Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 165

Cowboys and Aliens

There might be spoilers ahead. I'm going to try to avoid them, but if you don't want to risk it, please stop reading here.

Let me preface this review my mentioning that I'd never had any desire to watch Cowboys and Aliens. One of the guys at work loaned his DVD to me because I was talking to him when another person he'd loaned it to came over to return it. I also was doing other stuff while the movie was on, so I wasn't paying strict attention.

Cowboys and Aliens is basically that aliens have come to Earth to take our gold. For reasons that are unclear to me, they attack a town and abduct some of the townspeople. A group from the town goes to rescue those who were taken.

The first thing that surprised me was this movie was set in the old west. I didn't realize it was historically set, which echoes back to it not being a movie I'd wanted to see so I didn't pay attention to details while it was advertised. I imagined modern day cowboys and I had to adjust my expectations.

Secondly, the movie started out slowly. Oh, there was some intrigue about what the heck was going on with Daniel Craig's character that kept me watching, but there was too much stuff I found boring. Like the spoiled rich man's son who could do anything he wanted in town because of his daddy (played by Harrison Ford). I'm not sure why this spoiled man-child needed that much film space spent on him, but they spent a lot of the opening on him and I got bored.

Finally, the aliens attacked the town and stuff started happening. I perked up briefly, but it didn't last. The cowboys ride out to find the aliens seemed to take a very long time. We got to hear Harrison Ford's character tell a story about how he got to be such a bad tempered SOB. During this trip we also discover a "shocking" revelation about one of the posse members and we get more telling. This time about the aliens and why they're here.

The dramatic battle at the end? Not so dramatic. I found it to be slow and lacking much in the way of suspense.

Maybe if the premise had grabbed me enough to want to see the movie, I wouldn't have been so bored watching it. Or maybe not. I'm very picky about movies and a story has to grab me to turn off this inner critic. This film couldn't do that. The best part was watching Daniel Craig who did look fine.

If you have nothing else to do, there are worse movies to watch. There are better, too, but someone else might enjoy it.

My rating: 2 stars

5 Historical Misconceptions

On the Hunt

I heard recently that Jayne Ann Krentz's Guinevere Jones series was being reissued and I was giddy with excitement. I already have the complete series, but they were extremely difficult to find when I was looking back in the 90s and they must be even more difficult to find now. Reissues means I can have backup copies just in case. Reissues means I can share my love of these books with more people.

Part of the joy of finding an online romance community is being able to discuss books and authors with others who've read them. No one I knew IRL read like I did and I felt like a freak. Then I discovered other people had To Be Read piles and they were delighted to recommend books and make my pile even bigger.

But because of how hard to find the Guinevere Jones books are, there were few people I was able to gush with about the stories.

The hunt for these books brought back memories of what I used to do on the weekends before I dedicated myself to writing. Every Saturday, my mom and I would head out with a list of hard-to-find books and we'd make the rounds: used book stores, thrift stores, library sales, anywhere I might find these rare treasures.

I carried my hard-to-find list with me everywhere I went. I heard Eugene, Oregon had a great number of awesome used book stores, so when I went out there for a conference, I planned to come home with books. I did. IIRC, I bought 86 of them. The bag was so heavy, I couldn't lift it into the overhead on the plane when I flew home and had to slide it under my seat. But they had some titles by favorite authors that I hadn't been able to find in Minneapolis and I wasn't leaving them behind.

Still, my book collection had holes. Then I heard about BSJ: Book Store Junkies. These were people who hunted for books others wanted and sold them for what they paid plus postage costs. Now when I went out searching on the weekends, I was looking for books others couldn't find and I had people all across the United States looking for the ones I still hadn't found. It was awesome!

But despite all this, I never did find but 1 of JAK's McFadden Romances. It was part of an omnibus collection (not the stand alone version of the book) and I still remember spotting it at the library book sale. (Excuse me for digressing for a moment.)

