Just got back from the Soccer Tournament. The boys did great. To be honest, all the parents expected we'd be heading home after the 3rd game. They've been on the wrong end of some blow outs in league play. They narrowly lost their first game by a goal, but they won their second game 5-nil, which was a great end to the first day. In order to advance they needed to win game three 1-nil or beat them by three, and against a team that creamed both their previous opponents. They won 1-0. They advanced and took 4th out of 12 teams. Whew! The downside is I didn't get any writing done. Zippo, and I'm exhausted now and going to bed as soon as I have the laundry in the dryer.

I tried to blog this morning but the hotel wireless cut out on me. Frown. I'm feeling kind of incoherent right now. I need sleep.

Labels: writing freaking writing

What a long week. The happy news is I've hit or exceeded my minimum every day, including today. I'm closing in on the ending for Scandal which is still going well. Only I know I have a lot of fixing to do...

This weekend my son has a soccer tournament in a town far enough away that it's an overnighter for us. So, I'm freaking a bit about whether I'll be able to get enough writing done. The laptop is coming with me, naturally.

I'm going to bed now. One person has requested my patented Vishous Dish, any other takers? Isn't it great there's a book people care about so much? This is me. Waiting for Phury...

Labels: Scandal, writing, writing freaking writing

Yes, I have read Lover Unbound by J.R. Ward I read it yesterday. A lovely day married only by the fact that I've picked up my son's cold. I'm trying hard not to spoil anything, so actually, it being this early on, I'll only say that the story was larger than life which is exactly what I so love about the series. Big bad boys. Really BIG bad boys. I love bad boys.

Anybody who would like Carolyn's patented inside scoop can email me privately, and I'll dish you some Vishous dirt. I'd love to compare notes!

I also recently finished reading Twilight by Stephanie Meyers. This book has been out long enough that I don't think I'll spoil anything by talking about it. For anyone who doesn't know, this is the first of a now prominent YA series. The protagonist is 17 year Bella who moves from Phoenix AZ to Forks WA and meets the gorgeous and mysterious Edward, who is her classmate. So, yes, the characters are teenagers, but the story is quite complex and utterly compelling, as any good novel is, regardless of target market.

Edward is a vampire.

The book is quite long, but yay for long stories that need to be long! Bella, Edward and their developing relationship is brilliantly rendered. When the villain shows up the story is absolutely impossible to put down. He's scary. Legitimately scary. The guy is probably one of the best villains I've ever read.

I also read Night Play by Sherrilyn Kenyon Lucky me! I haven't read all the Dark Hunter novels. Naturally, I enjoyed this one. The hero is one of the were-people, so no actual Dark Hunters. Fun story.

Scandal is going well enough. Maybe not fast enough, but well enough. I'm heading for bed early tonight since I'm not really 100%.

Labels: Black Dagger Brotherhood, reading, Scandal

The following items have been shipped to you by Amazon.com:
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Qty Item Price Shipped Subtotal
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Amazon.com items (Sold by Amazon.com, LLC):
1 Lover Unbound (Black Dagge... $7.99 1 $7.99

Shipped via UPS (estimated arrival date: 25-September-2007).

Labels: Black Dagger Brotherhood

I've been in correspondence with some young writers lately, met through various methods. MySpace, emails to me, the Little Owl Mentoring program, contest judging etc. Which is why I think I'd be really happy teaching one of these days. I seem to do a lot of that. Be that as it may, as anyone who's had the opportunity to read work by writers working toward publication knows, there are a lot of writers out there who need to read more and study more about writing. The case is somewhat different with younger writers as they are still learning the building blocks of fine writing, not to mention building up life experience so you'd naturally expect their work to have some issues. All of which is a long way of saying I read a lot of work that needs work.

One of the biggest issues (after plain grammar and language skills) is a story that is being told rather than revealed. There's a big difference between rough writing in which the story is being told to me and rough writing in which the story is being revealed. The second case is rare and it's exciting when you come across it. Grammar can be learned, typos can be fixed. You can teach someone how to identify Point of View problems. But it's really, really hard to teach someone to start their story smack in the middle of something tense happening to a character.

