of the radio stations here has begun its all Christmas music 24 hours a day programming. Yea! I love Christmas music. Sometimes I listen to it on my MP3 player even when it's mid-summer. :-) What can I say? Besides there's nothing like Dean Martin crooning Baby It's Cold Outside to make a day divine.

I'm completely moved into my new cube at work! Yea! It's already so much nicer than where I was sitting before, it's like a paradise. Well, okay, as close to paradise as I can get at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). The only drawback is it's going to be sneaking on the internet. :-( I have a little less privacy where I'm at now.

My issues with my heroine continue. It's so weird because she is talking to me. I know what kind of vehicle she drives, I know where she works, I know her family situation, I've even found a picture of what she looks like. In fact, she's been more forthcoming about details than a lot of my characters have been. Except for one critical piece of information--her name. Yep, the saga goes on. And on and on. Sigh.

I guess the argument could be made that with everything I know about her and with the fact that I have a picture, that I should know enough to start writing scenes from her point of view. After all, what's in a name? For me, I guess, quite a lot. It provides nuances into the character, just like the picture does and I think those shades are important.

I've had a few people emailing me name suggestions and I've liked a few of them so I'm going to try them out in my head and see how it goes. At this point, I'm getting pretty desperate. The prologue is written, I've tinkered with it, now it is time to move forward.

I'm beginning to feel like an echo, constantly talking about this, but this is my writing news right now. I've never, ever been in this situation before. I've always had characters volunteering their names. I've toyed with the idea that maybe it isn't time to write this book, but I think it is--both characters are talking, both of them are showing me future scenes and that doesn't happen if it's not the right time.

And the beat goes on.....

Yesterday at the Evil Day Job (EDJ), my phone was moved to a new cube. Yes, it's real. I'm really getting a cube as far away from the coworker from hell as I can get and still be in my department! Yea! It's not foolproof because he's so loud and because he comes over to this area I'm in to chit chat, but it's better than being at ground zero. I'm hugely happy!

Of course, while my phone has been moved, my computer hasn't, and since most of my job is on the computer, I'll still have to spend time at my old cube until that comes over, too. So while I'm not completely free yet, I'm almost delirious with joy and two big pluses--I'm much closer to the printer and to the restrooms. :-)

In other news, for a little while last night I thought I had my heroine's name. I even emailed it to a writing buddy, all excited about it. Then as I laid in bed and tried to daydream the scene in her point of view, I realized it wasn't her name after all. Talk about agony. To go from elation to resignation in one fell swoop was not fun. Ah, well, the search goes on.

So I tried to write yesterday using the name Isabel. Yes, the spelling changed from Monday's blog, but Isabelle didn't look right when I typed it in the story and I believe in going with instinct. Besides, I figured maybe that meant she was finally communicating with me.

I'm not sure if my problem came from lack of sleep or the fact that I'm still not 100% certain of the heroine's name, but I only got a couple of paragraphs written yesterday. Very disappointing, but Mondays have never been my best writing day of the week. I'll hope that's it and not the name thing because I'll confess I am heartily sick of the situation. I'd like to just tell her this is your name for the book, deal with it. The problem is that she'll make me pay later as I'm writing. It's okay, I'll get my revenge at some point, but in the meantime it just makes things more difficult for me, so I let her have her way.

Ah, the joys of writing.

The gardens are now all winter-ready and my outside chores should be about finished. Yea! Of course, it took hours more work on Sunday to reach this point, but it was a nice day--I was able to be outside without my jacket on--and that made it almost pleasurable to be out there. If I was sitting on the deck with a book, then it would have been completely pleasurable, but to work? Nah.

I spent untold hours over the weekend searching for 1) my heroine's name and 2) a picture of the hero. I have a picture of him that might kind of work, but I don't love it. I can't even begin to tell you how hard it is to find a picture of a man who's half Maori. And nearly all the Maori pictures I've found have had the men's faces painted/tattooed, which is a problem because my hero doesn't have any tattoos on his face. Elsewhere--yes. Face--no. Why aren't there more pictures of sexy half Polynesian men with ripped abs turning up in my searches?

The name thing continues to drag on. I've checked out every link and every suggestion people have sent me (and I've had a lot), but none of them are producing results. I think my heroine is deliberately holding back because she has issues about love. I've probably seen her name a dozen times, but she won't claim it. I think--and I could be wrong--that her name is something soft like Jessamine or Isabelle. Actually, it might be Isabelle. At least that's what I'm using when I write today. If she doesn't like it, she can lodge a protest. More to follow as I know it. :-)

I'd planned to answer comments this morning since I was so tired yesterday that I didn't reply to anyone, but I'm going to have to get moving soon to go to my local writers chapter meeting and I don't know if I'll have enough time.

I've been really, really tired this week. Every day, I've woken up at 3am. :-( That's about an hour before my alarm goes off, and I'd just fall back asleep and then have to get up again. It happened last night, too. Right now I'm groggy and tired, it's raining, and it would a good day to crawl back in bed for a couple of hours. So anyway, I'm feeling a little irritable this morning--not crabby, but things are rubbing me wrong.

