Sigh.

This is the hardest part for me... early on when the core of the book isn't established, yet I know what I want it to be. Sometimes the words just aren't there, and sometimes the words that are there are the wrong ones. Double Sigh. Times like this I'd rather do anything than write the right words.

So, one of tonight's episodes of Buffy was Fool for Love which I'd noticed made Joss Whedon's top 10 list of episodes. For about half the show I was wondering why. And then it happened. Oh. My. Gosh. I am now a Joss Whedon Fan Girl. Spike is a very bad vampire, just really bad. He seriously hates Buffy yet has come to realize he loves her. Even though (because of?) he wants desperately to kill her. Really. He's let at least part of his secret out and she delivers a resounding and rather heartless slap down. He is determined to kill her and sets out to do so. He goes to her house, ready to do the deed. Only she's sitting on the front steps by herself, crying. (Because of some terrible and devastating news about a family member). He has all the opportunity in the world to kill her. But instead, he asks "What's wrong?" Shot of her tear stained face... She doesn't want to talk about it. She's plainly devastated. "Is there anything I can do?" he asks and you can tell he truly, sincerely means it. Then he sits beside her, leaving ample space between them, and awkwardly pats her shoulder. End of the episode.

Now, that, people, is a real villain. Not cardboard bad. This is not one of the bad guys from The Fairie Queene where bad is just bad and the outward appearance and action stands in for the inward person. Not a psycho for whom reality is but a distant memory.

I want that guy for my hero. I'm twisted that way.

Fine.

Back to work.

nooooooooooooo!!!!

Labels: Buffy, procrastination, villains, writing

I started reading this book last night and I can't stand it so much, I'm not going to read past page three, which is I think how far I got. I know all about Mary Sues, the heroine who is too perfect and so brave and all that. And I think the male equivalent is called a Gary Sue or something. But what is it when the whole world is like that? There's a scene in the movie 9 to 5 in which Lilly Tomlin is skipping through the lunchroom with Disney characters and bluebirds and cutsey animals swooping and trilling around her while Lilly T makes her boss coffee and spikes it with rat poison. This book was like that, only without the rat poison or the coffee. This world needed some rat poison.

I'm just saying, is all. No Planet Sue's or Culture Sues. Please.

Labels: craft, reading, writing

Fabio hasn't emailed me yet. Don't you think that's odd?

Labels: utter silliness

Didn't get much done today. At least not yet. Stuff going on etc that's distracting me a bit. I struggled with Xia today so I decided to start reading from the beginning in order to get a check on where I am with this. Are things hanging together? Are there small tweaks doing big things? Stuff like that. The answer seems to be yes, more or less. So, back to it. Sigh

But Xia ia gratifyingly bad in the opening chapter, and I fixed it starting out more boring than it should have. Hopefully I fixed it enough. I have 15 chapters so far. I hope to exceed 30K today. That would be good.

Labels: editing, plotting or the lack thereof, Xia

Today was not a fun day, pretty much on any level. The writing was hard. Nothing was easy. Yuck. But I made my minimum and today have 29K words.

Saw 27 Dresses today. Although I loved the actress who starred in the film (sorry no idea of her name) Ok I looked it up, it's Katherine Heigl. I thought the male lead was unworthy of her. And there's a point where she strikes back at her sister by publicly humiliating her in front of friends and family. Not good. The movie died for me right there. Not even Heigl could save the movie for me at that point. And then sometime later she's at least expressing some remorse, the male lead actually tells her at least you stood up for yourself Oh come on. Whoever wrote this movie should be ashamed. Ok, I looked that up, too. It was Aline Brosh McKenna and she should just be ashamed. Somebody give that writer lessons in what it means to be despicable. That scene was despicable. Don't see this movie. Ever.

Labels: movies, writing, Xia

I am darn glad it's the weekend. But not just any weekend, is it? It's a Soccer Free weekend. I don't have to drive anywhere. I can sleep late Saturday AND Sunday. I can stay up late if I want and I won't regret it tomorrow at 4:30 am. I don't have to do any Evil Day Job stuff this weekend.

