Tag: Sunburn

She Blinded Me with Science

Wednesday morning, and I’m groggy, but my new dryer was just installed so it was worth getting up early. I am doing a load of laundry as I type this; trying desperately to get caught up; the laundry never seems to end, does it? It is ridiculous, though, how happy it makes me to have a working dryer again. So bougie.

Yesterday was just plain weird on every level. I am blaming it on the aftermath of the eclipse and Mercury being in retrograde; everything was just whack yesterday. It seemed like every time I turned around something else crazy was happening; just batshit crazy. One lovely thing, though–my co-workers brought in cupcakes for my birthday, which was incredibly sweet. I was touched, and my blackened little heart was warmed.

I am still  chugging away at Steve Berry’s The Lincoln Myth, although the plot is making me uneasy; which I am more than willing to discuss once I’ve finished reading the book. I think I’m into the home stretch; the last quarter or so of the book. It really does move quickly; Berry certainly knows how to pace a thriller.

(I am definitely reading the new Lippman next; can’t wait!) I got started on Chapter Four of Scotty yesterday; a dreaded transition chapter, and God knows how much I hate writing those. The key is to just get it fucking done and move on to the next chapter, where the action will start picking up once again. Crescent City Charade is turning out to be vastly different than I thought it would be when I started writing it–quelle surprise, that happens with every Scotty, doesn’t it?

Heavy heaving sigh.

I also didn’t get nearly as much done yesterday as I had wanted to; primarily because I kept get sidetracked. I originally, for example, had asked for my dryer to be delivered yesterday morning; I got up early only to discover that despite my request it had been scheduled for this morning. You know, when I am supposed to be at work at eleven thirty. The only other option was to reschedule it for Saturday, but on Saturday the delivery window is anytime between eight and five, and cannot be narrowed. So, rather than spending my entire day at home on Saturday waiting, I decided to take the chance that it would come this morning in time for me to make it to work on time. What, I ask are the odds?

Not good, would be my answer.

And on that note, ’tis back to the spice mines.

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Electric Avenue

Tuesday, and tomorrow I get my new dryer. Heavy heaving sigh. The laundry is piling up.

But I did manage to write another chapter of the new Scotty yesterday, and got to bring up/set up the moral dilemma he’s going to experience through this book, which was kind of fun. It’s also a massive change-up from the opening of the book, which is also way fun to do. If I can manage a chapter a day, this book’s first draft will be finished in about three more weeks. How cool is that? I also managed to get the second half of the WIP line edited. Don’t get excited; I did the second half first, and now am going to do the first half–but am doing the second quarter first, and the first quarter last. Capisce? It makes sense (to me). I am trying not to get distracted by the story and focus more on the language more than anything else. Once I input all these cuts, I will go through it one last time. I also have one more scene to write, for the end. (No, I haven’t gotten the end right yet. It’s another reason I think I keep futzing with it. But it’s going to be much better now than it was.)

Ah, self-confidence. I wonder what that would be like, to have some?

I started reading Steve Berry’s The Lincoln Myth, which appears to be about the Mormons, the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln; I am only about seventy pages in. I wanted to read Laura Lippman’s Sunburn next, but I only have an electronic copy and I forgot to charge my iPad, and that battery was deader than Lizzie Borden’s parents. I literally went over to the book case which is filled with books I’ve not read yet, closed my eyes, and reached for one. Hardly scientific, but there you have it. Sometimes you just have to let chance take you by the hand. It’s kind of interesting to read a book by Steve Berry with the Civil War as a plot point–given the latest bad publicity Berry is getting, about a memo he wrote when he was a prosecutor in Georgia, before he turned his attention to writing thrillers with a base in history–but as all Berry novels, it’s a quick read with lots of action. Berry also cross cuts between several different points of view, and you can never be absolutely certain who are the bad guys and who are the good. I am curious as to what the secret hidden away for almost two hundred years in the Utah desert is, what it has to do with the Civil War, and how it can affect the present (which is the basic plot structure of every Berry novel; some long hidden secret could have dangerous ramifications in the present unless Our Hero gets to it first before the Bad Guy), but I do enjoy the suspension of belief and getting on board that train. And he does research the books; there is always some semblance of historical truth buried in the books. (The Columbus Affair taught me a lot about Jamaica that I didn’t know, for example, and The King’s Deception likewise taught me some Tudor lore I hadn’t been aware of previously) So, we shall see. His series character (not all of the books belong to the series) Cotton Malone is kind of a James Bond/Jason Bourne/Jack Ryan hybrid, but like I said, I enjoy suspending my belief and going along for the ride. What can I say? It’s fun.