One good thing, though. If it stays cold and rainy, I won't be going outside this afternoon to finish yard work. Yea! Of course, then I'd have to go out tomorrow. Not yea. Especially since I won't get much writing done if that happens. Not that I'm getting far with this damn heroine anyway, although she did tell me why she's not sharing her name which is some good personality stuff to work with in the story. If I can ever get her name so that I can write it. :-)

I have to run--like 5 minutes ago.

So far I've gone through three baby name books and checked out a huge list of French names on two different websites. My heroine repeatedly shoots down everything. I ask, "What about Gabriella?" She says with warning in her voice, "Gabby." I suggest, "Abrielle?" She intones, "Abby." It doesn't take any interpretation to know what her tone means--I name her something like this and I can forget getting any cooperation. Since I write by listening to the characters, she gets her way.

I'm dead tired of digging through all this stuff, but I'll trudge onward. I have a couple more books to stick in my bag and look at during lunch at work today. I also have a bunch more French name sites to wade through.

In other news, my holiday Amaryllis arrived yesterday. It's planted, but nothing is growing yet. The instructions said to place it in a utility tub with 1-3" of water and let the water be drawn upward. Last night, after 4 hours in the water, the top of the soil still wasn't damp, so I ran water on it. That might have been a mistake since it dislodged soil.

I'm going to do a quick post today. I can tell you that I continued to fight with my heroine over her name and there's still nothing I can use. On the other hand, I'm getting a sense that her name is something softer sounding and unusual. Now if I could just find the one.

Since I have nothing else of interest to add, here's the preliminary version of the cover for In Twilight's Shadow. It made it's world premiere earlier this week in my newsletter. I also posted an excerpt from the book there that won't be posted anywhere else. :-) If you'd like to get in on all the excitement, you can sign up on the Up Next page of my website. The newsletter comes out around once every three months or so.

The "her" referenced in the title of this blog would be my Polynesian heroine--the one who still doesn't have a name despite my spending hours (and I do mean HOURS) combing through baby name books and baby name sites. I even searched until I found a list of Miss Tahitis going back like 30 years thinking one of their names would be it. There were Miss Tahiti websites, too, that covered the last four years and I checked the names of all the contestants, but none of them made my heroine say, "that's my name."

What's really frustrating is that I'm not a writer who can use a placeholder name. The last name isn't really important, but I have to have the first name. Why can't she do what Cai and Mika did and just tell me her name? I'd even be thrilled if she gave the first letter of her name like Ryne did. But no. I get nothing.

Maybe if I could come up with something close, but while she likes Isadore, that's not her name. Neither, apparently, is any other I name.

I wanted to stay away from R, M and S names, but I gave up on that some time yesterday. I told her she could pick any name she wanted as long as it didn't start with a T. It's just too cutesy for words to have a heroine and a hero whose names both start with the same letter and he's dead set on Tane. I tried to talk him out of that a couple of weeks ago and that wasn't negotiable.

One of the websites I found said that old fashioned French names are popular in Tahiti, so I looked at French names. A gazillion French names and none of them produced a bingo moment. I'm pondering whether or not I want to comb through the entire girl's name sections in any of the baby name books I have. It doesn't sound particularly appealing, but I'm not sure what else to do at this point. If she could at least narrow it down to a few letters....

I'm counting Monday as a success. I finished the prologue--the first draft of it anyway--to my Polynesian story and I did a newsletter. I'm trying to do one every quarter, but it's tough sometimes. I scheduled it to go out this morning.

I still don't have a name for my Polynesian heroine, and it's now become critical that I come up with one because chapter one is in her POV. The Tahitian names aren't working for her, but I found a website that said French names are very popular there. Now I have to investigate that and see if something doesn't appeal to her there. Honestly, it's so much easier when they just tell me their names and save me from having to go through all this!

Did I mention that I spent some time this weekend watching my research DVDs for this story? I still have three more to watch and I'd like to do that this week.

I think that's all I have. Mostly a boring day yesterday, but it was fairly productive for a change and maybe I remembered how to write after all.

In Twilight's Shadow is up for pre-order now on all the Amazons! Here's the link to the book on Amazon.com, but if you need Canada, UK, Germany or France, check out my website. I linked to each of them there. I'm actually stunned to see it up this early. Usually Amazon goes about 6 months out and it's still 7, but it was cool to see it. Yes, it really is a book after everything I went through to get it done.

I was actually able to get some writing done yesterday. Yea! Unfortunately, it's a little bit rougher than I'd like, but then I have been on a bit of a break and synopsis writing takes a different part of the brain than story writing. It'll pass, but it's going to make me unhappy in the meantime.

