First, goals in review:

FEBRUARY
Complete revisions on proposal pages on LMB
Complete synopsis of LMB
Send proposal and synopsis to agent for review

MARCH

Complete 100 pages of revisions for KND, aka Berta

APRIL
???
Original goals were to write a synopsis for Berta and submit proposal for review. However, I've had to reevaluate this.

I surpassed my 100-page goal and actually got to page 167 before I was forced to face a serious logic flaw in the story.

No, this didn't hit me all at once: I'd "kind of" noticed it from the beginning, though I thought the way I'd written could be believable in a DUH-it's-a-paranormal! sort of way. I mean, heck, I believed it.

Of course I did. I wrote it.

Then I stopped believing it. I mean, seriously: A box, okay? The contents of which need to get back to Germany. Nobody can take it there for reasons that are quite clear in the story. The contents of the box do have certain powers and already managed to get it from one place to another (though with a bit of human assistance.) Therefore, it made perfect sense to me that the box could also make its way to Germany.

So without human help, the box shows up in Germany very mysteriously. My characters knock themselves out trying to figure out who sent it. It appears no one did...cuuuuz...it's a paranormal, right?

This nagged at me for 4 months. I discussed it with Beth, who was noncommittal.

ME: "It's a paranormal, right?????"

BETH (eyeroll): "Um, yeah...okay."

ME (thinking): "I sooo do NOT want to rewrite the whole damn thing."



Then I had lunch with another_wip.

We discuss it. I whine. She listens. I whine some more:

"Soooo....okay, what I'm worried about is this: The box GETS to Germany, okay? So the characters can find out who it belongs to." Which is the crux of that part of the story: Getting the contents of the box back to where it belongs. "SO WHY DIDN'T THE STUPID BOX JUST GO STRAIGHT WHEREVER IT REALLY WANTS TO GO?" Which of course would render my characters useless. And there would be no story.

Pam agreed.

I thought about it all day.

I woke up out of a dead sleep at 4 a.m. the next morning with one single thought in my brain: I have to rewrite the whole damn thing.

Not actually the WHOLE thing--just the stupid, unbelievable, totally contrived part about a box mysteriously FedExing itself on a transatlantic journey.

GOD, it was such an awesome idea at the time! The creepy old box showing up out of the blue. My characters' horrified reactions. Their search for an explanation, only to find none. Their realization that a dark force, indeed, was very much at work there.



Yeah, great. But even PARANORMAL has to be somehow grounded in reality. Everything has to add up, make sense in the end. I realized after much consideration that this particular plot device sucked.

The problem now is this: All that great mystery and intrigue? Gone. Which means it Must Be Replaced.

REVISED APRIL GOAL: Make it work!

As some of you may know I've been watching the old miniseries Winds of War. After it ended abruptly, I moved on to the sequel, War and Remembrance. Two things I knew before I started watching it:

1. That I'd seen it before.
2. That I'd hated it.

Why am I watching it again? Maybe for the same reason I try to read The Scarlet Letter every 10 years--to see if I hate it less? Actually I don't "remember" movies. I remember I've seen them, just not the details. Even now it's like watching W&R for the first time. I don't remember a thing.

I do, however, remember now why I hated it.

IT'S BORING!

Not only is it boring--hours and hours of sailors wandering around on ships (should we blow up the japs? yeah. no. wait. here they come. fire! no wait! run! go get me a cigarette) and hours and hours of Jewish immigrants wandering through Italy (we have to escape! okay let's go. wait. we can't. when? later. okay. here come the gestapo! hide! no wait. false alarm. go make me some soup)--but it's crappy writing.

You hear me? CRAPPY WRITING! And this is why:

Remember how I bitched about the stupid characters in this movie though I DID admit (somewhere) that it's the stupidity of such characters that kept the story (and other stories) interesting? Oh my God. It's so true.

