My new amaryllis is beginning to have the flower pod open and just in the nick of time. The weather here has been horrible (try -36 with the wind chill when I woke up yesterday) and any sign of spring is welcome right now. Okay, flowers blooming indoors isn't really a sign of spring, but hey, I'll take what I can find. And of course, like always, there'll be pictures when the amaryllis blooms. This one is a cream/red mixture.

I keep getting emails from the nurseries I've ordered from--and a few others that I signed up for--and I'm so tempted to get some of those huge begonias. They'd have to be indoor plants because, like the amaryllis, they're sissy flowers, but they're big and gorgeous and I'm thinking, wow, wouldn't that add some nice color in the winter. I'm getting just the slightest bit desperate for warm weather. :-)

Of course, it helps that the gnats that came with the second amaryllis appear to be gone now. If I still was fighting those damn things, I wouldn't be quite so tempted by new plants. I hate bugs and don't want any in my house, even if they're only little nuisances.

Good news. We're safe from the asteroid. I know y'all were worried about that, right? ;-) Actually, the first I heard of it was yesterday, but I guess there isn't much point in broadcasting this near miss since there'd be nothing we could do to save ourselves anyway if it was going to hit Earth.

But don't put away your hard hat yet, the article in USA Today continues on, focusing in on the spy satellite that's going to hit our planet. Somewhere. No one knows where, but rest assured, the government is monitoring the situation. This would be the same government, BTW, which launched the satellite (it lost power) and can pinpoint when it will come down to February or March. :-) Yep, heavy sarcasm, but then this thing "could contain hazardous materials." (per USA Today).

On a slightly more upbeat note, there was an interesting show on PBS about The Parthenon. From what I saw, it seems like the ancient Greeks had some pretty advanced building techniques. The most incredible thing was they had it up in less than 9 years. There's a restoration underway right now and they've been at it for quite some time and still have a long way to go.

I was tagged to post 16 "bizarre, random facts, habits" or whatever. I'm also supposed to tag 12 other people to do the same, but I don't tag, so if you feel like doing this, post and let me know. :-)

1. I used to dream about sharks every night when I was in grade school and junior high. I ended the dreams by going to the library and reading every book they had on sharks. On a tour of Sea World, I knew more about them than the guide did.
   
   
2. I thought about becoming a marine biologist because I became fascinated by my research into sharks. I'd like to write a book about a heroine who studies them. Someday. :-)
   
   
3. I have a very eclectic taste in music, but I can't tolerate polka, rap, or regurgitated disco.
   
   
4. The best place in the world that I've ever visited is Australia.
   
   
5. When I finished college, I had 240 credits. I only needed 180 to graduate and I had no second major or minor. I did, however, take classes in everything from theater to far Eastern art to astronomy to oceanography.
   
   
6. Bananas totally gross me out and I can't stand the smell of them.
   
   
7. I'm addicted to the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle.
   
   
8. The totally best nature moment I've ever had was when a hummingbird hovered no more than two feet away from me while I was watering my flowers. It was the first time I'd ever seen one in person.
   
   
9. The biggest class I had at the U of MN Minneapolis was 1500 students (Intro to Psychology). That was as big as my entire high school and nearly as big as the U of MN Morris where I spent my freshman year.
   
   
10. My decorating style is modern/contemporary/Asian. I took a test on HGTV that said so, but I knew anyway.
    
    
11. I love bright colors and don't understand why people are afraid of them. My house would need to have almost every room repainted if I ever wanted to sell it.
    
    
12. I adore Shakespeare and my favorite play is "Much Ado About Nothing."
    
    
13. I own over 300 pairs of shoes--I stopped counting--but I usually wear the same two or three pairs over and over.
    
    
14. I love Monty Python and can watch "Holy Grail" over and over without getting tired of it. "Bring me a shrubbery! Nee!"
    
    
15. Baseball. If they played it 365 days a year, I'd be ecstatic. If I get digital cable, it will be solely to get the MLB network so I can watch extra games. Go Cubs!
    
    
16. I own over 5000 fictional books (we're not counting research books or my New Age books) and I've read more than 4000 of them. I used to be able to read a book a day and I'd go on vacations where I'd read three, four, even five books in a day.

There! Made it! I didn't think I was going to manage to come up with 16 facts. I don't know how bizarre any of them are, but they most certainly are random.

