Category: The Blog

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Sundries

Re: book chat with Cindy — I noticed she hasn’t posted her portion yet.  When she does, I’ll provide the link.

The writing is slow going.  Couple of hundred words here and there.  Why, yes, I am in another nagging scene.  How did you know?  (Because they always slow me down.  I might have to skip this one and get my momentum going again.)

We drove down to Joplin today to visit My Beloved Sis and take her some frozen meat our dad, Papa from Mexico, had brought her on Thanksgiving, which she forgot.  Papa was supposed to come babysit the monsters while we celebrated our wedding anniversary early by eating at my favorite restaurant, Mythos, but Papa has pneumonia!  Not so bad that he needed to be hospitalized, but we definitely didn’t want him driving down here and exhausting himself trying to keep Middle Monster from setting something on fire.

So we changed things around a little and decided to drive down later and see the light display in Carthage.  Aunt BB and Uncle J happened to call while we were on the way, and they decided to follow us.  We visited with Molly awhile and then we all met up at Grand Fortuna, a delicious Chinese buffet.  We also drove around town, showed the monsters our first apartment That Man and I had together, as well as the Missouri Southern campus where I graduated.

A trip to Joplin would not be complete without a stop by Books A Million (we don’t have one here).  Remind me never to take the monsters in there again.  Every book they wanted was ridiculously pricy.  As much as it pained me, I had to deny them a book there, and promised their choice at a more reasonably priced store.  I was able to find book 2 and 3 of Brent Weeks’ fantasy assassin series.  I made the mistake of beginning book 1 the other day and it’s really good.  (I’m not supposed to read anything until I finish Return.)

Once Return is done, stand back, I’ll fall on that entire series like a starving pack of wolves.

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Elf Yourself

Do you know why I write like a maniac?  Because if I don’t keep these characters busy, this is what it’s like in my head.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

This one is Rhaekhar (Kevin Sorbo), Gregar (not a very good picture of Adrian Paul), Hades (Jason Isaacs), Ruin (The Rock), and Conn (Clive Owen).

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

This one has a little better pictures of Gregar and Rhaekhar, with Christian Bale (yet to be written Given In Fire novella), Charon (Vin Diesel), and Conn (Clive Owen). This one about made me wet my pants I laughed so hard. 

Huge thanks to Dixie Bell for the link!

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Little Did She Know

…that my head would implode!!!

I saw something yesterday in an online book excerpt (that shall remain nameless) that set my teeth on edge and it’s still bugging me, so I decided to blog about it and share my irritation with you.  Maybe I’ll feel better once I get it off my chest.

<rant>

As a reader, I despise being tricked or lied to. 

Don’t spring a suprise in the final pages that the protagonist supposedly knew all along but kept secret from the reader.  POV characters cannot keep secrets!  Not if the author is writing in deep POV.  It’s impossible.  That particular book was made even worse because the POV was first person, and I was still supposed to believe that little “secret?”  Nope.  Sorry.  It doesn’t work, and I refuse to read that author to this date.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Sixth Sense.  I loved going back to watch the whole movie and seeing all the little clues.  If you do that as an author and give me those little clues to track and decipher, then I’m one happy camper.  I love tracking the trail of bread crumbs.  (Don’t ask me how many Robert Jordan books I read trying to figure out which sister in the Tower was actually one of the Forsaken.  Don’t even get me started about Jon Snow in George R.R. Martin’s series, because if he’s only yanking my chain, I’m going to be really pissed.)

I don’t want you to tell me the heroine is sooooo smart, only to watch her stumble around in the snowy woods with no coat in the middle of the night without so much as a flashlight even though she knows a serial killer is stalking her, all because she heard a noise.  Surely we’ve learned that lesson from Scary Movie 1, 2, …10…haven’t we?  At least in those movies it was FUNNY and not irritating.

My latest peeve:  I despise being treated like I’m stupid.  The biggest slam to a reader’s intelligence is the “little did she know” trick.  Like I’m too stupid to figure out delicate foreshadowing, so I must be clubbed over the head with “little did she know, but the man she was kissing would kill her before dawn.”  Or “she had absolutely no idea that he was a serial killer.”

If she doesn’t know, how can the reader know if the author is handling POV appropriately?  This is author intrusion and I can. not. stand it.  It absolutely drives me bat-shit crazy, even worse than blatant head hopping.

Give me the unease souring her stomach, the chill clawing down her spine, the hair crawling on her nape, something, but don’t give me “little did she know that danger approached.”

