Once again, here is a list of a few of the things cluttering up my nightstand.

Mankind, Have a Nice Day!  A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks by Mick Foley
I'm embarrassed to carry the book around because the cover is psychotic; however, the book is pretty good - and I'm not even into wrestling.

How To Write Killer Fiction by Carolyn Wheat
Good info.

A book of jigsaw sudoko
Yoga for my brain.

Bible
Just started a three year plan.  Still on Genesis and quite amazed at all the deception.

Notebooks and pens
In the arsenal of every writer.

I-touch

And, of course, an alarm clock with a much abused sleep button.

As always, my nightstand is a revolving door.

Critters, an online critique group, is a great place to sharpen my editing skills.  I submitted a story the other day and received an email telling me the piece was put in the queue for others to critique at a later date.  The email also showed how the text would look on screen.  Re-reading the story in a different format, I found three critical errors I didn't notice before.  It amazes me how the mind is blinded to certain things.  I miss errors in my own writing that I catch in others and vice versa. 

Yesterday, I copied a set of numbers off of the computer screen without looking at the paper I was writing on.  Easy, right?  I got the sequence wrong.  I'm too young for Alzheimer's.

Why does this anomaly exist?  Do the synapses in our brains move and change and grow and die and alter our realities so quickly? 

High school.  I took advanced science, math, language, art, and even advanced gym classes, getting A's and B's.  Then I took typing.  My grade?  D.  How can I ace Calculus and almost fail Typing?  It was a blow to my ego.  Probably much needed.

Ahh, the fleshy and fallible machine that is our brain. 

Rarely do I buy a book - especially hardback - with a capable library system at my disposal.  While walking around the mega-warehouse store today, a pile of books caught my attention.  I picked one up, opened the cover, read the first sentence, then immediately put it in my cart.  The book is The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.

Now I've read The DaVinci Code and considered it an entertaining novel of fiction, but I wasn't waiting on pins and needles for the next Dan Brown book to hit the shelves.  I was at the store to buy food and snacks.  To get me, of all people, to shell out money for a hardcover book based upon reading the first sentence, is masterful.

I only wish I could write like that.

My brother told me to read 50 pages before I close a book forever.  And I did, 53 pages to be exact.

Book One of The Mage Winds Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey.

1.  It's actually the 9th book in the Heralds of Valdemar series.  I believe calling it Book One is misleading.

2.  Confusing - of course I missed the groundwork laid in the previous 8 books.  I couldn't keep the clans and harolds and mages and companions and guardians and scouts and types of magic straight.

3.  A three page inner monologue.

4.  Needs editing.  I know, harsh.

5,  And most importantly, death is treated lightly.  I believe seven people die in the first 53 pages, seven nameless men with no loved ones to mourn their deaths.  Evil oafs and inept assassins.  Easily killed.  Too easy. 

Many reviewers said they liked this book and I am, admittedly, a harsh critic.  Reading the book wasn't fun, but I guess that's just me.

I have had serious misgivings about the novel I am currently slogging through.  It lacked punch and the plot was diluted.  Working on in became work.  But this morning I woke up with my head spinning in a different direction.  There is that moment between sleeping and waking where you are doing neither.  That is the moment where creative alternatives strike.  And strike it did this morning.

A perfect plot twist to my novel.  No longer do I dread the workload.  If I find joy in the creating than perhaps readers will find joy in the reading. 

Writing, what a roller-coaster ride it is.

Ever wake up and feel like the room is spinning at 100 miles per hour?  I have.  And thats without drinking.  No clue as to why either.

On to writing.  It's now September and time for me to set some goals.  Let's see: 

      20 pages a week, every week until the end of the year + the pages already written = a novel. 

That's in addition to keeping  up with Critters, writing some shorts, and not forgetting my family and other responsibilities.  Do-able,  as long as vertigo doesn't strike me full force again.  The room is currently spinning at 20 miles per hour.  Doctor prescribed some anti-vert pills but I'm not fond of taking medication.  I'd rather fix the problem than camouflage the consequences.

You can tell a lot about a person by what is on his/her nightstand.  The current books/authors next to my bed, recently acquired from the local library, are:

Kiss Me, Kill Me by Anne Rule
No fiction could ever be more terrifying than the true cases written about by this great writer.

The Collected Poems of Langston Huges
Short, like my attention span.

The Drunkard's Walk, How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow
I have to make sure the house is quiet and the phone is off the hook for this one because it's math intermingled with philosophy.

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
Have only read one paragraph so far but it is promising.

There's also a killer Sudoku book to help me unwind, a box of tissues for my rare late night allergies, and a bite-size candy wrapper. 
Come September, these items will change as my priorities change. 

It is hard to find time to write during the summer months for many reasons.  The yard needs work and the house is noisy; there's BBQ's and vacation.  September though....  I'm looking forward to some alone time to dive deep into worlds of my own creation again.

So I need to set some goals, and to do that requires math.  Let's see, a 100,000word/400 page novel divided by time should give me words/pages per day.  Will work on that later. 

Still lots to enjoy in August, but I am excited for September.

