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Mine from... two years ago? My computer was trashed and I no longer have all my blanks on it. I have them on disk... I can't open the disk drive and need to take my computer in. Does anyone have the blank for this? What a way to learn my computer is broken, again.
And then this just made me go wtf. I haven't been playing lately so there are a lot of newish people in the guild who don't know me. This is one of them, and the first thing he ever said to me:
Ugh.
- Mood:
restless - Perfume du Jour:The light outside my window buzzing.
In this article you wrote, you pointed out a really hideous situation. However, you got something wrong.
To me, this program seems excessive, and I’d imagine the non-athletes are pissed. Which college student, jock or not, doesn’t already own a notebook?
Um. The ones who can't afford a fucking luxury version of a computer?
I type this on a damn laptop computer that was purchased with student loans, and believe you me, I didn't want to purchase it. However, a lot of people -- especially those who can barely afford school -- don't want to take out a cent more in loans than they have to, or are paying for school a class at a time, or are nontraditional students in other ways, or or or or . . .
Look. Stop being a Wired contributor for just a moment and think that really, THERE ARE COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO DON'T HAVE LAPTOPS. Like a LOT of them. Like, oh, I don't know -- to give another category, PEOPLE WHO GO TO COMMUNITY COLLEGES?
And yes, I'm pissed that the school is, yet again, giving special treatment for jocks, but "they already have laptops like everyone else!" IS NOT THE REASON.
No love (since I don't know anything about you other than your name and your part-time job at least),
Stephanie
You just said something along the lines of, "I don't like using sexually violent metaphors, but ..." and then indicated with a gesture that what you were talking about (Wall Street) was, well, rape.
I admire your attempt but you kind of failed.
Love (yeah, I still love you),
Stephanie
--
Dear Weather Fairy:
Please, off with the wind. I'll take the snow, though. It's very pretty!
Love,
Stephanie
--
Dear F-List:
Orangina actually has an ad that is at least as bad if not worse than the Method ad I complained about. (Version here.) The problem? Orangina is made by Schweppes, which makes . . . Dr. Pepper. *sigh* So if you could not drink Dr. Pepper for a couple days (nor any Orangina) or if you want to send them a nasty letter, well, there's a link at the website I linked above.
Love (and rockets?),
Stephanie
--
Dear Law School Profs:
Thanks, three of you, for thanking us for coming to class every day.
Fourth professor, well, ... it's not us, it's you. Sorry.
Possibly love,
Stephanie
--
Dear SNL:
Nope. Domestic violence still isn't funny.
No love,
Stephanie
result: As a small business owner, I am fucked, and so are my employees. A real public plan was the only thing in all of this health care "reform" bullshit that was going to hold prices in check. Now, the insurance industry is going to get whatever meager profits I could scrounge together in this republican wasteland of an economy. So much for expanding my business.
Hopefully, liberal representatives in the house take a giant shit over Obama's weak ass capitulation to the insurance industry, and refuse to pass it in reconciliation, or... refuse to rubber stamp the senate version, which insiders say will be handed back to the house for a rubber stamp so Obama can sign something before the end of the year.
It looks like Obama is happy to make all the mistakes of Lyndon Johnson (Afghanistan), but have none of the successes. (true health care reform).
Enjoy your noble peace prize.
I'm looking to fly in Wed, Jan 13th arriving in early afternoon.
i wont be leaving until the following wed, the 20th.
So in other words
you all better clear your calenders. I miss you all so much... you have no idea. really.
These dates may change, but if so ill let you know. :]
- Mood:
sleepy - Perfume du Jour:Starstruck-30h!3
Yes, I’m still talking about Lady Gaga. It occurs to me that as writers, we can learn from her.
Consider the evidence. Here’s a short clip talking about some of her more wackadoo outfits:
And here’s another one of her videos. This one features her in a weird Hello Kitty get-up (toward the end), and some sort of cyborg paraplegic outfit. Seriously.
You might be watching that and thinking “Dang. Bitch is crazy.” And she totally, totally is. And I (and nine bajillion other fans) absolutely love that about her. She is not afraid to be strange, and absolutely, completely unafraid to take people out of their comfort zone. She loves making her audience wonder what she is going to do next.
I love that about her.
I mean, sure. There are always people that do not get it. That’s the same for any kind of artistic form, whether it be music or books or watercolors. And we’re not going to talk about that today, because that’s totally another blog post. What we’re going to talk about here is pushing the envelope.
Do you push the envelope in your writing?
See, I think that aspiring writers don’t push the envelope. When you are seeking publication, I’ve noticed that there’s a big focus to find that “new” thing that has never been done before. Frog-changelings! Never been done! Let’s run with that! Were-turtles!