My apologizes to Ali McGraw: Though I doubt anyone ever considered your acting worthy of an Academy Award, I didn't realize how much you brought to this miniseries until your character Natalie was replaced with Jane Seymour. I am not saying Jane Seymour is worse than you. (OK, people--no matter how many times I re-word that last sentence, it's going to offend either Jane Seymour or Ali McGraw; I'm leaving it as is.)

Ali McGraw, they say, was too old for the part by the time they made the sequel. Frankly, she was too for the first one. Attitude wise, she was a perfect Natalie: Passionate, snarky, she put up with NO crap. What do they do? First they replace her with Seymour who, in the looks department, is about as believable as a Polish Jew as Whoopi Goldberg. Next, they turn her into the biggest ethnic Mary Sue on the face of the planet.

(As an aside, they also replaced Briny because Jan-Michael Vincent was A. also too old, and B. unreliable, and you know what THAT means)

I realize the author helped write the screenplay. So, was it senility? Lots of cash? Blame it on the director? WHAT???

Natalie in Winds of War tells an SS officer her name is "Mona Lisa" and practically flips him off.

Natalie in War and Remembrance whimpers to her supposed Israeli rescuer: "Oh, can't we leave tonight? There's a big bad maaaan here! I don't like the way he looooks at me! I am so afraid he's going to sneak into my room tonight and have his nasty old waaay with me!"

Ali McGraw's Natalie would've waited up for the dude with a butcher knife under her pillow.

What am I getting at? Why is this "crappy writing?" CONSISTENCY IN CHARACTERS. Herman Wouk wrote a masterpiece. It wouldn't be considered a masterpiece if everyone who read it threw it across the room, frustrated with wishy-washy characterizations. I don't think it's entirely unfair to compare novel writing with screenwriting; you still have characters that your audience wants--needs--to connect to. Maybe a lot of this does have to do with the director. It's Dan Curtis, after all: The king of visible booms, and prop boys skulking in the background.

Also, this running-from-the-Nazis thing has gone on way too long. This series is ENDLESS! I'm ready to drop the atomic bomb myself. Better yet, drop a dime on Natalie. ANYTHING to end this movie! Sill I keep watching it.

Go figure.

I slept till 11:30 this morning.

Eleven-freaking-thirty! This time change is kicking my butt as usual. This is after working day shift this weekend and NOT sleeping for two nights in a row. Seriously, it has to be psychological. But whatever it is, twice a year my circadian rhythm gets blown to shreds.

I'm on page 74 (of first revisions) of killernazidoll, which from now on I'll simply refer to as BERTA. "Killernazidoll" makes her sound as if she's the killer when in fact her original owner was the murderous maniac. Though Berta has her personality flaws (ornery, manipulative,downright nasty at times) she hasn't actually "killed" anyone; therefore, she has informed she is annoyed by the misnomer.

I do not want to annoy Berta in the middle of revisions.

26 pages to go to meet my end-of-the-month goal.

Surprisingly, though this was a NaNoWriMo project, it's not in as terrible shape as I feared. What I've found mostly is this:

1. A lot of repetition, hopefully resolved.

2. Lack of physical description of the characters.

3. Inconsistencies in the speech patterns of one character whose first language isn't English (this one is killing me.)

4. A lot of scenes involving the MC and her mother. Maybe too many? True, Mom gets virtually written out by the middle of the story, but plays a big role in the beginning. I wonder how much is "too" much...

5. Remember those scenes I started and then ended in the middle because I couldn't figure out how to end them and I wanted to hit my 50K? Yep, there's a lot of 'em.

6. Time line screw-ups, also mostly resolved (so far).

7. A character whose profession changes from chapter to chapter--NOT yet resolved.

8. A character who was alive in the first draft, and then I decided to kill her off prior to the start of the story, now keeps turning up ALIVE in later chapters. Disturbing.

Other than these little speed bumps, I'm enjoying the revision process and am absolutely in love with my two main characters. 13 days left to wrap this up!

Two drug/alcohol rehab programs in the same city. Both in major hospitals.