Have y'all seen that commercial from Monster.com? The one where people grab satellite dishes, coffee table tops, mattresses and whatever else they can get their hands on and race to the top of a hill. They hold up their items like shields, trying to fight it off, but the sun rises anyway. The tagline? Stop Fighting Mondays.

I love that ad--and I feel that way right now. I wish I could grab up something and fight off Monday. It's another five days at the Evil Day Job (EDJ) and this week also has a dentist appointment. Talk about way down on the fun-o-meter.

No movie reviews this weekend. My disk from Netflix arrived with a big ol' crack in it, and so I was forced to rewatch Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. The original is the best and most fun. :-)

I just missed seeing a show on the National Geographic Channel last night about Special Ops soldiers. I caught like the last 5 minutes. I can't believe I was watching HGTV and coverage of some multi-state garage sale when I could have seen a show about Spec Ops. Sigh. I hope they repeat it.

Yesterday was actually a pretty entertaining day at the Evil Day Job (EDJ) and a pretty good one overall. One of my engineers managed to pick up a new nickname--Nostradamus--because he was talking about how the NWA/Delta merger has been in the works for a while because of studying our redesigned logo. It was a planner who tagged him with the name, but I think it might stick. At least I'm going to do what I can to make sure it does. :-)

Then came the highlight of our day--and yes, it takes little to make the highlight reel at the EDJ, but this is funny anyway. A maintenance specialist at Continental sent one of my guys a link to a video. It's about two minutes long and the five of us were laughing out loud as we watched. It's called The Front Fell Off and it's definitely worth watching.




I hope you find it as funny as we did.

I love collecting quotes like the ones I posted yesterday. It doesn't matter if it's from a philosopher or a bumper sticker slogan, if something about it catches my attention, I save it. Of course, a lot of my quotes have been emailed to myself and are buried deep within the thousands of notes on my laptop, but they're there. :-)

I collect trivial information the same way, but I think a lot of writers do this. I'll hear something or read something and think, wow, I have to remember that. The most bizarre topics can grab my interest--like the time I was flipping through channels and ended up watching an entire hour about container ships. I mean, how many people are going to find themselves riveted by this?

One of the guys at work called me Cliff Clavin after the Cheers character because, he said, I know everything. That was a nice ego boo, but far from true. The thing is that I know a little bit about a lot of things, but I know a lot about nothing. Chalk that up to eclectic interests, the U of MN's School of Journalism which wanted me to have credits all over the school for that major, and being a writer who researches incredibly small details. I've got all kinds of minute facts swimming around in my head. Just don't ask me what I did last week. ;-)

And one last totally off-topic thing. I stumbled across a fabulous review yesterday for Eternal Nights. The reviewer said, among other things that "Eternal Nights by Patti O’Shea is one of the best romance novels I’ve read in a very long time" and a bunch of other nice stuff. You can check out the entire review at Nights and Weekends.

I'm feeling lazy today and don't have anything I particularly want to talk about, so I'm just going to share some quotes I like.

"If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less." General Eric Shinseki

"Typists Type. Writers stare out the window." Unknown

"A man may make many mistakes, but is not a failure until he starts blaming someone else for them." Don Shula

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

"The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for us to grow sharper." Eden Philpotts

"The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer." Air Force Motto

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" Robert Schuller

"Fall down seven times, get up eight." Japanese Proverb

"Everything you can imagine is real." Pablo Picasso

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." Ferris Bueller

"The bridges you cross before you come to them are over rivers that aren't there." Gene Brown

"The world is its own magic." Shunryu Suzuki

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." Walt Disney

"Reality continues to ruin my life." Calvin and Hobbes

Last winter and spring I was writing a book set in August. Right now I'm writing a book set in July. It's really hard to get in a summer frame of mind, to even imagine shorts and sandals when it's icy cold. Saturday morning in Minneapolis, it was -31. I spent a lot of time when I wrote In Twilight's Shadow relying on my memory of what warm felt like. :-)

One of the things I started to do when I wrote In the Midnight Hour was to print out calendar pages and write down what chapter/scene occurs on which day. This ended up being a brilliant idea and I've continued doing it for all my books since then. Now, without needed to reread chapters and make notes, I know exactly how much time has passed in the story and between events. If something traumatic happens to my heroine in chapter 2, I'll know that it's only three days later when I'm in, say, chapter ten. I might have written it months earlier, but it's still fresh for her and that's something I need to keep in mind.

