Book Two, that no-named bitch.

This blog will be neither cute nor funny because I’m about to leave the house. Again. No, I can’t seem to stay home lately (I went rock-hounding yesterday).

I saved this blog from the other day because it was funny and, duh, I’m working on my second novel and it’s been going quite shittily, thanks. I think I’m the world’s busiest person who has nothing to show for shit, so I asked myself if I am, in fact, just busy, or if I’m shifting blame and I’m actually afraid of my second novel.

Well?

*meh*

Not really.

do you know me at all?

But then again… as that blog said…

You let the doubt creep in; I know it. You’re afraid of giving your heart to a second story without feeling secure about the first. And you’re terrified of the time, the years that you’ll be investing in another novel that may never… that may never ever…

Well, yeah, there is that. This writing shit ain’t no joke–I’ll resist the urge to go off on a tangent.

~

But, no, I’m not afraid of it. It may have been confusing and frustrating the pure hell out of me for months now, but I’m not afraid of it because, as of last Thursday, it has a title.

You know how I feel about putting a name to things–and if you don’t, go read here. Call me fae, but I believe words have power and you should take care throwing them around, especially when naming a thing–if you give a thing a name, you give that thing power. I named it. I gave it power, but in giving it a name I also gave it direction, which was something it was sorely lacking.

For months, I kept staring at my Scrivener board and wondering what the hell the book was about? I knew, for the most part, what was going to happen, but that’s the mechanics; the outline plus a few thousand words. It was too busy, too much going on, too many people that I know are there, but for the sake of this story do they need to be? What is this thing about? So! I’m driving the Magic Bus (that’s my van, where I do my best plotting) to work and the gods do love to give me inspiration over the radio. Yanno, the whole clouds-part, angels-sing deal.

The first book’s title, An Ordinary World, was inspired by this:
An Ordinary World~Duran Duran

Pretty much the whole damned song was involved in naming OW. All Lien wanted was an ordinary world and look what he got.

Well, no, you can’t. Yet. Sorry. Unless you’re an agent or a publisher! Then, gimmie a call! Be glad to show ya!

For book two, we only rely on the chorus of this… until I’ve had a chance to listen to it a billion times and my head makes what it makes of it:
The World I Know~Collective Soul

~

So, I walked upon high

and I stepped to the edge

to see my world below.

And I laughed at myself

while the tears rolled down

cause it’s the world I know,

oh, it’s the world I know.

~

So.

I have a title for book two:

The World Below

It works. Gods, it so works. And it sent the delete key flying in Scrivener, big time. I imagined that guy on the purple paint commercial, waving his hand and two or three shades of purple would wander off left, then two or three purrrples would wander off right, until the gal was left smiling like a loon with that one perfect shade.

I also have a solid idea on the title for book three from the same song. Wouldn’t that be a novel idea? Having a title before it even starts? Now if I can just fix the lock on my office door so it stays closed when I close it, I’ll be great.

I told you. Neither cute, nor funny, just me being weird. Shuffle up, Buttercup, and deal, because, I promise you, I don’t get any more sane as this goes on.

Oh, and I have not yet been rejected.

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Jane Austen, Zombies, Sea Monsters… and “Squishy”

I kinda’ understand why my husband doesn’t like to take me shopping. On second thought, no I really don’t, because I think it’s amusing as hell.

See, I hate shopping. It’s boring, for one, but for two I simply do not have the time or patience to wander aimlessly through a store, so I always go in with a plan: get in, get what you need, get the hell out. Ok, unless we’re talking a bookstore–then I’ve got forever and you just better deal because I’m not rushing for anyone.

Anyway! 

It’s pond season and after last year’s disaster we’re having to start some things from scratch, which means we had to go to the only store in the area that deals with large ponds. Of course, being Sunday they were still closed. We had twenty minutes to kill and needed shampoo and whatnot at the dollar store. Lemme tell ya, I saw fear in my husband’s eyes when I suggested we go there to kill time waiting for the pond store to open.

*heh*

I like shopping with him because he shops for serious and I get to play with everything in sight.

*heh*

So, I pick up this squishy thing that’s long and, well, squishy, and has tentacles coming off it with these huge googly eyes. And I wave it at him.

“That’s obscene.”

“No, this is cool.”

I love squishies. I have no idea what you really call them, but I love them and I will stand there and play with the whole box if I’m allowed. Balls, tubes, whatever, I love squishies. And I don’t own a single one. I debate and debate, and always put them back. No sooner had I put that thing back on the shelf when my eyes beheld the ultimate squishy of all squishies in the known universe. It was an alien–omg, I love aliens–with hands and a tongue sticking out and one huge eyeball and ohmygodsImusthavethissquishy.

But I put him back.

And paced around the store.

And found the bargain book section.

Pay close attention now, because this is how my mind works.

Earlier, I found a ten dollar bill in my wallet that I had no idea I even had, so I’m already ten dollars to the good. Found money. That’s almost as good as laundry money, right? So, I’m flipping through the books and see a few names I know, which is unusual, so I keep digging and ohmygodsIfoundtwobooksthatImusthave!  Like I need more, right? But I WILL HAVE THESE BOOKS, so I find the hubs, who I suspect is hiding from me. He sees the books, but says nothing because they’re books and not a squishy.