Program A: For the duration of their stay, patients have no visitors, no phone calls, no personal electronics, and watch a community TV.

Program B: Patients walk around with cell phones, play on their lap tops (hurray for wifi) and hang out with anyone from the street who wanders in to visit. I've learned each patient room will soon have its own cable TV.

Which program do you suppose has the higher success rate for long-term sobriety? Well, just the fact that these patients aren't making drug deals during their hospitalization, or having their buds slip them bud/smack/crack/blow/whatever during visiting hours...um, I'd have to guess A.

Now which program do you think is funded solely by taxpayer dollars?

Well, it's not A.

Goals, goals, goals.

I love setting goals.

As my Grapemo goals have been reached, it's time to set others.

First, February goals in review:

Complete revisions on proposal pages on LMB
Complete synopsis of LMB
Send proposal and synopsis to agent for review

Goal for March:

Complete 100 pages of revisions for KND

Goals for April

Write a synopsis for KND
Submit proposal for review

Writing a synopsis for LMB was a nightmare. I don't have a first draft, only 100 or so readable pages and...well, now I have a synopsis. The story itself is, essentially, still in my head. Writing a detailed (5 pages, single-spaced) synopsis for a story I haven't actually written was an experiment in terror. Happily, as I've been assured, a proposal synopsis isn't carved in stone.

With KND, however, the first draft is already written. Though writing a synopsis is never easy (frankly I'd rather floss my teeth with a razor blade) at least I have a decent foundation and won't feel as if I'm making it up on the spot.



Anyone care to share YOUR new goals?

I wrote the first three sentences of the first chapter to the project that's been waiting in the wings for what feels like MONTHS.

And that's absolutely all I've had time for today.

It still feels spectacular!

1. GRAPEMO (brace yourself!) starts in 2 weeks! Details to come. I'm all geared up to work on Project #1 which has been sadly neglected for eons.

2. I am anticipating major withdrawal once American Horror Story: Asylum ends next week. Does this show ROCK??? OMG! I haven't been this addicted to a series since Six Feet Under. Thankfully there are a few episodes left of Downton Abbey AND a few things queued up in Beth's Netflix line.

3. Today is the first day--honestly--I've felt like myself again. So who DID I feel like? Some nameless, decrepit old lady who couldn't make it around the produce department without collapsing on top of the cantaloupes. Thank God the old heifer seems to have wandered off somewhere. I've locked the door behind her and she ain't coming back!

4, In fact, I'm feeling so good, I thought I'd try Chipotles out on my non-existent gall bladder tonight. :)

5. Ask me if I've done anything about getting my psych credentials yet.

Nope, don't bother.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me what led up to my ending up in the hospital with an imploding gall bladder last month, so here are the Cliffs notes in case you’re morbidly interested. 

Mistakes were made.

Mistake # 1: Eating like a pig, which happens to be one of my favorite past times.

Lately, I’ve had a bit of stomach issues off and on which I’d been blaming in the salad bar at work. Seriously, salad bars should be banned. It’s a well-known fact people don’t wash their hands, and here I am, handling the same utensils, etc. Plus that craps sits out for hours, right? Whatever. That was my excuse.

Anyway, the week before all this happened, I went to Panera’s with my friend Ruthy. Having been there recently with Pamela (aka another_wip) and THOROUGLY ENJOYED their mac and cheese (“large, not small, thank you very much”) I ordered the same thing. Again, it was delicious! There is no other mac and cheese like it on earth.

In the middle of the night I woke up with severe abdominal, radiating to my back.

Me, thinking: “It’s my gall bladder.”

Yes, classic symptoms. I haven’t been a nurse for 150 years for nothing.

Disclaimer: This has happened to me in the past, maybe once every 6 or 7 years. But seriously, who runs to the doctor for something that happens maybe once a decade?* No one, right? At least not me.

*Of course, this is why people walk around with heart attacks they never knew they had.