So on my island counter top, I have the calendar pages for July and August out. The story starts the weekend after Independence Day, so I don't think I'll make it into August--my stories tend to play out in short time periods--but just in case. :-)

Characters can be really interesting to work with. I mean that both for real and sarcastically. :-) My current problem (and I'm not sure that's quite the right word) is that Logan isn't letting me see below the surface. Oh, he had me fooled for a while, thinking that's all there was, but I figured out that there's more than the easygoing guy he's let me see so far.

It's how I figured it out that makes me want to add the sarcasm to "interesting." You see, I'm getting loads of information about Logan's brother. Too much. I'm not writing Kel's story and I don't need to know most of this stuff to write Logan's story.

Being the curious person I am, I started to ask Logan questions. He sidestepped me. I talked to Kel about Logan. He only gave me some basic info before sidestepping me. I asked assorted other people in Logan's life about him and they all gave general details before sidestepping the questions.

When I see this kind of systematic avoidance, it definitely makes me go hmmm. I have no doubt that he is generally easygoing and that his family is important to him. It's what's beneath that surface that's beginning to intrigue me--and frustrate me since I can't get answers yet.

One of the little facts that I found interesting is that Logan has more sexual experience than Kel, his twin. If I'd had to guess, I'd have picked the opposite. Kel's also gruffer and has a more prickly exterior, but that's because he's so empathetic and feels things so deeply, that he needs that extra protection. Which brings me back to Logan and has me going hmmm again.

I think I'm going to need to sit down, bring out the bright lights, and grill Logan to get some answers. The last thing I want is a mid-book surprise. Been there, done that.

Um, sorry Packer and Charger fans. Yes, it's true. I was rooting for your teams. This football playoff season I've only had 1 team I've wanted to win actually do so. That was back that first week with all the wild card teams playing. I guess this means New England is destined to win the Super Bowl because I can't stand that team or their quarterback. If anyone's doing a pool, you know who to bet on. :-) It's really tough being a jinx--takes all the fun out of watching the games.

It is monumentally cold here still. I think the lowest we went was -31 with the wind chill when I first woke up on Saturday morning, but even now, my toes are cold and I am so not looking forward to going outside. I think they should dome the entire metro area and heat it. :-) It's a long walk from where the peons park at NWA to the door.

Flower report: Looks like I'll have to throw out both poinsettias at some point. The red one has been shedding since before Christmas and it looks like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. Now the white one it starting to lose leaves, too.

Last night I watched Dead Like Me. It's a television series that was on Showtime, I think. This is one of the frustrating things about having the NetFlix one at a time plan--I wanted to see more episodes, but I didn't have disks three and four for Season One. There are some episodes up on the website that I can watch, but I'd rather watch on my television than my computer.

Anyway, Dead Like Me is about an 18-year-old girl, George (short for Georgia), who gets killed and discovers that she's a Reaper. That means that she takes the souls of people who die out of their bodies. The leader of this group of Reapers passes out the assignments on yellow Post-It notes. She doesn't like her job and doesn't want it. She questions everything and disobeys rules all the time. The Reapers are dead, but not dead and so they need places to live and money to live on. The job comes without a salary.

Disk 1 was the pilot episode and that was it. It was okay, but not hugely interesting to me. I was going to stop watching there, but the premise of the series was so intriguing, I decided to try Disk 2. I enjoyed the next five episodes much more. George is struggling with her job. She doesn't want people to die and constantly searches for ways around it. Only that never works and the repercussions are usually high.

IMO the fact that George is 18 when she dies makes the questioning and her trying to keep everyone alive believable. She doesn't understand yet that death is a natural part of life and that it's not necessarily fair.

The other part of the series I'm finding interesting is her family. The series jumps to her sister and mother regularly (the father just largely seems absent, both physically and emotionally) and shows how they're reacting. The mother is a piece of work, but after six episodes, I'm starting to understand why she is how she is. The little sister is the one really having difficulty with George's death and it feels as if she has no one she can turn to because the mother is so shut off.

Anyway, I enjoyed the five episodes I watched last night enough to get the next disk. The only downside is one of the Reapers in the last episode was replaced and I really dislike the new one. She's just walking all over George. I'm hoping this woman is only temporary or that George will kick her out of her apartment and we'll get less of the blond chick. If not, I might be stopping with disk 3.

