Adventures In Microwaving

Yes, it's true. I can even find adventure when I try to cook in the microwave. Some people are just not cut out to be chefs.

So it's time to heat up some leftovers in the microwave. I have these great containers from Lock & Lock (not a paid reference, I just really like their product) and I used one of those. The directions say not to lock down the lid before microwaving and I've always been good about making sure it's not closed. I did the same thing this time--rested the lid on top of the container without locking it.

This time things didn't go quite the way I expected.

When I opened the microwave, the cover of the bowl was concave. No big deal, I figured, I'll just take off the lid and it will pop back into place. Only I couldn't get the lid off.

I wrapped one arm around the bowl and tugged with all my might with the other. Nada. It actually took a while before I gave up on the tugging strategy. I was sure if I could just pull hard enough... But I couldn't. Clearly, it was time for Plan B.

My second idea involved putting the bowl in the refrigerator. The cold would cause the silicone seal to retract and I'd be able to take the lid off. No. On to Plan C.

Next, I Googled for help. I couldn't be the only person this had happened to. I wasn't. I found a couple of people asking my question. The first few answers I found were less than helpful. One suggestion was putting the lid on upside down when microwaving. Um, hello? The person who posted wanted to know how to get the lid off (and so did I!), telling us what to do the next time doesn't help with this time.

I continued through the responses, most of which were how to heat in Lock & Lock in the future. Yeah, thanks. Finally, I hit a reply that offered a solution. I just didn't like the solution. This woman had punctured her lid to break the seal. Really. I wasn't ready to do that and I kept reading.

The best solution I found involved using a screwdriver to pry up the edges of the lid until the seal was popped. I used a butter knife. Actually, I used four of them, one pried up on each side. Then with the fourth one, I really worked it in the slot. Then I heard it. The little whoosh as the seal finally gave way! Success!

On the plus side, I don't think my digging in with the knives caused any damage to the silicone or the plastic. On the minus end of things, my lid is still concave and I don't think it's going to pop out again. I console myself with the fact that I didn't have to puncture anything.

NaNo Fail

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month and takes place every November. This is the second time I've decided to do it and the second time I've failed.

In my defense, both years that I've done it, I've been given revisions from an editor that needed to be done. But to be honest, I was failing spectacularly this year anyway. Kind of. You see, my goal wasn't to write 50,000 words like most participants in NaNo are shooting for. My goal was just to write more than usual and I was winning with that.

I have this hero and heroine, Finn and Zo, who have been in my head constantly for months and months and months. Their story isn't paranormal, although I tried my darnedest to make it become paranormal. But I really got into them and their story--until I had to drop it for revisions.

Revisions are done now, though, and even though NaNo is ending, I have a goal. It might be a tough one because the holiday season is now officially here and it's difficult to find writing time during this time of year. My plan, my hope, is to have a rough draft of their proposal finished by New Year's. Can I do it? I'm sure going to try.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American visitors!

I Got It

Last week, I think, I talked about not having a growth arc for my hero in the Work In Progress (WIP). Through some glints and glimmers, I finally learned what his issue is. It's one of those really fun ones (I say that with complete sarcasm) because it's something that stems from his childhood and it isn't completely logical. He should get over it, he should be able to see the illogic--he should, but he hasn't and he doesn't.

I still had one problem, though, even with the information. I didn't know how the story situation was going to force him to face it. From my view, it looked as if nothing would trigger the need to do something about it.

My position is that people don't like change and won't embrace the opportunity when it comes. BTW, this theory was proven out again when a writers' loop I'm on went into melt down over the prospect of a change. Never mind that nothing had changed yet. Never mind that none of them had tried what was being proposed. It was an immediate and strident No from many. So yeah, if people don't like change even about small things, can you imagine the big stuff? To make a character face deep-seated issues requires dynamite and I didn't think I had a match.

Then on Sunday morning, I woke up, but didn't want to be awake. As I laid there, trying to grab a little more sleep, I had an epiphany and it was perfect. I have the ignition source! ::insert evil author laughter here::

This story has an odd structure to it, so it'll be a while before I need to have him address his issue, but it's always nice to know up front. It will allow me to foreshadow without having to go back and it'll allow me to write the synopsis a little easier because editors like to know how the character is going to change over the book.

Anyway, I'm excited! I love it when a plan comes together. ;-)

Adjustments

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about searching for royalty-free photos online and what an ordeal it was. I had a few people ask me why I was taking the time to look. Now that things are in place, I can answer this question. If you've visited my website previously, you would have noted that the anchor image was the running couple from my Crimson Veil book. They've been replaced.

