When Does the Super Fabulous Part Start?

I read my horoscope for December on Christmas--I know, I'm slow, but it isn't something I do every month, so it rarely occurs to me to check. My sign is supposed to have all the planets in alignment for a super fabulous month and the end of the month--from the 27th on--is supposed to be particularly wonderful.

Cool! I thought. And while the month wasn't what I'd call super fabulous, some nice things had happened and it was only going to get better. I couldn't wait. I'm still waiting.

Today wasn't a horrible day--not really. It was just a day filled with minor frustrations. Until this afternoon. First, it started snowing. Not a lot, just enough to really mess up traffic. The wind was icy and strong so I was freezing as I headed out to my car. Of course, I had to dig out the brush and clean off all my car windows and then I let the car warm up and plugged my iPod into the converter so I could play it on the stereo for my drive home. I knew it was going to be a long one and I wanted to listen to another lecture from the Berkeley earthquake class. The adapter wouldn't work. I fiddled with it even when I was on the freeway.

No, I didn't have a car accident, thank God, but I managed to cut my index finger on both sides--top and bottom--just above the knuckle. To say it hurt is an understatement. The pain was excruciating. It doesn't hurt as much right now--more sore than anything else--but typing isn't all that easy for me. Not good when I need to write. And blog. :-)

I've never been a huge believer in horoscopes--at least not the general kind that aren't personalized for each person--and after my experience this month, my opinion isn't changing. :-/ So I might continue to read them now and then for entertainment value, but if I hear again about the super fabulous week I'm supposed to have, I'm going to be extra careful!

To end on a better note, Digital Inspiration picked its Most Useful Web Applications of 2008. I haven't had a chance to check out any of the sites/apps yet, but I've got the entry bookmarked so that I can do that when I have more time (and can move my finger better).

Terminator Salvation

I guess I live under a rock because I didn't know that they were making another Terminator movie until last night. I was online and looked up to see the movie poster for Terminator Salvation. I clicked on it and found a trailer for the film! It looks good, too!

The story takes place in the future with John Connor (Christian Bale) leading the humans in their war against the machines, but apparently the future has changed from what his mother told him it would be. That's about all I know about the movie, but now I'm anxious to see it.

Christian Bale looked like a good choice to play John Connor, but I'll admit to some trepidation with Anton Yelchin in the role of the young Kyle Reese. He doesn't look at all right for the part and he most definitely does not look tough enough to be the Kyle who saved Sarah in the original Terminator movie. I hope I'm wrong because I love, love, love Kyle and if this kid is wrong for the part, he could ruin the movie for me.

Just in case you'd like to see the trailer yourself, I'm embedding it below.

Happy Holidays!

For those who celebrate, have a safe and joyous holiday!

Edge of Dawn Up

Edge of Dawn is up for pre-order on Amazon.com! There's even been orders placed already and a couple of people tagged the book before I even knew it was up. Wow! Nice holiday surprise. :-) This is the third book in my Light Warriors series.

The back cover blurb:

Glass artist Shona Blackwood has lost her ability to create, but instead of panic, all she feels is apathy. Her detachment is shaken when she narrowly avoids being mugged, thanks to a timely rescue by a man who makes all her senses come roaring to life.

Logan Andrews is a magical troubleshooter assigned to protect Shona from an unseen enemy. Shona is unaware that magic actually exists and Logan is under orders not to tell her, but it isn't long before he finds his loyalty torn between his people and the passionate woman he is guarding.

He thought this would be a straightforward job, but Logan quickly realizes that in an edgy contest between magic and passion, love is destined to win.

I loved working with Logan and Shona. He's sweet and indulgent and just perfect for Shona. She's off balance and not just with the way she reacts to him. She's coming to grips with a lot of changes.

That's all I have today, sorry. We had another snow event last night, so I was up early. Again. It's been like every morning for the last two weeks. I'm tired and I still need to write.

Christmas Websites

Since it's the weekend before Christmas, I thought I'd go in search of some cool sites for the holiday. I found a few.

North Pole.com is broken into three sections: Kids, Parents, and Teachers. There's a list of free things to do here, including sending a letter to Santa, a visit to Elf Pal Academy, puzzles and activities, and stories to read and color. There's also a section for Christmas recipes and you do not want to miss the disco-dancing Santa Claus.

Next up is The Official Website of Santa Claus. Here you can send a letter to Santa, find out about traditions around the world, and read about the physics of Santa.