Yesterday I was looking at the new Macbook Air, it's Apple's super thin laptop computer and it had me drooling. At least until I saw the price and read some information on a forum of Mac people. The battery isn't removable. So I crossed this off the list, but it's got me thinking about going to a Macintosh computer. Maybe a Macbook Pro--although the desktop computer needs replacing more urgently than the laptop. (But wow, if all laptops go as thin as the Mac Air, that would be just too cool!)

So I guess I'll waffle a little longer. It's not like I need to make an immediate decision anyhow. And I still like that little EEE laptop with it's inexpensive price tag as a backup laptop. Oh, and the tablet PCs I've been looking at over on the Fujitsu and HP sites. Yeah, I'm definitely having trouble making any kind of decision and usually I'm good at that.

You might have guessed this, but I like gadgets. OMG, if I had enough money to buy whatever I wanted, I'd be gadgeted up like crazy! I wonder if I've worked with my engineers too long???

I've also managed to cross a fair number of items off my To Do List, although it remains impressively long.

My RITA books arrived. Eight of them! I think the contest needs more judges or something because that's a lot of reading when I have writing to do. I think I have about 6 weeks to read, which should be enough time, but I'll have to double check my instruction sheet to be certain.

It's supposed to be hugely cold here this weekend, which would actually be a perfect time to curl up in bed with a book, but it's also a prime writing time for me. So guess what I'll be doing? Yep, writing. I signed up for my chapter's Book In A Week--we do it every month--and I'm behind on my goal. I'm going to need Saturday desperately.

The newspaper here had an article on hard-to-kill houseplants and it's got me thinking I should get a few more plants. And then I remind myself that I didn't want a jungle inside my house. I have two poinsettias, two amaryllis and 1 lucky bamboo plant. It's already starting to get jungle-like, although the red poinsettia has been dying almost since the day I brought it home.

If y'all have been hearing the merger talks between NWA and Delta, you know things are not calm and peaceful at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). The last thing I want is to relocate to Atlanta. For one, I just moved into my house about 18 months ago and for another, Atlanta is having a horrible water shortage. Why would you want to move more people into that city? Anyway, I keep reminding myself that there's no point worrying about it until I have to, but there are days that's tough.

And some person who's name was "unknown" on caller ID woke me up at 1:30 this morning when he tried to logon to the Internet using my phone number. Argh!

The WIP (Work in Progress) is the third in the Light Warriors series and that means continuity is on my mind. In fact, it's a major issue at the start of the book. The first instance where this comes up is that the creature Logan's fighting is mentioned in Twilight's Shadow. It was a one line throwaway on who/what it is, so I'm clear there and can do pretty much whatever I need to do.

However, the second flare up isn't that simple. There is the council chambers and anteroom. They were not only mentioned in Twilight's Shadow, they were described in some detail. Normally, I like to find a picture of a room and use it as guide. That way I don't get details wrong and it doesn't require that I reread previous books. This time, though, I had a clear image of what these rooms looked like and I didn't bother searching for any visual representation. I'm paying the price now. I think I've had my finished book file open as many times as the WIP files and I'm still not finished with the scene.

I think I've mentioned how tough it's been for me to write this past week. I attributed it all to getting back into the swing of being on deadline again after not having that time pressure for a while. On Monday, though, something happened to make me doubt that.

I didn't have much sleep Sunday night and I was doing the head bobs at work. I was struggling to write on lunch and finally reached where the actual fight begins. It didn't take more than an instant to decide I was in no frame of mind to actually write it, so I typed something along the lines of "Insert fight scene here" and continued on. And a funny thing happened--the writing began to flow again.

Then I remembered that it had been flowing last week while I was writing about Logan and his family, it was only when I got into the part where I was setting up the action that my pace bogged down.

Hmm. That deserved some consideration. What was it about the fight scene that was slowing me down? I know I need it up front because it sets up one of Logan's issues for the book. Same thing with the scene between him and his family--it sets up how important they are to him particularly his brother, Kel.

After thinking about it for some time, I began to wonder if it's because I need some different way for Logan to fight the dark-force creature. Now I have to do some more thinking.

I think I owe a formal apology to football fans across the country. I'm sorry I rooted for your team. Yep, it's true--every team I wanted to win over the weekend lost. I'm normally not a fan of Indianapolis, but I dislike San Diego even more and I figured the defending Super Bowl champs would win. They didn't.