Also, I've been meaning to point out that author Gemma Halliday is auctioning off a gifts-and-cyber-date with some extremely handsome Romance Novel cover models. Enter here. Or just look. I won't tell you who I put my money on as I do not wish to be outbid. It's for a great cause, too, so check it out.

I can NOT believe this. My cat is trying to push me off my own darn chair!

Speaking of Cover models, I read what I believe is the now infamous interview with Fabio. Oh, my. But here's the thing that keep occurring to me as I read the interview (keep in mind that George Clooney just doesn't do it for me...) Fabio is rich and single and he looks damn good for someone in my *cough* age cohort. I mean, yeah, he's older than I am, but hey. Not all that much older. He let The One For Him get away. He is pining for love, Fabio is. And here's the great thing. I'm available, too! We have a lot in common:

• I have been to Italy


• In the Italian part of Switzerland, I met a woman named Fabienne. (and used that name for my Vampire Enforcer in DX).


• I have ridden in a Porche and think I could stand doing so again.


• I write Romance Novels


• I have long blond(ish) hair too!


• I'm pretty sure my son is going to be something like 6 foot 3, just like Fabio.


• I work out pretty hard and can do a lot of push ups.

I think it's fate. Fabio, email me, OK?

Labels: Fabio, sleeping

Xia's going well enough. The last 2-3 days I've been doing my first Big Adjustment to the story. Things were getting pretty messy but I think I've got myself straightened out. Although it's not much fun when I realize I need to re-align -- because it's a lot of work that doesn't necessary increase the page count -- It's also important to go through it. For me anyway. Otherwise, the story continues to suck. All of which means things are on track.

In other news, if politics and privacy are not your thing don't bother following this link regarding the events that led to this quote from Joel Johnson:

And as the reaction of the crowd to my questions showed, no one wants AT&T rifling around in their communications. The only way to stop them from doing so is to speak up whenever we have the chance

You might consider encrypting all your internet traffic pretty soon. Video and written commentary. Check out both. If AT&T does this, how soon before some writer sending her full to an agent, editor or critique partner gets caught up in this boondoggle? This is just insane. And outrageous.

Labels: politics, privacy, Xia

I have a little over 23K words on Xia. That's nice. But I'm freaking over my tight deadline. Given that you'd think I'd be working even more frantically, but that's just not going to work. For me, writing without a clue leads to Delete-Key-itis. I need some tiny clue, so that I can then do the exact opposite.

Oh well. I'm tired and so's the dog. Bed is calling to me.

Labels: plotting or the lack thereof, writing, Xia

Went to lovely Ripon CA today for my son's soccer tournament. Let's not speak of the result, though the boys played hard. We arrived about 10:30 to blue skies and a slight wind. It was actually kind of nice. A good day for sitting on the chair at the sidelines we parents thought. Then the wind picked up and half an hour before game time everyone had gone back to their cars for coats. By game time everyone who had a blanket had pulled out those too. It was windy, freezing cold and oh my gosh, we were nothing but ice cubes on the sidelines. It's hours later now and I'm STILL cold.

I car pooled with the coach which meant a stress free drive for me since in fact, I did no driving at all, except to the coach's house and back. Yippers! I'm reading this non-romance vampire book and by now I'm more than half way through because I'm skimming and/or skipping sections. The man did his research into the history of New York City and, alas, has so far missed no opportunity to insert the results in his narrative AND his dialogue. Oh my gosh, it's painful. The history comes at the expense of character development because his characters are all too busy telling the other characters supposedly obscure historical facts. Not to mention a pet peeve of mine, which I know some people don't mind, which is historical characters -- real ones -- who are characters in the book. Boss Tweed (can you say High School U.S. History?) Jay Gould, Diamond Jim... Oh, it's just so not for me. I am very sorry, but no matter how fascinating U.S. History is, and I totally agree that it is, it doesn't belong as a character in your novel, because what happens is readers skip the history lecture Like this:
"Why, yes, and did you know that in 1862 blah blah blah.... " page turning until something actually happens.