Santa's Net also has a section of world traditions, song lyrics for some holiday favorites, and a naughty or nice list checker. Where do you fall? Also another opportunity to email Santa.

Find more recipes at Christmas-Cookies.com. The count is 540+ recipes and people can leave comments. Also has low carb cookies, country of origin listings, and baking tips. For those of us who um, nearly set fire to microwave popcorn, ahem, this last part might come in handy.

Merry-Christmas.com has games like elf tic-tac-toe, boxing with Santa, and a few trivia games. See how much you know about It's a Wonderful Life. There's also a section for kids where they can email Santa, find coloring pages--both for online and off, and download free MP3 music. This site also has a section on traditions and another for recipes. And if you're looking for gift tags, you can print some out here for free.

I've only browsed through these sites briefly, so as always, use caution on the net, but they looked okay in the time I spent there. Enjoy!

And They're Off

I finished copy edits for Edge of Dawn on Monday and sent them off to NYC on Tuesday. Everything went faster than I'd thought it would, but I was pretty organized in advance. I did a final read through--that's what held them up a day--but it was a good thing I did. I found I'd crossed out the wrong paragraph in one spot. Oops. I fixed that and fiddled with word choices. All that's left to do now on the book is proofread the test print of the book in a couple of months. This is where I enlist my mom's help because it's so easy to not see missing and/or extra words. My brain seems to put them right in.

As I left the Evil Day Job (EDJ) for Fed Ex on Tuesday at lunch, it started snowing. By that afternoon when I left the EDJ to go home, traffic on the freeway was at a standstill. It took an hour and a half to get home. I handled it okay, though. I didn't think the roads were that bad so I wasn't all that stressed and I had my iPod plugged in to the car stereo and listened to a couple of lectures from UC Berkeley on Earthquakes. I got hooked and now I'm working my way through the rest of the course. :-) I think I'm through lecture seven now.

We've had a lot of snow in MN this month, particularly in the last week or week and a half, and I've had to get up early nearly every day this week because of snowy roads. And I'll be doing the same thing tomorrow because there's another storm scheduled to roll through tonight. :-(

Still working on setting up the new laptop, but the important stuff like word processing software and antivirus protection is on there, so I'm good until I have more time.

And to close out, here's a cute video for y'all.

Fun With Computers

I bought a new laptop this week--the price was just too good to resist--but I forgot how much work it is setting up a computer. When I bought my iMac desktop replacement (the old laptop was like a fossil it was so old), all I did was plug it in and load a little software and it was good to go. It's not so easy with a Windows-based system and to make it even more challenging, this laptop has Vista on it.

The first "fun" task was burning the restore disks. You only get one crack at it. I'm not sure why. Are they afraid someone will pass the disks out to friends? Sell them on eBay? My challenges started immediately. First, the system took forever--and I do mean forever--to prepare itself to write the disks. Second, each disk took forever to burn--more than an hour apiece. Say what? I've never had restore disks take that long before. Third, the first disk didn't verify. The laptop told me to put in another disk. I thought it was going to reburn it, but instead it verified the blank disk! So I have no clue if I have this emergency backup or not. I've never needed to use them on my other laptops, so I guess I have to hope my luck holds out on this new one.

Now it was time to update Windows. Oh, the joy of 35 critical and important updates. Even with high speed, this took a long time to download. I also registered my new product and hooked into my wireless network.

Then there was Vista. Every time I tried to do anything that damn pop up window would appear asking me if I was sure I wanted to do it. Yes! A million times, yes! The one nice thing about Vista is that the search function was actually pretty decent and I found the instructions on how to turn that annoying thing off immediately. Then I started getting the red security warning on the task bar because the damn alerts were off. ::head banging on desk:: I found instructions on how to turn the security alerts off as well.

That's all I managed to accomplish last night. Amazing. Tonight, I finally managed to get rid of the trial software I don't want, turn off the Welcome Center, and load software I do want--like Firefox and iTunes and a word processing program so I can actually write on the laptop. I wanted to do more setup, but I had another project that needed my attention tonight, so I stopped with the critical stuff. But as I did my other project, I connected the new laptop to my desktop's iTunes collection and I've been playing music. Saves me from having to dig the iPod out of my tote bag. :-)

Anyway, to sum up, it's been 4 years since my last new Windows-based computer and I forgot what a hassle it is to get everything the way I like it. Why do the darn Mac Books have to be so expensive? As I wasted hours setting this thing up, I kept thinking about how simple Apple makes everything. I ♥ Mac.

