Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 149
June 23, 2013
June 20, 2013
House Hunting Part Two
House hunting on Saturday didn't get off to the greatest of starts. My agent was a bit late because she'd gotten a phone call from another agent. The first house on our list of appointments already had five offers on it and she basically told my agent not to bother. This house had gone on sale like 2 days earlier.
House 1 off the list, sight unseen.
House 2 didn't get off to a good start either. We arrived to find: The owners still home, another set of house buyers looking during our time (they'd had an appointment for later in the day and just showed up), and repairmen there doing...something.
Everyone cleared out a few minutes after we got there, though, and we started to look around. It was a nice, two-story house with a lot of windows and light. Corner lot, but it was on a small, cul-de-sac street so it wouldn't be an unbearable amount of traffic. Fantastic landscaping and I liked the light fixtures they'd chosen.
But the master bathroom was small and so was the kitchen. The other rooms were upstairs, including a bonus room that was being used as a man cave. I liked it enough to keep it on the list, but I was kind of meh about it.
House 3 was a new house in a subdivision that had been started maybe 5 or 6 years ago? Maybe a little longer. We never got out of the car. My agent took one look at it's location (it was a on a corner lot) and said I'd have car lights from every direction because of how the roads were situated with the lot. I agreed with her.
House 4 was another new house in the same subdivision. Again, we never got out of the car. My agent took one look at the power lines going through the area behind the back yard and said I'd never be able to sell the place with that there. I thought health hazard and no, I didn't want to live behind the big, ginormous power line towers.
House 5 was at the top of a hill. A fairly steep hill. When my agent brought her car to a stop, I told her to put on the parking brake. I was afraid her car would roll down the hill if she didn't. To drive into that garage, you wouldn't be able to slow down much until you'd leveled off the car.
This house was a one story--ranch--with hardwood floors in the entry and kitchen, upgraded carpeting and padding in the rest of the house, a kitchen with plenty of storage room and a good sized pantry, granite counter tops, and big rooms. It was awesome. It even had an in-ground sprinkler system.
But no basement. I really wanted a basement.
House 6 was 3000 square feet, all brick, but built in 1989. We showed up to discover the reason it had so much square footage was that the owners had enclosed the garage and made it a room. Sort of. It wasn't a very pretty or useful room, so I don't know why they gave up the garage, but they had.
We needed to enter through the back door because there was a problem with the front one. The backyard was beautiful. Very private and large, especially for the area we were looking in.
As soon as we walked in, I decided it had to have been owned by an elderly lady. All the walls were stark white except for the borders around the walls near the ceiling. The kitchen had peach counter tops, ancient appliances, and the linoleum needed to be replaced. It was big, it had a built-in oven (which I love), but holy cow.
The rest of the tour didn't get any better. All the rooms were big and the bones of the house were good, but it would take another $50,000 dollars to fix everything that needed fixing, update all the old stuff, return the garage to being a garage and host of other issues.
Even if this house hadn't been priced slightly over the top of my budget, I wasn't willing to tackle a fixer-upper. Especially one this intensive. I crossed it off the list.
House 7 was the house I'd looked at on Wednesday, the one under construction and at the very top of my price range. Okay, beyond the very top of my budget, but my offer was going to be my max amount. We talked to the agent and I decided this was the house, so why not go ahead and put in an offer?
But as I started asking questions and realized I would have to take vinyl flooring and builder-grade carpet, that I would be allowed hardly any choice in anything at all, I panicked.
I said, "I have to think about this." And we left.
To Be Continued.
House 1 off the list, sight unseen.
House 2 didn't get off to a good start either. We arrived to find: The owners still home, another set of house buyers looking during our time (they'd had an appointment for later in the day and just showed up), and repairmen there doing...something.
Everyone cleared out a few minutes after we got there, though, and we started to look around. It was a nice, two-story house with a lot of windows and light. Corner lot, but it was on a small, cul-de-sac street so it wouldn't be an unbearable amount of traffic. Fantastic landscaping and I liked the light fixtures they'd chosen.
But the master bathroom was small and so was the kitchen. The other rooms were upstairs, including a bonus room that was being used as a man cave. I liked it enough to keep it on the list, but I was kind of meh about it.
