Carolyn's Blog

Thursday, June 30, 2005

I sent my fairly solid proposal to my agent, via email. So, here's a slice of life moment: I've set up my email and cell phone so that I get paged when I get an email with certain characteristics. I'm able to read the first 100 characters on the phone. (I'm neurotic.) Emails from my agent page my cell phone. So, I am working on the laptop in a remote location w/o internet access. Phone pages me. An email from my agent. The 1st 100 characters are I read it, but then printed it out bc I'm a print person and I want to think on it for a day or two. Looks

No internet access. Now I am staring at chapter 4 of the story thinking, well, maybe I should just stop working on this because obviously the part that comes after "Looks" is something along the lines of, "You're crazy if you think I can sell this." So, when I got to my email account, that's not what followed. There were nice words but I'm still freaking.

Liz's Crimson City is in the No. 7 spot on the Waldenbook best sellers. So, check out her book. Woo!! And check out the Crimson City blog It's pretty cool. Tiber posted today. =;P

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Saturday, June 25, 2005

Ok, my synopsis is pretty much done, with the exception of a concluding sentence or two. And I have another idea to work up. So that's in good shape. Still in not really a great mood. My son has soccer camp for the next 5 days, from 5 to 8 pm. I don't get that much battery life off the laptop. Camp's at the university, so hopefully the library will be open and I can go sit there for three hours. I'm over-caffeinated, not necessarily a bad thing, except it's 11:14pm. Oh well. I'm going to go work a bit on this new idea thing. Tomorrow, I'm going work on the Sleath draft, start a query letter and maybe write some chapters for the synopsis. Plus sit somewhere for three hours. Crud. I just checked. The univ. library is closed on Sundays and only open until 7pm Mo-Th. Well, I guess I'll find a cafe somewhere. Shoot.

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Thursday, June 23, 2005

I've been working hard on a proposal that's really going well. I may even already be at a point where I need to start writing chapters. CK is editing A Darker Crimson. I'm trying not to think about it. Please don't let me be the weak link. Please don't let me be the weak link. I despise criticism even though when it comes from an experienced editor it's Sigh pretty much on target. Amazon has A Darker Crimson but with no cover. Sigh. There's a totally cool Crimson City blog. You have GOT to check it out. I'm already the weak link. LOL! But I'll fix that.

Mostly, I have been in dark mood. Too much er, stuff, going on.

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Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Tiberiu here. Just a test.

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Friday, June 17, 2005

I read through A Darker Crimson today. I'll be sending my pre-revisions to CK Sunday eve. Found a couple of other things that really had to be fixed and did so. Busy weekend. Son's birthday party (for kids) 2 soccer games Sunday, but I hope that in between I can bang out a completed first draft of the Paranormal proposal, make another pass through the Sleath paper so I can write to my contact in the UK (Are you laughing, Eric?) for more specific citations, and whip the 1st 3-4 chaps of The Rake into proposal shape, then I have to start working on my syllabus for the class I'm teaching in the Fall. Also, I am seriously hooked on military, FBI, CIA etc books (romances I mean) and I'm trying to figure out why. Partly it's because I'm studying for my Security+ exam, and all that InfoSec stuff is in the news a lot because, it seems, none of the companies that handle financial data seem to have hired an InfoSec person, or if they did, they didn't mean it. "What do you mean we need a new router? What's wrong with the old one?" or maybe it goes like this; "Patches? Patches? We don't need no steenking patches." So, anyway, all this cool stuff about military theory, special operations and InfoSec very neatly dovetails in an intellectually challenging manner that will show up in my writing. Will it stay there, who knows?

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Thursday, June 16, 2005

Test

This is just a test of blogging via email. Check out the wiki!

Hey! It worked. I was checking my site statistics and was about to go see who my visitors were, when I remembered how depressing that can be. So I didn't do it. Meanwhile, Lath is meeting his fate. . . Almost. Kind of engaging in avoidance behavior, but Liz's Crimson City is getting great reviews, so I was setting up my website links to those. Now here's the thing. I thought to myself, gee, maybe I shouldn't do that, because what if my reviews suck? Then I'll have to link to those and everyone will see I'm the weak link. Sigh.