I’ve been there, done that. You see, I wrote a book about a valkyrie heroine back in 2004. Back when the urban fantasy craze was really just beginning. Vampires were ‘over’ (yes, even back then) and everyone was scrambling to find the ‘next’ vampire. So I wrote about valkyries (since I’m a Norse mythology geek) and sent it out, proud that I’d come up with something ’so original’. And I sent it out, and sent it out. Half the agents I sent it to didn’t know what a valkyrie was and weren’t interested.
When that book didn’t sell, I was stumped as to what to do next. I mean, here I had this great idea and nobody knew what to do with it or how to market it, right? One agent flat out told me that “We need something easily marketable, and a valkyrie isn’t it.” (at least, at that time)
And then I got an idea for a new novel. And discarded it. It was a little too ‘out there’. It was about a female vampire, but instead of blood, she fed on…sex. I thought it was completely and totally ridiculous. It was crazypants. No one was going to want this! But I started writing it anyhow…and I just threw in whatever. Sex in a confessional? Sure! Historical figure turned evil nemesis? Why the heck not? Speedboat chases and fallen angels? Who cares at this point? There was no mental filter to tell me ‘No’ when I wrote that book. Anything I wanted to put in there, I put in there.
I wrote it. And as I wrote it, I realized…this one was marketable. It wasn’t the concept itself (immortals that feed on blood, yawn). It was that I’d pushed the concept of vampire into a different territory. I’d made it into a succubus, but kept the same basic concept as a vampire – feed or die. Except it wasn’t like all the other vampire stories out there. Not quite.
And it sold, along with a sequel.
I recently sold another book, about a dating agency that deals exclusively with paranormal clients. Again, a basic concept, neatly twisted into something different. Pushed outside of the regular envelope. It’s the same old thing…except, not.
This is why vampire books continue to sell. And Twilight clones. And Regency romances starring dukes and bluestockings continue to sell. This is why Navy Seals continue to sell. People love to read what’s familiar and comfortable. Why re-invent the wheel? There’s nothing more basic or versatile other than the wheel (except for maybe a stick!) and the reason why we keep using the wheel is because IT WORKS.
You can come up with wacky, mythical creatures known only in the most obscure of mythologies (lamias! catoblepas!) but you’re also going to run into a lot of head-scratching and puzzlement. Whereas if you take the established and put a twist on it and push it outside of the ordinary, it’s…clever.
After all, if you take away the wacky videos and the strange outfits (and the odd name), Lady Gaga is just a young, blonde pop singer. Nothing special about that. But she packaged herself in a unique way to stand out, and continues to push the envelope and surprise her audience. And they keep coming back for more.
So what are you going to put in your book to push the envelope?
Mirrored from Jill Myles Dot Com.
I'd absolutely forgotten about it in the craziness of deadlines and holidays until today, when my old high school buddy, Jackie, emailed me on Facebook. Her mom, who still lives in Lago, brought up a copy of the paper to show Jackie.
Thanks to modern tech, I now have scans of said article. Go on, read it, I know you want to... ::g::
Hope everyone is staying safe, sane and warm this holiday season. And don't forget, if you'd like a holiday card (no reciprocation needed!), go to my post here and comment with your snail mail addy. (comments are hidden and available only to me).
On Sunday, stop by Amberkatze's Blog for a guest post by moi--it's all about Texas.
I'm still on deadline and VERY close to finishing, so I'll be quiet again. Expect peals of laughter and jumps for joy when I turn the book in, 'kay? Just warning you. ::g::
Cheers!
- Mood:
cheerful
tired- 21:57 Had delicious Thai food and must now return to work. Not that it is a great tragedy to imagine myself in Florence, sparring with hot Greek. #
- 22:09 @GLITZANDBLITZ Oh, yes. This hero is... something else! #
- 11:41 Got a "hey cutie" from homeless guy outside CVS. Was secretly pleased until I realized my fly was down. #
- 11:59 What's your favorite holiday song? Tell me here: tinyurl.com/yzqznpj #
But the other thing coming to light for me as I go back through the book for the first time in nearly two years is that I like this book. As in, really like it. This isn't inordinate pride talking; I don't often say that about my own writing. Usually I'm my own biggest critic. But I had fun writing it and especially after that two-year gap, I'm having fun reading through it again. Its unity of storyline and how everything hangs together, at least as far as I'm concerned, have held up well. So if it's to be a 120K+ novel, then that's what it'll be.
But those friends who commented about splitting it got me thinking seriously about something else: Splitting the Shenandoah books. Again.