*heh*

I’m thinking… the books are a buck each–big score–and I have ten dollars. But I can’t just… take two books up to the register with a ten dollar bill when that squishy is sitting over there on that shelf and he’s lonely because he’s the only squishy-alien and he needs me.

Again, I saw it in my husband’s eyes, and he must have seen it mine, too, because then he said, “No, seriously?”

I nodded.

He got what he needed, I got my two books and my Squishy. With my ten dollars, dammit! And I even got change. So, there.

It gets better, I promise.

We get in the truck and hubs asks me what books I got.

I showed him.

He shook his head.

I said, “I know, hun. I am so damned weird.”

I will love him and squeeze him and call him Squishy!

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“DUDE! I can’t believe this is your SISTER!”

I am not a computer/internet noob. I slept through 99% of my high school computer classes because they bored me to death–that was 1986, I ain’t ashamed. I bought my first home computer in 1994, and I’ve had the same personal email address, and password, since… 1994.

**1994**

A few days ago I kept getting these idiotic bounce notices, the majority of them with the subject line “DUDE! I can’t believe this is your SISTER!”

Normally, that would send off alarm bells, but life decided to try and drown me for the last two weeks so I ignored them, swearing I’d sit down and resolve shit when life let go of me for five minutes. And, stupidly, I did ignore them… until I emailed a nudge to a publisher on Thursday and I woke up Friday unable to check my email.

My secondary worked just fine, but not my main. If the publisher responded, how the hell would I know?

So, I changed the password. I would have rather pulled my nails out by the roots, but I changed my password.

Glory! That fixed it! Thumbs up, right?

No.

Come Saturday morning, not only is the main down again, but so is the secondary.
I call my provider and get someone in some country who not only has a horrid accent, but speaks so softly a butterfly fart would be louder.

He told me I had changed my password three times.

“Until it stopped working, no, I had not changed it at all. I changed it once. Now the other one isn’t working and I haven’t changed anything on that one at all.”

He asked me if such-n-such was my password?

“Um. No.”

Again, I was told I had changed my password.

“Um. NO.”

We tried.

He blamed me.

Back and forth.

For an hour.

And I was this close…

…to telling them where to go–to throwing away twenty years of my beloved email address.

Until! The guy finds a memo.

They shut my account down because it had been hacked.

The provider had been the one who changed my passwords. The same passwords the accounts have always had. Six characters, all lower case. So simple.

Gone because I was hacked.

Now my passwords have a capital letter, eighteen characters, and require a virgin sacrifice every time I have to type the fuckers in.

Dude. I hope it really was your sister.

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Pride & Prejudice, and Peanut M&M’s

Some days the spice the words just don’t flow.

I spent four and a half hours yesterday, door closed, outside world cut off, working on an anthology piece and only added about nine-hundred words. That’s not a bad word count, but I grumbled when I was done, anyway. The problem I’m having with this is I don’t do small. I only know how to write big–as in way the hell over 10k stories, or ongoing series that never, ever end. The other problem I have is I can’t seem to write outside the all-consuming universes that already exist in my head and come up with something different for this anthology, so I’m not even sure I can/should use what I’ve managed to bleed out. But I digress from the point of today’s blog.

At the end of the afternoon I found myself curled in bed, eating a box of peanut M&M’s (way to go, diet!) and watching Pride & Prejudice with Lily-dog at my feet. I saw an opportunity and grabbed it, because the hubs would rather pull his toenails out than watch that movie with me for the millionth time and he was outside. He did eventually come in the room and roll his eyes. I dashed off for food during a commercial and came back apparently all wide eyed–because I was peeking around the side of the screen as I came in to make sure I’d catch the scene where Lizzie lays into Lady Catherine’s ass–and I say apparently because the hubs told me so.

Damn right I wanted to catch it. That’s a great scene. But he commented that I knew every line by now, so why was I rushing back?

“Because I don’t own the movie. That’s why I watch it every time it comes on.”

I think he’d have told me to buy it, but then he might be subjected to watching it more. Yes, I do know how his mind works, but it made me think about all the other movies I watch over and over, each time I catch them on tv. I do it because I don’t own them… and they’re my favorite movies… and why the hell don’t I own them?

Sense and Sensibility – The Other Boleyn Girl – Shakespeare In Love – Elizabeth… and, guess what? Even Interview With The Vampire.

I don’t own them. 

Oh, I have IWTV on VHS as I bought it the day it came out, but my VHS player died many years ago. So, why don’t I just go buy the damned movies? If I did, I could just pop them in any time (he’s not around *ahem*), but I think I don’t buy them because randomly catching them on tv seems to make the moment more magical–a moment that needs to be seized and relished. I own Lost Boys and Rocky Horror Picture Show (my kiddo bought me that one! I love her!)… and never watch them. The cases are covered with dust.

I also noticed a theme in my favorite movies. Half are quirky or about vampires, the other half full of regency, and history, and royalty. Oh, yeah, and I do own the tv series The Tudors, as well. Yeah, definite theme. I suppose that’s where my fae universe came from–a collision of my taste for fantasy and my fetish taste for regency and Tudor royalty. Maybe they should be the ones with my attention right now? Hmm. Food for thought.

Is it weird that I don’t own my favorite movies, or is this just the way I best enjoy them? Anyone else do this, or am I alone in this quirk?

He’s not home this morning. I betcha P&P is available on demand right now.

hehe! 

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