Sharp Words

Sad news: it appears that my beloved desktop is well and truly dead. My Darling Smart Ass has been working on it, but it refuses to recognize its new hard drive. He says we will have to wipe it and reload Windows, which I believe would make it something other than the grouchy machine I’ve been working with for the past five years. (And it would kill the scads and scads of software cracks I loaded on it back before I decided to be an upstanding citizen and pay for all my software–oh, the remnants of my reckless youth!)

Darling Smart-Ass put a comforting hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s eight years old, that’s a long, full life for a desktop. I think it’s time you put it out of its misery.”

Me: “I can’t! You don’t know what adventures we had, what stories I wrote on it, what lovely, lovely software it ran.”

Him: “Do you remember that movie, the one about the dog where the boy had to shoot it at the end?”

Me: “My desktop is NOT Old Yeller.”

Too late. Smart Ass has now christened it “Old Yeller” and is urging me to let it go. It’s sitting beside my desk right now, all hulking and ginormous, yet still outdone in processing power and efficiency by my slim little laptop. Sure, the laptop has most of the programs I need to do my thang, but it just isn’t the same. It doesn’t have the same soul. Me and Old Yeller, we were a team. We stuck together through power-supply issues, dust-bunnies, and tense, nail-biting sessions of anti-vir. I’ll miss it.

Some good news:… Read the rest of this entry »

I’m around, but busy, tired and uninspired–uninspired, at least when it comes to email and blogging. The writing, though, is going pretty well. And my math class is starting to make sense. Which is good, because the final is only 3 weeks away! If I pass, you’d better believe I’ll be blogging about it.

You may have read this elsewhere, but I just thought I’d link here in case anyone missed it. Bam’s monthly writing contest is back, at Lorelie’s blog. You may remember Lorelie from the Serial Fabulousity that is Tarnished Angel. And if you don’t, then you probably haven’t read Tarnished Angel. (Go read it!)

The prompt: I wanna see a girl tell a guy what she wants. Sexy, zany, crazy, whatever. I wanna see her pipe up and ask for her heart’s desire.

The word count: 400.

The prize: $50 gift certificate from Amazon.

The deadline: 15 May.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: This contest is one of my favorite writing exercises, ever. The word limit, the deadline, the faint whiff of competition–all these things combine to get the creative juices flowing. I’ve gotten two novellas out of entries I wrote for Bam’s contest. One was Like a Thief and the other–you may be hearing about it soon… Point is, it’s a lot of fun, and if you haven’t entered before, don’t be afraid.

And if you’re not the writing type (oh, come on, you know you really are!) you can have fun just reading the entries. I love how a bunch of writers can take the same prompt and produce so many different stories.

So, go forth and enter!

First off, this post is probably the girliest thing I will ever post on this blog. I am not some Sex-in-the-City-watching, cosmo-swilling, shoe-obsessed writer type (Yes, I am going to go see the movie–Hey! stop looking at me like that!. I’ll have you know, I happen to hate cosmos. My drink for the year is the pear martini, ok? And I hardly ever use the phrase, “I can’t help but wonder.”). I have better things to occupy my time and my thoughts.

But these shoes, they are so pretty, so terribly impractical, so fabulously cheap–I can’t help myself. So, I apologize, in advance. I’ll try to keep this and all future outbursts to a minimum.

Read the rest of this entry »

The best birthday presents are things you never expected. For example, this very strange birthday link from the lovely and talented Kate R. (a.k.a. Summer Devon)
There are also a couple of fortuitous events that just happened to happen on my birthday. The first was the Best.Sale.Ever! It’s like this: The Macy’s in Pasadena is housed in a historic building (which, in LA, means it’s like 60 years old. Los Angeles Architecture years are like dog years.). So, because they want to bring the building back to its former glory, the very astute execs at Macy’s decided to clear the entire store to the bare walls, and embark on a six-month renovation plan. What did this mean for me? It meant at least 80% off shoes!