Off to watch Buffy and then go to bed.

Labels: avoidance behavior, reading

Right. Tired. Goes without saying. As you-all may know, I turned in Scandal in December -- early even. And my editor can't read it until March. Well, golly! Sigh.

My chapter with Kynan didn't go so well last night. I wrote it and all, but after the first paragraph in his Point of View (POV) it was clear that his wasn't the right POV. It should have been, but it wasn't. The feeling was boring and wrong practically from word one. So I gave up quickly and instead wrote it from the future-girlfriend's (FG) POV and that went better but it still didn't feel quite right. Better, but Not Quite Right, and the problem with POV is that you have to get it right or you're sunk.

My motto these days is to leave nothing around that can stink up the joint, so today during various mental downtimes of the day, I mulled over my situation. Eventually a refined approach popped into my head, which is that the FG needed a bit of danger, and that could be supplied by having her talking to the antagonist, Christophe, instead of Kynan. And since Kynan is still there, only now in stealth mode, I can put the scene back into his POV. Great!

While I was sitting in the car during soccer practice this afternoon I started rewriting the scene. Much better. Plus this switch solves another problem with the old version, which was, why would FG go off with Kynan? Well, she will now because Christophe will do something creepy like try to kill her or something, and Kynan will step in and whisk her away, and then they can go look for Xia.

Cue the creepy music though, because this was chapter 10 and in My Wicked Enemy chapter 10 was the chapter from Heck. I rewrote that dang chapter about a billion times. Am I facing a similar struggle here? Just what is it about Chapter 10's? Any theories?

Labels: My Wicked Enemy, Point of View, Scandal, Xia

I was busy all day and feel like I have nothing to show for it. That's not so uncommon, I suppose, but I do get tired of all the little things that eat up my days. Honestly. Anyhooo.... Today I mailed back the copy-edits for My Wicked Enemy. That feels good. And, I'm told the cover will have special effects on the flames and some decorative bits. That's pretty neat. Can't wait to see the final! Then I had a few website updates to do. That always takes longer than I want it to and there's managing or posting on the social sites like Twitter and My Space. Sigh.

The first funny thing that happened today is one of those, it's scary to be a writer things: I'm going to be doing a few chapters of Xia in the Point of View (POV) of Kynan, the hero of the next book (this is assuming my publisher will want to go to contract on more; with a fancy cover, let's hope so!) and I've been wracking my brains about the circumstances of the chapter and the fact that I want him to meet his heroine (but not know it) in at least one of those chapters. How to do that, I've been muttering to myself these last few days. So in an unrelated plotting dilemma, now that I have my first crucial fight scene drafted, my vague intention was that someone -- didn't know who, would call Kynan who would then do some stuff -- careful, that's advanced panster plotting there! I mulled over a bunch of lame-o or otherwise unsatisfactory ideas and moved on. I started thinking about the fact that my heroine has called her best friend (Kynan's heroine-to-be) to arrange a get together, only the big fight comes along and by the time of the meeting Xia and Alexandrine are long gone from the house. So, I'm driving home and thinking about this and admitting that I cannot leave this appointment thing unresolved. What to do? I'm sure some of you are shouting the answer at me. Bear with me, please. So, I'm imagining the heroine-to-be standing at Alexandrine's house where it's obvious something awful has happened, and I swear to Dog, this is exactly what happened in my head --- Kynan walks up to her and says, "Are you Alexandrine Marit?"

See, the whole time, Kynan has been trying to get a hold of Xia but can't because Xia's cell phone was crushed in the big fight. So he finally drives over to talk to him about what's up and there's the heroine-to-be wondering where her best friend is. Two problems solved with one frightening glimpse into the writer's mind. Sometimes it's best not to look too hard. But it was like I was watching T.V. or something. Kynan just walks up and voila!