Check out my website's home page to see the new couple!

The new picture fits in so seamlessly, it looks as if was always there, doesn't it?

Even though it took forever to do the image search and even though I didn't find another running couple (who weren't smiling), I think the new image works really well. I like that they're holding hands and that the woman is in front. To me, it looks like they're partners and I usually write heroes and heroines who work together as a team. They're even wearing dark clothes.

In other news, I'm working on edits for Shadow's Caress, my Feb 2011 release from Nocturne Bites. It looks as if the title is set now and I'm relieved that I don't have to brainstorm more ideas. Titles are really hard for me, and for some bizarre reason, I've been able to keep about half of the ones I've come up with. Go figure.

Shadow's Caress Coming In Feb!

Shadow's Caress, my short story from Nocturne Bites, has a release date now! You can find it online everywhere February 1, 2011! This is the third story set in my Blood Feud world.

I've been trying and trying, BTW, to come up with a name for the series that wasn't the title of the first story that takes place in it, but nothing fits better. I finally decided to surrender and just call it Blood Feud because it fits. One of the main issues in the world is the animosity between vampires and demons and how their respective leaders are trying to bridge that and form an alliance. It's not easy going for them because it is a Hatfield and McCoy situation.

So the vampires and demons realize that humans have become a bigger threat and would be better addressed with a unified front. Humans have vampire hunters and demon slayers out there, although the vast majority of the population is unaware any of this is going on. And the vampires have a small issue--the rogues.

In my world, all vampires are part of a clan through blood exchange. If you're bit by someone who was bit by someone who was bit by clan lord #1, then you're part of his clan. Everyone is affiliated--except during the Demon Wars, one of the clan lords was killed. Most of these vampires joined other clans, but a sizeable number did not. They haven't made an appearance in any stories yet, but they're out there. Waiting.

The thing that's so interesting from a writer's perspective (at least to me) is introducing this all in small chunks because they're short stories. I've never subscribed to the barf out everything about your world up front school of writing. It's hugely boring to read. But I have been able to reveal bigger chunks of say my Light Warriors world than I've been able to do with the Blood Feud stories because of the length. Blood Feud, the first book, introduces the vampire and demon conflict. Demon Kissed brings in the demon slayers, and Shadow's Caress will introduce the vampire hunters.

I do have plans for more stories set in this world. There are two characters (vampires) mentioned in Shadow's Caress that have stories. I just need to finish a few other projects and take time to work things out. Time is always such a problem!

Aspen Gold Award

I promised to take a picture of my Aspen Gold Award when it arrived. I haven't had time to hang it yet, so I had to try to frame it while I had it propped up on the counter. I used to be a good photographer. Really. :-) Sorry about the skew in the shot, but this was the best of the half dozen that I took.

I'm pretty excited to hang it up on the wall. The best I ever did for award hardware while I was in school was my National Honor Society pin, so getting plaques and trophies is an enormous thrill for me.

Growing Pains

Right now, I find myself in a very interesting position--I don't know the growth arcs of either character in my Work In Progress (WIP).

When I say growth arcs, a lot of writers think I mean an elaborate chart where I have pivotal moments that change the character and how much they change. No, I don't do that. This strikes me as something a plotter would do and I'm much closer to the seat of the pants side of the spectrum.

How growth arcs work for me is that I get the thing about the character that needs to change. The character who has to do the big change? I say it's their book. The other character has a growth arc, too, but theirs isn't as big.

To use an example, In the Darkest Night was Kel's book. He had PTSD and he refused to talk about anything that happened while he was captured and tortured. Over the course of the book, he had to go from stubborn silence to sharing The Big Secret. Farran, his heroine, had the minor growth arc. She was physically abused by her father. In another story, that might have been the major growth arc and it might have been her story, it's certainly serious enough and big enough, but not for this book. I knew immediately it was Kel's story. She had a self-worth issue that needed to be worked on during the story.

Usually, I know whose book it's going to be and what their issue is before I ever write one word. The one and only other time I didn't have it before I started, I got it when I finished the prologue. (Which ended up getting cut. I don't consider it wasted writing, though, because it gave me the growth arc and fleshed out the heroine in a way she hadn't been earlier.)

I know the WIP is the hero's book, so he's got the big change to make. I thought I had his issue even though it felt just a teeny bit forced on my part. Then, as I drove home from work at the end of last week, I was told that he wasn't stupid. The growth arc I thought was his involved him realizing something over the course of the story, so this message was to tell me this is not going to work, he already realizes it.