Because, naturally, I'd been fretting about their word count too. The first book is a clean 100K and can likely be trimmed back a bit more. The second book is 140K and might come down to 125 with trimming, but that didn't bother me so much because most of it is the Civil War, which is perpetually popular. The third book, on the other hand, is already 127K with 69 book years left to go, and this was especially disturbing me.
Yet as I was drifting off to sleep last night my brain unfolded a plan to rearrange the novels and make it a four book series instead...which, actually, is closer to what I had in mind years ago. I imagined the generations ranging across four to six volumes once upon a time, but the story seems now to fit snugly in four.
There wouldn't be any expanding; I'm telling the stories I want to tell. They might simply be more digestible across four books rather than a trilogy.
(This may also have something to do with the fact that I'm currently reading John Jakes' Bicentennial / Kent Chronicles series.)
Part of me is also resisting this. I don't know why; likely it's because I'm afraid the first ones won't sell well enough to justify publishing the last ones. But considering a recent warning to me about most publishers having a 100K upper limit, the word counts could then become ideal: Shenandoah would be 90-100,000 words; Weary are the Hearts (the Civil War one) would come in at around 80,000; the new Book Three would likewise be around 80,000; and this would now mean that The Great Valley would be currently less than 60,000--and almost certainly would not top 100K by the time it's finished.
A four-book format would work out better thematically, too. Like so:
Shenandoah: Would stay the same as it is now, 1646 (the Native Americans) to 1797 (the end of the "Backcountry" and pioneer days).
Weary are the Hearts: 1815 (the early Southern abolitionist movements) to 1865 (the end of the Civil War).
The As Yet Unnamed Book Three: 1865 to 1906, Reconstruction through the early "New South".
The Great Valley: 1916 to 2010, covering everything from the resurrected KKK and the Great Depression to the Civil Rights movement and the modern fights against pollution and the struggle to rebirth the American Chestnut tree.
So now all that's probably left for me to do is just dive into the rearranging. I know myself well enough to know that my resistance will probably fade once I have a title I like for Book Three. :) I just hope that publishers of historical fiction like series as much as specfic publishers do!
- Location:Rearrangement Land
- Mood:
pensive - Perfume du Jour:"I'll Fly Away", ala Allison Krauss
This picture, taken with the Hubble's new infrared camera, is the deepest we've ever glimpsed into the heart of our universe. Looking toward the center, the furthest galaxies from us (shaded red) were formed around 600 million years after the Big Bang. (Our Johnny-come-lately Milky Way forming between 10 and 6 billion years after the Big Bang.)
Seriously, words just fail.
( Read more )
- Location:The open plain of I want more to eat
- Perfume du Jour:In my head I am signing eye of the tiger
I'm going to go curl up in a blanket and try not to hyperventilate.
- Mood:
nervous - Perfume du Jour:Pearl Jam - "Wishlist"
Just deleted the last post, sorry. Wasn’t comfortable with the comment train.
Will blog more later tonight!
Mirrored from Jill Myles Dot Com.
Yesterday, I left my house to do some early-morning grocery shopping, the better to get out there before the hordes. Here are some choice moments:
One holiday-maddened woman bought a entire cartload of paper towels (directly in front of me) and then muttered to herself (no Bluetooth--I looked) while cramming them all into her reindeer-festooned hatchback (right next to me), and then stood there, her driver's door ajar and nearly touching my car, as I tried to back out of the space. She just... stood there. Muttering. For ages.
One dude screeched into the parking lot as if being pursued by a phalanx of law enforcement officials (he was not) and wrenched his massive Escalade to a stop, leaving the ginormous thing horizontal across a series of vertical parking slots. He then leapt from his vehicle (and was not actually wearing an Ed Hardy shirt, though I felt one was implied) and sauntered toward the door, looking around as if he expected an angry mob to rise up and confront him. But, of course, no one said a word. Because it was roughly 7:45am and the parking lot was nearly empty. There were exactly three people to witness his raging against the machine, and none of us cared.
One excessively skinny and fashion-y chick was clearly en route to a long and unfulfilling day's work, and was therefore perfectly comfortable if not determined to run over a pedestrian on her way to the office. Said pedestrian considered rolling her shopping cart into the grill of this woman's Mercedes, but restrained herself.
One enraged gentleman (seriously--he was twitching) stole my parking space at Whole Foods. When we were surrounded, at 8:00am, by a veritable sea of open parking spots. But no! Only mine would do. So I... parked next to him in one of the twenty-five available slots, and he responded to this by flipping me off. Happy holidays to you, sir!
And this, people, was all before 9 in the morning, on the 8th of December. What will happen next week? Can we survive?!
Be careful out there.
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blue_succubus- Richelle Mead
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