Carolyn's Blog

Thursday, September 29, 2005

late night thoughts

So, today is my long day. Work soccer school... The students in the class have turned in some nice work. Some surprises about whose writing would be really strong. Interesting that dialogue, particularly punctuating it, was a weakness for many. So, we talked about making the punctuation work for you (true, it can! Honest) and we talked about how and why you'd want to break up dialogue. Where you decide to interrupt a bit of dialogue subtly emphasizes some of what's said. We played with a couple of sentences and I think they got it. How you do it matters, too. Got to go check the laundry and see if I can get myself wound down enough to sleep. Have been working with the Rake. Pleased. Still need a complete synopsis and don't have it yet.

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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

thinking about stuff

My personal life continues to suck majorly, but I've been thinking happy thoughts about A Darker Crimson. An RT top pick is really great. Now I'm anxious to see the review. So, yay for me, I have been able to breathe and savor the moment. Anyway, I am now stressing about proprosals. They need to go out. The Rake is almost ready. Then, what? Shift or Dark Elf or both? Dunno.

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Tuesday, September 27, 2005

So, okay

All around, a pretty horrible day. Ick. And it's not even over yet.

However, looks like A Darker Crimson got 4 1/2 stars from RT and a top pick, so, that's pretty okay. This is me, dodging another bullet...

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Sunday, September 25, 2005

Home again - writing

Home from the tournament. Weird situation was. . . just really weird. . . unpleasant and scary. OK. Enough of that.

I got about 1/2 an hour of work done on the Rake, but it was quality work. I'm quite pleased. When we came home today, my son and I went to the antique fair and stopped at the bookstore, which means I spent too much money on books. I always do that. But I got some good books. Two of them I have to read for school, so they don't count, right? Then I got The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I heard him interviewed on NPR and he and the book sounded really interesting. But, more important, I heard from other writers that it's good, which is what counts. I also picked up some stuff for my contest.

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Saturday, September 24, 2005

soccer on my mind - getting desperate?

Am at the tournament. At the hotel. Not a lick of writing done and my son wants to play dungeons and dragons, meaning I'm the dungeon master, which is fun, but it's not possible to write and be dm at the same time. Plus, I have a weird thing going on which I guess I won't mention now, involving someone's social strangeness, not mine, for once. Perhaps someone more clueless than I am. Anyway, will try to write some now.

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Friday, September 23, 2005

horrible thought - Great review

Just had a horrible thought which is that it's getting to be the end of September and that means the October issue of RT, which will have reviews for November books, will be out soon. With, presumably, a review of A Darker Crimson in it. Arhg! or maybe that should be Sigh. Ok, I have seen one review of ADC. I've had it in my email for about a week I guess. I don't know why I can't bring myself to say anything about it. See, it's that old, dodged a bullet thing. Sure, that one missed, but I bet the rest will kill me. OK, it's a really good review. Really.

Good Review!

From Romance Reviews Today Review by Sinclair Reid

A DARKER CRIMSON is a fast-paced, attention-grabbing, action-packed hell of ride into the unknown demon world. Claudia is a tough-as-nails cop and a loving mother all rolled into one. She will fight to the death for her daughter without a second thought. Tiber is a vampire with money, power, and ambition. He makes a deal with Jaise behind the leader of the vampire's back, and it seems it might not have been a good choice. Especially when Claudia and her young daughter, Holly, are brought into the picture. Tiber's developing feelings for Claudia throw a monkey wrench into the mix as he's not sure what to do about them. Of course, every time Claudia calls him "Fang" or a monster, then it becomes crystal clear...steer clear of Claudia. The chemistry between Tiber and Claudia is intense, emotional, and simmers just beneath the surface, adding another level to the dangerous situation they are in. Another ingredient added into the turbulent mixture is Lath, the Bak-Faru demon who happens to be Claudia's vishtau mate. He wants nothing to do with Claudia, but the connection of the vishtau soon captures them in its grip and neither can fight it.

Ok. I'll go post this on my website,

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have laptop will travel - tales from a writing soccer mom

My son has a soccer tournament this weekend. Games on Saturday and Sunday in a town about 60 miles from here. Keep in mind this is Northern California and I'll be heading South. Into traffic hell. It'll be a weekend so maybe not as bad as it could be. Found an inexpensive hotel. We'll spend the night.