The Lego Dude

Another video today. Sorry, but I have been pounding paper (a small joke or joke attempt if it fell flat) trying to get my edits done in time to mail back tomorrow. Despite spending massive time and working into the wee hours on Saturday night, I'm not going to make it. It might be a blessing since it rained here today before the temperatures plummeted below freezing. The roads here are ice covered with snow and the high temp tomorrow is supposed to be 1 degree. That's the optimistic forecast.

Anyway, all the markups are made. What I need to do now is one final read through before I package the manuscript up and send it back to NYC. Since I'm only about halfway, I don't think I'll finish tonight.

While I was marking up, though, I had the national news on the TV Friday night and in the Assignment America segment, they interviewed this guy who makes works of art out of Legos! It was incredibly cool and I was amazed. His work is showing in museums and it's incredible. As someone who could barely make the most unimaginative things with the toy, I was impressed. I hoped some of you might be interested, too.

In the Doghouse

First, I found out today that In the Midnight Hour won the Barclay Gold Award for Best Paranormal! You can see a list of all the winners at the LCRW website.

Things are really busy right now--both at the Evil Day Job and at home with the writing. Right now, I'm working on edits for Edge of Dawn which will be out July 2009 and trying to write the Work In Progress (WIP). That is on the schedule for March 2010. Lots to do and not much time to do it in. So I hope y'all don't mind another entertaining video.

This is from JC Penney and it's about men who give the wrong gift. I think one of the reasons why I find it so amusing is that I worked with a woman whose husband was hopeless at gifts. When they were dating in high school, he bought her a WaterPik one year. After they were married, gifts have included moon boots, a men's sweater, and a slip about twice her size. He thought it was a night gown. We used to look forward to events like anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas so we'd have another story to laugh about. Unfortunately, their daughter grew up enough to help her father pick out presents and we lost our guess-what-he-got-her-now stories.

Anyway, the video is nearly 5 minutes long and some of it is funnier than other parts of it, but it's an interesting advertising concept.

Straight No Chaser

The other night I was watching the national news and they did a story about a group of college friends who had a CD released with Christmas music. Two years ago, one of the guys had uploaded them singing a quirky version of the 12 Days of Christmas and it took off on YouTube. They've had more than 8 million views and one of them was a record executive who signed them. Of course, I was curious and immediately headed over to watch. I thought it was quirky and fun, too, so I'm sharing it here. I hope y'all enjoy it as much as I did.



BTW, no endorsement is implied. I just thought it was a fun video and these guys looked as if they were having a good time.

Reading, Oh How I Miss It

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago I used to read a book a day. I'd start the book at lunch time at the Evil Day Job (EDJ) and then pick it up again when I arrived home. If I stayed up too late and went to work tired the next day, it was because I had a longer book that I couldn't finish before it was time to go to bed and I couldn't put it down.

Way back in this time frame, I used to take week-long vacations to a cabin in Wisconsin and I would bring an enormous bag of books with me and spend all day reading. On these vacations, there'd be days where I'd read four, even five books from the time I woke up until I went to sleep. It was nirvana.

I used to be able to answer all kinds of questions about books that any romance reader on any board had. After all, I'd probably already read the story. (Unless it was historical. I gave up reading historicals when month after month they sat in my To Be Read (TBR) pile while I finished all the contemporary romances and paranormals.) If anyone was trying to come up with the title of a book that they'd read and couldn't remember, I probably knew it.

You might have guessed that while I was reading like this, I wasn't exactly spending a lot of time writing. You'd be correct. I wrote on Sundays. Sometimes. And for the 2.5 years before I started Ravyn's Flight, I hadn't written at all. (I think of this as preparation time, BTW, and not wasted years. I spent a lot of it working on becoming a better balanced, more grounded human being, something that's helped enormously in the roller coaster world of publishing.)

And then a friend of mine got me interested in writing again. It came back slowly--a poem here, a short story there, but then one day I was driving home from the EDJ and I saw Ravyn huddled on the floor and I knew something bad had happened. I just didn't know what and I had to write to find out. Then I had to write to learn the rest of the story and get to the end. I was dying of curiosity. Despite this, though, I still spent a lot of time reading. I devoured books--and I like to think, learned from each book I read.

Then I sold Ravyn's Flight and things changed. I couldn't take 18 months to write a book any longer. I learned to write during my lunch hour instead of read and I wrote when I got home. With a four-month deadline for my second contracted book, if I came into work exhausted the next day, it was because I'd stayed up too late getting my page count in.

