Happy Vladurday!!

Happy Vladurday!

making work fun

well, wouldn't it be awesome to work wherever this is? they must have people with amazing senses of humor. work should be fun. or I think it should be. you get higher productivity for multiple reasons. I think if you can make your work fun, you do a better job but that's just me. I try and make my writing fun. especially research. research is always an opportunity to buy new books and watch films. LOVE IT.
I have been buying bunches of books lately for an unrelated future WIP. they're history related so I am really going to enjoy them. the bad thing about these books is that they really get into my brain. sometimes I even end up dreaming about the subject matter. it's okay because like I mentioned in another post, I dreamed the idea for this book. so reading and sleeping, two of my all time favorite things yielded productive and positive results. if I could find a job that combined that, I'd be all over it. I'd love it. anyway, I got a really cool book in the mail today and I'm dying to get to it. it looks even better in person than it did on the Barnes and Noble website. I just can't start it yet because I have stuff to do for our local writer's group meeting tomorrow, work on my blog posts for my guest stops(they are gonna be terrific!) and do laundry. I loathe laundry. it comes from my days as a theatre student and having to do show laundry. but the things must get done. I'll figure out a way to make them fun.

so...now what?

you know, I think I have griped more about this WIP than any of the others. it's not moving along. I swear it sometimes feels like I'm going backwards. it could be that I'm spoiled by how easy the last one was. Blood of New Beginnings practically wrote itself. it helped that it was a NaNo book. I cranked out 50k words in a month and finished it in December. the words just overflowed onto the screen. not this one. it comes in spurts. like rain showers. right now I'm in a drought. a couple of nights ago, I just drew a blank. a big fat, black hole style blank. as in no light was escaping from its massive gravitational pull of suckage. I'm still at that point. none of the characters are talking to me.and I've had no ideas for scenes or plot twists or dialog or even settings. I'm beginning to not like it. the WIP not the situation and that's not a good thing. I think I'm going to back away from it for a while and see what happens. I'm going to pretend like I'm dating my WIP. I'm going to ignore it and wait for it to start chasing me again.

It's in the bag!

Congratulations to the winners! Beckah-Rah, Cheree and Sara Allen! I decided to pick three winners because I love the bag so much!
email your snail mail address at maddy56 at ufl dot edu

Happy Vladurday!

Happy Birthday Christopher Walken

http://www.funnyhub.com/videos/pages/snl-more-cowbell.html

most efficient time waster EVER!

or so it would seem. my daughter is at her dad's house this week and I had big plans for getting things done but so far I haven't been so lucky. not so much with my writing. I'm at 11k words with my WIP so that is good. but the other things on my list haven't been as lucky. yes, I even made a list. the problem is that I am easily distracted. I see something else I'd rather do and I do it. I can't stay focused. I've had this problem a long time. it's one of the reasons I never studied in the library at UF. there was too much other stuff to do. just the periodical floor was enough to do me in. now Library West, the main library, at UF has a Starbucks in it so I'd waste even more time if I was still a student there.and the art and architecture library was just as big of an attractive nuisance. I'd walk around and read all the interesting books that had nothing to do with what I was there to research. it got so bad that I had to have someone come with me to the library to keep me on task. maybe I need someone like that for my list of things to do.or maybe I just need someone to do the things on my list. that would be better. then I could do more writing! I 'll put it on my list.
hey! don't forget about the giveaway!! leave a comment under the Big Bag of Crazy post and you'll be entered!

Dark Shadows News Page: Movie to Feature Young Barnabas

Dark Shadows News Page: Movie to Feature Young Barnabas: "Deadline New York reports that Thomas McDonell has been cast to play a young Barnabas Collins in the new Dark Shadows movie. The actor is so..."

Bad reviews and what not to do. And a GIVEAWAY!