The attack lasted 12 hours and then I was fine, though I had to cancel my anniversary dinner with husband. A week after that, December 14, I ate, not from the salad bar, but a tuna melt from the grill. Pretty yummy for hospital food.

I wake up at 3:00 a.m. (which seems to be the gall bladder witching hour) in excruciating pain and riddled with nausea.

Me, thinking: “It’s my effen gall bladder again, dammit.”

I wait for the pain to go away.

It doesn’t.

It lasts all day Saturday and Sunday. I can't eat or drink. I DON'T want to go to the emergency room. I honestly think, like the previous attacks, I can simply ride this one out, which of course was…

Mistake # 2.

Monday Nate drags me into see my doctor.

Me: “I am having a gall bladder attack. There is no doubt in my mind.”

Doctor: “Blah blah blah blah, it’s possible, we’ll do an ultrasound, but it could also be a virus, blah blah.”

Me: “What the **** kind of ****ing virus shows up, lasts 12 hours, goes away, and comes back a ****ing week later?” *

*No, I didn’t say it in those exact words. But I expressed my doubt that this was any kind of virus.

At this point I am also having fever and chills and my whole body's cramping. I've had nothing to eat or drink x 3 days. I am told to go to ER for IVs if I can’t keep anything down and I’m given a shot of Compazine and a prescription for it. Pills, not the shots. Like I can keep them down.

I have the ultrasound, return home, and crumble on the couch. At 6 p.m. someone from the doctor’s office calls and the ultrasound is find. My gall bladder is FINE. I don’t have pancreatitis, either. It’s probably a virus. I should push fluids, etc., and call back if I don’t get any better.

Mistake # 3: Listening to anonymous people calling from a doctor’s office.

My gall bladder is FINE? Now I am doubting my own sanity. How can it be fine?????? I HAVE ALL THE CLASSIC SYMPTOMS. I HAVE PAIN! NAUSEA! I AM DYING HERE!

Beth buys me a smoothie. It takes me a day and a half to drink half of it. I suck on ice cubes. I retch. I am hot and cold. Wednesday I take a Compazine, feel better, and decide to eat something. Eli does well when he’s sick and I feed him rice, so I eat some rice. After two bites I get shooting pains in my right shoulder—another classic sign.

Thursday I call the doctor back. I can’t get in to see her, so they sent me to this little twerp I’ve never seen before.

Me: “It’s my GALL BLADDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Dr. Twerp: “Well, the ultrasound says you have sludge in your gall bladder—“

Me: “I was told it was normal!”

Dr. Twerp: “And your liver enzymes are elevated…”

Me: “Gall bladder, right? GALL BLAAAAAAAADDERRRRRR!”

Dr. Twerp: “You need a hidascan and a GI consult. Go make an appointment. And make yourself eat something.”

Me: "DO I LOOK LIKE SOMEONE WHO NEEDS TO *MAKE* HERSELF EAT????”

Dr. Twerp (who, by the way, wasn’t even BORN the year I graduated from nursing school): “Umm…”

At the appointment desk I learn he didn’t even order the hidascan—OH, and they’ll call me back in 48 hours to let me know when they can fit me in for a GI consult.

Me (sobbing at this point): “Never mind. In forty-eight hours I will be DEAD.”

Appointment maker: “……”

Back home, on the advice of my poor freaking out sister, I call the patient advocate because this hospital, who advertises “world class care,” is supposed to offer SAME DAY APPOINTMENTS in emergency situations. I guess, because I'm still breathing, this was not considered an emergency.

I get a voice mail. So much for THAT.

Then I get a call from the appointment maker. “We can get you in with a GI doctor on January 16th.”

I hang up on her.

Nate, eying me weirdly: “Yanno, my buddy’s dad had a ruptured gall bladder…”

Me: “Yeah? What happened?”

Nate: “He died.”