</rant>

Nope, I’m still irritated.  Needless to say, I won’t be buying that book.  (At least it was only an excerpt–think how furious I’d be if I had actually PAID to be irritated!)

What’s one of your reader peeves?

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Happy Thanksgiving

…to everyone in the United States!  Something That Man got via e-mail today:

 

I AM THANKFUL:

FOR THE WIFE
WHO SAYS IT’S HOT DOGS TONIGHT,
BECAUSE SHE IS HOME WITH ME,
AND NOT OUT WITH SOMEONE ELSE.

FOR THE HUSBAND
WHO IS ON THE SOFA
BEING A COUCH POTATO,
BECAUSE HE IS HOME WITH ME
AND NOT OUT AT THE BARS.

FOR THE TEENAGER
WHO IS COMPLAINING ABOUT DOING DISHES
BECAUSE IT MEANS SHE IS AT HOME,
NOT ON THE STREETS.

FOR THE TAXES I PAY
BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM EMPLOYED .

FOR THE MESS TO CLEAN AFTER A PARTY
BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE BEEN SURROUNDED BY FRIENDS.

FOR THE CLOTHES THAT FIT A LITTLE TOO SNUG
BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE ENOUGH TO EAT.

FOR ALL THE COMPLAINING
I HEAR ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT
BECAUSE IT MEANS WE HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

FOR MY HUGE HEATING BILL
BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM WARM.

FOR THE LADY BEHIND ME IN CHURCH
WHO SINGS OFF KEY
BECAUSE IT MEANS I CAN HEAR.

FOR THE PILE OF LAUNDRY AND IRONING
BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE CLOTHES TO WEAR.

FOR WEARINESS AND ACHING MUSCLES
AT THE END OF THE DAY
BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE BEEN CAPABLE OF WORKING HARD.

FOR THE ALARM THAT GOES OFF
IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS
BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM ALIVE.

AND I AM THANKFUL:
FOR THE crazy people I work (and blog) with
BECAUSE they make work interesting and fun!

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Thanksgiving Prep

My to-do list today is insane.

  • get the monsters to school
  • run by the bank
  • take the dog to the groomer’s
  • run by Wal-Mart for thyme and a few decorative items
  • unload and reload dishwasher
  • throw a load of sheets in the washer
  • change the filter in the heater
  • make pie crust for 2 pies:  while making the crust, I realized I’d bought Eagle Brand (sweetened condensed milk) instead of Carnation (evaporated milk), so add:
  • trip to the store to buy Carnation evaporated milk
  • pick up the dog from the groomer’s
  • pick up the monsters (early dismissal)
  • continue making the pumpkin filling and bake the pies
  • get Flarp out of Middle Monster’s hair
  • wash Middle Monster’s hair to get out the rest
  • referee my monsters and their two friends from school
  • keep starving kids from eating each other as snacks
  • throw sheets in the dryer
  • peel 10 pounds of potatoes for Granny’s “heavy potatoes” including sour cream and real butter to be twice baked tomorrow
  • dice celery, onion and saute for stuffing
  • dice 13 cups of bread for stuffing
  • make fudge
  • make 2 loaves of chocolate Amish Friendship bread
  • what’s for dinner again? (chinese takeout)
  • make second kind of stuffing (cornbread)
  • bake ham for the turkey haters
  • strip our bed and wash another load of sheets
  • fold 2 loads of laundry from last night (Princess Monster helped!)
  • clean dorm-sized fridge in garage for overflow (That Man did this for me)
  • WRITE!
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NaNo Catch Up

We’re hosting Thanksgiving this year.  Last count was 14 guests.  We just moved here in July.  The kitchen is the size of a matchbox and we still can’t park the van in the garage.

Needless to say, we’ve been a little busy this weekend trying to whip things into shape.  We found some inexpensive put together storage cabinets that are helping my kitchen situation.  The monsters found the carpet in their playroom.  I emptied the refrigerator yesterday and cleaned it.  Now it’s almost ready to be stuffed with thawing turkey and all the other goodies I need to pick up this week.

I’m so thankful that I already hit 50K for the month, because even though I have this next week off (except possibly Friday), I’m going to be busier than a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest.  Which only reminds me of a different kind of arse contest from Road to Shanhasson.   *falls over laughing*

I have touched Return both Friday and yesterday.  I’m still in the dream sequence.  I think I’ve made 500 words in two days.  But I’m hoping to finish this section today while football is on.  (Football implies holiday from cleaning the garage as far as That Man is concerned.)  I still need to make another trip to Wal-Mart for drip pans for the stove, and then clean it; I need to pick up all the school and meal essential food items for us; and then make a master Thanksgiving grocery list that I won’t pick up until Monday, Tuesday at the latest.  I also need to write out a schedule for preparing as much ahead as possible, leaving only the turkey for Thursday and reheating the other items.