Had class last night, so I wasn't home long enough to do much of anything. Still reading Milton. Got micro-work done, which is better than none. Will try and get some done tonight.

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Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Why Exercise is Good For You

There I was at the gym, earlier than usual because I had an appt and I'm tired of having my gym time sacrificed. Well, who should be there but the man I like to think of as my personal cover model. Alas, not my in-person personal cover model (although we have said hello from time to time, somehow "Hello. Will you be my personal cover?" is beyond my ability to utter.) He's an electrician and I wish I had the nerve to ask him why he's an electrician when he could be a model. I have seen his abs (only through his shirt, but it was tight and white and thin, but not a showing off kind of shirt, but a this shirt was on top shirt.) He's ripped, but it looks like it comes from being an electrician not going to the gym. If I see him again, like apparently, if I change my gym time, maybe I'll lose my mind and ask him that. Ok, anyway, that's not even the exercise is good for you thing, although,come to think of it, that is one reason. A n y h o o....

There I was, drooling and reading Milton's Paradise Lost. Satan was listening to his chief minions talk about what to do to get back at God now that they're stuck in Hell and bam! Fabulous idea for my Dark Elf. And, no, it does not involve an electrician-cover model elf, although, he's my elf exactly. Honest. Pose him with a strategically placed broadsword and instant-elf. Hmm. I seem to be distracted. So, anyway, that's why exercise is good for you. Seeing your elf at the gym. I mean, um, having a great story idea for a WIP.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2005

more shocking details

Worked on The Rake again. Did some really good work. Plus, had a most excellent idea about a subplot. Big relief.

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Monday, September 19, 2005

shiver me timbers, laddie!

Hoist them mainsails! [Piercing whistle] Hard a lee, ya flamin' son o bilgewater. You be walking the plank if you don't hand o'er the map. Bring the Lass here. Avast there! Cut line. Ohh-arggh. [Sqawking parrot: Pieces of Eight Pieces of Eight] Send the gunner to the -- Fire! [Sound of cannon shot]

A hit, cap'n!

Arghh! I kin see it's a hit you lily livered maggot. First mate! Show our colors to the frigate. Ahoy there!

I just now remembered today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day and I wanted to do my part. I feel much better.

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shocking details

Today I got some good work done on The Rake. Do not fall down in amazement. Tomorrow I drop it off for additional comment at school. Continuing to work on the synopsis. The Tonkinese (cat) is in devil mode. Must go rescue things that shatter when they hit the floor.... Too late. Crud.

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Saturday, September 17, 2005

More on Heros and Time Wasting

I got my replacement curtain and now my curtains are totally cool. Soccer this morning. Worked on a Crimson City article which I better go back and look at, it's due tomorrow. Failed miserably to make a decent graphic for the possible website redesign. And I put up a webpage called Hero Material. Vote for your favorite or nominate someone else. Now is that world class writing procrastination or what? Guess who my favorite is. No really, try and guess.

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Thursday, September 15, 2005

another clever title here

Things going OK I guess. I surfed a bit, just now, while in search of winding down from teaching tonight. Sigh. Now I'm all despressed about what other writers are doing. Should never have looked. Bed now.

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Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Hero Material - You Be the Judge

There's a really amusing and interesting thread going on at the Beau Monde loop. Favorite Hunky Actors. Some of the favorites:

Sean Bean
Ioan Gruffudd
Adrian Paul
Johhny Depp
Sean Connery
Alan Rickman
Hugh Jackman
Viggo Mortenson
Timothy Dalton
Gym elf man (see post of 9/21/2005)

Hmm. Anyone else who should be added? I know at least one of the names is an ick for me. Some I kind of shrug my shoulders at. I added one of my own. Couple of interesting ones missing. . .

How about a sick one?
Lortz, the Uruk-Hai from Lord of The Rings.... You know the big one with the white hand on his face.

Got more good feedback on The Rake. Very good. I think I need to think about it a day or two then get to work. I got a lot done on Dark Elf yesterday in the car and then later at home. I think I'll work on that while The Rake percolates a wee bit.