But today, I did read something like that. The talent is there. And it's really exciting!

Now I have to go back to work on Scandal. I hate first draft writing. Hate it hate it hate it hate it. But now I have to go do it.

Labels: Scandal, writing, writing craft

Hopefully I can keep this short and sweet. (Right. I write novels!. I went to the gym while my son was at soccer practice. His practice lasts longer than my workout, so I notebooked while I was waiting for him to finish up. I worked out a lot of stuff. Folks, I think I have a complete plot! I worked through what issues I need to deal with in the remaining chapters. I wrote the first half of one of them tonight.

Tomorrow the Darling Child's soccer game is 40 minutes away and he has to be there at 8:00 am. Sigh. Which is why I'm going to bed now. I have to get up early. But I'll have the afternoon to work, plus I'm not dead tired like I was last weekend.

Off to bed.

Labels: plotting, Scandal

Yesterday was my son's Jr. High Open House so that's what I was doing last night. I didn't get much writing done. Maybe three hundred words, and then it was really just too late. I don't want to get behind on my sleep. With soccer season on, I don't think I have any weekends for quite some time during which I can sleep in.

This morning I went to the gym and while I biked I notebooked and mapped out the ending for Scandal. I have that blocked out in my chapter outline and now I'm working my way there. I want to be done by Nov. 15 so I have a month to edit and polish. Meanwhile I have some chapters to fix, and one that is currently homeless, but soon won't be.

Back to work.

Oh, and I guess one last thing. People want to live their lives and be happy and avoid conflict and unpleasantness. But there are events that must not be left unremarked and wrongs that cannot be met with silence or inaction. It's not enough to think someone else will surely be more eloquent or is better placed to act. Quite probably that's true. But the point isn't to wait for someone else's eloquence or the action. The point is to add your voice somehow so that your silence doesn't add itself to evil. Forget eloquence. Act if you can, but speak out. So I'm speaking out.

It really makes me just spitting mad when people say or do things that insult, demean or denigrate another race or gender and then remark, with all seriousness, that gee, they didn't mean it that way. Don't you get that it was a joke? You know, like those white kids in Jenna, Louisiana thought those nooses were a joke. Or the adults who actually said people are overreacting to a prank. Well, it wasn't a joke to the black kids. Right now the legal system in LA is failing all of us. A felony charge? Those nooses were powerful symbols of hate. And quite frankly, if the people of Jenna are really the non-rascists they claim to be, why the hell were they glaring from their porches (as was reported) instead of marching? That's another symbol and I understand it loud and clear. And that's just something I can't let go unremarked.

Labels: editing, hate, Scandal, writing

There are several actually. But the one on my mind right now is Credit Cards. I try never to use them anymore. There are some things, however, for which a credit card is a necessity. Hotel reservations. On line purchases, certain bills. But I have those amounts budgeted and I am working on being debt free ASAP. So, the hassle is that the other day I had to reserve a hotel room for a soccer tournament and my credit card was not in my wallet. Uh-oh! I hadn't shredded the old one and so was able to get the number and reserve the room. But then I had to call and cancel the missing card.

I have no idea where the card might be. I haven't used it for a physical purchase in months and months and months. I don't really know when I saw it last. So today the new card arrived and I had to spend a couple of hours updating my card info everywhere there's a recurring charge. I still don't have them all yet. What a hassle. And the biggest hassle of all turned out to be Amazon! Completely hidden and unintuitive.

Right, so I'm blogging early tonight so I can wrap up the night's work on Scandal and fall straight into bed. Today was a dumb, boring day full of hassles. Blech. Yesterday's work on Scandal went well, but I'm starting to feel panicky about the amount of work that is, or isn't, getting done.

Off to write.

Labels: Scandal, writing, writing freaking writing

Somebody get me a vinaigrette!!

It's almost here! The PW review looks fabu, so check it out!

But Wait, there's more!!

Book 6, Lover Enshrined is available for pre-order. Should be out in April. Yes, I ordered it, one day delivery. And laughed hysterically when Amazon said if I'd pony up for Amazon Prime they'd give me free 2 day shipping. As if!! Uh, no. Don't think so. I love Alpha males. I'm not waiting for this set.