But someway, somehow, I will write today.

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Buy a Book, Save the World (and Borders)

Thanks to Moonrat, Alison Kent, and Jennifer Jackson, I, too, was inspired to do my part to save publishing.  I took my quest to troubled Borders.  Without my 20% off coupon.  (Although I did claim my reward points.)

And yes, I nearly had withdrawal-symptom convulsions as I passed Swallowing Darkness by LKH in hardcover.  She’s my crack and I’m a junkie, I admit it, no matter how irritated I end up with Anita Blake.  But I figured she’d probably made plenty of money off me already and chose to spend my precious quest dollars more wisely.  No more LKH hardcovers!!!  I can wait for paperback.  *wipes sweaty brow and tries to ignore shaking hands*

As a result, I came home with:

Red by Jordan Summers (can’t say I like the red-edged pages but I’m looking forward to a new Red Riding Hood!)

Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman (loved the Coldfire Trilogy)

The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks (hmm, no idea why an assassin protagonist would appeal to me) :mrgreen:

How about you?

Depressing side note:  I don’t know if it was my imagination or not, but the front tables at Borders seemed especially light.  In the past, I’ve struggled to find “new” fiction because they had books stacked so deeply, even beneath the tables on the floor.  Today, I could see the color of wood beneath the books.  I also noted that they reshuffled how they stocked romance.  They used to keep all the trade (mostly erotic) and hardcover “segregated” by itself.  Now it’s all mixed together with normal romance, which I think makes better sense (although it bothered my need for symmetry to see the mix of book heights all jumbled together on the shelves). 

The only books stacked on the floor were…more copies of Swallowing Darkness!  Gah.  But I restrained myself and bought 3 books instead of 1 as a result.

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RX Day 22, 23

I’ve made it semi-dark and early two days in a row but I don’t have a lot to report.  I’m editing previously written sections and smoothing old and new together.  Night Sun Rising is up to 106 pages and I’m getting ready to decide what section kicks off Chapter 6.

We’ve had another scare with Middle Monster.  She threw up in her bed again the other night, but didn’t wake up.  No one knew she’d thrown up.  Of course, immediately I envisioned her choking to death in her sleep.  We bought a baby monitor (our old one was sold in a yard sale years ago) last night, but it picked up every little sound with tons of static, and the bunk beds are really, really squeaky.  At 1 AM, That Man finally turned the damned thing off so we could sleep.  I checked her as soon as I got up this morning and all is well.  We’ll have to tinker with the channel and placement of the monitor so it’s not quite so annoying, yet can still protect her if she does get sick again.

The Evil Day Job is really ramping up this week.  I’ve got a project to turn over for testing by the end of this week and more demands on an even larger one that have waited while I get this other one done, and a little project that has delicate timing moving into production on Monday.  Oh, and I’m out two days next week, which throws a monkey wrench into everything.  It’s amazing, I still have to get my work done even if I’m not in the office.  I still have obligations and deadlines, but now even less time to meet them.

And then I wonder why I still have 120+ hours of vacation to use.  :roll:

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The Plague

I thought Middle Monster was mostly better, but she was up at 4:00 a.m. throwing up again, now joined by Princess Monster and That Man.  Of course, it was one of those nights for me where I simply could not get my brain to shut up, where I wasn’t even sure I ever fell asleep (I know I did, but I was awake every 20-30 minutes).

Needless to say, it was a hot tea morning Dark & Early instead of coffee.  I don’t think the plague is getting to me, rather just a long sleepless night.

I didn’t title this “Revision Xibalba” even though I was up writing, because I didn’t work on the Mayan story.  I finally got a bit of an idea for a short story set in the Beautiful Death Mythomorphoses world.  Well, short story may be stretching the truth a bit.  It’s a “scene” at least.  I have characters and I know their goals.  Whether it makes a satisfying short story, or morphs into something else entirely, I don’t know yet. 

I also began plotting (loosely) the beginning of Return to Shanhasson for NaNoWriMo.  Although I began second guessing myself and wondering if I should try to write Charon’s story instead.  I *know* Return very well, except for the beginning.  I know only a vague beginning to Charon’s story and nothing after.  So Return will definitely be easiest to write fast.  I do need to get the next book done in the other world, though, or Sis is going to hunt me down…  (Charon is her favorite character)