The time between deadlines was spent on proposals for other books or on gardening or my website or promotion or a dozen other things that piled up. Reading became a luxury.

For the month of November, I finished one book and that was because I'd listened to it on my iPod while I worked on a project at the EDJ. I have a lot of books I want to read. Books by friends of mine. Books by acquaintances who bought one of my books and took the time to tell me they enjoyed it. Books that I've heard good things about from other people that I trust. And they all sit, waiting for me to find time to read them. I'm trying to think of the last book I actually read and not listened to, and it's been so long, I can't even come up with a title. That's sad.

And don't even get me started about the pile of magazines that I don't have time to read. Maybe after the current WIP is finished. :-)

Random, Totally Random

I needed a blog topic for tonight and was getting desperate. I searched news headlines for articles I could maybe talk about about, but nothing grabbed me. Then I thought, well, maybe I'll head over to Google and search for someone who has suggestions about interesting blog topics. That was no help. My next idea was to use the "I feel Lucky" button on Google. For some reason, I thought it would take me to a random website, but unfortunately that isn't what it does. It takes you to the first website listed in your search results. Pfft. That wasn't what I was looking for.

Then I googled "random website" and lo and behold, there are sites out there that do just that--take one to a random website. The first one I found is called Random Website Dot Com and the other was Memory Cloud/Random Website Generator.

In my exploration for a topic, I was taken to a website with wallpapers--some cool ones, an animal rights group website, zombie nation, and project censored, the news that didn't make the news. Some of these were meh, and others were interesting and I've bookmarked them to explore later. But while I did find some cool stuff, I still had no blog topic. :-(

Then I was taken to the Inspirational Quotes website. Now this is something I can go with. I love inspirational quotes. So my quote of the day is:

If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.

~Henry David Thoreau

Is that cool or what? To me, what he's saying is that the dreamer should do more than merely dream. He's saying that the dreamer should do the work necessary to make his/her dreams come true. I totally believe that. I can't imagine looking back and having regrets.

Now granted, some dreams are impossible, but I'm not talking about things like becoming an Olympic gymnast or something that would bankrupt a Rockefeller. I'm talking about pursuing reasonably achievable dreams. Like writing. Go for it!

Daydreaming

Before I get rolling, I have news. In the Midnight Hour won the Laurel Wreath Award for Best Paranormal! Yea! I read the email when I got up on Thanksgiving morning and it was a heck of a nice way to start the holiday.

I've always had stories in my head. I remember as a six-year-old child playing Barbies with my friends. They'd be done and ready to do something else and I'd still be playing out these elaborate scenarios with my dolls. If my parents brought me somewhere and I was bored, I'd find a corner, sit down, and start weaving stories in my head. I didn't write anything down, though, until 8th grade.

My favorite time of day, though, to run through stories was when I laid in bed. That space between climbing beneath the covers and falling asleep was prime storytelling time.

When I wrote Ravyn's Flight, I had the hero and heroine in my head every waking minute of every day. They were with me in the car, at the Evil Day Job (EDJ), in the shower, and especially before I fell asleep at night. I worked out scene after scene and had all kinds of information passed along that never made it in the book. Fun stuff.

Things have changed in the last six years, though. Now, I can't think about the story I'm writing before I go to sleep at night. Oh, I've tried and what happens is I get my mind all keyed up and can't sleep. This has been going on for the last three or four books.

I miss this time to just enjoy my characters and learn about them and what happens next. I wish I could just immerse myself in their world at bedtime and fall asleep as I daydream. Sleep is too important to me to do this, unfortunately.

But I can't fall asleep without telling myself a story, either. What I've been doing is running through stories I know I'll never write. This removes all the pressure I feel to fine tune the sentences I hear in my head. Yep, that's why I can't sleep--I'm trying to write while I lie in bed. But if I'm not ever going to write down the story, that compulsion is gone.

These night time stories are generally fragmented, too short to be a full-length book. Some are old, familiar characters that I've pulled out to daydream about from time to time for years. One of my recent favorites is Keir, the catman from In Twilight's Shadow, and how he found his mate. And currently I'm running through one that was inspired by a novella I read years and years ago. I also have TV/movie based stories, but they're not on the front burner at the moment.

I'd rather be daydreaming my Work In Progress (WIP). When I think of how much work I got done on my earlier books before I fell asleep, it inspires me to try again. But the outcome has been pretty inevitable--I compulsively try to make each sentence perfect in my head (and remember it) for when I do have my laptop up and my file open. It is not conducive to sleeping. Sigh.