A Week Gone Impossibly Fast

I don't even know where the last week went. I can't believe it's Friday already. :o I'm desperately trying to finish the next two chapters of Tayce since I won't have time this weekend, but it's slow going, mostly because I had a horrible night's sleep and my brain feels mushy inside my skull. Though, lately, I've been having really vivid, strange dreams. I've found that my creativity coincides with the time I have vivid dreams at night; it's like my brain doesn't shut off when I close my eyes, it wants to keep writing. Mom would say my brain is just going through "a bit of spring cleaning." I actually like dreaming, some of the stuff my brain comes up with leaves me flabbergasted in the morning, wondering where the heck that came from (and no, I don't usually have sexy dreams, unfortunately(?), usually it's just really weird stuff like flying carpets and camping trips in the middle of my university and mysterious escalators and Green Men).

Anyhow, last week I've been listening to Faunts a lot, a band that John and I found through the Mass Effect video game. The ending credits song is "M4 Part II" by Faunts, and we loved the song so much we got the soundtrack. I then found the music video online and I got to say it's pretty awesome. Kind of sad and full of crustacean blood, but still pretty awesome.



John and I now refer to the crab as "Flag Crab," and we've decided we don't care what the music video implies, Flag Crab is only sleeping at the end. ;)

Just a Quick Friday Post

Thought I'd quickly post, a quick "Hi!" as it were. I didn't get a lot done today, yet it was a busy day. I spent a lot of it trying to outline "Tayce" and get my background information together and in one place. Along with some other chores (the list is long and boring). Anyway, I did find a great new song that I listened to while writing a pretty steamy scene in "Tayce." I'm going to track it down on Amazon and see if I can buy the track.



And now, I'm off to read a chapter of IT (which is one of the few Stephen King novels that I love and tend to read again and again. And, it's a story that always manages to creep me out big time. *shudder* Clowns) while my homemade guacamole cools. Then...yup, you guessed it. Champagne and the next 4 episodes of Supernatural. :grin:

A collection of Lolita covers

A Flickr user set up a challenge: design a cover for Lolita. The result? 164 covers for a story all about pedophiliac love. Or, you know, whatever theme you want to argue. :P



Some of the covers are disturbing, some downright artistic, and some look like they were slapped together in five minutes using Adobe Photoshop and stock imagery. However, it is interesting to see what people think of when they think Lolita. I tried to pick a favorite and couldn't, although this one might win for sheer "Eeew" factor.

If it's romance, don't skip the sex please

Maybe I just like my romance books smutty, or maybe I will freely admit that, to me, there's little point of reading romance books unless there's a sex scene or two. I mean, it's not like they're particularly unique as far as plot or characterization goes. There's a few exceptions -- just like in any genre -- and I'm sure a lot of women have "that" romance book, the special one that holds a special place in their heart because it was the first or the best or something (for me, that's A Patriot's Heart by Stobie Piel. It was my first romance genre book. I still have the copy I bought), but lets be honest people.

Where am I going with this? I picked up a book by an author that I like, although I'm beginning to wonder why I like her. Her premises and ideas are awesome, but the execution always leaves me desiring more. When I picked up this book, it was a lesser known one. I didn't even know she'd written a romance, but I decided to give it a try. Listen to this premise (in my words, cause I'm trying not to name names here) and tell me it doesn't scream "romance genre":

The main heroine is a librarian who, one day, witnesses a demon scarf down a child. After that, she vows to hunt the demon sucker down and manages to do just that by finding a treasure trove of demonology books in her library, making a sacred knife, and hunting the demon through the sewers. Unfortunately, making the knife and killing the demon causes a chain reaction of magic that not only piques the interest of the demon world, but the Order, a bunch of people who are fighting the good fight against demons to "keep humanity safe." The Order sends two field agents to investigate, one is a hot, half-demon guy. Apparently, these half-demons will bond to one mate, to the point of getting rather territorial. Except the Order doesn't allow their half-demons to bond. Oh, yes, and the demons want to sacrifice the heroine and use her blood to rend open a hole in to the demon world.

I'm sure you can guess where this is going. The amount of times it's mentioned that hot, half-demon guy just wants to "drag her to bed" and do a lot of bonding (if ya get what I mean and I think ya do ;) ), I was waiting with baited breath. Because, well, he was hot.

...And then the book ended sans lots of bedroom-bonding. WTF? I thought. All that build-up?! Damn tease! Sure, everyone survived. The dude I knew from page 20 was going to betray everyone betrayed everyone. The fight between demons-trying-to-sacrifice-heroine and main characters lasted a page or two (there wasn't even an epic last battle, just an escape), and suddenly we've got an epilogue with the mention of meeting the folks and marriage...and no sex.

So if any romance genre author is reading this, please don't tease the poor reader. If you're going to go on and on about how hot-broad-shouldered-conflicted-hero really wants to drag heroine to the bedroom multiple times, then deliver on the goods.

Nobody likes a tease.

The mysterious world of semicolons

I found this comic through Inky Girl. It's great, I made a note about it for when I actually find a teaching position and have to teach a semicolon lesson. Not only is it a good lesson but it's amusing to boot. I mean, how can you go wrong with example sentences like, "The ice cream truck man drove by my house today; he had big hairy knuckles" or "I gnaw on old car tires; it strengthens my jaw so I'll be better conditioned for bear combat"? :grin:

I'm going to have to explore this website more, there's other pages that look like they'll provide an afternoon of amusement. But, I'm off to the gym and then I have to finish writing a sex scene and then go to movie night with a friend (Disk 3 of Season 1 of Supernatural the TV Show! With champagne! I can't wait! :love: )

Using Macros to find specific word occurrences

Recently I found two useful macros that count word occurrences. I had been wondering how many times I used a specific word in my story, then realized there was no way in Word to check this. Installing these two macros was fast and easy (once, I figured out how to install macros on Word ;) ) and they create interesting reports on word occurrences in your document.

I've been playing around with both macros to much amusement. It's handy for writing; for example, I've checked to see how many times I've used certain adverbs, ones I definitely want to cut down on, like "loudly" or "softly." If the number is high, I know it's something I need to work on in editing. Using the macros, along with something like AutoCrit provides a good "map" of one's writing and gives a good indication of things that need to be changed or worked on in the editing phase.

For those who, like me, had never tinkered with macros in Word, here's a quick tutorial on how to get these word occurrence macros up and working:

Note to self: in future, don't create a character who doesn't curse...

...especially when you, yourself, tend to curse like a sailor when in pain or frustrated.

I never knew it would be so difficult to write dialog when a character doesn't curse. I think the worst thing Tayce has said so far is "goddamn" and "hell." That's not because she's prudish, it's just not something that she naturally falls back on to voice her frustrations (like I'm known to do :P). After all, the character was born in Victorian times, when nearly everything even remotely scandalous would equal "there are ladies present!"

Although, I shouldn't say it's difficult, it's just annoying at times because my gut-reaction is: In that situation, a lot of people would lay down the F-bomb. I know I would. And by Tayce not cursing, it seems to draw attention to the fact that she's...well, not cursing.

Or maybe I'm over-thinking it? This is a possibility, I have been doing that a lot lately.