Thunder and Lightning

So I’ve commented before that a lot of my books don’t necessarily have a whole soundtrack, but just one song. Meljean’s made a great post about this at Odd Shots, too.

(btw, if you haven’t entered my contest, it ends Thursday. you can win free books!)

I started working on a new project the other day. Just for me. Just to ease a little bit of the creativity bulging in my brain. If I work on ‘work’ stuff for too long (and I love my Succubus and Dating Agency books, but they’ve turned from ’secret project’ to ‘work’ now that they’re contracted), my brain starts hissing and spitting like a cornered cat. The only cure for this? More cowbell! A project just for me!

I won’t tell you what it’s about, because when it’s in the burgeoning stages, I can’t discuss it publicly. It drives me insane. Because until I write “THE END”, shit’s gonna change. I could say it’s about a panther-shifter, and then change it to a cougar-shifter on page 200 (like I did with HEAT). Names could change mid-stream. Alarming things of that nature. But I will tell you I’m in love with the phrase from a Selena Gomez song (I know, I know, I know…) — You are the thunder, and I am the lightning.

Perfect.

Oh sure, she looks 14 if she’s a day, but I’m more interested in the song than the video. Mom and Dad, you might like this one. (Also a note to Mom and Dad, avoid the new Gaga video. I like it, but I don’t think you’ll like it. Fair warning. She crazy.)

This book is also a bit of a stretch for me because it’s in alternating 3rd person POV. I joked to poor Meljean earlier today that it’s awkward switching to the hero’s head for me. It reads something like this:

Heroine: Oh my. What just happened? Where did everyone go?
Hero: YOU PRETTY.
Heroine: Um, that’s very nice I think, but I’m curious to know what is going on.
Hero: YOU MINE. ALL MINE.
Heroine: Oh dear. I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding–
Hero: HULK SMASH.

Okay, not really. It’s actually not that bad now that I’ve slept on it and re-read! But once I get about 50 pages down, I’m probably going to have to send to my sister to see if it’s horrible or salvageable. We shall see.

Weekend round up

This time change thing has me all messed up. I slept extremely late because my body wasn’t used to losing an hour. Not that it was bad to sleep late – my dreams were cool. I dreamed that I was a woman trapped in a house located on the front lines in the Civil War. The house had a rotating cast of people that flitted in and out, and the war killed nearly everyone and left zombies in their wake (Yeah, I don’t know what zombies had to do with it). My boyfriend was a soldier that died, and I had several younger siblings that died in the war, and all of them were haunting the house afterward.

It was strange. It would make a pretty cool book. Not my book, but someone else’s book, maybe. My books aren’t quite so sad.

Other than that, it’s been an uneventful weekend. I’ve been working on writing, reading beta manuscripts for friends, and watching my husband play Mass Effect 2 (which is an amazing game). We only have one TV, so I watch him play rather than play myself. It sounds weird but it’s more entertaining than you’d think. Of course, now I’m in the mood for more space epic stuff…

I’m hoping I’ll have more exciting stuff to post about soon, but right now I’m dabbling between multiple projects and not feeling particularly ‘attached’ to any of them, so I have no exciting writing updates to share. Boring blog is boring.

More Movies Watched

We’ve been on a movie kick, the husband and I, and here’s a summary of a few more films we’ve watched:

Whiteout: Man, this was bad. I saw the reviews (that were almost universally bad) but the premise sounded really intriguing. Murder in the Antarctic! Nazi treasure! How can you go wrong? Well, apparently you can go really, really wrong. It wasn’t a bad plot, but the story itself was so stupid and the characters did such stupid things that you spent the entire movie irritated at them.

Wall-E: This was adorable. I think I would have liked it more if I had not just seen UP, but how can anything be better than UP? It can’t. So this was good, but not amazing. I loved the space scenes (spacedweeb!) and Wall-E’s love for EVE was adorable. Very cute, sweet movie. Husband pronounced it boring.

Monsters Vs. Aliens: This movie was weird to watch, for me. It started out kind of bland but became better the longer the movie went on. Kudos to Dreamworks for having a plot where the woman doesn’t need the love of the ‘right’ man to be fulfilled in her life. The weird part comes in where…well, let’s just say that a very large chunk of the plot here was pretty much IDENTICAL to the Young Adult novel that my agent has that we’re going to shop very soon. So that was bizarre to watch play out.

The Devil’s Tomb: Husband and I love horror movies, and there are certain things that are insta-rentals for us. A tomb filled with an ancient horror and people are trapped there? Pretty much hits both of our horror movie kinks. Sadly, this movie did not deliver. The plot was WAY bad and implausible, the writing terrible. The ‘tomb’ also looked more like an army bunker, so there went any hope of archaeological creepiness. Sigh. It was also gory and gross for the sake of being gross, which meant Husband liked it more than me. Blech.