Another funny thing happened today. Over on the Crimson City blog where no one has posted for ever and ever, because, well, we're done with the City for now, it seems, someone posted two comments: Here they are for your reading pleasure, along with my response since, for good or ill, they were directed at my book:

my mom is reading "a darker crimson" with the characters Korzha, and Claudia Donovan, and I think the third is Lath. she's almost finish[ed] reading and wants to know if their story line continues?

Nice! I think. But, hey! not so fast, Carolyn!

never mind about the continuation, she finally finished the book. And is cursing..." how the hell can an ultra alpha gorgeous male die at the hand of a twit who didn't know her own lust. As she is banging on the table and cursing at the characters. it is a anti- climactic book. why could they both have her. love on one side lust on the other, the dumb twit didn't deserve her. he wasn't evil just true to his nature, i didn't agree with him but that twit should not have be able to kill him and he deserved better than her twit ass self." "maybe she could write that he vanished and he really wasn't dead. he deserves love too and make the twit jealous. maybe when he died he regenerated and now can have someone else better than her and make her jealous he just should go out like that"

Oh. But the thing is, I don't really disagree. My response:

Dear Anonymous:

In the un-revised version of A Darker Crimson Lath did not die. But my editor, and others, strongly believed that Lath had to die. ::Sigh:: So, I did the dirty deed. I didn't want to do it. Honest. But, I understood the Lath-Must-Die faction's point. It's not a traditional HEA ending if Tiber has a rival for Claudia's affections at the end. Still...

Lath was a total hottie. But with writing, you cross some lines, which I did with Lath, and see if you get pulled back. Which I did. If it helps, my story (DX) in Shards of Crimson, features a demon who doesn't die. And I have a book coming out where I got pulled back at a different line, a little further out. (Heh, heh!) So, yeah, I totally get your frustration.

Thanks for the comment, though. If you see this, feel free to email me directly, and I'll send you the original chapter where he doesn't die.

And I added my email address. I'm hoping she sees my reply either over there at the Crimson City blog

Labels: A Darker Crimson, plotting, writing, Xia

Ok, let me just say that I have been cold for two days. The boys won all 3 of their soccer games and so they advance in the tournament and play next weekend in the frozen south.

I got some work done on Xia, naturally not as much as I'd hoped, but some and then a 2 hour drive home during which I plotted.

I'm tired. As soon as the laundry is in the dryer, I'm putting on my jams and going to bed.

Labels: plotting, soccer, Xia

I'm here in Marysville CA for a soocer tournament. The boys won this morning 5-0, so that's good. We soccer parents like to savor the wins because, well, the boy's don't have all that many of them. So Yay!

I'm about to get started on Xia in a bit. Off to it. I'm anxious to get to the exiting part -- there's about to be a fight and Alexandrine, the heroine, is going to need to rescue him...

Labels: Xia

Sometimes Fridsy just seems like a two minute wonder, doesn't it? There's a soccer tournament this weekend, so we're off very early tomorrow. On the road by 7:00 AM I'm hoping. I had to do some work for the day job this evening. I got the power seat at Starbucks and fired up the two laptops etc and got done by 7:15ish. In between waiting for stuff to finish, I worked on Xia. I was actually kind of po'd when everything finished because I had to stop at an exciting part. The guy behind me kept having distracting conversations with or about his girlfriend. Oh my gosh. Why do people put up with baloney in relationships? He's yakking to a friend about why he even has the woman in his life, blah, blah blah, and I'm thinking, Look, pal, just dump this loser babe. And then he gets on the phone with her, so I presume, and he's all, not quite whiney, but sounding like he really wants her to love him more than she apparently does. It was quite clear the two have different visions of the relationship. Mars. Venus. I'm not even sure they were having the same conversation with each other. Anyway, I was the evening's technology winner, what with two laptops, two phones and a thumb drive. Hah.