Then there was the Dallas/NY Giants match up. Every one of the football experts on the FOX pregame show picked Dallas. I figured I'd be one for four. Nope. The Giants won. If anyone wants to make some money in Vegas next weekend, I'll be rooting for San Diego and Green Bay. (With apologies in advance to fans of those two teams.)

I was writing while the games were on--it's still like pulling teeth, but I'm hoping the more I get my butt in the chair, the easier it will come. To that end, I signed up for my chapter's Book In a Week. Publicly admitting my progress or lack thereof will hopefully keep me in my seat and keep me going.

The chapter meeting on Saturday was full, loaded with people and that was good to see! 2008 is a one year in numerology (2+0+0+8 =10 1+0=1) and that signifies new beginnings. That sounds positive, yes?

I heard some people already have their books to judge for the RITA Awards. I'm not one of them, but then I always seem to get my books later than most others. It's frustrating, though, because the more time I have to read, the easier it'll be to get them all in before the deadline. Sometimes judges really get slammed with a huge amount of entries. IIRC, I had eight last year. That's a lot of reading in a short time.

I was talking to a guy at work Friday about Linux and Ubuntu because I heard about this really small, light laptop that's incredibly cheap. The EEE from ASUS (you can read more about it here if you're interested), but it runs Linux and I've never used that before. So this guy at work is geekier with computers than I am and not only is he running it, he says his laptop boots up incredibly fast. Unlike with Windows where I can basically make coffee and still sit and wait. That speed makes it incredibly tempting. And this wouldn't be a substitute for the current laptop, but a traveling version. But since I still haven't made a decision on a new desktop computer after 2 years of consideration, I don't guess I'll be moving too fast on this.

Today is my local chapter meeting and I'm hoping to attend, but before I go, I found a fun web page. If you've owned a dog, you might find this amusing.

One of my least favorite things to do is name the minor characters. I'm not talking about secondary characters, I mean the ones that I don't think will make much of a ripple in the story or that I'll ever want to write about, but are on the stage long enough to be named and not just referred to as "the valet" or whatever. My two problems are 1) I want it to be a name that I'm unlikely to be using as a hero or heroine in the future. The near future at any rate. And 2) I've been bit before by thinking someone was a walk-through character only to have them tell me later that they had a story.

So yesterday I'm trying to come up with a name for a character I don't think will make a second appearance, but at this point, I can't be sure. I also don't want to repeat names that are close to any of the characters in my Light Warriors series. I had a great name for this character--until I realized how close it was to Anise (the villain in Midnight Hour) and I thought it might get confusing.

Sometimes it's not so bad. The inside joke in Eternal Nights is that it's my baseball book. :-) Many of the walk-through characters (mostly bad guys) all have the names of major league players. Hey, desperate measures, right? And I had the games on anyway for the playoffs.

The character name that bit me, though, was also from EN. I needed a throwaway name for Wyatt's chief warrant officer and I went with Cantore (hey, it was hurricane season when I was writing that part of the book). Only it turns out that Flare has a story. I haven't written it yet, and TBH, there are other stories calling louder right now, but if I do write it, I'm stuck with Cantore. At least I didn't give him a first name for him in that book.

I think I finally came up with something for the character in the Work In Progress (WIP), but what if she ends up being a bigger player than I thought? Do I really want to be stuck with this name that I don't like? And so the dilemma rages on.

I'm curious. How do you other writers handle the throwaway name thing? The football playoffs aren't going to help me with the first name for a woman. :-)

My new amaryllis arrived yesterday--one day after the nursery notified me it was coming. Now that was quick! But it didn't come to me like the red holiday amaryllis came. That one was all planted for me and all I needed to do was water it. This one arrived in pieces. I have one pot, one bag of dirt, and 3 bulbs. Some assembly required.

The package also came with at least one gnat! Grrr. After dosing the other plant for more than a week after it's arrival brought those darn little bugs, the last thing I want is to go through this again. Especially when I'll have three other plants to dose now. One was bad enough.

So tomorrow when I should be writing, I'll be planting amaryllis bulbs and dosing all my plants with that gnat stuff. If I'd only known, I probably would have resisted ordering. Maybe.