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Tuesday, September 13, 2005

stupid web tricks

So, I think I'm going to go to the Dorchester Website and click on the link to A Darker Crimson about a bazillion times because that will make it look like I'm really popular... Right? They have the first chapter posted. Go visit. Make it look like there's a lot of interest in the book.

Interesting that they do their site in Cold Fusion. I've never heard that CF scales well.

I googled my name (another stupid web trick) but I didn't click on any of the links. There weren't any to A Darker Crimson yet. Argh! Sometimes it's a slow descent to insanity and other times, wham. You're just there. How is it for you?

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going like gangbusters . . . not

So, I slept in and all that. Still tired. I did some championship futzing, I'm telling you, world class. I have new curtains in my room and hey, they look really great . . . Well, I stupidly assumed that whoever hung the previous curtains got everything lined up right, so I used the same holes. They didn't and the rod is a bit crooked. But I have to work and am not going to fix it right now. I may need to procrastinate later and it'd be nice to have a ready-made really important project. Also one of the curtain packages was mismarked and it's too short, but since I went to a discount place, no returns. Can't really tell much because it's by my bed, but I'll have to replace that one. Darn.

Got to pick up my son in about an hour. He has a 2 hour soccer practice today, so I should get a lot done in the back of the car. No internet access there. I'll have to work.

In a side note, I am freaking again about A Darker Crimson reviews. I make myself crazy. But, how come my Amazon ranking is going from 40,000 to 129,000? No more pre-orders? Liz, Majorie and Patti all have good solid fantastic rankings, how come mine is 6 digits? I don't think PW is reviewing me, or else they did and no one at Dorch wants to break the bad news to me. It's a good thing my curtains look so great.

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Monday, September 12, 2005

I just never learn

Today was the first of two days off work. I am so freaking tired from last week, I think I need a week to really catch up. I slept till 8:00am. I futzed around, jumped up and down several times to do critically important stuff like get cobwebs off the ceiling, read the paper a bit, clean off the counter, you know, important stuff.

Checked email incessantly. There was an interesting couple of threads going on on the Dorch author loop - had to participate in that, right? Tying up loose ends on the HHRW sex scenes class. Looked at the new short and deleted everything I wrote last night. Note to self. When you are writing and hoping it's going to get interesting or start working pretty soon, that's a clue that it's neither interesting nor working. I do have in my new first sentence. Proud little glitter graphic here

Then I started on The Rake, got as much done as made sense given that I have a meeting at school in re The Rake on Wednesday and then realized my synopsis now bears no resemblance to my story. So I worked on that, which is good. Then I had to go to this grad school thing for 1.5 hours which was good. I am not doing the wrong reading for the orals, big relief. Got to meet some of the other students and chat with some of the professors.

So, now I'm going to work on the new short thing. I think.

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Sunday, September 11, 2005

oh just stuff, you know

So, got a fair amount done yesterday. I have this idea for a series of shorts... Am thinking of redoing my website and this time I actually have a visual idea I can probably pull off. I might as well admit now that I'm committed to an elf story. I worked on the Rake yesterday, chopped off the whole opening up to the point where I should have started in the first place. Drove to Napa today for a soccer game. What a pretty drive. Vineyards and diaries. And lots of Highway Patrol. I live in wine country and have I ever been wine tasting? No. Course, I don't drink, but still. It's September and this is one of the best times to be in No Cal. The weather is fabulous. I like the brown hills, even though it sounds dull, it's not.

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Saturday, September 10, 2005

just call me sleepyhead

I slept until 11:00am this morning. Guess I was tired. Wonder why? I have some feedback on The Rake. She suggested starting in a particular spot in chapt 1. Darn. I knew that. I really did. I thought it myself several times. I still have to work on following my gut. I'm a plotter with the soul of a pantser, a left brainer with a right brain that won't shut up. Or something.

Took my son to Art in the Park today. It's a ritual for us now. It was fun. I can't afford art, but this place usually has some stuff that's not out of the world expensive, and my son is developing quite an artistic sensibility. Soccer tomorrow. He's spending the night at his cousin's so it's eerily quiet right now.