This has been a busy and frustrating month so far.  Just finished writing a dark fantasy short story.  Still in its early stages but at least it's complete.  I also want to concentrate on writing the second installment of my novel.  That project has stalled.  Need to do some serious plotting to resurrect that beast.  I'm about fifty pages into it and it reads like a romance novel - not my intent - and the story line is convoluted.  Oh well, it's only fifty pages.  Writing is in the re-writing they say.

Just received word today that my story was accepted by Quantum Kiss, an on-line journal of romantic speculative fiction.  I'm walking on air.  Will have to open a bottle of wine tonight and celebrate.

Fourth of July fireworks went off in my computer.  Nothing worse than hearing a loud pop in your CPU.  Problem (a very expensive problem) fixed.  I seem to have bad ju ju with technology lately.  Then again, no system is perfect and upkeep is usually required.  Thankfully have a good comp. repair contact.

Was three pages into writing a new short story and totally engrossed in creating when the fireworks went off.  Story was saved.  Whew.  I really should back up my stuff more often.

On the plus side, I did clean the basement during my hiatus.

My first ever published story will be out in The Lorelei Signal as of today, "A Breath Of Ill Intent". 

This coincides with yet another rejection I received this morning on a different story.  It's interesting that one editor said the beginning is bogged down with too many characters.  Another editor said she liked the beginning very much but was still going to pass.  Maybe it's time to file this story away.

I suppose writing is like baseball.  Ty Cobb holds the title for highest career batting average at .367.  And an average higher than .400 is rare.  (Thank you Wikipedia.) 

Me?  I'm in the minor leagues.  Maybe one day I'll make the move up.

MOOD SWINGS

I look in the mirror
And what do I see,
A hideous monster
Staring at me.

I look in the mirror
The very next day,
And what do you know,
She went away.


An ugly attempt at poetry in the Shel Silverstein vein.  It amuses me though.  I occasionally wax poetic to help my writing become more fluid and concise.  Besides, it's cathartic.  Back to pen and paper - or blank screen and keypad.

No, not forty although today is my birthday.  It's...it's....  I can't.  Okay, deep breath, here goes.  It's:

a bodily function,
adolescent,
crude,
smelly,
and sometimes funny.

The word popped up while writing a short story so I went with it, but it made me cringe.  The story writes itself they say, and you can't censure your characters.

I've always been this way.  Just ask my family about the infamous "fange fit foo farts" incident.  There, I wrote it.  And yes, I cringed.

I read Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice during a short stay in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

I read Dune by Frank Herbert while living in a tent in the desert of Bahrain.

I read Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton in college while writing a thesis paper entitled "Explanation of heart rate variability utilizing chaos theory" (much more interesting than it sounds).

Karma? 

I am currently reading Forty Dreams of St. John Bosco in which he describes his visions of hell and terrifying demons.

Should I be worried?

I would like to upload some cool pics to make the journal more interesting but am finding it difficult.  Been perusing some sites and have been finding a lot of 100 x 100 pixels of:

1.)  movie/TV stars,
2.)  women, and
3.)  vulgar humor.

None of which I want to post on this site for obvious reasons.  I know, I'll make my own - just no personal pics.  Nature or mood or art icons.  If only I could use the picture I saw.  Wait, I need photoshop or some other software.  Exactly how long will it take to learn that?  And what about copyright? 

Yes, my age is showing.  Maybe I need to take a computer class to get up to speed.  But who's got the time? 

My computer's been infected with a low level threat virus that's been eating up all my time to fix.  Hopefully everything is sterilized now, but it makes me wonder.  What is the psychology behind such a malicious action as creating a computer virus? 

Also received a pop-up proposition to meet singles in my area.  No thank you and go away please.  But it wouldn't.  So I backtracked around the negative feedback loop.  I was looking for userpics that people were willing to share to upload to my LJ and found some pretty cool ones when the pop-up occurred - even though I have my blocker on.

Every technological advance created with good intentions has the potential  to be corrupted.  (A good idea for a story.  Hmmm.) 

Shakti is an Indian name meaning strength.  She is also the main character in the first novel I ever wrote.  She is powerful, reckless, a loner, flawed, my alter ego, and so much fun to write about.  

The antagonist's name was originally Bella - meaning beautiful of course.  I wanted to contrast these two women as much as possible and throw them into the crucible.  Then I started reading Twilight.  Aaaugh!  Bella is the name of the main character.  So I had to change the name.  (Never finished reading Twilight.  Don't think I ever will.)

I'm hopeful that this first novel is publishable (I know the odds are against it).  If any popular book comes out with a strong, female character named Shakti, it would be like a knife in the heart.  It's not just her name, it's who she is.

According to the Chicago Manual of Style, there should be one space after a period.

According to Proper Manuscript Format by William Shunn, there should be two spaces after a period.

What the...?

And everyone insists they are right.  I took a technical writing course in college and am pretty sure I was taught the two space rule.  Today I had to go back over a story and delete a space between each sentence, not to mention change underscores to italics.  I'm sure if rejected, I will have to once again modify the format to fit a different editor's preference.  

Enough whining, back to the grind.