Okay. Thanks. Now I'm back to having no growth arc for him. I've asked him questions, but he's totally clammed up on me. That makes me believe it's something kind of big, but I'm not sure about that. Usually when a character won't share, I ask the people that know them, but he hasn't told anyone about it, so I have nothing.

I have no minor arc for the heroine either, but I'm not as worried about that. Minor arcs aren't pivotal to story structure (usually), but the major one is.

I'm feeling kind of at a loss right now because I've never had to prod about this particular piece of a character before. It's always been laid out for me like a gift. This time? Nothing.

Brave New World? Not Quite.

I'm always interested in technology and gadgets. I lurv gadgets! And even though I'm not writing futuristic romance right now, I'm always watching and reading about new stuff because you never know when something might come in handy for a story.

Over the years, I've seen a lot of articles about how video conferencing is going to replace in-person meetings. That flying on business is/is about to/will become obsolete. Interesting, I thought, but I had no firsthand experience.

Until Tuesday.

For those unaware, I worked for Northwest Airlines which was bought by Delta Air Lines. I'm in Minneapolis, but half of our department (including the manager) is in Atlanta. For a bunch of reasons, I wasn't part of earlier staff meetings, but on Tuesday I was and I learned a few things about video conferencing that I hadn't considered or read about.

The first thing that struck me was how difficult it was to hear. I have really acute hearing and pick up sounds a lot of other people can't hear. This didn't help me in the meeting and others complained they had trouble hearing, too.

I'm not sure where the microphones were to pick up the sound and when I had to speak, I shouted. I'd say that I probably sounded like some technology idiot, but since I couldn't hear a lot of what was said in Atlanta, I assumed they'd have trouble hearing us as well. So yeah, I shouted, as did others. I'm glad I don't sit near that conference room.

The second issue was having to see myself on one of the two monitors. Why? I don't need to see our conference room, I'm in it. There was nowhere to hide from that damn camera either.

My last item is the biggest issue. I had a really hard time paying attention. A really, really hard time.

This could just be a me thing. When I'm home, I can't just sit and watch television. I just can't pay attention for long enough to the screen or the show. That's part of the reason why I love baseball so much--it's very forgiving of my lapses. Even when I'm watching a show that interests me, I'm doing other things. I'll even leave the room to do these things. I've been this way for probably ten years, maybe a little longer. I can lose myself for hours in a book, immerse myself in that world, but I can't focus for half an hour on the TV.

Now I'm in a meeting and half the people attending, including those leading it, are in Atlanta and on the TV screen in our room. My focus kept wandering. We received handouts. I started reading. I don't know how long it took before I realized that I'd completely forgotten we were, you know, having a meeting. :-)

That got me thinking about technology predictions and using tech in stories set in the future. Instead of focusing only on the possibilities--both positive and negative--I have to remember that (for example) meeting via video conference is not the same thing as meeting in person. Maybe some day, but not now. This goes for any technology. Some of it will not be as effective for everyone as it is for some.

I'm still mulling this over and how it would convey in a story, but it's definitely something interesting to consider. And all from a staff meeting. :-)

Fear Factor

With baseball season over, I've been watching other television while I'm not writing. Often, I have some project that needs to be done (like converting my short stories for e-readers or looking for pictures as I blogged about on Sunday), so I'm not paying strict attention to what's on. I'm not a fan of reality TV, so I usually end up on the Discovery Channel, History Channel, Science Channel or something like that.

Sometimes there's just plain nothing on and I'll just choose one of them because I don't feel like putting music on. This has it's good points and it's bad. On the positive side, watching one of these "Chariots of the gods" shows gave me an answer for a story I was working on.

On the negative side, I scare myself. :-) Hey, I'm a writer! I have a very active imagination and it doesn't take much to set it off.

I had one of the negatives happen the other night. There was a prophecy show--Nostradamus and some modern guy who uses mathematics to predict the future. Apparently they both agree on a lot of points. And whichever show this was happily showed clips of global warming scenarios, world war three scenarios, and general death and destruction scenes. Gee, thanks.

This is the reason why I try to skip those shows that cover prophecy because they always portray the worst possibilities, never the best. I suppose showing a the shining future that might be ours doesn't hold the same ratings potential of doom and gloom, but I'm tired of doom and gloom. Nostradamus needs to give me some happy!