I have to say I'm tired of hearing about the plagiarism scandal. I can never decide if I like the Smart Bitches blog because sometimes they're just so darn mean, and I get these proto-hives and think, man, someday that could be me they're bitching about like that. I end up feeling kind of sick. But when they're discussing stupid plots or tropes, I end up laughing and saying, right on! But sometimes I just want to say, ya know, there's enough really awful stuff in the world is it really necessary to be vicious, personally vicious? And you know why? Because when I was growing up, I was not one of the cool kids. I was a dork and a bit too chubby, and smart, too. I didn't have to work very hard to get A's and I wasn't all that attractive, either. And I was the target of mean and vicious boys and young women. People played mean, horrible pranks on me and boys said mean horrible things and threw things at me, too. Great. I know exactly what it feels like to be on the receiving end of someone who's being vicious to someone who can't fight back. Then I went to college and got skinny fast and guys would ask me out, and I would look at them and just shake my head. I thought they were trying to trick me. Seriously. I hate vicious people. And I guess I think the Smart Bitches should mention their findings and then just shut up about it instead of conducting a mean-fest.

Labels: overheard, stuff, Xia

My son's soccer tournament last weekend was postponed due to the storms. (We had the chainsaw out so yeah, it stormed) This weekend they're moving all our games because our scheduled field is closed due to storm damage. Now I'm scrambling to cancel hotels, reserve at a new one, find out where we're going when...

And, the copy edits arrived for My Wicked Enemy today. Very light, but I have a few things marked to go over in detail later. Tonight I'm just marking... I have a page of queries to address. I guess not till Monday unless I decide to take the MS with me, which I don't want to do (What if I lose it?) But it seems my big problem is commas, mostly the lack thereof, and hyphenating or not hyphenating words. Seriously, that's 98% of the copy edits.

And I saw the rough image of the cover today. It's pretty awesome, I have to say.

I'm now behind on Xia because last night I went to bed at 7:40pm. I read for a bit, but pooped out before 9:00. Tired girl.

Off to work.

Labels: Book Covers, copyediting, life in general, Xia

And yet, I am addicted to Buffy and want to marry either Spike or Angel. Don't know which for sure.

My Grand Central (Warner) editor emailed today to let me know the copyedited MS for My Wicked Enemy is on its way to me and they need it back the 23rd. That's the publishing biz. Wait wait wait wait wait (Hum the Jeopardy Theme....) ohMyGoshHowSoonCanThisBeDone? But I like it. I'm funny that way. 23rd should be no problem.


Xia's going more slowly than I like right now. Back to it.

Labels: Buffy, My Wicked Enemy, writing, Xia

This weekend, I took my son and his cousin to the bookstore. They went off to the children's section and I wandered around. There weren't any new bestselling mass market paperbacks on the display. Most of them I'd already read or didn't want to read. Rats. So I wandered over to the Romance section to see if maybe whoever at the store hates Romance had maybe moved on to some other section to hate, but no. The Romance section still stucks there. So, there I was in an extremely large bookstore (my local independent is doing pretty well, they just expanded again) and here's what happened: I went over to the children's section because, I thought to myself, that's were most of the really interesting books are.

Oh. My. Gosh.

It's true. I can name off the top of my head, at least five fantastic books (or series) that are marketed YA or Teen:

1. Harry Potter, JK Rowling


2. Bartimaeus Trilogy, Johnathan Stroud


3. Faerie Wars, Herbie Brennan


4. Twilight etc, by Stephanie Meyers


5. Inkheart, Inkspell, Cornelia Funke


6. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

See? Right off the top of my head. And what am I reading right now? City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. It's really good.

Why is that? I mean, it's fantastic that there's so much great stuff out there for kids to read. But where's the neat stuff for adults? Now, one reason for having teenage characters is nobody has to have a job. And it would be terrifically un-PC to have the characters doing -- you know. Those two things alone decrease the plotting and plausibility burden by about two thirds.

Here's the inappropriate NON-PC comment list to the above list. The anti-list list that will get me in trouble I bet.

