Genetics Predictions

 

I had an email from 23 and Me recently. Or at least I clicked the link recently. The email might have been sitting in my inbox for a while before I had time to take a look at it. There was a new genetic report available that would predict my wake up time. Cool.

I scrolled down the page and stared in amazement...at how WRONG they were.

After looking at several hundred places on my genes, they determined that I was a morning person and that I woke up naturally around 7:30 am. Gah!

I'm not sure they could have been more wrong if they'd tried. When I'm off from work long enough to fall into my natural sleep pattern, I usually stay up until about 2am and wake up around 10 or 11 the next morning.

I have all the hallmarks of a night person. I get a second wind around 8pm. I wake up groggy and unable to function until I've had enough caffeine. I have a hard time going to bed after I get my second wind because I'm ready to go. Even on days where I've gotten up early, I can easily stay up until after 11pm without issues. Because nighttime is my time of day.

Mornings? Bah.

When I was a kid, my mom knew not to talk to me when I first got up. She knew to have the fewest amount of lights on that she could. I shied away from brightness like a vampire from garlic. In fact, you still can't talk to me when I first get up in the morning. Seriously. My dad, who lives with me since my mom died, waves at me because he knows not to talk to me unless I talk first.

Um, 23 and Me? You need to rethink which genes you're looking at. Me? Wake up at 7:30 in the morning? Voluntarily? It'll never happen.

Seven More Minutes

Researchers say that to avoid sleep inertia, we should pop right out of bed when the alarm goes off, turn on lights, and get moving. Um, no. I'm not going to do that.

I set my alarm clock about 45 minutes before I really have to get out of bed and then I hit the snooze until I can't do it one more time without being late. I like this time in bed to acclimate to the idea of getting up. On mornings where I accidentally turn my alarm off (oops!) and the backup alarm wakes me, I'm cranky and discombobulated all day.

Now granted, that could be because the backup alarm is a hugely annoying beep as opposed to my regular alarm which wakes me up to music. It might also be because if the backup alarm is going off, I've overslept and that can throw the whole day out of whack, but I don't think so.

Even on the weekends when I sleep as late as I want (another no-no according to researchers), I still don't pop right out of bed when I wake up. I'll stay snuggled under the blankets for another half an hour or so before I decided to actually start the day. I enjoy this time in bed. Seriously, more than enjoy it, I love it.

So no matter what science says, I'm not giving up my seven minutes of sleep that the snooze function on my alarm clock gives me. I say it's easier for me to wake up this way and I'm sticking to it.

The Fall Sleepies

It happens every fall. I call it the Fall Sleepies because once it hits, all I want to do is sleep. And after taking an informal poll at work, it seems a lot of people are experiencing this right now.

It's really not fun. I'm ready to go to bed at 7pm, and if by some miracle I actually go to sleep at that time, I still wake up tired the next morning. It always lasts two or three weeks, but while I'm in this mode, nothing gets accomplished. Cleaning house? Nope. I have mail stacked up on my center island and I try not to do that. Updating the website? No, don't feel like doing that. Answering email? Even that is too much work.

If it were up to me, I'd hibernate until this passed. No work, no writing, no internet--nothing but sleep and veg out, sleep and veg out. Of course, it's not possible. I do have the day job, writing, parents, etc that need my attention. What I do when I hit this stretch is go into triage state and handle what can't wait. Everything else sits.

Of course, when the Fall Sleepies pass sometime in the next week or two, I will be hopelessly behind and exhaust myself trying to get caught up, but there's nothing I can do about that. When this hits, it hits hard and there is no surmounting it.

Also, I'll be part of the Raven Scavenger Hunt starting in October! More info coming soon.

Super Sloth Saturday

I used to belong to a meditation group and one of the women who was in it used to do something she called Sloth Day every now and then. She said her kids hated it because she wouldn't cook or do anything else. All she'd do was sit and read. She wouldn't even take a shower. This woman didn't do it often, maybe a couple of times a year, but I always thought it sounded like a fabulous idea. This weekend, I adopted it myself--Saturday was Super Sloth Saturday.

I slept late, messed around on email and the computer, and at noon, I went back to bed for a three hour nap. It was totally fabulous! I did shower, however. (I can't stand not having a shower.) And I also did laundry and finished loading all my rock CDs onto the computer so that I can download them on the iPod, but that was the extent of my productivity. The rest of the day was spent playing games (I love hidden object computer games) and playing online.

What I should have done, of course, was answer the dozens of emails that I owe people. I'm feeling hugely overwhelmed by all of them, maybe that's why it's easier to do none of them. If you're one of the people I owe an email to, hang in there. I'll get to it. Some day. Sorry.