The writing came easier yesterday, but these darn transitions are a bear! I don't want to end the scene and pick it up again, but making the turns into what Logan needs to do next has been rough. I was fighting with another one of the things last night. On the plus side, once I make this turn, I'll be into the action part of the scene, and while mixing choreography with emotion takes work, it's gotta be better than transitions. gasp! I'm trying to give myself permission to accept a rough segue by telling myself I can fix it later. The perfectionist in me is balking.

I was watching television the other night when that commercial came on for Comcast. I don't know if it's nationwide or not, but it has men and women in suits singing about "the big old expensive phone company." Here's a link to the ad on YouTube. The tune kind of got caught in my head for a while and I didn't think beyond that (and the humor), but the other night, it hit me. Wait a second. The cable company is accusing the phone company of being expensive??? Does anyone else see the irony?

Now granted, the phone company isn't cheap either, but this is definitely a case of people who live in glass houses not throwing stones. My cable bill just went up this month and Comcast eliminated several channels from my service. Cable also is more than I pay for electricity or natural gas. gulp.

I had a new gardening catalog in my mail yesterday from a place I'd never heard of. They mostly carry roses which means I'm fairly safe since I'm not much for that particular flower. They're too fussy and require too much work. They did have a few other flowers that looked cool, but I'm going to be strong. Um, especially since I have another amaryllis plant on the way. I had to buy it. It was half price!

BTW, I found out the amaryllis is native to South America and the Caribbean, which explains why it's a sissy flower. I was reading instructions on how to care for the plant I have and stumbled across that fact.

I'd ordered a calendar and some research books from BN.com on Dec 30th and they just arrived yesterday, which I thought was a really long time since I had the three day shipping option selected. But I digress. Anyway, this year's calendar theme is Tropical Paradise. I loved last year's Greek Isles calendar so 2008 has a lot to live up to.

It was another tough writing day yesterday. Not only was I my usual Monday tired, but I had to make a difficult transition in a scene. It was something that would have given me fits anyway, but on a Monday.... Especially a Monday where I was busy at the Evil Day Job and not mentally calm when I went to write on lunch, it was extra tough. BTW, I was so busy yesterday, that I was late leaving the EDJ and that almost never happens.

My last amaryllis flower bloomed Sunday. I hate to see the flowers wilt and dry up because I've loved having the red and green in the house. Okay, I loved it after I dosed the dirt enough to get rid of the gnats. But I'm not ready to be flowerless. Sigh. At least I'll still have my poinsettias. The red one doesn't look too great, but the white one is beautiful. When's spring coming?

The weekend ended up being really busy, but I did plan to get on here at least once to answer comments. I'm sorry I didn't, but by the time I was freed up to play online, I was so tired, I couldn't form a cohesive sentence let alone reply to comments. I finally caught up Sunday night. I hope. At least I don't think I missed anyone.

I stayed up late Friday night to finish cleaning before I had company come on Saturday and then overslept Saturday. Good thing they were coming at 1pm. :-) I ended up nitpicking at the rooms until the first guest arrived. Then, after everyone left, I straightened up the house again and did laundry. It ended up being another late night.

Sunday was writing. I just hate trying to get back into the groove when I haven't been regularly writing for a while. I know I'm not alone; one of my writing buddies has the same problem getting back into the swing of things, but it's a pain. Hours and hours spent with very little progress to show for it. Anyway, I learned Logan is really into classic muscle cars--he restores them--and he's just finished a Mustang. Or as he says a Bullitt Fastback. Yes, I had to research. Luckily for me, he's going to be much too busy too soon to worry about Mustangs or Cobras. :-)

Oh, yeah, while I was doing laundry, I watched National Treasure with Nicolas Cage. I thought it was okay, but very far-fetched. That doesn't always bother me, but it did in this movie. (Nicolas Cage steals the Declaration of Independence to prevent a former business associate from stealing it.) I won't be watching the sequel.

BTW, did anyone ever see The Pacifier with Vin Diesel? There was a preview for it on the DVD and it looked like it could either be really funny or really stupid and I was curious which it was. If it's funny, I'll add it to my queue.

I've had notes from readers asking for Creed and Sin's stories--both made brief appearances in In the Midnight Hour. I was able to tell them that Creed's story was next, but Sin? Well, I knew I wanted to write him at some point, but I didn't have a story for him. That all changed this week.

The first revelation was who his heroine was. I've started working on my next book and the hero has three younger sisters. Boom. Suddenly I knew that one of Logan's sisters belongs with Sin. That happened back on Monday or Tuesday, I think, but there still was no story, just a pairing. I should be used to this by now since I almost always get the characters first, but I wanted the story, too.