That was it. Off to the emergency room I go. I will spare you all the gruesome details—and trust me, “gruesome” doesn’t quite do them justice—but I got there Thursday night, had the hidascan on Friday (where they inject radioactive dye into you and see happens…as it happens, my gallbladder was DEAD at that point and didn’t even react to it). My lab work was screwed up, my potassium level was dangerously low (hence the cramps) and my blood pressure was in the toilet. After several days of being shot up with morphine and Zofran, they finally took out my gallbladder—which was loaded with STONES—on Sunday morning.

Biggest Mistake, in Retrospect: Probably not going to the emergency room to begin with. But honestly, most people “trust” their doctors, and I’m no exception—or at least I wasn’t. Now I want to know: Why didn’t one of those two doctors admit me to the hospital instead of FORCING me to go through the emergency process? Who was the IDIOT who read the ultrasound results? Who didn’t notice my enzymes were elevated? Why would a doctor not listen to someone—who NEVER goes to the doctor when she’s sick because she NEVER GETS SICK—when she drags herself into the office twice insisting she’s on death’s door?

It boggles the mind.

Anyway, I’m pretty much recovered. The surgery itself isn't all that complicated, and would’ve been a lot easier to endure had I not been sick as a dog for a full week in advance.

Word of advice for those of you who really enjoy those big fatty meals: Excruciating abdominal pain radiating to your back and right shoulder, nausea, diarrhea, and, later, fever and chills…do NOT let your doctor blow you off! Untreated gall bladder disease is nothing to play with.

NaNo has kick-started me into a project that I can't let go of, so--in spite of my best intentions--I've had to make the choice between writing and blogging.

As you can see, writing has won.

I don't want to be one of the many who've abandoned LJ, so I won't. I can't get the hang of Wordpress, and Blogspot doesn't let you f-lock the posts you really don't want the whole world to read (not that the world is reading this one, lol). And I HATE that I screwed up my LJ format! How stupid was that? I can't customize anything the way it is now and it'll take too much time for me sit down and figure it out again.

Project # 1 (which I've been working on for probably 3 years) has been on hold, first because I pretty much lost interest and then because I've been busy with Project # 2 (just a wee bit of ADD going on there...). Now that I'm over 70k into the first draft, and, hopefully, nearing the end (maybe this weekend?) it's occurred to me that GRAPEMO is coming up--and one of these would be The Perfect Project for that.

I'm leaning toward #1 only because there is a certain lady in New York who's been extremely patient with me for...um...three years?

So just to put a bug in everyone's ear--GRAPEMO IS ONLY SEVEN WEEKS AWAY!

50,313 to be exact.

I finished on the 29th, and wrote every day but 4 days, which means it took me 25 days to hit the 50k mark. This is a new record for me. Of course it's only the third time I actually won Nano, out of five or six tries...

What I've learned this year:

1. What starts out as one story easily turns into something else. I'd planned blood and guts. Instead I ended up with a lot of weirdness: Nobody died.

Yet.

2. Google translators suck (though I've always suspected this), and really, if you want to translate anything, you need to go to message boards, or talk to people who, um, actually know the language. Also, there are words in the English language that simply can't be translated. And vice versa.

3. Setting a novel in a different a country is a monumental undertaking. Seriously,am I out of my skull?

4. Historical research is kind of fun, especially when it's something I'm actually interested in.

5. I've never loved "new" characters more than I loved these. Even in this first miserable draft they have their own personalities. They make me laugh. They tick me off. Most importantly, they feel real to me. I'm hopelessly attached to them.

6. Sometimes names do "fit" your characters right from the start. In previous works, I've changed characters' names over and over, right up to the last minute. The only name I plan to change here is one that belongs to a someone I know--I threw it in on an impulse--but because the character turned out to be a bitch, it might be better to, um, change it, eh? :) Though nothing, of course, is carved in stone, the chances of my changing any other names are pretty much zero.

7. Scene transitions are still the hardest things for me to write (after first chapters). Therefore, I didn't write any, which means I wasted less time. I also didn't write a first chapter.