House 3 was a new house in a subdivision that had been started maybe 5 or 6 years ago? Maybe a little longer. We never got out of the car. My agent took one look at it's location (it was a on a corner lot) and said I'd have car lights from every direction because of how the roads were situated with the lot. I agreed with her.
House 4 was another new house in the same subdivision. Again, we never got out of the car. My agent took one look at the power lines going through the area behind the back yard and said I'd never be able to sell the place with that there. I thought health hazard and no, I didn't want to live behind the big, ginormous power line towers.
House 5 was at the top of a hill. A fairly steep hill. When my agent brought her car to a stop, I told her to put on the parking brake. I was afraid her car would roll down the hill if she didn't. To drive into that garage, you wouldn't be able to slow down much until you'd leveled off the car.
This house was a one story--ranch--with hardwood floors in the entry and kitchen, upgraded carpeting and padding in the rest of the house, a kitchen with plenty of storage room and a good sized pantry, granite counter tops, and big rooms. It was awesome. It even had an in-ground sprinkler system.
But no basement. I really wanted a basement.
House 6 was 3000 square feet, all brick, but built in 1989. We showed up to discover the reason it had so much square footage was that the owners had enclosed the garage and made it a room. Sort of. It wasn't a very pretty or useful room, so I don't know why they gave up the garage, but they had.
We needed to enter through the back door because there was a problem with the front one. The backyard was beautiful. Very private and large, especially for the area we were looking in.
As soon as we walked in, I decided it had to have been owned by an elderly lady. All the walls were stark white except for the borders around the walls near the ceiling. The kitchen had peach counter tops, ancient appliances, and the linoleum needed to be replaced. It was big, it had a built-in oven (which I love), but holy cow.
The rest of the tour didn't get any better. All the rooms were big and the bones of the house were good, but it would take another $50,000 dollars to fix everything that needed fixing, update all the old stuff, return the garage to being a garage and host of other issues.
Even if this house hadn't been priced slightly over the top of my budget, I wasn't willing to tackle a fixer-upper. Especially one this intensive. I crossed it off the list.
House 7 was the house I'd looked at on Wednesday, the one under construction and at the very top of my price range. Okay, beyond the very top of my budget, but my offer was going to be my max amount. We talked to the agent and I decided this was the house, so why not go ahead and put in an offer?
But as I started asking questions and realized I would have to take vinyl flooring and builder-grade carpet, that I would be allowed hardly any choice in anything at all, I panicked.
I said, "I have to think about this." And we left.
To Be Continued.
June 18, 2013
House Hunting Part One
With a closing date set for my home in Minnesota, it was time to go house hunting in Georgia. Being the obsessive/compulsive person that I am, I'd begun watching houses online about a year ago and that picked up in earnest a few months ago. I knew what area I wanted to live in and I knew what things were important to me in a house.
TBH, I didn't expect to find anything for a long, long time. You see, I really, really loved my house in Minnesota. I'd picked out the plans, I had it built, I chose everything from floor to ceiling, and it was a totally awesome home.
Last Wednesday, my agent and I looked at a house under construction. It was above my price range, but it had a basement and would be a brand new house. Two pluses for me.
When I got there and saw the lot, my heart sank. The road sat high and the house sat really low. All I could see was rain hitting the ground and streaming for the house.
We went in and walked around inside. It was a nice floor plan and had a lot of similarities to my house up north, but it was cramped. I swear it had to have less square footage because so much of the total was in the bonus room over the garage, not in the rooms on the main level.
Still, it wasn't too bad and it had a basement. We went down to look at it and there, against the front wall, was water. In fact, the red Georgia clay stained the entire length of one of the basement walls.
My agent called the builders agents and got some more information. The basement had been poured a long time before the walls and roof went up and that was probably where the water had come from. Also, the steep lot we saw wasn't what the final version would look like. There was a lot more grading to be done.
This left it on the list of possibilities. If the builder was willing to take less than what he was asking for. I didn't, however, want to commit to the first house I saw, so my agent and I made a date for Saturday.
To Be Continued.
TBH, I didn't expect to find anything for a long, long time. You see, I really, really loved my house in Minnesota. I'd picked out the plans, I had it built, I chose everything from floor to ceiling, and it was a totally awesome home.
Last Wednesday, my agent and I looked at a house under construction. It was above my price range, but it had a basement and would be a brand new house. Two pluses for me.