That came yesterday. I can't tell you what I was doing because I don't remember. I was at the Evil Day Job (EDJ), and either during lunch while I was writing Logan and Shona, or after lunch when my mind was still on them, I got it. Another boom.

It's just a general idea and not a full-blown story, but it's something I can mull over while I'm writing the WIP (Work In Progress). The best part is that there's built in conflict--I'm thinking the council divided Sin's territory in half because there's so much activity that one troubleshooter can't keep up with it, and that Tris is the one they assign to work in Los Angeles alongside him. Sin would hate that. Tris would hate that, too. But when something that's related to In Twilight's Shadow comes to their neck of the woods, they'd have to work together. (And no, because it might be a spoiler for Twilight, I'm not going to say what that is.)

Of course, who knows if I'll have the chance to write it. The story I'd like to do after Logan and Shona is Logan's brother, Kel, so this is at least two books out, but it's nice to have the idea of what to do anyway.

Yesterday I received the cover copy for In Twilight's Shadow and I couldn't stop reading it. Hey, it really is a book. :-) What do y'all think of this?

Something Wicked...

Maia Frasier thought she'd escaped the world of troubleshooters and demons when she'd ceded her magical powers years earlier. Now a wounded enforcer has turned up in her home, claiming Maia's sister is in danger.

Creed Blackwood needs Maia's help to hunt the demon he's after, especially since he's hiding the fact that his powers are becoming erratic. And then there are the blackouts...

Maia soon begins to fear Creed has fallen to the dark forces himself, and with his strong magic, that makes him as dangerous to her and her sister as any demon could be.

I'm not going to load it on my website yet, so this is the sneak peek of what will be on the back cover.

Now if only my ARCs would come....

It's official; the new website is up and functional! Yea! There's still some work to be done. One of the pages has an awkward layout and there's other little things that need tweaking, but the major work is done. :-) You can take a look at pattioshea.com and let me know what you think. If it totally sucks, I can reload the old site, but I'm really hoping it's okay and I'm totally excited to have something new.

New Year's Day was spent at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). Sigh. I can't believe they make us work on a holiday like this. There was one other person there yesterday since only my union lost this particular holiday--the other unions and management lost other holidays--and there are only like five of us from this union on the floor. It was nice and quiet and I was actually able to take my lunch hour without ear plugs. :-) Too bad I wasn't writing yet because it would have been perfect.

Today I begin the new book. I'm actually looking forward to getting started and I probably would have kicked off on Monday if I hadn't gotten bogged down in my brilliant idea to redesign the website. :-) No tweaking it for the rest of this week. I have to clean my house and write. The site can wait till Saturday evening or longer. Unless it sucks and I need to reload the old one, of course.

I fell short of having the new website ready to load. I have two more books to do pages for and some links to set up yet; I was this close. If only I didn't have to go to the Evil Day Job (EDJ) today and I could stay home and finish this morning, but I do, so that means needing to wrap up this website tonight. Tomorrow begins the onslaught of the New Book.

So speaking of books, how did the galleys go? I'm sure you're all wondering, right? I made 12 corrections. That's an incredibly small amount. The part that's scary is that 11 of those changes are to fix my stuff, only 1 change is for an extra word.

My mistakes include the point of view debacle where in the middle of my hero's POV, I have a paragraph from the heroine's POV. Why? Because during copy edits I needed to add the paragraph for explanation, thought I was in the heroine's head and didn't double check.

My other lulu of an error was having two full moons in approximately a two week period. I almost missed that, but as I made my last read through on Friday at the EDJ, I thought, "hmm, didn't I mention the full moon once before?" A quick little search of my WordPerfect document when I arrived home showed that sure enough, this was the second full moon in the book. I changed the first reference to starlight because I needed the moon more in the second scene later in the book.

Everything else was mostly nitpicky stuff.

Last Friday night, I go to make my final changes to the galley, and I decide I need to refresh my memory, so I look for the cover letter with the instructions on how they want the markups handled. Um, I couldn't find them. Anywhere. I think in my cleaning frenzy that I mistook the galley letter for the letter that came with the copy edits and shredded it thinking I was done with it. I was left with my memory of what I did the last time I had galleys for Tor. Hopefully, they didn't change their process.