The other funny thing when I was checking, just for the hell of it, when I might expect ::Vishous:: to arrive at my door, Amazon showed me a selection of books it thought I might want based on past buying. Not the usual If You Liked.... but a nearly artful display of images, and the thing is, I already owned way more than half the books they thought I might like. Some of which I bought from Amazon. But some I bought elsewhere.

Labels: Black Dagger Brotherhood, books

Oh, no! Author Robert Jordan has passed away.

Labels: Robert Jordan

Yikes. Didn't get much done today, word-wise. Soccer in the morning in a city about 45 minutes away, then back to town where I did the grocery shopping before heading home. Kidlet not happy about that, but pretty much, tough tootles for him. No way was I going to go back into town to shop later. Too much stuff is out or picked over. I gave him $5.00 and send him over to the yogurt place to wait for me while I shopped.

Came home from shopping and fell exhausted into bed and slept hard again. When I woke up, I fuzted around and thought about Scandal but didn't actually do anything about it. Then I took the DC to the movies. We saw The Brave One which was better than I expected. I like moral ambiguity and that was present for sure. And, I'm embarrassed to admit that I totally missed a subtle yet key point of a pivotal scene that my son totally picked up on. He liked the movie, which I actually didn't expect. I thought it might be too cerebral for his tastes, but no.

Came home, took down the garbage and recycling and I swear by the time I walked back up the hill, I was ready to fall down in a heap. I'm exhausted now, and this, obviously by now, isn't normal. I wasn't anemic when I gave blood, so that's not the problem. So, we'll see how things are tomorrow. I must be getting something. I did work on Scandal though, and ended up rearranging the chapters. But I need an unexhausted brain to think about where things are going.

To bed for me.

Labels: movies, Scandal, Writting. freaking writing

So, I was writing along, in between bouts of emailing, turning on the laptop and getting stuff updated etc. (where by etc is meant anything not writing-related) and things were going well. Until it turned out I had to delete all of Chapter 18, which was the most recent chapter, and substitute a different chapter that needed to be conformed to its new home. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad I did it. No sense keeping a chapter that turns out not to be pulling its weight. And, I like the way this section is now coming along.

More soccer tomorrow morning, so I need to get to bed, down 900 and something words. Coulda been worse.

Labels: editing, Scandal, writing

This morning I was soccer Mom. When we got home from his game, I futzed around a bit, answered emails etc, and then took a nap and fell fast, fast asleep. Not one of those lovely afternoon naps in which the mind is working for you, but a deep, dark completely comatose sleep. I'm still groggy from that. But I'm working on Scandal, in fits. This whole book is getting worked on in fits. I keep worrying that it's too vanilla Regency and I'm worried that it's boring.

The thing is, I have to have enough written to know in my bones what the deal is with the story and the two characters. But I'm not there yet, and so here I am in the painful writing stage. Sigh. Which I hate. I'd much rather be editing a substantially complete book. At the moment, I have just short of 50,000 words, which is not quite critical mass for me. Almost, but not quite. 70K is about where the story is essentially done, the other 20-30K comes from editing and polishing. But I'm not there. Wahhhh! I'd rather clean my desk than do this. OK, I'll stop complaining and go back to work.

My son is off with a friend tonight for a bit, so I don't have to cook dinner. It'd be cool to hit my minimum early and read or relax or something. Which isn't going to happen if I'm blogging. Rats.

Labels: editing, Scandal, writing

First off, my sister's dog has been found. Someone called her this morning and stayed with him to make sure he didn't run off again. Meanwhile, one of my brothers who lives nearby went to get him. So her dog is home safe. Thank goodness. And thanks to the woman who found him, called and stayed with him. He's skinnier and dehydrated and a bit wigged out by his experience, but he's OK.