I thought I'd say something about this because of the uproar over on Big Al's Books and Pals blog http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/search/label/2%20star check it out for yourself. anyway, I went to check it out when I saw tons of tweets about how an author was going ballistic about a review that she didn't agree with. apparently the author dropped the f bomb many many times and called the reviewer a bunch of names, most of which were misspelled.
as an author, it's hard to hear criticism. but if you want to grow as a writer and improve your writing you take it to heart and learn from it, not hurl f bombs and insults to the reviewer and the forum. now, I'm a bit of a scrapper and also a fan of the f bomb but I know there is a time and place for it. it isn't the site where your book is reviewed. in fact, you generally don't respond to negative reviews other than saying thank you for taking the time to read my work. not everyone likes my work. I respect that. when I get critiques, sure it stings but after it stops stinging, I go back and evaluate my work in relationship to the criticism. often times, we don't see things that objective eyes do and that is a good thing. that is how we grow as a writer. we improve on flaws sometimes pointed out in uncomfortable ways. as writers, we already have tough skins. a bad review shouldn't spin us off into a rampage.
I hate that this author self destructed in front of the world. I picked up on the hoopla from twitter from retweets from agents and book reviewers and headed over to Big Al's (I'm not missing out on anything on a site called Big Al's) now it's everywhere including Amazon, where her book is for sale. I hope she takes some time and takes the advice she got to heart and fixes what was pointed out. in addition, I hope she develops some  professional skills because even if she does write a book that is magnificent she is going to have to do a lot of damage control on this. in her case even bad press is press isn't going to to benefit her. it might even blackball her. but I hope not.
and now in honor of the lesson we learned on what NOT to do when your work gets a bad review...a giveaway!! I'm giving away the bag in the picture above. Yes, it's a big bag of crazy bag. all you need to do it comment on the post or your take on what went on over at Big Al's and you will be entered. I'll draw and announce the winner after the Happy Vladurday post this Saturday.

everyone get excited!

I'm just giving y'all a heads up because over the next few weeks, I'll be having an author guest post, some book reviews and an interview or two. maybe I'll even throw in a few other goodies as well but I haven't figured that out. I'm very excited about this, like the cat in the picture so I'm hoping you will be too!

Happy Vladurday!

and then what happened? the pantster rides again!

I'm a pantster. I've said it before on here but I'll say it again. and I'm a big one. I never do outlines or character sketches or anything organized like that. usually, I have an idea and then I sit down and write. the characters drive it. most of times they drive the story like they stole it and right now I'm having to do a lot of research on things that I didn't foresee. I had a character show up who is a brilliant hematologist. yeah. so guess what? I had to do quite a bit of research on diseases of the blood and then I had to figure out how to tweak them so they would effect vampires. if I had made an outline, I would have known all that and prepared ahead of time but no, I let the character spring it on me. that's not to say that I just write what comes to me. I don't do stream of consciousness writing. I save that for here.lol. no, really. being a pantster doesn't mean that I don't steer the book. I do. sometimes. but since the characters are in the action, I let them do it. I just serve as a traffic cop and referee when necessary.
funny thing about being a pantster writer is I don't do everything like that. you can't be a pantster nurse. you have to be organized and have a plan. the plan can have wiggle room but you still have to have a plan. I have a dear friend who is a dedicated plotter. he is awesome like that. but, he is working on his 5th novel. so it works for him. I don't think he could be a pantster. he'd never get anything written because he wouldn't have an outline to follow. hmm.
pantster or plotter, however you get the words on the page. that is all that matters. and hopefully, my characters will give me hint on how this WIP is going to end. I think I know where they're going but we'll see where it goes!

so you're a writer? oh.

so yesterday was our family reunion. I live in rural north Florida and have an old rural style family. farm people. not to say that we don't have our eclectic members. one cousin owns a yoga studio, one cousin is the tax collector in our county and a lot of people work at the post office, so they know more about the people of this town than anyone. anyway, I was talking to one of my out of town cousins and she told me that my mother told her that I  had written some books. I said yes, I was waiting to hear from some publishers but they were indeed going to be published. she then wanted to know what kind of books I wrote and I told her paranormal romance and urban fantasy. she looked at me with a puzzled look so I clarified by saying it was a series about vampires. right away she assumed I wrote young adult and said, oh like Twilight. I smiled and said no not like Twilight. my vampires cuss and have sex frequently. these are adult vampires who have adult social problems,they're just vampires on top of it. oh and they have people trying to kill them. my cousin nodded and changed the subject.
I often get reactions like that when people hear that I write. it's either an Oh kind of expression or when they find out what I write, they assume it's another Twilight. which is fine. I think the world of writing is mysterious to the outside population. they have no clue what's involved. they think you bang out a story in a few days and poof, it's pubbed. they have no idea about writer's block, revisions, queries, more revisions, revising your query, getting a pub interested in it and landing a contract. then the fun begins and the time passes at a snail's pace. when you announce that your book sell's they expect to snag it off the shelf or download it in a few days. HAHAHAHA! publishing moves at a crawl. more revisions, edits, cover designs, proofing and then a year or so later(maybe) your book launches. then you are so excited and some smart ass says, your book is just now coming out? what took so long?
who deserves a facepalm/faceslap more?

Happy Vladurday!