Posts from — July 2009

Just FYI for you AM. As if you don’t do this on your own. But we need to try the method next time we get together…

This is from one of my favorite shows, Couplings. It is from the BBC.

Okay, here’s “The Plan”. I work on this friggin’ rewrite of the partial today and tomorrow. Damn it, figures I’d want to make a major change in chapter three. Why couldn’t it have been in chapter four? It’s always the way. Then, I will finish the synopsis this weekend. Yeah, sounds like a good plan. I moved back into my office so I can close the door and shut out the world while I work. All right, maybe not when it is just me and my kids at home can I do that, but if I have to for ten minutes, I can.

Safety Note: I have to be on hand for when my kids go outside. We have a registered sex offender (who likes little girls) living down the street. You’d be surprised how many predators live in your area. Watch your kids like a hawk when they go outside, in a play area like McDonalds, etc. You never know who that guy is sitting outside in the play area. Is he a dad or a sicko looking for a target? ALWAYS check your local sex offender listings. We have another living a block away. The one that lives down the street I see a few times a week walking a dog. Freaks me out. I so want to move. Here is the GA sex offender registry if you live in GA. If anyone touched my girls, I would go postal.

Okay so, back to “The Plan”. Next week I am taking a break after the partial is off in the mail. Well, a break from writing. I really have to clean the house. No, really, I have to. I have the in-laws coming at some point. They’re passing through on their way out to Arizona…or San Diego…or San Francisco…wherever. Hubby’s brother Dennis is moving from Sebring out west somewhere. I heard it was Arizona, but then I heard San Diego. They are all coming here to see the girls for a night as they pass through. I know why he wants to move from Sebring as it really isn’t a town for a young guy with his tastes. He’s very artistic and is more the California type. San Diego seems to me more of a place for him. Or more likely San Francisco. (I really liked San Francisco when we went in October 2008. I took that picture of the Golden Gate during a ferry ride in the bay. Ronald, my other BIL, almost gave me a heart attack when he drove up that mountain in the background (not the bad part) and took a dirt road down (definitely the bad part). The road was NOT a gradual decent. It was practically straight down. I wanted him to stop and let me out but the damn road wasn’t wide enough to do that. Jerk. LOL I can laugh about it now, but not then.)

So okay, next week will be a bust with writing for the most part. Thursday I go to the doctors (I guess I should tell my main Dr. that I had 2 surgeries, huh?) and that night I am going down to Tallahassee to the ALPHA event (see side bar for details under “Events”). Then the next day I have the kids’ school open house. I still don’t know who their teacher will be or if they will be in the same class. They were crying this week afraid to be separated. I don’t know what to do about that.

Then August 3rd….whoohoooo it is back to school!! And the beginning of my push to finish my book. Blaze would have taken the full if it was completed. I know they are going to ask for the full. I need to get that done. I also want to plan out a few more books, not just in this series. I had started another book with a homicide detective as the hero (who looks just like David…imagine that?) and a doctor heroine who’s being stalked by a serial rapist. I think I can add heat to that to be more Blaze. Also, I definitely want to write a type of medical series for Blaze, using my experiences as a floor nurse. Nothing gets the heart pumping like calling a Code. Or dealing with a crazed naked man 3 times your size wandering in the hall. Or telling a family member they just lost their mother. (I did all that at. I hated that last part at the nursing home. I was always stuck doing that and organizing the funeral home to come and do a pick up. It’s draining.)

Back to school is also back to nursing for me. I want to find a 7p-7a position in the hospital for twice a week. That reminds me, I need to go get my BLS (Basic Life Support) updated. Damn. I think I may go ahead and get ACLS (Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support) certified too. I can do it. (Back in February I helped a teenager who had a reaction to a vaccine. I swear that girl had no blood pressure. I gave her a shot of epinephrine. She came out of it and left the office–[Edited to add: her MOM] refusing to go with the EMTs I also called–to go right to the ER. Later the mom called and told me she hadn’t gone to the ER yet and her daughter was getting woozy. *shaking head* I told her to take her daughter to the ER right away. Ugh.)

See, I do have the medical stories. LOL

Anyway, back on topic–”The Plan”. I will get my book done. That first week or two of their school, I will be in my dark pit.

Repost of an interesting blog article from Dorchester Books:

Why ‘Sold out’ doesn’t mean ‘Sold well’

I recently came across a “save this series” campaign–the publisher has basically told the author sales have been rough and they likely won’t be able to buy any more books unless they see a dramatic uptick . But the author couldn’t understand how sales could be bad if a book sold out its print run.

One word: returns.

For mass-market paperbacks, when a book is “returned,” it’s really destroyed. There’s no way to resell it.

Just recently I got numbers back for a debut published a while ago. Our intitial print was close to 50,000 copies, which is pretty terrific for a first-time author. In fact, a major account wanted to take 6000 more a few months after publication, which led to a reprint. Fantastic, right?

Unfortunately, that same account then went on to return that 6000 and a good chunk of what it had initially bought. Why did they order more when they had unpurchased stock sitting in their own warehouse? I have no idea. I’m sure it’s something to do with costs of shipping and warehouse inventorying. It seems completely inefficient to me, but since they’ll get reimbursed for returns, there’s really nothing for them to lose.