Today wasn't meant to be a second sloth day, but it kind of ended up that way. I had credits at one of those online royalty-free photo sites that expire tomorrow and I couldn't just let them disappear. The problem was that I don't need any pictures right now and I ended up spending most of the day going through the site, looking for pictures that I might be able to use at some point in the future. I never realized how much time that was going to suck away. Right up until 5pm, I thought it would only take a little while, not six hours. Now I'm feeling totally guilty for wasting the entire weekend. Saturday was a planned sloth day, Sunday most definitely wasn't.

To close out the post, I did go outside and check on my flowers yesterday. A new lily is in bloom. This is supposed to be yellow, but the pictures in the catalog were much darker than what actually grew in my garden. Neither shot is great because of the position of the flower relative to the chicken wire fencing it in, but I have another yellow lily coming in, and when that blooms, I should have some better shots.

Sleepy

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

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

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

I have to run--like 5 minutes ago.

Hall Monitor

I know most people who visit the blog don't comment, but for those that do, you'll notice that I've switched comments to moderated status. Some spammer has apparently figured out a way around the verification system that keeps them from posting crap. I happened to be online the two times the spam comments were made and deleted them quickly, but
that might not always be the case. I thought about turning off anonymous comments to foil them, but I didn't want to force anyone to register with Blogger who didn't want to do that. So best I could come up with was to moderate what gets posted. With a little luck, the Blogger experts will come up with a brilliant idea to solve this and I can turn moderation off again.

I managed to squeeze in reading most of In the Midnight Hour. I always like to read my books when they come out because usually by this point, it's like someone else wrote it. :-) Found a couple of things that made me nuts. Like the missing word. Sigh. I read the galleys twice, my mom read the galleys twice, and a proofreader for the publisher read through them and none of us saw that. I checked my copy to see if it has somehow magically disappeared between galley and book, but no. We just all missed it.

Then there's the thing that's making me nuts every time I think about it. In a scene in chapter 5, I talk about the heroine using "keyless entry" to get in her SUV. In the book, it's "keys entry." WTF? So I looked that up in my copy of the galley, too, thinking there was no way I'd miss that, and I was right, it was keyless entry in there, so who the heck changed it? Now the sentence makes no sense whatsoever. Argh!

Despite having no sleep for 4 nights, I still couldn't fall asleep last night. That's so frustrating! As soon as I tried to go to bed, though, my brain started whirling and for some reason, it suddenly became imperative that I know the first name of this character that's hanging out in my head. I got up three different times to search through the baby name books. I still don't have his given name, but I did finally fall asleep. I think it was self-defense. :-)

I would have liked to lounge in bed longer, but today is my local chapter meeting and I like going to those when I don't have a book due. The speaker today is Echo Bodine who's a psychic, ghostbuster and healer. I took a psychic development class from her a while back and she's a really interesting speaker. Plus, I think this idea that involves the hero with no first name is going to have psychic stuff going on so a refresher wouldn't hurt. I suppose I better round up a pen and a pad of paper before I go.

Garden Space

It's official--I have insomnia. Sigh. Four nights with little sleep. I think it took me this long to figure out because I've had nothing to really worry over for most of the week. Don't know what's up with that. I'm having a second cup of coffee--for the second day in a row--or I won't be able to keep my eyes open.

Yesterday, I ordered my weeder that my mom found in a catalog. I did a search online and found a TV station in Utah had done a test of it and said it performed well, so that gave it the green light for me. :-) The search also turned up a company that was selling it for $6 less than the company that had the catalog my mom saw, so I got it for $8.50. Of course, that's not all I got. They had this duster system for people who have vaulted ceilings and I've been planning to get one of those since I moved into my house. I also picked up a cover for my air conditioner. I figure anything that keeps the snow and debris out has to be a good thing for my purse in the long run.

The other thing I did yesterday was have a strategy session with my parents about how to lay out all the flowers for my garden. I finally added them up, and while I didn't order that many types of flowers--certainly not the amount I wanted to order--I somehow ended up with 104 bulbs. Gah! I ordered the smallest amount available for each type of flower, too.

I've been thinking about adding a flower bed with decorative stone around it to the front yard in a year or two, but I wasn't planning on doing it now. I might stuck, though, whether I like it or not. I don't know what else I'm going to do and I'd like to order more in the spring. :-(

How do I get myself into these situations?

Last Call

Sorry, I'm really, really, really late posting today. Overslept (again) by a longer margin and have been swamped at the Evil Day Job (EDJ) today. I was even busy during lunch today with promotional stuff for IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR.

I hope y'all had a good Fourth of July! My parents came over and we were going to have brats on the deck. The weather people on multiple stations all promised that the holiday would be rain-free and we might as well enjoy the nice evening, right?