I am told that tonight we are going to watch OUTLANDER (my pick). It features Vikings and Space Aliens and a monster, so it will either be awesome or totally suck.

Word count on the (new) old project

I am temporarily calling it BEAST, just because I can (and doesn’t that sound mysterious and awesome?).

Where you won’t find me

I’ve had a couple of people ask me about my Goodreads account recently. I’m there, I check it every day, and I actively participate at Goodreads – I tag my TBR list, mark books I’m excited about, review the ones I’ve read and enjoyed, etc. I chat with people about reviews I’ve left on other books. There’s a major caveat to my participation, though.

My books get reviews or ratings almost every day. As an author, I love this and find it terribly exciting. People love my stuff! (sometimes!) People are talking about my stuff! But I don’t comment on any reviews or threads. I read the comments (even the unpleasant ones) and I NEVER, EVER, EVER PARTICIPATE IN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT MY OWN BOOKS.

The same thing goes for Amazon and B&N and review forums, etc. I poke around – absolutely. I’m nosy as hell. But I don’t participate in the conversation. A couple of people have asked me why, so I thought I might explain.

If we chitchat on Twitter every now and then and you post a review of my book on your blog, I will probably pop over to thank you for reviewing it. If you comment on my journal or at Odd Shots, I do my best to answer your comment, I really do (and if I’ve missed you, I’m sorry!). But I don’t participate on the Amazon forums or on Goodreads or anywhere else that they talk about my books.

Those reviews aren’t for me. They’re for other readers. NOT ME. And I believe that me showing up and commenting or trying to explain something about my books, or why I chose to do things a certain way…it influences the conversation. It makes some readers downright uncomfortable.

If it was me and I was talking constructively about a book, and the author stopped by to comment? I’d hate that. I’d clam up. I don’t want to do that to other people. You should be free to talk about my stuff in public without fear that the Authorbeast shall descend upon you and Explain Her Book And Show You The Error Of Your Ways.

So that’s why I don’t participate in discussions on Goodreads (for those that asked). If someone point blank asks me something, I might respond, but it’s just as easy to email me (my inbox is always open). It’s something that I feel fairly strongly about — and I know other authors don’t necessarily agree with me. But that’s how I feel. Maybe this will change later, but for now, I prefer that people have an author-free zone to discuss my stuff. And if it gets to the point that there’s enough traffic to warrant a forum for fans (oh, what a glorious day that would be) I’d throw one up on the website.

But you are free of me on Goodreads and Amazon.

Snippet from MY FAIR SUCCUBI

(to celebrate it being listed for pre-orders on Amazon and all)

So – spoilers ahoy. Don’t read below the cut if you’re not interested in a tease about a certain character that returns.

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Look what’s on Amazon!

It’s book 3 – whee!

<3

Release date is December 28, 2010. That means you get 3 books in one year (well, theoretically). Coolbeans!

(I am still ridiculously in love with this book, even weeks after finishing it.)

I wish!

So a while back, I had this idea that once I sold a book or two, I’d automatically know what I was doing. Writing books would come so easily, and so, so naturally to me. I’d sit down at the computer and just pour the scenes on to the page, smiling merrily and birds would sing outside my window, blah blah blah.

Yeah. Not so much. Here’s how my weekend of writing went.

Stare at page, wait for inspiration.

Make breakfast, wash dishes, consider cleaning house. This is all procrastination. Settle for watching random videos on YouTube instead.

Write 30 words. Contemplate crying.

I must be writing in the wrong POV! Start a new file. Write two sentences.

Gnash teeth. This doesn’t sound right either.

Take time off of writing to watch: Curling, Women’s Ice Skating (on DVR), Aliens, UP, Moon, more Curling, and Ice Hockey.

Go back to computer, write a page. Am convinced of my brilliance once more. Time to switch POVs with the scene break!

Thirty minutes (and 200 words) later, no longer convinced of my brilliance. This POV feels so wrong.

Maybe I need to switch projects. I switch to an old project, but it’s not the one I want to be working on. I rattle off a few pages, realize that I’m probably going to have to rip them right back out, and re-open the document that is bugging me so much. Back to square one.

Go back to the plan to do the original 1st person POV. Try again. This time for real – starting now!

…or starting right after WHITEOUT. And some Curling. And some Hockey.