8. Neither did I write any descriptive details. Half the time I don't even know what these people look like. What the town looks like. What they're eating. Wearing. Sometimes I don't even know what freaking ROOM they're in (it's NANO, for Pete's sake...I'll work it in later).

9. I can write just as easily at my kitchen table as I can at Panera's or at the library. Who knew?

10. How easy it is to gain 8 pounds in a single month? FRIGHTENINGLY EASY!



What's up next? I'm not entirely sure. I have another ms on the backburner I'm supposed to be working on, and as attached as I am this THIS one, it'll be hard to pull away. I'll give myself a couple days to think it over.

All psyched up to see "Lincoln" today. Beth and I stood in line for-freaking-EVER waiting to buy our low-cal, low-fat (not, not) popcorn and diet (not) sodas.

We wait. And wait.

And wait and and wait and wait.

I wondered if I'd accidentally wandered into the BMV. It wasn't even a long line. It was ONE PARTY of three people.

The whole time I am mentally bitching: How long does it take to serve someone? When the people in front of me spilled a drink on the floor. I swear to God my brain blew out of my ears. The movie started in, like, thirty seconds. I chilled a bit when I realized that one of the people ahead of me was someone I used to work with (Heynicetoseeyoutoobadaboutthatdrink). Not their fault anyway the workers are so slow. And anyone can spill a drink. I do it regularly. Usually on the elevator at work.

Still, I was at my wits' end by then. I am not, in general, an impatient person (regardless of what you've heard.) I just don't like wasting my life standing in lines when I CAN'T SEE WHAT THE FREAKING HOLD UP IS.

And not only haven't they gotten to me--now I'm standing in Lake Pepsi, dying of thirst.

SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE?????

Resisting the urge to suck on the floor, I decide to blow off the goodies and try later...like, when nobody's there. We zip into the theater and find some seats. Good seats, too, with no fat heads in front of us, no babies behind us. Yay! I'd really, really been looking forward to the movie. Daniel Day-Lewis? Sally Field? Woo-hoo!

The lights dim.

Nothing happens.

For like...five minutes.

The lights go up again. Not a good sign.

A man walks in. "Sorry, the bulb blew. We won't be able to fix it. The next showing's at nine-thirty. We'll refund your money."

All I could think of was that huuuuge tub of popcorn and those two large drinks I would've been stuck with had it not taken the chick behind the counter longer than the course of the Civil War itself to serve the people in front of me.

Better luck next week, I guess. When Mercury is NOT in retrograde.

"Hello, Nano Work-in-Progress."

"Why, hello there, Jen. You're sure been spending a lot of time with me, haven't you?"

"Why, yes I have."

"You just said 'why' twice."

"...What?"

"I said WHY hello there, Jen, and you said WHY yes I have. That's an ECHO."

"Why, yes it is."

"Now you're doing it deliberately."

"Why, yes I am."

Silence.

"Yanno, for a NaNo project you have no sense of humor."

"What do you mean--'for a NaNo project'? I sense a veiled insult there."

"Sorry. It was actually meant to be an overt insult."

"You say I have no sense of humor? HELLOOOO? I've been humoring you for the past nineteen days! I hear you laughing your ass off over every page."

"So?"

"SO???? I'm a HORROR story, you eejit."

"You're nothing yet. You're a crappy first draft. A NANO first draft, no less. You're 30,018 words of incomprehensible babble, implausible plot lines, undeveloped characters who can't go three paragraphs without repeating the same gesture they've already performed fifty times before--characters, I might add, who switch languages at the drop of a hat. Why do you torture me so? You know I'm monolingual."

"Mono-what?"

"Whatever you call it when you only speak one language."

"Yes, unlike your MC who happens to speak three. Why do always write about people smarter than yourself?"

"Nyah nyah nyah nyah NYAH NYAH nyah?"

"Great, Jen. Very mature."

"And, by the way, it's 30,218 words, not 30,018. I just wrote 200 more words while arguing with you. AND ate some baklava."