I gave blood today and when I went for my lunchtime walk I was feeling very, very tired. But Fridays are Taco Fridays! There's the best taco place just about ever very close to where I work. Every Friday I get two soft tacos, one chicken, one whole beans and cheese. A very good choice, as the only extra on them is salsa. The cheese is a splurge but they don't use much, it's mostly beans and salsa. Excellente! So, I got a big dose of protein for lunch and felt much better. I went to the gym while the Darling Child was at soccer practice and did resistance work. I figured it wasn't really the weight lifting the nice blood lady warned me against. Low key enough. Cardio today would have done me in I think.

While I waited for practice to end, I notebooked some on Scandal. I need to rework last night's chapter.

In other news, my Grand Central Publishing Editor, Melanie Murray, has been put in charge of the entire Forever line, and so won't be doing much editing, which is why Magellan's Witch has been unreviewed for 6 weeks. A great promotion for her. Every writer hears terrible stories about editors acquiring a project then departing for whatever reason, leaving the author with an editor who dislikes her work. So, as you can imagine, while I was pleased for Melanie Murray, I wasn't sure what to think for myself. But the editor who'll be taking on MW seems really nice, and she read the proposal way back and really liked it, so I can say that my style works for my new editor. I should be hearing something in 2-3 weeks.

I was in meetings when my agent called to give me the head's up and make sure I didn't think she wanted to give me bad news, which, I tell you, for the seconds between her saying (in her message) that she was conferencing in Melanie and then saying "It's nothing bad!" all I could think was on my god, she hated MW so much she needs my agent just to stay calm about it. But that wasn't it. (Yet.)

Tomorrow the DC has an early soccer game so I'm going to bed very soon.

I'm going to try to get some work done on Scandal before I fall into bed.

Labels: editors, Magellan's Witch, Scandal

Well, I'm awfully tired these days. I'm trying to get myself into bed with the lights out at an earlier hour, but it's tough to wind down enough. I need to find a way to catch up on the sleep, though. This is nuts.

My sister's dog is lost. He's an elderly Rat Terrior, going grey, mostly deaf, who recently had surgery and needs his stitches out. She was at my brother's house and left him in the back yard, securely fastened in they thought, while they took the kids to McDonald's. But he was gone when they got back, and now he's been missing since Tuesday, which is why I didn't get any work done that day. I went over there to help look. She's had a couple of calls and near-catches by others. It's awful. She's loves her dog dearly, and it's horrible to think of him wandering around. We're all hoping he's found soon.

Yesterday, I got a lot done on Scandal and now I need to go get to more. Off to work.

Labels: life in general, Scandal

This explanation was on MySpace about how everyone's (apparently) freaking about friend counts decreasing:

Just wanted to update everyone on this issue. Last Friday we ran some database jobs to fix an inaccuracy in the way we were counting the number of friends each user has.

I'm a DBA (Database Administrator) so I can totally read between the lines. First off, and this has nothing to do with dbs, directly, MySpace is written in ColdFusion, which is a programming language that used to be cool a few years back and isn't anymore because of .Net and Ajax. ColdFusion doesn't scale, everyone knew that years ago. And, although I don't know for sure, I'd be willing to bet the database backend is probably mySQL. Sorry, but the deficiencies of MySQL are well known among people who work with REAL databases. (Insert smug grin) It's a great product if you need cheap/free and good. That's an amazing price point there. But MySQL is lacking, compared to SQL Server or Oracle, which are really your only two Enterprise choices (sorry DB2 you're a joke).

So, Bet Number Two. If it's true the MySpace backend is MySQL, then it's also true that the database design sucks majorly. Sorry, but the kind of db design skills that give you scalable, reliable AND high performance from a database do not reside with people who use MySQL. Really.

There's only two reasons for an inaccurate friend count: A bad query (see comment above about skills...) or a forked up database that wasn't properly normalized. (See comment above about skills...) I bet somebody keeps the friend count in more than one table, or worse, stores a calculation result instead of letting the database engine calculate on the fly.

That's why MySpace is so freaking slow. ColdFusion and MySQL. Back when, nobody knew MySpace was going to be getting 100,000 new users a day. Guaranteed the database isn't designed for that, and I bet they spend hours writing kludge code instead of working out how to port to a REAL programming language and a REAL database, properly designed and indexed.