Sunday was the day for looking at hot men on television. First there was the second mummy movie with Oded and Brendan Frasier, then USA segued directly into the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie with Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. I heard that Pirates 3 will be on DVD Dec 4 and I can't wait for that. The second was a disappointment, IMO, but I've heard the third was pretty good. Actually, it doesn't matter if it's good or not. Johnny Depp is hot. :-)

Oh, I can't believe I almost forgot. I think I have a last name for Hope. Finally. Maybe. I'll have to wait and see if it sticks. Now if my Polynesian heroine would just give up her name, I'd be delirious. Kind of.

I'm not sure how Saturday ended up straying so far from my intentions. It started out okay. I had an appointment to get my haircut at 11:30, but I wrote a little on my Polynesian story before I left and I watched one of the DVDs I'd bought for research. The appointment went quickly and I arrived home ready to start laundry and write. Only I ran into my dad. I suggested we pull the flower boxes off the deck and porch--a quick job. That's not quite how it worked, though.

While I was outside, I decided to walk down to the new garden and take a look at it. You won't believe what I saw. Deer tracks. And they went deep--right over my bulbs. Argh!

I showed them to my dad who decided we should hurry up and put the chicken wire up around it. Which meant that we had to mulch it first. We didn't cover the whole thing, just where there were plants, but it took up 6 bags of the cedar mulch. Then we put down the weed killer, I watered it, and my dad went to his house to cut stakes to hold the fencing. We were out there until 5pm.

No further writing was done.

Writers must have really overactive imaginations. Well, I guess that's kind of a given, but it pops up in weird ways sometimes. Like earlier this week--I think it was Thursday morning--I was walking into the garage when I hear a helicopter overhead. Now keep in mind this is 5:30 in the morning; it's not exactly as if the traffic needs monitoring yet. My first thought was that it had to be the police chasing a fleeing felon.

My garage door is up, I'm away from the button to bring it back down, and trapped in the open. I expected a criminal to duck into my garage, gun drawn, at any moment. I rushed to my SUV, checked the back seat to make sure said felon hadn't already broken into my garage and was hiding there, then jumped into the car, and locked all the doors. I didn't waste any time getting my seat belt on and the car in gear. I wanted out of there and my door down again pronto.

Do you think normal people would react like this? I'm guessing probably not, or at least not with the level of detail my brain supplied to the scenario.

Sometimes I wonder if this is why I'm such a worrier. I can imagine dozens of scenarios--not all of them particularly likely to happen--and get myself going. I even do it with silly things like email. If I send an email to someone and I don't hear back, I immediately imagine that they didn't get it, then I start running through their reactions to my not sending a note, and I end up having to send another note to ask if they received the first one. No wonder I get tired!

Another oops. I completely forgot I was supposed to blog over at 2 B Read today until yesterday afternoon. I was thinking about Tane--he's just hours away from being executed and I wanted to write more--when I suddenly remembered that I was on the calendar. I blogged about my garden, of course. What else? Here's one of the pictures I included, but didn't post here yet.

Each one of these sticks represents a bulb, and next summer I should have a lot of beautiful color to look at while I write. There's even some open space so I can plant more flowers after the trauma of this planting wanes. :-)

Anyway, I didn't finish writing that until after 7pm, and since I was up at 2:30 on Thursday morning, it was too late to start writing. I'm still looking for a picture of Tane, BTW. Her, too, for that matter, but then we're still working on just figuring out a name.

I have other things on the agenda like updating my website--which I haven't done since the end of September--and sitting down with a notepad and hammering out that one book in the other proposal. I'm not even on deadline and I feel like I'm falling behind again.

I hope everyone had a good Halloween. I forgot what day it was until I got to the EDJ yesterday and saw everyone wearing orange. Oops! If I had remembered, I would have wished everyone a great holiday.

I wish I had something interesting to talk about. I worked some on one of my proposals yesterday. It's nearly ready to send to my agent for some feedback except for one small thing. I still need to hammer out a better plot idea for one of the stories; that's the main hold up right now.

My Polynesian heroine still needs a name. I thought I had it, but it's just never settled on her right. In fact, she's stopped talking to me since I started using it. I'm guessing that means it's wrong. Darn it, I hate it when they don't tell me their names. And I know, that's a complete 180 from how I was lamenting the fact that I never get to pick my characters' names. After being forced to come up with Logan's last name on my own, I changed my mind--fast. Now I've got two separate proposal packages where characters are refusing to divulge their names. And it's all the women! I'm taking this to mean I have a better rapport with these heroes. :-) After all, I have first and last names for all of them.

So let's see where I stand. No name for my Polynesian heroine. No last name for Hope. She's the heroine in one of the books in the proposal I'm close to finishing up. Also no name at all for Rafferty's heroine, also part of that proposal. That would be three out of three. :-) I guess I should console myself with the fact that Shona gave me her name months ago.

Ooh! Do you think they'll start sharing when Mercury leaves retrograde? I didn't think of that, but maybe that is the problem since the planet does affect communications.

I know y'all are probably sick of reading about my naming problems. Hell, I'm sick of having naming problems. Once everyone has a name, I'll stop blogging about this, I promise.