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Just about done with the last chapter changes to A Darker Crimson. That's good news. I'm beginning to dread getting the revision letter from Chris K. I got to sleep late this morning. Heaven! And, I've decided to bring my wiki live. What's a wiki? It's a web tool that's designed to be collaborative. Anyone can edit the material in the wiki. When I blogged about 24 hour MS support, I meant Microsoft, but as any writer knows, MS also means manuscript. Thanks to Liz Maverick, I decided to make a wiki out of 24 hour MS Support. I've got the document started. Anyone reading this blog can follow the link and edit the document. Add stuff, edit stuff, whatever. If there were a manuscript help hotline, what would you call about? Add your idea. Honest.

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Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Still recovering from computer ickiness, but I'm functional where I have to be. What a pain. If TV's or phone were this much trouble, heads would be rolling over in manufacturing and marketing. Anyway, I have tomorrow and Friday off and I think I'm about rock solid on the paranormal idea. It's totally cool. I feel like I'm not getting anything done, but I am.

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Tuesday, June 14, 2005

I have recovered from my computer disaster. Mostly. I'm having to reinstall all my apps. But, I've started a few advance revisions for A Darker Crimson and worked out the hook and story-container (for lack of a better word) for another paranormal and I think I've nailed the character changes for The Rake, which is, more or less (more, actually) being massively rewritten. Every now and then I look at my clean(er) closet and am glad to have so much more space for junk.

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Saturday, June 11, 2005

I have had the world's stupidest day. OK, most irritating day. First, I goofed around and cleaned a closet. Then when I was finally going to get some work done, my desktop computer seems to have died on me. I had to reinstall the OS. Well now it wants the product key, which I no longer have. Tip: 24 hour MS support is a lie. So instead of being like a normal person and working off the laptop, which I am now, I have spent the last I won't even say how many hours looking for the Product Key. I found many, many things, most of them useless (I threw them away) none of them the product key. I will deal with this tomorrow, but I'm --censored word -- gosh darned upset. Sigh.. Some days are better off skipped, you know?

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Thursday, June 09, 2005

Weird day. Not in a good mood writing wise. Discouraged and down in the dumps. Sigh.

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Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Today, I worked through a part that I thought was much worse than it actually was. I was soooo tempted to take along a book to read while my son was at soccer practice, but I was strong. I left the book at home so I had no choice but to sit in the back of the car with the laptop. It was good for me. Glad I did. I worked out some good stuff and then came up with a really great idea.

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Monday, June 06, 2005

Confession. I haven't done much actual writing this week. Lots of thinking about my story, interesting things bopping around in my head. I've been reading a lot. I'm on a Susanne Brockmann kick. Love those SEALs! This happened because on SANS a while back there was a summer reading list for Internet Security and some of the books sounded so great, I ordered several of them. Spec Ops, by Bill McRaven is fabulous an analysis of what makes a Military Special Operation succeed or not. My head was suddenly swimming with ideas and after I spent some time dwelling on the implications of his theory for InfoSec (they are fairly huge) the ideas kind of crept over into the writing half of my brain where there are percolating yet.

That got me to thinking that I really, really enjoyed Brockman's Flashpoint, a recent read, and so I ordered a bunch of her back list and am happily reading away. One complaint: I wanted to try to read the rest of the SEAL, Troubleshooters books in order but I could not for the life of me figure out what, exactly, that order would be or which books belonged in what series. Yes, I did visit her website, but I have a brain like a sieve and by the time I got back to Amazon, I couldn't remember which ones, plus although I love Amazon mostly, their search results return so much stuff that's got nothing to do with a targeted book search like "Suzanne Brockmann" that it was actually kind of frustrating. So, Amazon, if you are listening, I did not buy as many books as I might otherwise have bought. Problem.

I will get cracking on The Rake now, though, because I need to nail their characters so I can start writing up a proposal for my paranormal with elements of SpecOp theory in it.

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