The books were spine up across probably a dozen tables. I was at the third or fourth table in from the door when I glanced up and scanned the next table for a sneak peek. My brain registered something. My eyes zipped back. Yes, there it was, a McFadden omnibus collection!

Immediately, I did a quick recon. No one was too near that table. Good. I already knew the odds were slim it would be a collection with Jayne Ann Krentz in it. I'd spotted a fair number of McFaddens over the years, but none of them had ever contained a JAK story. That didn't matter. Any McFadden was rare and there was always a chance. I raced from the table I was at to the other one and grabbed up the book. I looked down and gasped. At last! I'd found a JAK McFadden story! It was like spotting a unicorn.

I clutched the book to my chest and looked around, afraid that some other book hunter would grab it out of my hands and run away with my find.

But now back to what I meant to say before I remembered my McFadden adventure. So I only have one of JAK's McFaddens. I wonder if the fact that Guinevere Jones is finally finally being reissued that there's hope for the only JAK books I don't own? I'm keeping my fingers crossed that some day I'll have my collection complete. Please, please let them reissue her McFadden romances.

How Much Is Enough?

I've been living in two cities since January when my job officially relocated to Atlanta. To explain, most of my stuff is still up in my house in MN while I'm in Georgia with only some of my things. Until I can get my house ready to sell, close on it, and find something down here, this situation will continue. It's stressful, time consuming, and expensive.

One of the interesting things, though, about this experience has been being separated from most of my stuff.

The big thing is that I haven't missed most of it. That's enough to give one pause, isn't it? How much of what I have am I keeping out of inertia or because I spent money on it? How much do I really need to move down here?

Oh, there are definitely things I miss--my big television (not as big as most people's TVs, but big enough for me). Watching baseball on the 19 inch set I brought down with me is passable, but lacking. I also miss having a DVD player down here. Not the recording part of it. I never record anything because I never watch it. Ever. But the only DVD player I have is on the laptop and it's just not convenient to stop doing stuff while I watch a movie. (I also miss some of my DVDs that I left behind.)

I miss some of my books. When I was pruning my book collection, I was reminded of old favorites and I want to reread some of them. Many of these titles are not in ebook, and if they are, priced too high.

I miss my desktop computer. Unfortunately, that's the machine to which my iPod is synced, so I can't load new music. The desktop is an iMac, the laptop is a PC and that's the problem. I could go on about the technical issues here, but I'll spare y'all. :-)

I miss my computer printer. I miss my reference books. I miss my bedside lamp. ( I know; weird thing to miss.)

But for all things things I wish I had down here with me, there are 10 other things that I haven't given a thought to since I left. And that's what has me wondering if I can get rid of some that without regretting it later. I've already donated something like 30 boxes of stuff to various veterans groups and I've donated (so far) 2400 books to the local library (not a typo), but can I get rid of more? It's made me think.

Evolution of the Moon

Maybe a Glimmer

I blogged recently about how much trouble I'm having getting back into writing after a long absence from it. My struggles continue, but I think there might--maybe--be some improvement. Characters are giving me information again! They're still not giving me story words and I still don't have keepable work, but I'm hopeful that it will come now that the silent treatment has ended.

What's funny is the characters that started sharing were not on my radar screen. They're not new characters since the hero has been hanging around since 2005 and his heroine since 2006, but their story had been filed in my inactive project folder.

The other interesting thing about that is that this hero and heroine were the second couple in a three book trilogy and I'd done nothing with their story in the past. Although, I wonder if maybe that's why they were the ones to talk. It makes sense that it would be a couple about whom I had no preconceived ideas to mess me up.

On the other hand, I had a brand new couple on a project I should be working on, but after an initial spurt of information, they went silent. I'm not sure what this means except that this couple and their story were for publication whereas the old couple from six years ago can be written just for me. :-) Yes, I'd like to get them out there, but there isn't any expectation on my part, if that make sense. Less pressure means easier to write?