Frustrated

My project for this weekend was to find a picture of a couple. Since this is going to be public when it's finished, I had to look to royalty free images that could be purchased. Even so, I thought the task would take an evening, I'd be finished, and could move on to something else. This isn't what happened.

The parameters I needed for the picture included a vertical orientation of the image itself. It would help if the picture was full length or nearly full length of the people. The man and the woman in the picture both needed to be attractive. And the final requirement was that it convey suspense.

It was amazing how impossible these criteria were.

If I wrote erotic romance, I would have had my couple in less than five minutes. But I don't write erotica, I write action/adventure romance. This is where the difficulty started.

The first problem was finding pictures where both the man and the woman were both attractive. I can't tell you how many times one of them was gorgeous and the other wasn't. This problem wouldn't have been insurmountable because there were plenty of pictures with two good looking people, but my other requirements... Sigh.

By far, the biggest and most annoying issue was the suspense part of the equation. Almost every single picture showed the couple smiling. The few where they weren't smiling usually depicted the couple having an argument. Awesome. Just what a romance writer wants.

I spent the vast majority of my weekend on this search. I'm guessing 20 hours or so total. In that time I found a grand total of 5 possibilities and I don't know if any of them will work for what I need. I'm hoping I don't have to do this again--three days was enough.

I'll share more about what this was about when it's all done and ready.

Being Descriptive

I've been listening to a lot of Urban Fantasy lately on my iPod. The one thing that's really struck me is the amount of description. There's so much of it and I don't understand why. It's not as if these books are set in unknown worlds and it's not as if the author is describing things I won't understand.

When I read a book, I skim description stuff or skip it all together. I've never enjoyed it for a few reasons. The biggest would be that I'm visualizing the setting and characters myself and I hate when the author's description of the scene doesn't match mine. Granted, it's her book, her world, her characters, but when I read, I make it my own.

Description is also not my favorite thing because it slows down the pace of the story. I read other things besides action/adventure kinds of books, but that doesn't mean I want the pace bogged down in a description of the clothing or the scenery. I don't care, just tell me the story.

Then there's the Charles Dickens debacle. When I was in high school we were forced to read Great Expectations. Ugh! In case you're unaware of it, Dickens was originally serialized in newspapers and paid by the word! Which led to pages and pages and pages of description. At first, I skimmed, but it was endless and I started skipping it completely. Only to find myself lost a few pages later because somewhere amid the sea of words was something that actually impacted the story. This was the first time I ever used Cliff's Notes to get through assigned reading.

So now I'm listening to audio books with no real way to skip the description of the city (I know what a city looks like, thank you very much), the apartment (yes, I can visualize one of those as well), and the clothes (seriously, don't care what anyone is wearing). I'm assuming that the excessive description is a requirement of the fantasy genre that got carried over to Urban Fantasy?

Of course, one person's excessive description is another reader's just the right amount. I've had to learn to put more description in my stories than what I personally care to see. And when I revisit my characters, guess what I skip as I read? ;-)

This is one of the reasons why I don't think I'd enjoy writing fantasy or science fiction. I care about the characters, about their story, and about their growth arc. I don't care about the locations, the gadgets, the governing body of the world, or the clothing. If I say the city is Los Angeles, if I mention the crumbling red brick warehouse with a riot of brightly colored graffiti. If I say the stench of rotting garbage filled the air, that in the distance a car horn honked, I think that's enough. Let's move on and get to the story. :-)

Phone Calls and Edge of Dawn

Edge of Dawn won the Aspen Gold Award for Best Paranormal!

I found out yesterday even though I got the call on Saturday because I didn't bother to play messages right away. In my defense, I've been getting a lot of telemarketing calls lately and those robo-callers ramble as soon as the phone is answered. Even if it's answered by voice mail.

And I had a phone call from my dad, too, on Saturday and I figured the message was from him. My parents have a really bad habit of leaving messages even thought I've told them time and again not to. I always see them before I do a play back. It doesn't stop them and I've learned to just ignore it until I have time to delete it out.

If you've guessed that I hate the phone with the fire of a thousand suns, you'd be exactly right. :-) I'd rather do email or IM or anything else rather than use a phone. Part of it is that I always end up sounding like an idiot and don't know how to gracefully end a phone conversation. Part of it is for a year while I was in high school, I had a job that kept me on the phone. I was probably the only 16-year-old girl who cringed when a call came in and it was for me.

Yesterday afternoon, I finally decided to clear messages. Imagine my surprise when I had two messages, not just one. This was one time, though, where I was elated that the indicator was blinking!

The best part? I'm going to get a plaque! Hardware--woot!!!