When I got there and saw the lot, my heart sank. The road sat high and the house sat really low. All I could see was rain hitting the ground and streaming for the house.
We went in and walked around inside. It was a nice floor plan and had a lot of similarities to my house up north, but it was cramped. I swear it had to have less square footage because so much of the total was in the bonus room over the garage, not in the rooms on the main level.
Still, it wasn't too bad and it had a basement. We went down to look at it and there, against the front wall, was water. In fact, the red Georgia clay stained the entire length of one of the basement walls.
My agent called the builders agents and got some more information. The basement had been poured a long time before the walls and roof went up and that was probably where the water had come from. Also, the steep lot we saw wasn't what the final version would look like. There was a lot more grading to be done.
This left it on the list of possibilities. If the builder was willing to take less than what he was asking for. I didn't, however, want to commit to the first house I saw, so my agent and I made a date for Saturday.
To Be Continued.
June 16, 2013
Dark Matter
The stuff we can see is only 5% of the universe. The rest is dark matter or dark energy.
June 13, 2013
TL; DR
Another recent article on the internet was about long articles. Sorry that I'm not linking to it, but I read it last week and I didn't save it. Of course, I can't remember which site it was or even narrow it down.
The gist of the article was that people don't read long posts. He gave the stats, like so many will click away almost instantly. I'm guessing those are people who ended up there by mistake. I accidentally click on stuff all the time because of my impatience.
Of the people who stay on the site long enough to read something, most last one screen length. They don't scroll, they leave. The author ran through how many people he lost at each point. They can actually measure how many pixels deep people read. Which is maybe taking analytics just a step too far for comfort.
The thing is that this has been common knowledge for a long time. It was one of the first things I learned in journalism school and it's why when you read the newspaper, the most important information comes first and it's been this way for decades at least. For all I know, maybe centuries.
This article also made me wince. I know my blog posts tend to be long, not quick and snappy. I suppose I have a ton of people who take a look and think TL; DR. (Too Long; Didn't Read) Sorry, y'all.
The gist of the article was that people don't read long posts. He gave the stats, like so many will click away almost instantly. I'm guessing those are people who ended up there by mistake. I accidentally click on stuff all the time because of my impatience.
Of the people who stay on the site long enough to read something, most last one screen length. They don't scroll, they leave. The author ran through how many people he lost at each point. They can actually measure how many pixels deep people read. Which is maybe taking analytics just a step too far for comfort.
The thing is that this has been common knowledge for a long time. It was one of the first things I learned in journalism school and it's why when you read the newspaper, the most important information comes first and it's been this way for decades at least. For all I know, maybe centuries.
This article also made me wince. I know my blog posts tend to be long, not quick and snappy. I suppose I have a ton of people who take a look and think TL; DR. (Too Long; Didn't Read) Sorry, y'all.
June 11, 2013
Saying No
Someone tweeted a link to an article on Sunday that I thought was really interesting: Creative People Say No.
The one thing I've learned is how important it is to guard writing time. It's hard to come by and easily sacrificed by others. I can't tell you how many times people have argued with me saying, it's just one evening or it's just a few hours.
But it's not that simple. First of all, there are a lot of people who only want "just a few hours." Without the word no, there'd be zero writing time left. They discount the days when the words all have to be cut because none of them are the right ones. They discard the way life has a way of throwing little emergencies at people.
Right now I'm on deadline and panicking because I have to close on my house in Minnesota--it's sold--and find a house in Georgia. Um, there is no extra time in my schedule. I'm like hyperventilating on this deadline, so just an evening? No, sorry. I can't do it.
The one thing I've learned is how important it is to guard writing time. It's hard to come by and easily sacrificed by others. I can't tell you how many times people have argued with me saying, it's just one evening or it's just a few hours.
But it's not that simple. First of all, there are a lot of people who only want "just a few hours." Without the word no, there'd be zero writing time left. They discount the days when the words all have to be cut because none of them are the right ones. They discard the way life has a way of throwing little emergencies at people.
Right now I'm on deadline and panicking because I have to close on my house in Minnesota--it's sold--and find a house in Georgia. Um, there is no extra time in my schedule. I'm like hyperventilating on this deadline, so just an evening? No, sorry. I can't do it.
June 9, 2013
The Night Watch
This is totally awesome!
And if you're as interested as I am, here's the Making Of video. You'll have to click the CC button on the bottom and select subtitles in English.
