The Instagram Algorithm

Instagram is at it again!

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the furniture restoration reels they keep showing me. It was tempting, but I knew that would be too much hard work and that there was a steep learning curve.

This week, they started showing me card making reels, paper quilling, and (gulp) scrapbook journals. ::sobs::

The paper quilling is incredible! But I also know this not only requires a high skill level, it also requires a level of patience that I don't possess, so while I'm enjoying watching the woman do her paper quilling, the temptation to do it myself is low.

The card making was a little harder to resist. It just looked like so much fun! I was contemplating giving this a try and then I saw the scrapbook journaling. OMG! Here's a link to the journal artist that Instagram hooked me with.

I have all kinds of stuff from a previous attempt at scrapbooking. Papers, scissors, punches, chipboard, paper cutters, and assorted other tools/supplies. I never got great at it, and I gave it up after I scrapbooked all my Ravyn's Flight reviews and news and awards and stuff. I kind of meant to get back to scrapbooking some day, but since Ravyn came out in 2002 and I haven't done any scrapbooking since then, well the handwriting was on the wall.

And then I saw the Instagram reels for scrapbook journaling.

I know this one is going to have another learning curve since my scrapbook pages were...interesting. I know I don't have all the supplies I'd need even if I have a lot of them. I'm tempted anyway.

Not only do I have a ton of supplies, I also have a ton of spiral bound junk journals. I bought them to do my book notes, thinking this would work and give me enough pages to last a while, but when I tried to use one of them, it quickly became obvious that they wouldn't work for this purpose. I'd been hanging on to them, wondering what I could use them for. Instagram provided the answer.

I haven't done anything yet. I haven't attempted a page in the journal, I haven't bought anything to work with. I've been busy writing Case and Nyx. And I'll blog about that on Thursday.

The Name Game

So I think I found the secondary character's name. It does not start with an N or a T. Darn I hate it when they mislead me! As I was doing a general search through the name books, she liked Natasha with a nickname of Tash, but that wasn't her name, but if this was "almost" it, it must start with one of those two letters. Logical, right?

With my own resources not providing the answer, I did an online search for "unique baby names." I got a lot of hits and checked out the appropriate letters--and I still couldn't come up with her name.

It went on like this for quite some time, then I clicked on a link that had all the names on one page, and there it was. Under the F's. Argh! If she'd told me that from the beginning, it would have saved me hours of searching.

TBH, at first I wasn't sure if this was her name for real or if I just thought it was because I liked it and I was sick of searching, but after a night spent sleeping on it, I think it is right.

Speaking of sleeping, I went to bed really early last night. I was so tired, I couldn't think clearly enough to work on my synopsis and I'd had 2 nights with four hours of sleep in a row. Not good. I still couldn't get up this morning, but I feel better. And just one day was enough to backlog me again. Too much to do, not enough hours to do it all in.

I did finish hooking up my cutting machine. It's for scrapbooking and cuts out letters or shapes. I test cut a flower which I still want to refer to as a snowflake because that's what it looks like to me and my name in the font I use on my website. It worked slick as spit and I'm in love with this machine. Now I just need to start scrapbooking again, so I can use it more. I'll add that to the To Do List. Sigh.

Actually, I should make an effort to scrapbook more because I do think it helps me with my writing. It sparks my creativity, but it doesn't use the same creative muscles in my head that writing does, which means it doesn't drain me. The more creative energy flowing in, the better!

Craft Day

It was Craft Fair day yesterday on QVC. Need I say more? If I was smart, I wouldn't because it's downright embarrassing how many things I bought. I knew I was in trouble when I woke up yesterday morning and saw the Today's Special Value. It was a Silhouette cutting machine that hooks up to the computer and will cut out any true type font (letters or shapes) that you have. I'm a font slut, so I have many, many true type fonts. I'd been eyeing the Wishblade ever since I heard of it and the Silhouette is the same kind of machine. I was determined not to order. Absolutely not. I could wait. And I did.

About three hours.

Then in the afternoon came the sparkly 687 piece assorted theme rub-ons. Those looked way cool and I don't have any rub-ons. Clearly, I needed some.

I vowed I was done shopping for the day. That was it; I'd spent enough money. But there wasn't any baseball on last night. Nobody was televised. I had to watch something while I worked on the synopsis for my proposal, right? And I tend to default to QVC because I can watch without needing to pay strict attention. That's when I saw the fall and winter themed 600+ piece self-adhesive chipboard kits. I would have been fine if the letters hadn't been so cute. I caved again.

This was it, though. I was absolutely, positively 100% finished shopping. But as I was working, I saw this card making kit. They hadn't even demonstrated it yet when I ordered, just previewed it. I love homemade cards with embellishments. Now granted, the cards I have were made by someone else, but come on, I can do this, too! I think.