Annmarie, here’s the picture of David B I was talking about. Yum! I actually ran it through Paint shop a little. The original was kind of pale. Anyway, he’s my wallpaper… LOL

Check out the new softer look for The Writer Chicks.

I am obviously sitting here trying to figure out how to word something in my WIP, so I went over and redid TWC. I can’t think straight on this book at the moment. Er…yeah, the wine is helping but in a different way.

I was talking to one of my chapter friends and she is going for her Masters in Writing. She did this intensive residency to begin. One of the teachers actually suggested writing with a glass of wine to help ease the inhibitions. I am, obviously, trying it. It isn’t as though I don’t know what has to happen, I just don’t know how to write it.

I almost got in a friggin’ accident today. I swear, I get a green arrow to turn left and the on coming traffic apparently got a green. I almost did a head on. Thank goodness for the brakes and the people coming who stopped. I’m still wondering if I was wrong in seeing the green arrow or not. Worse yet, I had instant flashbacks to the jerk who plowed into me last year while HE ran a stop sign. He didn’t even slow down and nearly totalled my van. I remember, if I didn’t swerve those few inches, he would have hit me straight into the drivers side, and I would have been in the hospital. *breathe* At least I didn’t get hit this time. At least I could walk away without it replaying in my head 100 times over and over. Still, it scared me pretty good.

I am not having a good day. Not at all. But then again, at least I’m alive. Could have been worse.

Oh man, do I ever meet the wackos. When I was dating, at one point I called myself the “moron magnet” because that is what I seemed to attract.

When I was 21 I went to Wildwood, NJ for some summer partying with a friend of mine. We ended up in this bar and sure enough, we were approached by two guys. Not young guys, much older men, and they were talking the typical “let’s all go have a party at my place” crap. Yeah right. We excused ourselves and circled around to the restroom and out the bar. I think we were running to my car laughing the whole time. Losers.

And you know, even that I am older, it still holds true. And online, they come out of the wood works.

A few years ago I got involved with Errol Flynn fandom. You’d think a dead celebrity would be a fairly safe topic. Oh, not so, my friends. I was cyber attacked, stalked, and threatened. I eventually backed down from the whole thing just to keep my sanity. (At the time my kids were preemies. That first year of their life is a big blur to me.) The person who did the stalking continued for years and I seemed to be a favored topic with this man. He particularly liked the fact I wrote vampires and called me all sorts of names to reflect my obvious dark side…and how sad it was that my kids were stuck with a mother like me. (FYI: My kids are #1 in my life. No one, nothing, can change that. I am a damn good mom.) Does this stalker continue his obsession with me? No. I heard he passed away a year ago from a heart attack.

Then we have the wackos you meet as an author. I had a fan think I was the link to one of my characters (Lucius the vampire). I had the hate mail who told me I should not consider writing as a career avenue. I even had someone threaten me because of my pen name. Then you have the weirdos who read your books and think you live your works. You know, researching the steamy scenes you write through first hand experience. I’m sure some of it is true. I have a friend who writes menages well because she lives that with her two partners. I have another friend who lives a BDSM lifestyle. Write what you know, right? But then we are also writing fantasy.

Writing sexual fantasy can be very tricky. I am willing to admit I have fantasies. I like staying safe in my own little world in my head. I just happen to write them down on occasion. But some readers believe otherwise and think they are the answer to your every fantasy. Like the dude on Annmarie’s blog who replied to the repost of the excerpt from my WIP. As if… However we did get a good laugh out of it.

Moron.

I was up late last night IMing Annmarie and we got to taking about the social networking stuff. She even blogged today about Facebook. (See post here.)

Am I on Facebook? Yeah. But I don’t check it often. AM is right, the status updates are just Facebrags. That doesn’t bother me so much as it is the endless invites to be a fan of XYZ authors. Hey, if I want to be a fan, I’ll find you. Don’t keep sending me invites to join your fan group/page. I delete them. In all, I don’t like Facebook, but then I have met up with friends and family. Heck, I even have my ex-boyfriend as a friend on there. (Oh, we’ve been talking long before Facebook. I found John a few years ago on Amazon with a few collector books. Now he makes movies. The trailer for his movie Slammerella is below. It’s funny because I recognize his humor in it. Agent Orange…a guy in a gorilla suit…*shaking head* Yep, I used to date this guy for three years. LOL)

Twitter. I actually like Twitter, but only to a point. I do get updates all day on the plugin on Firefox. However, I can’t keep open the browser window if I am working on my book as if someone “tweets” that whole window comes up. Some people are very chatty on there, and I will unfollow them. I don’t get it, how do you have time to chat on Twitter all day, every day? And don’t get me started on the authors using it to promo….retweeting their posts over and over and over again. I mean, it is okay once, but not 4 times in 2 hours.

MySpace. Talk about major time suckage. I prefer it to Facebook, but not much. When I began over there, I’d lose days. Now, I don’t go over but once a week or once every few weeks. I suspect I get a tracking cookie everytime I go over there that I have to remove.

In all, Twitter is the least work to maintain. It is more like a big chatroom–without the constant IMs from some dude looking for ___________. (You can fill in the blank. We’ve all gotten those IMs.)

Follow me at www.twitter.com/marilacroix