I cleaned a little (the house needed it!) and got all my revision stuff and notes off the center island and my table. It looked so nice. I'm a total neat freak and hate clutter around me, but when I'm writing or revising, I like my notes handy which usually means piles on the center island and/or the kitchen table. I was very much admiring the clean and now-shining surfaces that I hadn't seen in so long. ;-)

So my parents showed up around 5pm and the sun was shining. As we're talking, the sky grew darker, and in less than ten minutes after they arrived, it was pouring! I mean coming down in buckets! So much for the weather guys.

We ended up doing our Fourth of July cookout in my kitchen and ate at my newly cleaned table. Good thing I put everything away, huh?

I kept telling everyone that when I finished this last book, I was having a drink. I rarely drink anything alcoholic--the last time was at RWA in Atlanta--and this is a big event for me. :-) My dad made me a drink called a melonball (Midori, vodka and OJ, I think) and I told him light on the Midori and vodka. He followed instructions, there was very small amounts of alcohol in there, but it still made me really, really sleepy. :-) Yep, I'm a total lightweight when it comes to drinking.

I was in bed before 9pm and didn't want to get up this morning. Either I need to drink more so that I get more accustomed to liquor or I need to have my yearly drink on a Friday or Saturday night. LOL! It's truly sad and pathetic.

Endurance Test

If you're wondering why I haven't blogged the last couple of days, it's because I overslept and didn't have time. Usually when that happens, I post something later in the day--usually from the EDJ--but I didn't do that this time, mainly because I can't think of anything interesting to say. I know what you're thinking--that's never stopped me before. :-) Ah, well, there's a first time for everything.

Anyway, I'm stressed, exhausted, and I want this book done so bad, I almost whimper at the thought of still having to work on it. I want to plant the flowers that are sitting on my kitchen counter. I want to buy a coffee table and a few other missing pieces of furniture. I want to sit out on my deck and read books. I want to actually sleep more than 4 or 5 hours a night. Sigh.

My super cool bookmarks came for In the Midnight Hour. If you'd like one (or more!), send an SASE to me at:

PO Box 1365
Minnetonka, MN 55345

And after I turn the WIP in, I'll send your envelope off. I also have bookmarks for Ravyn's Flight, The Power of Two, Through a Crimson Veil, and Eternal Nights so feel free to ask for the entire collection. A regular size envelope works just fine, so you don't need anything oversized.

I think that's it.

Power Nap: Thumbs Down

When I was writing The Power of Two, I used to take these twenty minute power naps. They were enough to refresh my brain, but not so long that I ended up feeling groggy when I got up. This seemed like a good solution for me yesterday. I'd do a power nap, wake up refreshed, get a lot of work done, and then be able to sleep that night. Sounded like a good plan.

I left my blinds open so it wouldn't be dark. I didn't turn my air cleaner on because I'm used to sleeping with that running. Twenty minutes, I told my subconscious/higher self/unconscious.

An hour and fifteen minutes later....

I finally woke up. I was groggy and had a hard time focusing my thoughts. I was also pretty awake at 10pm, but I had to try to go to bed because I get up at 4am. I'm not sure how long I tossed and turned last night, but it was a while, and this time, I didn't get any brilliant ideas for the WIP. :-(

So I'm tired. Again. I overslept. Again. I'll have to answer comments later because I'm pushing right now and I'm moving at about quarter speed--both mentally and physically.

On a slightly more interesting note, I found a blog where my books and writing are liked! I swear I didn't search my name. I don't do that anymore. I was hesitant about checking it out because if people don't like my books, I'm much happier not knowing. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because she reviewed Shards of Crimson and had some interesting observations. The one that caught me had to do with Kimi's age.

My original plan was to write Kimi when she was older, like done with college and out in the world for a couple of years, but I couldn't because it's part of the series and we had to stick closer to that time frame. Because I was stuck with Kimi being 19 in Through a Crimson Veil, the most I could age her was to 20. I think she grew up a lot during the course of the book, but she was young enough that she was still learning who she was. That made things dicey for me because Nic was much older (he's a demon and long lived) and I didn't want her molded by him. Does that make sense? I was hoping that by the end of the story, that the reader had a sense that she'd grown up enough and had developed enough confidence in herself, to hold her own with Nic.

But I do wonder what she would have been like and what the story would have been like if I'd written her when she was older. I write by listening to the characters, so her age would have changed everything.

Action!

I love the vernal equinox. From here on out, the days keep getting longer and I love that. When I was younger, one of my friends told me that at the moment of equinox--7:07 last night to be exact--you can make an egg stand up and stay up. I tried it and it worked. Of course, I did it on berber (sp?) carpeting so maybe the ridges helped it stand, but it was still really cool. I didn't do this last night, but I thought about it.

This morning I woke up thinking about starting a book with action. I've read a lot of contest entries over the years that have begun that way and I can't think of one that worked. Quite frankly, I didn't care what happened to the characters because I didn't know them. This morning, though, I thought about how In the Midnight Hour starts with action. I don't know if this was something that was working it's way through my subconscious or what the deal was because it wasn't anything I was actively worrying over, but I had an answer when I woke up: I don't start immediately with action.