1. Professor Snape (OK-- Alan Rickman) I have the hots for you. But if you're busy, send over Lucious Malfoy.


2. I'm quite sure Bartimaeus would have had the hots for me, too. You could be anything you want. Please pretend this is a footnote.


3. Lord Hairstreak. Oh. Yes.


4. Eric, you can bite me any time. If you're too hung up on Bella, then well, send over Jake. I'll distract him.


5. Dustfinger rocks.


6. Lord Asriel. Need I say more?

Just some odd random thoughts.

Labels: reading, writing

I recently suddenly remembered I'd agreed to judge a contest and yeah, the entries were due back soon. So I spent Fri-through now doing that. I think I must get a pretty good taste of what it's like to read slush, except I have to keep reading instead of stopping when it's plain there's no hope. When I'm judging, I am as nice and constructive as possible, but when I'm done, it's like the niceness balloon just flat out pops. I'm venting here.

It's true you can tell if something's going to work from sentence 1. Editors and agents are completely justified in stopping after that. 98% of the time you can tell on page one.

This most recent batch had much of the same issues in common. I like to think that most of us go through life understanding there are rules. For example, the law has rules and even if we don't know specifically what they are, we mostly know there are rules. The police, airlines businesses etc have their own policies and procedures which they must follow. So why, for the love of Dog, do writers think they can make up their own policies or ignore the ones normal people must know exist? Suppose that you're a screener for the TSA. (that wasn't in any of the entires) Don't you suppose that TSA screeners get trained in a policy and procedure for dealing with suspicious people? So why on earth would you have a TSA screener ON THE JOB call some number they saw on a flyer in order to report a weirdo? I mean, why would a normal person think for even a moment that such an action is even remotely plausible? Why would you decide to base a novel on that premise? You don't get to make up your own rules for say, Family Law. I mean you just can't. Can. Not. Well I guess you can, but you won't get your novel published.

Suppose you have a character located in, say, the middle of a room, and another in the doorway and a third halfway between those two. If the person in the middle of the room can hear normal conversation taking place in the doorway, then logic tells you that they can also hear the normal conversation of the person between them and the doorway. That simply must be true. You cannot suspend the laws of physics for the convenience of your story. Can't!

Argh!

Anyway, now I have to go shopping and then try to catch up with Xia. I'm behind now.

Labels: contest, writing, Xia

Only it's not Friday. If that's not cruel, I don't know what is. I'm just past 10,000 words for Xia. I like what I have so far. Lately on the drive to and from work, I've been turning off the radio to think about where I'm going with Xia, or to mentally play or replay a scene. I've never really done that, but then for a long time my commute was only 15 minutes. There are 3 big storms ready to hit my part of California. I think the first one just got started. Hopefully the trees stay upright and rooted.

Oh, and last night my son and I were only going to watch 1 episode of Buffy, on account of it was a work day for me, only the first one was the episode were Buffy and Angel... you know. And ohmygosh. Well, we couldn't not watch the next one. I got sniffly. The stories are getting better and better.


Now I'm off to write and check the laundry.

Labels: Buffy, writing, Xia

Yeah, it's 2008. And I'm grumpy. Shouldn't be. But I am. Why? Tomorrow I have to get my car looked at. That's one reason. I may have to drive it 50 miles away if the issue is serious, since it's under warranty. Only the only dealer is 50 miles away in the commute direction in what I believe is, in fact, the official worst commute in the entire United States of America. Sigh.

Also I didn't write a word today. I worked more on uploading the new website, which was more work than I expected and then I overlooked a typo and had to re-upload a bunch of files. There's more clean up to do. Rats.

Then I watched 4 episodes of Buffy with my son.

Now it's late.

But, it's still a spanking new year and I haven't broken any of my resolutions yet. This is good. Plus, unless Scandal gets pushed to 2009, I should have two books out this year which is a good thing.

So, yeah. Happy New Year everyone!

Please think good thoughts about my car. That could help avoid a big bill just when my son is getting braces...

Labels: big fat hoo-ha, holidays, writing