See? This is why ESPN, TBS and WGN need to show more baseball! I only get in trouble like this when there aren't any games on, and with the Twins playing on the west coast tonight, I was at the mercy of QVC. And they had none. They kept showing irresistible item after irresistible item. Only my incredible willpower (STOP LAUGHING!) kept the damage from being much worse.

In other news, my dad found my wind spinner at the bottom of the shepherd's hook so I didn't lose it. He also found my rain gutter extension in my neighbor's yard. Those were two rough storms Monday night. Final total on the number of Twin Cities residents without power was something around 55,000. I'm so happy not to be one of them. Of course, it might be cheaper if I had been. No television.

Another flower bloomed yesterday too, bringing my total back up to five, although I think two will be losing their petals shortly. They just don't last long enough.

Friday the 13th Rocks!

I absolutely love Friday the 13th because I always have a great day. The skeptics will say that this date is no different from any other, that people just remember bad things that happen and say, 'it's Friday the 13th' and ignore anything that contradicts their beliefs. For me, they'd say the opposite. I think these skeptics are wrong.

I've honestly never had a Friday the 13th that was bad. Not all of them have been stellar, of course, but nothing I perceived as negative has ever happened. This morning started out tremendously and I just expect on it staying this good all day.

So far I've had two great reviews show up for In the Midnight Hour! The first is from Romance Junkies. They gave the book 5 Ribbons and said:

IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR is certainly a book you will not be able to put down until you have read the final word.

Romance Reader at Heart gave Midnight Hour a Top Pick and said:

Patti O'Shea delivers a gripping, tale full of suspense, danger, and attraction. IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR is a true enjoyment to read.

A pair of great reviews for a fabulous Friday the 13th. :-)

Last night, QVC had a scrapbooking show on. I missed the beginning of it, but saw the last 45 minutes. They had some interesting stuff including some glitter chip board letters and colored paper with adhesive already on the back. Just to make it a little tougher, the One Time Only was a collection of paper. I have a huge weakness for paper.

I am proud to announce that I didn't order anything! Yes, it's true. I was strong. Yea!

Living Dangerously

Yes, I overslept again. I think that makes every day this week? I did try to go to bed early last night, but unfortunately, about the time I was thinking that, I discovered HSN had a scrapbook festival going on. I know, normally I am a QVC girl, but hey, it's scrapbooking! Yes, I bought something. Sigh. It's called a Crop-a-Dile and it's for putting eyelets in your pages without having to bang with a hammer. I've never used eyelets before, but I'm sure that's only because I didn't have the proper tool. ;-)

Anyway, by the time I logged off the computer and everything and made it to bed, it was much later than I'd hoped. This oversleeping thing is really getting old. I'm so used to doing stuff in the morning, like blogging and answering email, and losing this time means finding other parts of the day where I can do these things. That's not always easy.

I tried to sit out on the deck yesterday afternoon when I got home from the EDJ, but that didn't work out real well for me. As I'm sitting there, a wasp came to visit. I went inside, got my handy dandy wasp-killing spray and went back out. Fortunately, he was gone. For a while. Yes, I ended up shooting my weapon. Twice.

I thought I'd finally gotten rid of him, but he paid another visit. Well, maybe it was a different wasp, it's hard to tell. I also had a visit from a big, huge bumblebee and a spider ran past me on the deck railing. Grrr! Enough was enough. I grabbed my book and the wasp spray and went back indoors where it was safe from insects.

Yesterday, I talked to the woman from my video production company and she said if I embed the trailer into my website to use You Tube or MySpace to drive the hits up and increase my visibility on the search engines. I originally had used You Tube on my website, but I didn't like how it looked after the video played. It shrunk my screen and brought up a whole bunch of other miniature images for people to click on. Veoh has a more aesthetically pleasing screen at the end and it's bigger, so I went with them. I guess maybe I'll be changing that back this afternoon. If you'd like to check out the bigger screen version, visit the Midnight Video page on my website.

Oh! Speaking of the website, I accidentally updated my Up Next page--I was going to wait till closer to the release of IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR--but decided not to take it down, so if you'd like to see what's next, take a look.

Dreaming of Spring

Pitchers and catchers report to spring training today and the entire team will be in camp on Feb 20th, I think. Maybe I've got the dates wrong, but I do know it's this week. I look forward to spring training from the minute the baseball season ends in October. It gives me hope that the snow and ice will melt, that the temperatures will warm, and that I can abandon my coat, hat and boots. Plus, there's ball! :-)

My favorite way to write is with baseball on the television, sound muted. When I need to think, I look up and watch for a little bit, then go back to work. Now, I usually have QVC on because TV is a habit. Only I look up, see something cool, and have to struggle not to order it. Baseball is definitely better.