In a way, I feel my shopping life has peaked. Never again will I encounter so magnificent a sale. Never again will I buy a pair of adorably impractical $125 patent-leather peep-toe platform stilettos for the low, low price of $10.78. I wish I could post pics, but my desktop computer is still out of commission.

The other nice thing that happened today was this shout-out for Ember from Jenny Rappaport, an agent with L. Perkins Agency, on the company blog, LIT SOUP. Thanks, Jenny!

Between my broken desktop computer and the Cavalcade of Boring that is my life, I was sad as Cinderella sitting at home while the entire Romance world was living it up in fabulous Pittsburgh, PA. Then the blogging started. Reports of groping by greasy men, complaints about the complainer complaining about said groping, Mr. Romance contestants who are packing teh crazy in addition to the proverbial pair of tube socks, dueling daughters…WTF, peoples? It’s starting to sound like Romantic Times threw an episode of the Jerry Springer show, and everyone was invited.

Now, I know there are grown-ups who went to the convention, and had a fab time. They just don’t get as many hits. So if you went, and had a fab time, tell me about it in the comments, or link to your blog post.

After five years together, my great, clunking, 8 year old desktop computer has begun to falter. It’s up, it’s down, it’s frozen. Oh, dear. We’ll try to save it, really we will. A nice new 150 gig hard drive with a 10 gig partition for all the old stuff. So if I’m not around for a while, please remember, I am caring for an old friend.

There’s a helluva long thread over at Dear Author regarding another author/e-publisher behaving badly. Karen has a few crumbs, too. The whole thing makes me sad–the mudslinging, the back and forth. Some of the alleged behavior is so terribly Jr. High.

But the really sad part is, at least when it comes to the over-the-top and unethical alleged behavior regarding Amazon Reviews, I can kind of understand what motivates it. Authors are sensitive creatures. We get freaked out easily. I totally understand that first rush of horror and anger when you read something that seems to threaten or disparage your work. It seems so unfair!

Sitting in front of a computer as much as we do, it’s easy to get sucked into the Internet and imagine that it actually matters (see my irrational mini freak-out over the other Bettie Sharpe, below). The important thing is to step back, relax, and remember that the only graceful response to a negative review–if you must respond–is, “Thank you for reading and reviewing my work. I hope you’ll enjoy my next story more than you enjoyed this one.”

Kinda makes silence look appealing, doesn’t it?

Yeah, what she said: Shiloh Walker has a calm and collected post on the matter. Want to read more? Go there.

Update: I’m now officially unweirded, and just plain grateful. The other Bettie Sharpe has kindly altered her screen name so it won’t show up on Google.

Ms Sharpe, you are more than gracious, kinder than kind. I wouldn’t have asked it, but I truly appreciate it.

______________________

How weird. Since March 17th, 2008 there has been someone posting at Query Tracker under the name Bettie Sharpe. This other Bettie, she is not me. It’s not like I own the name, but this is weirding me out.

Mainly, I’m weirded out because she has posted things I wouldn’t say. [excerpt deleted] –just because it’s something I wouldn’t say doesn’t mean I have to quote it for everyone to read. Post in haste, regret at leisure…

To be clear: That lady, she ain’t me. The Bettie Sharpe who posts at Query Tracker is NOT ME. Of course, she may want to scream the same thing. Not everyone wants to be associated with the glamorous, highly-respected Romance genre ;-).

Hello. I’m back. I was out of town showering a dear friend with baby gifts (ok, loafing at her house, eating her food, and attending a baby shower for her sure-to-be adorable evil spawn).

It was a five hour trip each way which means I had ten hours to read! I meant to bring more books, but I only had time to get two–Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews and Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran. Since I really enjoyed both of these books (with some reservations) I read them both waaaaay too fast, which left me with a couple of nice two-to three hour chunks for editing (yay!) and math homework (boo!).

I’ll write more about the books when I get a chance–both of them did good things with their genres, and I’d love to read more books that are as well-written. For now, I’m going to try to keep myself on East Coast time by going to bed early (midnight, PST = 3 am EST so I go to bed early, but feel like I’m staying up late).