And if you're as interested as I am, here's the Making Of video. You'll have to click the CC button on the bottom and select subtitles in English.
June 6, 2013
More Stories Coming
There will be more stories set in the Blood Feud world! I sold two stories to Nocturne's Cravings. This is their novella length, ebook line.
The first story is tentatively titled Phoenix Burning. The hero, Ivar, is a vampire enforcer in Los Angeles, sent by his clan lord to find the man who centuries earlier killed the clan lord's human beloved.
The heroine is this guilty man's daughter and Ivar plans to stick close to her until she leads him to her father. Only things don't go quite the way Ivar planned. He's so attracted to the heroine that he can't see straight or think about anything except sex.
I don't have a release date yet or a for sure title, but I had to share my awesome news! Stay tuned.
The first story is tentatively titled Phoenix Burning. The hero, Ivar, is a vampire enforcer in Los Angeles, sent by his clan lord to find the man who centuries earlier killed the clan lord's human beloved.
The heroine is this guilty man's daughter and Ivar plans to stick close to her until she leads him to her father. Only things don't go quite the way Ivar planned. He's so attracted to the heroine that he can't see straight or think about anything except sex.
I don't have a release date yet or a for sure title, but I had to share my awesome news! Stay tuned.
June 4, 2013
Spinning Wheels
I've been working on this proposal. I had two chapters done before I went to Minneapolis and I figured another two chapters would give me about fifty pages and I'd be good to go. Only I got stuck.
There was a lot of stress involved with the house stuff up in Minnesota and even after I got back to Georgia, the stress level continued to soar high. I chalked the stall up to that. After all, when your fingernails are buried in the ceiling, it's hard to type. ;-)
But when the stress level eased back and I still couldn't write anymore in this story, I knew something was wrong. You see, I only get wheel spinning stuck when I've written something my hero or heroine don't like or that they would never, ever do. This has happened often enough that you think I'd get it faster than I do. Despite all the experience I have, this wasn't my first thought when I got stuck.
No, my first thought was maybe there's something wrong with what I'm planning to do in the next chapter. I ran it past my writing buddies, but they didn't see anything off in what I had planned.
Another week of frustration passed before the light bulb went off over my head. Duh, I'd messed up somewhere. Now I just needed to figure out what was wrong.
I found some little things and changed them. Still stuck.
I ran the previous chapters past my writing buddies with the focus on what I'd already written. I tried fixing their suggestions. Still no forward progress.
This called for complete story deconstruction. I questioned everything, and after a conversation with my hero, I realized that the entire setup was completely wrong. He wouldn't do what I had him doing, not after his temper cooled off.
Not good news. It means rewriting everything from the ground up. And it means figuring out another way to open the story. Unfortunately, I'm still mulling because the original opening was strong and nothing else I'm coming up with equals it. More contemplation is needed, but it's just a matter of time before I conquer this.
There was a lot of stress involved with the house stuff up in Minnesota and even after I got back to Georgia, the stress level continued to soar high. I chalked the stall up to that. After all, when your fingernails are buried in the ceiling, it's hard to type. ;-)
But when the stress level eased back and I still couldn't write anymore in this story, I knew something was wrong. You see, I only get wheel spinning stuck when I've written something my hero or heroine don't like or that they would never, ever do. This has happened often enough that you think I'd get it faster than I do. Despite all the experience I have, this wasn't my first thought when I got stuck.
No, my first thought was maybe there's something wrong with what I'm planning to do in the next chapter. I ran it past my writing buddies, but they didn't see anything off in what I had planned.
Another week of frustration passed before the light bulb went off over my head. Duh, I'd messed up somewhere. Now I just needed to figure out what was wrong.
I found some little things and changed them. Still stuck.
I ran the previous chapters past my writing buddies with the focus on what I'd already written. I tried fixing their suggestions. Still no forward progress.
This called for complete story deconstruction. I questioned everything, and after a conversation with my hero, I realized that the entire setup was completely wrong. He wouldn't do what I had him doing, not after his temper cooled off.
Not good news. It means rewriting everything from the ground up. And it means figuring out another way to open the story. Unfortunately, I'm still mulling because the original opening was strong and nothing else I'm coming up with equals it. More contemplation is needed, but it's just a matter of time before I conquer this.