"I'm certain your keyboard thanks you for that..."

"I'm tired. I'm going to bed. See ya Tuesday."

"Tuesday? Wait! What about tomorrow?"

"Hello, I'm working?"

"Well, well, well. You're just  full of excuses, aren't you?"

Sigh.

"Okay. See you tomorrow. But ONLY FOR A LITTLE BIT!"

"Thanks! I wuv you, Jen-Jen."

"The act like it, hey? Do my bidding without question! Become the full-fledged novel I know you can be. BE that horror story, O NANO WORK-IN-PROGRESS! EMBRACE THE INNER WORKINGS OF MY FABULOUS IMAGINA-- Hey! Where you going?"

"You're scaring me."

"Wimp."

"Loser."

"Na-No-WHINE-more!"

"Oooh, clever. Better save some of that wit for your BORING-ASS STORY!."

This conversation is over





 

1. I need to rake the yard. I also need to write.

Sooooo....do I write?

Or rake?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Total no-brainer.

2. Whenever I think NaNo's getting kind of tough, I remember this--

O

--and realize how easy I have it.

3. Hmmm...


4. Happy birthday to my sister Mary, AKA I NEED A PLAYDATE!



5. Back to work--and this is my inspiration for the day:

I don't often post reviews (I'm not sure why I don't...I just don't) but I really loved this one from Cynthia on Goodreads:

"I love a really great ghost story. I’m a fan of those where the author is not afraid to kill off a couple of characters and The Unquiet definitely surpassed my expectations. It was more of a thriller than a ghost story as we don’t really see a ghost in the story through most of it but crazy things begin to happen from the start after Rinn moves into town. It’s definitely not one you should be reading at night before going to sleep, I started thinking I could hear creaking noises and seeing shadows on the wall.

"The creepiness of the story seeps out and will give you chills. I love stories like that, ones that will get so descriptive, where the main character herself can’t tell the difference between reality and imagination so the reader doesn’t even know what’s real or not.



"It makes you crazy trying to guess what the heck is going on and also eager for the time when all truth will be revealed. I was able to pretty much put two and two together and figure out why the ghost was only haunting certain people, it was frustrating that Rinn had such a hard time figuring it out when it was so obvious to the reader.

"The Unquiet wasn’t just a creepy ghost story, there was also a bit of romance. We have Nate who’s a charming small town boy, a good guy that and we get to see a lot of him at the beginning of the novel. I enjoyed the funny dialogue between him and Rinn as they get to know each other. Unfortunately he does disappear for about half of the novel when Rinn begins to get obsessed about the ghost in her school and spends a lot of time with her new friends. This book should’ve come with a warning to not get attached to any of the characters in the story. There were quite a few shocking things that I didn’t see coming which made me flip the pages even faster, I finished this in one day which is kind of hard for me to do lately but that’s how hooked I was to it. Sleeping is for wimps! Even though the pacing slowed down a bit in the middle of the book I still enjoyed it a lot and the ending is not a happily ever after for everyone involved but it was a good one that left me with my mouth hanging open. Eeeek! If you want something to creep you out this Halloween or just any dreary day during this winter season then The Unquiet is a must read."

Thank you, Cynthia!

I hope my current NaNo project is equally creepy. Better yet, creepier.

I'm addicted to creepy. And speaking of creepy, this came in the mail:





So hopefully I'll learn how to do something about this poor girl's head:

Well, today I wandered from the Land of I'm-So-In-Love-With-My-Manuscript to the Valley of What-The-Hell-Kind-of-Shit-Do-I-Think-I'm-Writing. But at least I made my 4K goal to make up for doing absolutely nothing yesterday. It only took me ALL DAY.

I'm totally tired of this grumpy guy's face, so I'm changing my word meter, probably tomorrow.

I participated in the Buckeye Book Fair on Saturday and it was absolutely AMAZING! It was jam-packed with people from start to finish, and sales were excellent (cuz there's nothing worse than sitting at a book fair or signing and not selling a single copy. Which has happened to me--LOL, am I not too proud to admit anything on this blog??