Seriously – that was how my whole weekend went.  And it’s not the first time that it’s happened to me — it’s happened a lot lately. My books need to start with a clearly drawn opening scene, and if I don’t have it, I can’t move forward until I do. I always pooh-poohed people in the past when they told me this, but I’m a victim of it as well.  I’ve learned to trust my instincts over time, and if I’m constantly going back and rewriting the first chapter, it’s not working for me. There’s something wrong with it.

At least I’m smart enough to recognize it now, right?

Anyhow, after Sunday proved just as fruitless as Saturday, I took the rest of the evening off and just thought about my story. Thought about why it wasn’t working. Why weren’t my characters fun? Not FUNNY – the funny comes naturally if everything is working as planned. But the story wasn’t fun – it was dead on the page. Boring. I didn’t even enjoy re-reading it myself. And if I can’t get lost in it, how can I possibly expect anyone else to?

Then, of course, it hit me. I’d included a dark storyline that put my heroine in danger right at the beginning of the story. And this is a story that needs to start out light. Why couldn’t I move that plot piece to the middle of the book? Did I have enough conflict to start the book with the minor conflicts? And after thinking about it…I realized I was pursuing the wrong conflict.

Just like that, the rest of the story fell into my head somewhere about 10:45 last night, when I was laying in bed. I sprung up out of bed and ran to my desk to write notes to myself for about twenty minutes. My husband is used to this by now, so he kept sleeping.

But now I’m excited about my story again! My new outline is perfect, the opening scene is fun, and I think I have it down right now. I’m going to go home and scrap the 6k (weep) that I already have written, but I think I’m moving forward correctly now, and I’m thrilled.

(And nobody probably cared to read about all that but me, but yay me for finally figuring it out!)

Stuff I’m doing

Okay, not really stuff I’m DOING doing. More like “what I’m reading/watching” lately.

BOOKS: I am currently reading Michelle Rowen’s THE DEMON IN ME. It’s super fun and loads sexier than her vampire books. I’m lucky that I get to read an early copy (because I am AWESOME). Also reading early — BAYOU MOON. You can be jealous of me. I know. I recently purchased several books and tore through those, including Larissa Ione’s ECSTASY UNVEILED and the ever-amazing Kresley Cole’s PLEASURE OF A DARK PRINCE. It is all paranormals all the time over here, yo. I’m in heaven.

I’ve already pre-ordered Addison Fox’s WARRIOR ASCENDED, and I’m hoping it’s every bit as awesome as that cover. Seriously, I just love the colors on it. Isn’t it pretty?

MOVIES: So those that know me know that I’m a bit of a space geek. Well, okay, maybe you don’t know that about me. I’m kind of an armchair astronomer, and there’s something about space that terrifies and fascinates me. I’ve been in a total space ‘movie’ mode, quite possibly brought on by watching the STAR TREK reboot recently. Chris Pine = crazy hotness.

So we’ve watched a couple of flicks recently. PANDORUM was first up, and the first half-hour was terrific. Two guys wake up, stranded on a non-functioning space ship after being stuck in stasis for who knows how many years. Started out awesome. The next hour or so was totally boring and confusing, but the ending was good. Not bad overall, but left me hungry for more.

I suggested SUNSHINE (the one with Cillian Murphy) and so we watched that next. Man, I wish we hadn’t. What a terrible movie. The first hour was slow and stately, which I don’t mind. It had the hotness of Chris Evans – don’t mind that either. It had handwavey science that I can look past, but the plot takes a SERIOUS fork after the first hour to the point that I turned to my husband and said “What the f&ck just happened here?”

It was, in a word, WACK. Hated it.

The next movie in the queue is UP (Pixar movie). I am hoping we don’t hate it. If it’s good, maybe I can get the husband to watch Wall-E with me.

TV: Olympics, olympics, and more olympics. Strangely enough, we are watching more curling than anything else. I…like curling. I find this just a little bit odd.

Writing: I’m still in love with my new project, even though I didn’t work on it for the past two days. I needed a mental health break.

So…anything on your radars? Anything you are loving or hating book/tv/movie wise?

Character Soundtracks – Succubus Diaries

I thought Meljean Brook had a very inspiring post over at Odd Shots yesterday – characters and the ’songs’ that seem to fit them.

I’m a lot like Meljean in that I can’t listen to songs when I’m writing — but that doesn’t mean that they don’t inspire or evoke certain characters or images in your brain. Writers are a bit like magpies in that we take tiny pieces (song lyrics, images, etc) and cobble them together in our brain for inspiration. A lot of writers use collages. I cast my characters and create a personality ’sheet’ before I begin.

And a lot of characters have songs attached to them. Here’s what springs to mind for me at the moment.

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