Yeah, the first chapter has a fight scene, but I think I begin it early enough that the reader gets to know a little bit about my heroine and there's some interaction with another character before Ryne confronts her assignment. The first chapter contains a lot of world building and a lot of characterization, but it's done through action and not an info dump, so that's why I think it works.

Sometimes it amazes me what's going on in my head--especially the stuff I don't know about. ;-)

Is anyone else really tired still? I don't know if I'm still adjusting to the time change or what, but I'm still exhausted. I couldn't get out of bed this morning and now I'm typing this entry as fast as I can because I have to get ready for work in a minute. I just couldn't move. I hit the snooze as many times as I could and still laid there, not wanting to move. It's been this way all week and I'm getting tired of being tired. :-)

Transitions After Dark

I don't know whether to be frustrated or elated. One of the things that has been happening in the last week with the Book From Hell (TBFH) is that I'll hit a point writing that gives me trouble when the computer is on, but as soon as I boot down, I figure out how to solve the snag I've run into. I've tried writing the book itself longhand partially because of this, but once I get going, I find it limiting and frustrating. I'm much faster on the keyboard than I am with a pen and the delay frustrates me because my brain is revving the engine, waiting and waiting to move on. It also starts picking at what I'm still trying to write and I get a lot of scratch outs.

It happened again last night, the solving of a snag after turning off the computer. I'd struggled to make the turn in the scene I'm writing, but the transitions were just not working at all. Okay, I decided, if I can't transition, I'll just do a paragraph sum up kind of thing and go on. So I did and then it was late enough that I logged off to go to sleep. But as I was fixing the bed, I got it. The answer to the transition.

My laptop is over two years old now; it doesn't boot up fast. Or boot down fast for that matter. Turning it back on to write this new stuff seemed cumbersome when I wanted to sleep. Instead, I ran for a notebook and scribbled down the dialogue. I have it on paper now and it isn't a huge amount so it won't be a PITA to type into the file, and then I can adjust it.

I'm glad this happened, though, because with the transitional stuff, I can show a little something with my hero that calls into question whether or not he's using black magic.

My poor heroine is not having a good day.

I guess I'll take the answers however I can get them, but I'd rather see them while I'm actually working on the computer. Much faster and less frustrating. The other thing that I find interesting is that Maia and Creed like to work later at night too. I ran into this with my demon children, but they had the excuse of being nocturnal. I don't know what's up with this h/h because they don't have that reason.

Edits Are Done!

Edits are done! Hurrah! And all bundled up and ready to go to Fed Ex on lunch today. I was right, I ran out of time to do a spreadsheet, darn it. You know, it's funny. One of my engineers (or I guess I should say one of my former engineers since she's in a different department now) is getting married in the fall and she's using spreadsheets. I've been giving her crap about that, but I suddenly went, Oops! Guess I like my spreadsheets too. Of course, I'm not going to tell her that, and I'll keep teasing her, because that's what I do with engineers. :-)

Since I didn't have time to type up everything the way I wanted, I settled for hitting the highlights. I marked some of them with post-it notes, and if it was something that I disagreed with the copy editor about, I did a quick table in my word processing program and answered the query, explaining why I didn't make any changes. Like when the query for page 88 or something like that said, "tell us earlier how long he's been trapped." I replied, it says on page 53 and quoted it. There wasn't too much. I mostly just went okay and fixed it. :-)

Unfortunately, I didn't finish until after 9pm, and as I was making a last email check, I hear this really loud bang out on my deck. Of course, I immediately became wide awake and try to decide which phone to make a run for if someone is trying to break in. And I remind myself, make sure to unplug the phone cord from the laptop to disconnect before you run. There was no other noise and I finally worked up enough courage to flip on the outside light and actually check it out. Nothing.

I wasn't quite brave enough, though, to check out the basement, and when I went to bed, I was pretty tense, thinking a criminal was lying in wait for me to sleep, then he'd spring. Yes, writers have overactive imaginations. It helps when we're telling our stories, but it absolutely makes real life an adventure at times--even if it's only in our own minds. :-) Anyway, I'm darn tired today after 3 nights without enough sleep and no matter what, I'm going to bed early tonight.

I had some horrible news in email this morning--my Waldenbooks store is closing! NO!!!! This store has always been fabulous, not only to me as an author, but as a book buyer too. I can't believe they're closing this store again. They closed them once before back in the mid-90s and then reopened them again. Which means the only two bookstores I have in my area now are a huge Borders and a huge Barnes & Noble. I like my smaller Waldenbooks so much more. If you have a favorite bookstore, a place where people know your name when you come in, imagine them closing it. I'm heartbroken.