Not sure about the writing today. Some stuff came up that hosed my afternoon which I don't want to talk about right now. I'll try to get a bit done, but today may be a wash. Rats. Yesterday went well though, and when I went running today, I had some neat ideas.

Labels: My Space

My brother's wedding was really lovely. My son was very handsome in his white shirt and dress pants. I even managed a few pictures of him. The drive up north was winding, but gorgeous. The coast in this part of California is rugged. The wedding was at a house with a back yard (where the ceremony was) that looked directly over the ocean. There was a beach within sight of the house full of Sea Lions. Their barking was a constant background noise. Later, I grabbed a pair of binocs and got a closer look at them. Got home about five, made dinner and then everyone went to bed early, including me. My brother will probably be mad if he reads this (I don't think he does, most of the family pays very little attention to my writing) but this time he married the right woman. They're wonderful together.


Here's a picture of the Darling Child in Full Pout Mode. He didn't want to leave and the chair was comfy, too. Those are not the dressy clothes, by the way.


Turns out my son's Saturday soccer game that he was supposed to miss because of the wedding got canceled. Today's game went very well. They won 4-0 and looked like a much different team than before. Then we went to Art In The Park where Balou, the ceramacist/potter gave my son a gorgeous pottery mask. He's getting quite a collection of her work. She was telling everyone that he's her oldest customer. We've been seeing her every year now for 6 years. It's really wonderful for him. We had a great time. Then home, and then I had to go shopping.

My dog fell in the pond. One part of it is so covered with duckweed I think he thought it was solid. Fortunately, I was there to pull him out. I'm not sure he could have gotten out on his own. He's quite traumatized over it. Me too, actually.

At last, though, I got to work on Scandal. I finished re-ordering the chapters and wrote a new one. But I'm still behind. Now I have to go to bed.

Last night I finished Lisa Gardner's Survivor's Club. It was really good.

Labels: editing, Scandal, writing

It's going to be a busy weekend. I didn't get any writing done yesterday, for one thing. sigh. I skipped the gym this morning because I was so darn tired. Instead, I went this afternoon, while my son was at soccer practice. I did some good notebooking. I had a bunch of little errands to run today, too. I mailed off the signed contracts for the two historicals, I bought new windshield wipers since mine have deteriorated to the point of being non-functional, and since it's September there's bound to start being some mornings of heavy mist with perhaps some rain, though it won't start raining (if it does at all) until November, but still. Gotta be prepared. Then I had to get gas so I have a full tank for the drive to the wedding tomorrow.

So, now I'm looking at my chapters and conforming my outline and I've had to delete one chapter for being repetitive. I wrote a better version the other day. And in doing this I can see I have stuff in all the wrong order, so tonight will be fixing that. No writing, probably, given the time. No writing tomorrow, what with my brother's wedding and all. Soccer and Art In The Park Sunday, so I'll have to fit the writing in sideways. No rowing, obviously. Rats.

Anyway, back to getting my chapters in order.

Labels: outlines, Scandal, writing process

Like today. Today was not my favorite day. I got to work and there's servers crashing every time I blink. Then I was cleaning up some untidiness from that and other issues and dealing with developers who really should have been more chilled but weren't. Then more work, you know, crap and stuff. I left the office a bit late and went to pick up a game for my son, he'd pre-paid and pre-ordered the thing and today was The Day, which meant I got home later than usual. My brother and his wife were visiting, which was nice, except I was hoping to get some work done, which didn't happen. Nice visit though. My sister-in-law and I love the same tea so it was nice to chat and drink Yogi Egyptian Licorice Tea. Then I had to cook dinner only I got distracted and there was this alarming little fire for a brief period. Remarkably, nothing actually burned. Dinner got cooked, the Darling Child got fed, then I thought, Yes! At last! I can sit and get some work done. Which I would have done only there were all these bills to pay (I pay mine and my parents) and wouldn't you know, some bills were complicated because billing addresses had changed, and other bills were ending so I had to make sure no more payments were sent and others had been paid but never credited, and I had to deal with all that. Sheesh!

So now it's 8:34 and Rats! I forgot!! I have to go start the laundry.