I don’t have to go to work until later today–bar testing–so I am hoping to get some cleaning done, serious work on the book(s), and maybe even take some time to read a bit more.

And so, it’s back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, all. And here’s a Tuesday hottie for you:

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Let’s Dance

I managed, yesterday, to polish off Chapter Two; I wrote 1700 words or so in about an hour and fifteen minutes and voila! The pesky chapter was finished. I also started Chapter Three this morning; alas, maybe about a paragraph was all I was able to get done, but it was a start, and a start is always lovely. This weekend is my birthday; I will officially be fifty-six; but I’ve been saying I’m fifty-six for quite a while now. (I usually add the year after New Year’s; it’s just easier and I don’t really think of my birthday as a big deal, quite frankly). Paul and I are going to go see Dunkirk tomorrow night, and then out for dinner afterwards. I’ve taken Monday off, and I am working a late night on Tuesday, so I won’t have to be in to work until around three, which means I basically have a three and a half day weekend, which is lovely. I am hoping to be able to get a lot done this weekend; I want to finish reading the Ambler, which I am loving, then I am going to reread Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place, and then I am going to reread The Haunting of Hill House. After that, it’s either Jeff Abbott’s Blame or my advance copy of Laura Lippman’s newest, Sunburn.

One of the best perks of being a writer is that I get advance copies of books, or know people who do that can pass them along to me. My dear friend Lisa recently gave me an advance copy of this:

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I don’t consider myself to be a horror writer (SHUT UP BACK THERE! I said horror, not horrible), but I do consider myself to be a big fan of the genre. I read a lot of these books–not all, who knew there were so many? But I was a voracious reader, and I loved to read horror. The first horror novel I read was The Other–I still have the hardcover copy I originally read in junior high; I’m not sure I remember how I got a hardcover copy of it, maybe it was my grandmother’s–and I also read The Exorcist in junior high; everyone was reading it, and as all tweens (although we weren’t called that then) are wont to do, all we talked about was the crucifix masturbation scene. I always liked horror–I remember watching old black and white scary movies with my grandmother (she also likes mysteries) when I was a kid, but I never thought I could write it. I certainly never tried until the 1980’s, when my fandom of Stephen King made me give it a try. I still love reading horror, and there are certainly some amazing horror writers being published today whose books I greatly enjoy.

My inability to get any of it published is an indicator that crime was a better fit for my talents.

But what a wonderful resource this is! And a lovely trip down memory lane. To be honest, I thought I hadn’t read much horror throughout my life outside of the usual suspects (Stephen King, Peter Straub, Poppy Z. Brite) and some others that have come along more recently, but in going through this, I saw many titles I’d forgotten I’d read, and authors I’d forgotten.

This is a must for all horror fans; even those who are too young to remember the glory days of the mass market paperback boom of the 70’s and 80’s.

And now, back to the spice mines.

 

Beat It

Throwback Thursday!

Exhausted this morning after a lengthy day yesterday of office testing and then bar testing last night. I slept really well; my back is still a bit sore as are my hips; I may have to preemptively cancel Wacky Russian this week because I don’t think it’s wise to push my muscles when they are still recovering from whatever it was I did to them in the first place. I only managed to get started on another short story yesterday, “The Brady Kid,” and maybe got about eight hundred words of it done; I was too sore and too tired to do anything else. I hate losing work days like that, but at least this morning I don’t have to be into the office until later, and I feel rested and not quite as sore this morning. SO maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to be productive.

A boy can dream, right?

It’s raining right now; a thunderstorm rolled in sometime around five this morning. Thunder woke me into a half-awake state, and I was able to fall back asleep for a few more hours–another sign I was really tired and in need, desperately, of rest. I am awake now, on my first cup of coffee, and could easily slip back beneath the covers and return to sleep; it is truly amazing to me how crucial sleep–something I never really even paid much attention to when I was younger–has become to me as I’ve gotten older.

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to finish The Gods of Gotham by the end of the week. I haven’t decided on my next book–Blame by Jeff Abbott, or something by Eric Ambler (whom I’ve never read), or the new Donna Andrews, Gone Gull, are the most likely picks; I’ve also got an advance copy of Laura Lippman’s Sunburn; so many choices! My TBR pile is a veritable smorgasbord of good reading options.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me.

Today’s Throwback Thursday hunk, male supermodel of the 90s Marcus Schenkenberg:

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