I really want to give a shout-out to my table mate Claire McMillan who was there with her very first novel, GILDED AGE (S&S)--a re-telling of Edith Wharton's House of Mirth.

Claire sold her first copy within minutes of sitting down.

She looked at me and said: "You must bring me good luck."

Me (already paranoid b/c my last BBF experience wasn't exactly a raging success)(thinking): Yeah, well, I sure hope you do the same for me, sister.

Let me tell you: Claire was witty, and fascinating, and so much fun! People flocked around her, examining her book--and the vast majority of those who stopped by did indeed buy a copy. In fact, she sold out before lunch. CONGRATULATIONS, CLAIRE! Her first novel, and she rocked it!



Amazon description: ELEANOR HART had made a brilliant marriage in New York, but it ended in a scandalous divorce and thirty days in Sierra Tucson rehab. Now she finds that, despite feminist lip service, she will still need a husband to be socially complete. A woman’s sexual reputation matters, and so does her family name. Ellie must navigate the treacherous social terrain where old money meets new: charitable benefits and tequila body shots, inherited diamonds and viper-bite lip piercings, country house weekends and sexting. She finds that her beauty is a powerful tool in this world, but it has its limitations, even liabilities. Through one misstep after another, Ellie mishandles her second act. Her options narrow, her future prospects contract, until she faces a desperate choice.

“Looking for a beach read with a touch of literary pedigree? . . . [A] rich romp of a read.”—Elle

"Great fun, an over-the-top social farce, like Gossip Girl for grown people."—Boston Globe

As it turn out, I sold a lot of copies, too, of all three of my titles. *HAPPY DANCING* Claire proved to be just as much of a good luck charm for me. :)

What's interesting about this year's NaNo is that this dreaded first draft doesn't seem as devastatingly unreadable as previous NaNo attempts. Either (after 3 novels) I'm getting better at this "first draft" stuff, or I'm...well, totally in love with this project, in utter denial, and suffering from some serious delusions of grandeur.

Granted, there is babble. There is little or no description of any character or any setting. I'm jumping around. I'm still writing nasty notes to myself. There is an abundance of back story, though I seem to be working it in without pages and pages of way back when--and this can be easily edited later on down the road. My characters actually have personalities, something I usually don't master till the third or fourth drafts,

And! There is an actual story here. Really! I think if someone (without my knowledge or permission, which, in any case, they would never obtain) were to sit down and read what I've written so far, they'd actually see that story, and possibly enjoy it.

Mood: EXHILARATED!

I hope all of you are having similar success!

TOP 10 WRITERS BLOCK QUOTES

1. Idea: √

2. Character list: √

3. Protagonist: √

4. Antagonist(s): √

5. Character names: √

6. Basic plot: √ (?)

7. Characterizations: _

8. Setting: _

9. Motivations: _

10. Conflicts: _

11. Historical research:_

12. Resolution: _

13. Anything resembling a believable ending: _
 
14. A brain: _

(Notice the sad lack of check marks 7 through 14)


No matter. This is DAY ONE of of NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH and all you need is a keyboard, an idea, motivation, and...well, yes, time, lol. But even if you don't hit the 50,000 words by the end of the month (and I usually do not) whatever you end up with is still the start of something--and probably much, more than you would've written had you not signed up.

WHO'S WITH ME????

Author FRIGHT FEST from Winter Haven Books! (Scroll down for my contribution)

So it's Halloween--and all my scares will be at work tonight, lol.

Bernardine's "sister" has arrived. I left her sitting on the couch and when Elijah came home, he took one look and started barking his head off: Who is this strange person sitting in MY spot?!







Yes, she needs work. The top of her head is missing. One arm is severely cracked. She has multiple thin cracks criss-crossing her face, though I believe that only adds to her charm.

She is yet unnamed. I'm open to suggestions.