Those Darn Eyeballs

I'm in the second round of edits on The Wallflower, and I have to say that the process hasn't been nearly as painful as I thought it would be. A lot of what Angie is showing me is "noob" mistakes that I'll learn to do less and less over time. (And if not, she'll be more than happy to kick my butt and remind me I'm not as much of a noob anymore, lol.)

Apparently one of my biggest problems is spastic faces.


No. Seriously.

Eyeballs twinkle and roam all over the damn place. (I keep thinking of a beholder on LSD.) Lips try to teach us the Macarena, even though that dance is so dead even Anita Blake couldn't bring it back.


I know. It's not a pretty picture.

Who'd want to kiss that?

So now I'm in the process of once again taming those roving eyeballs and spastic lips while a three and a half year old repeatedly pokes me with a plastic toy. Ah, the joys of writing...

So what's your pet peeve in a story? Is it roving eyeballs and spastic lips? Is it "he said/she said" after every bit of dialog? Is it lengthy, prolonged, utterly boring descriptions of places that you'd rather chew broken glass than visit? (I'm a huge LoTR fan. I've read and reread the books ten or eleven times, and even I skip a particular chapter in The Two Towers. I feel like Nina Garcia on Project Runway: "Don't bore me!")

And on that note, it's tea and red pen time.

"It's Dead, Jim"

My coffeemaker died today! Ack! My caffeine! My beautiful caffeine!

I had to nuke water for my tea. No hot water on tap. Sob! I looked up the model number on-line to see if anyone else had had the same problem. Turns out that you can burn out the heat sensor, causing the coffee maker to die a lingering, horrid, cold death, leaving its loved ones in a hell of non-caffeine.

I wants it back! My poor precious! Waaaah!

P.S.: The hubby suggested I look at Mrs. Tea or something, since technically I don't drink coffee. Since he told me he'd messed with it to make hot water for hot chocolate, I'm wondering if he isn't being accomodating to hide his guilt...

P.P.S.: He also offered me a little cheese with my whine. Yup. He's feeling better.

My Brain Is Going To Explode

For some reason, my creative muse has decided to drop a whole lot of story ideas into my poor overworked brain this week. Luckily, after a long talk with Dusty I managed to work out one major snafu the rewrite on Beta Testing would have had, and managed to make it even better. (Thanks, love.) I've also gotten an idea for a set of sexy demons/angels and a plot about a sorceror who is dying to find true love to add to the Halle Pumas and the Gray Court series I have planned. And I think there might be something else percolating back there, too. Something to do with Loki having gotten a bum deal...

Thank God I have a PDA, or I'd never get this stuff down. Gah!

Beta Testing is back up around seven thousand words. It got chopped, again, down to a little under three thousand, but I'm slowly adding stuff back in that still fits with the new plotline. Hopefully I'll be able to have it out to the beta readers in about two or three weeks, and then off to Angie for a final yea/nay. After that I'm setting the Pumas aside for a bit of a rest and playing with some elves.

Yes, I AM Insane

Back before Christmas I got an R&R on Beta Testing. Everything Angela said, I totally agreed with, especially after I sat down and re-read it. What I had to decide was, did I want to start rewrites immediately, or finish working on my submision for the Psychic Anthology? The due date on the anthology is January 13th, not a lot of time to make a decision considering it takes me six to eight weeks to write a novella.

Well, I finally decided I wanted to do the rewrite. I love the Pumas a good deal, and I think Becky and Simon deserve their own story. (The other novella, Rosetti's Stone, will get finished at a later date as part of the Gray Court series I want to start.) So I started changing things. And changing things. And changing things.

Today, I deleted the story down to 4k words. I'm revamping almost the whole thing. I have a better handle on how the story should go, but most of what was there isn't going to work. I've saved a good deal of it to a seperate file, and plan on reintroducing some scenes, but I think the new direction will work a lot better than anything else I've come up with in the last two weeks.

So now I know what I'm doing, it shouldn't take nearly so long to get started on it. I'm still waiting to hear on Cat of a Different Color, but I know how busy Angela is (pokepoke) and she doesn't have a lot of time (pokepoke) at the moment. I figure I'll start poking at her for real in about two weeks to see if she's had a chance to look at it yet.

Gremlin!

I made these with the lolzbuilder over at icanhascheezburger.com:

Maybe I'll send the editor one over to my editor at Samhain, Angela. She'd probably get a kick out of it.

P.S.: That is my kitteh... um, kitty... Gremlin. He loves all things electronic, and is the inspiration for my logo.

Hottie of the Month

You like? Julian Gil with long blonde hair. I hate snow, but I'd play in it with him!

I so have to use this pic as an inspiration for a story. Hmmm... Let me think about it.