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Thursday, September 08, 2005

where does all the time go?

I'm teaching an on line course for Hearts Through History - writing the steamy scenes and I think it's pushed me right over the edge. I'm trying to read for the oral exam. Finished the Chaucer, which is slow going. Good stories, but not effortless reading. I'm doing Spencer's The Fairie Queen now, also slower going and not as fun as Chaucer. So I keep thinking, I'll just finish up the HHRW class replies and get some of my own work done, but then it's midnight, 12:30 and so I've now slept through my alarm twice. Woke up at 5:37am this morning and somehow got to work by 6:09.

Haven't done a lick of writing except for Tues, when I made one quickie change to The Rake before taking my son to soccer practice and then dropping off the chapters at SSU. That's it. Nothing. Although I will say I've had some great ideas for dark elf. I have 10 minutes before I have to get dressed for my dad's retirement party, but I drop my son at soccer practice then go to party, say my thing at 6:30 then jet to school to teach -- got to make sure my brother knows he has to be here so when my son gets dropped off after practice there's someone home -- then home at 10pm or so all wound up... I have The Rake out to another reader.

I'm taking off this coming Monday and Tuesday with the hope of getting the structure of a proposal for Dark Elf and doing Shift and Sleath. But I think I'm coming down with something.

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Wednesday, September 07, 2005

A really sweet and touching email

Today, amid the continuing crisis in the Gulf Coast, I got an email from someone in Indonesia. He's apparently read my books, or knows someone who has, I suppose, and he wrote me the sweetest email in less than perfect words, saying he was worried about me and my family becuase of the hurricane. He wanted to know if I was OK and he said he was touched by the tragedy. So, to anyone and everyone who's affected, people do care. They really do.

It made my day. My week. Maybe just everything.

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Monday, September 05, 2005

Can you spell Frustrated?

Yes. a-c-t-u-a-l-l-y-m-y-f-a-u-l-t.

But it's easier to lay the blame elsewhere. Watch a master at work: For crying out loud. I need another sign on my door. I'm working. Leave me alone. And for another thing, I am so sick of reading my chapters for The Rake that I can hardly stand it and have actually said, "okay" when someone bugs me when I'm supposed to be writing. I also wrote a 17 page story this weekend that I think reveals I have a sick mind. Oh well. It was fun anyway and I'm glad I did it because an interesting voice came out of that. See, the thing is, I believe in at least exploring no-holds-barred ideas, just to see what pops out. Sometimes it's politically incorrect. Oh well.

Still writing related, I signed up for Engl 535 (Directed writing) at school with one of the fiction people at SSU, so tomorrow I will turn in the despised 3 chapters noted above and briefly turn my attention to another project, probably Shift, but maybe it makes more sense to work on the elf thing. I'll figure that out tomorrow, I guess, but something I can turn in for 535. I want to finish the MA. I hate hate despise hate, turning in my writing because I'm afraid it sucks.

And speaking of that, I'm freaking about reviews. They're lurking out there for A Darker Crimson, waiting to crush me. That's exactly how it feels.

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Friday, September 02, 2005

Perspective

If you haven't donated yet to the hurricane relief, the American Red Cross is a good place to start. The minimum donation is $5 US. Can anyone afford not to? The Romance writing community is so far-flung that I don't think there's a RWA member out there who doesn't recognize many of the names of the found and still missing. At the same time Katrina has made us feel how large the world is, technology makes it small.

I find it puzzling and disheartening that a picture of someone walking away from a store carrying a load of clothes is labeled a looter. Really? A photo like that doesn't tell us where that person was heading or for what purpose. Maybe he/she was going to family or others in need. You know what? If it were me, and all my family and I had left was the clothes on our backs, I think I'd take those clothes, too.

Think hard about the visual and verbal rhetoric you've been hearing and seeing. Think race and class and gender and then think stereotype. Your logic and your emotions are being engaged with words and images that claim to explain what was happening, but in fact do not provide the motivation prior to the moment the shutter snapped. I do not have much of an issue concluding that someone wading through the streets carrying a TV is probably not engaged in survival or self-preservation. But someone carrying clothing or food? Think before you agree with the label you're being told to accept.

Think.

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