Let's see. Got a decent amount of work in this weekend on the BFH (Book From Hell). I'm still second guessing myself, but I'm trying to ignore that little voice. I need to make a turn in the scene I'm working on now and I'm debating how to do it. I fell asleep thinking about that last night, so I'll think about it some more today.

I found a copy of Sliding Doors at Best Buy for $6.99 and I think I'm going to get it. Like I said yesterday, I totally loved this movie. It's fate that there's a DVD sale on at the same time I saw it. :-)

My new scrapbooks that I ordered from QVC arrived. I love the polka dot one, the other is nice enough, but not quite my style. I'll keep it anyway. Paper was okay, but again, not my style. Lots of flowers and I'm not a flower person. I don't want flowers on my clothes, my curtains, upholstery or scrapbook paper. Of course, I'm a paper slut, so I have more than enough scrapbook paper that these sheets are really superfluous. :-) And I can always slice them up and use them for matting or something.

Waiting for the Warm Up

I canceled my order for the Cricut machine that I mentioned in yesterday's post. My former coworker who said she was going to order it, had canceled her order too after she talked to some people at her local scrapbook store. Then she mentioned the Wishblade. This is a die cutter that you can hook right up to your computer and it will cut out any true type font. Now since I'm a font whore, I have a ton of these! This sounded like the better way to go and less expensive in the long run because the fonts would be virtually unlimited and there are so many free ones available that it would be more cost effective in the long run. I did a search, found some reviews and a Yahoo group for the Wishblade. I joined that, but they have like hundreds upon hundreds of messages a day, so I'm web only--with no time to really read up on what people are saying about the product.

Tomorrow is the last day in the department for one of my tech writers. He got a management position. Of course, it's not Mr. Congeniality, AKA the coworker from hell, who's going. He, I'm certain, will be there forever. Why is it that the people we want to stay, leave and those we hope will leave, don't?

I also lost one of my engineers. I knew that was going to happen. The minute our new manager was named, he began looking. At least he's not leaving the company, only moving to a different fleet of airplanes, but again, why is it the ones you like to work with are the ones who leave?

I've had a couple of particularly boring projects at the EDJ (Evil Day Job). (I should probably put a glossary over on the right with all the acronyms I use. :-) WIP, EDJ, EN, TACV, TPOT, RF, etc.) One of them is for the 787 which is mildly interesting in theory because it's a brand new, not-even-built airplane. Unfortunately, it's just proofreading. And because I have to pay attention to the words, I can't listen to any of the workshops from RWA Atlanta. I've been doing that to keep myself entertained.

BTW, it's a hugely sad thing when a temperature of 20 looks like nirvana. We might reach that by next Tuesday. If we're lucky. Gah!

Scrapbook Fair

Yesterday, QVC had a couple of hours called "Scrapbook Fair" on their schedule. I should know better than to watch this--really, I should. First, I haven't had time to scrapbook in a couple of years now. Second, I still haven't unpacked anything in the spare bedroom (AKA the scrapbook room). The last thing I needed to do was order anything and add more stuff to this room. And third, scrapbooking stuff gets expensive.

But QVC is an enabler. They sent me an email over the weekend telling me that Tuesday was going to have a few hours devoted to scrapbooking. And they offered me a chance to order Tuesday's Special Value early. It happened to be an 8,000 piece scrapbooking kit complete with a really cool polka dot scrapbook. Well, I needed some more scrapbooks because I only have three and I want one for each book. Never mind that I haven't finished scrapping Ravyn's Flight from 2002 yet. I ordered two of the kits--one in blue and one in purple.

I didn't even have to turn on the television to do that. I was done shopping, I decided. Absolutely no need to actually tempt myself further. Except yesterday I was flipping through the channels right after I got home from work and there was Scrapbook Fair. I had to watch some of it. I bravely resisted the cute rub-on transfers and the embellishments. Then they showed it.

It was a Cricut machine that cuts out letters, shapes and preprogrammed sentiments. I'd heard of it before, but it's a lot of money and I told myself I could wait. Then I heard the words that struck fear into my heart: it's the last day at the introductory price. Gah!

Now, I had a decision to make. To order or not to order, that is the question. A lady I used to work with had ordered one. She'd investigated prices and said QVC was the best value because it came with two cartridges. Since she was always really good about checking out prices, I knew this had to be true. And if I didn't order on Tuesday, the QVC price would be going up.

I waffled. I didn't want to spend that money. There are other things I need more like a carpet runner and and some pieces of furniture. Then the host announced that they'd run out of the preorder allotment, but that their buyers had managed to get a promise of more from the manufacturer. When this extra number ran out, though, that would be it for a while.

I caved like a house of cards.

So now, not only do I have two scrapbook kits headed my way, I also have a Cricut machine and a tool kit. I had to order the tool kit too, right?

Yeah. Sigh.