> > > >

OK, so now the laundry's started. Anyway, then my other brother called, the one who's getting married Saturday and said he hoped my son had Khakis and a collared shirt for the wedding. Well, the answer is no, he doesn't. But the DC has a soccer scrimmage in another town on Thursday and practice Friday evening and we have to leave by 9:00 am Saturday to get to where the wedding is, so when exactly I'm supposed to get clothes for my son I really don't know. Not that this town has 16 or 18 slims anywhere. I guess tomorrow evening sometime. Note: Please do NOT point out that I should have realized my son should have had wedding-suitable clothing long before now. I didn't even know until yesterday exactly where the dang wedding was going to be held. Well, that was an amazing bit of sleight of hand, conflating an unknown location with an inability to obtain wedding clothing. To be honest, the days just all got away from me, and besides we were at the soccer tournament all weekend.

Right. So now it's 8:43 and I'm going to try to get SOMETHING done on Scandal. Yesterday went well.

Oh, wait. Yesterday I finished Julia Quinn's The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever and I LOVED this book. Quinn at her amusing best. Everyone go read this romance and next week we'll all have a chat about it.

Now I'm going to write.

Labels: reading, Scandal, writing

Today I was supposed to catch up on Scandal but I didn't. I slept until nine (heaven!) then took my son to breakfast. He was so tired from soccer he want to bed at 9:00pm last night and actually managed to be out of bed before me this morning. After breakfast we went to the bookstore. Yeah. Uh oh. More books in the TBR.

I need to at least pretend to look at Scandal tonight, so I'm off for some work.

Sigh.

Labels: avoidance behavior, Scandal

Today was day 2 of my son's soccer tournament. As expected, they got their butts kicked by the Under 14 teams. We were missing one of our bigger players and another good mid, too. Some of those U14 boys were, no fooling, six feet tall, at least one was at least a foot taller than my son, who's coming up on 5'3" They made a much better showing against the U13 boys. They have some offensive issues, but they dominated most of the time (they just couldn't get it in the goal). Against the U14 boys, my son made two absolutely stellar defensive plays, one came with the goalie too far out of the box. The giant boys blew past the goalie but my son blocked the shot in the goal (no hands since he's a fullback). Awesome play. He made another similar play in the next game. He played a little offense but not for long, since they soon needed him on defense. Interesting, though, to see him on offense. Still, there's signs of the team coming together. They should win some league games.

Today's games were deadly hot. 100+ degrees. Yuck yuck yuck. I'm wiped out completely, and that was just from watching. My brain is fried. I managed to get through 2-3 books this weekend so far. More on that later.

The tomatoes are starting to come in and it's heaven. Tonight I parboiled a couple of tomatoes with the pasta, then skinned them, mushed up the innards with garlic and butter and mixed in the pasta. Yummy! I like cooking that doesn't require a recipe. And garden tomatoes. Oh, to have tomatoes that taste like tomatoes. Heaven, indeed.

So, I read books during the tournament in-between times (they had games at 9am and 2pm both days) one book I won't mention by title or author because I didn't much like it. It was Romantic Suspense by a NYT author and included everything I consider cheap parlor tricks. I intensely disliked the heroine, too. She was a whiner. But mostly I despised the deliberate inclusion of tricks, just plain authorial tricks, to make it look like one of the characters was the villain. There's a difference between a red herring and an authorial lie. Like, suppose you have two characters whose names are, say, Fredericka and Felicia and everyone calls Fredericka "Freddie". So, when the psycho has a conversation with "Freddie" who could it be but Fredericka, right? No. Turns out Felicia has a secret nickname of "Freddie" which isn't revealed until the last few pages. This book went straight into the garbage.

I also read Lori Foster's Simon Says which I enjoyed a lot. It was well written, internally consistent, mostly worked against stereotype and cliche, and was fun. I've started Tess Gerritsen's Mephisto Club. Pretty good so far. I read a page or two of Cormack McCarthy's The Road, realized it was going to be depressing as heck and set it aside for a time when my brain isn't fried from heat.

I'm going to bed now. I'm going to sleep late tomorrow morning and then get myself caught up on Scandal.

Labels: reading, Scandal