I hope so, but we'll see.

Enemy Embrace

Enemy Embrace is now available as a stand alone! This is a novella that was originally released in 2011 as part of the Crave the Night anthology, but now that the six month exclusivity period is up, it's available as a single in ebook form. (Buy links are below the cover image.)


Nicole Ruiz is a psi tracker, an elite vampire tracker who can find her quarry anywhere, and she's after the vampire who killed her family. Daktan is an executioner, a demon assigned by his king to eliminate a vampire who's causing problems with her wanton disregard for human life. The vampire, however, is ancient and she's not going to be easily defeated. Not by Nicole. Not by Dak.

I have an excerpt available to read on my website.

A couple of review snippets. Review 1:

Red Hot Books said about Enemy Embrace: "This story was HOT. I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for these two to come together. Patti O'Shea... where have you been all my life?"

Review 2:

Scorching Book Reviews said: "Patti O'Shea, you are a new favourite author! ...definitely one that grips you from the start. And the sparks definitely fly when they do get together. I loved it!"

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Artist At Work

I wish I could do this.

Annoying Author Tricks

Over the past month, I have been subjected to author promotion that left me using bad words. These writers come from all areas--self-published, small press, and traditional publishing--so it's not a case of one group running amok. Everyone seems to be running amok, and you can bet if it's annoying the hell out of me, it's annoying the readers who are subjected to this, too.

Since common sense seems to be completely absent, let me run through what not to do.

*Do not send a friend request in Facebook, and the very instant you see it's accepted, send an invitation to like your page or follow your blog. If I friended you, that would be one thing, but I didn't and it makes me immediately sorry that I approved you. This is my first impression of you and it isn't a positive one.

*Do not ever post promo for your book, requests to like your page, or invitations to follow your blog (or all three!) on another author's wall unless you are invited to do so. It is completely rude to do this, but it's pervasive enough that I was forced to lock down my wall. Some intrepid souls (who will promptly be deleted) respond to my posts with spammy comments. Don't do this.

*Do not add anyone to a group on Facebook without their permission. I call it being hijacked, and I promise you, if you do this to me, I will never buy any of your books. I will also immediately unfriend you on the theory that if you do this once, you'll do it again and I don't have time to deal with it.

*Do not send mass messages on Facebook asking me to buy your book, vote for your book at some obscure website, or anything else. Don't do this even in a one-on-one message. This is called spam and no one likes a spammer.

*Speaking of spam, don't add anyone to your email newsletter list who doesn't ask you to do it for them. I can't even believe I still have to list this, but it happened just a week or two ago and I don't have a positive opinion of the author in question. This is also illegal. If you use a professional newsletter service, they will have a FAQ to explain this. Read it. Believe it.

*Do not harvest email addresses and then send out email asking me to buy your book, vote for your book at some obscure website, or anything else. Again, this is spam. This is another thing I can't believe I have to mention, but some author I never heard of did just this very thing the same day I received the author newsletter I didn't want.

*Do not use Twitter to do nothing but promote yourself. Twitter is about having conversations. If 90% of your tweets are promo either for yourself or RTs of other authors' promo so that they will retweet your promo in return, you clearly do not understand Twitter. I have an author in my stream right now that's doing this very thing. Maybe 5% of her tweets are non-promo. Maybe, but that might be stretching it. There are reasons why I haven't deleted her, but I promise you, I've stopped reading her tweets.

*Do not send me FB event invitations asking me to buy your book, vote for your book at some obscure website, or anything else. I will allow that readers have some interest in this information, however, while I read, my time is so limited and I have so many author friends, that I don't need more reading material. Facebook offers this awesome feature called lists. It allows you to tag everyone of your friends and only send stuff to the people who want to hear about it. Use this.

If you're doing these things, there is a very good chance you're aggravating readers. Before doing something, think about how you'd react if another author did it to you. And be honest with yourself because you're not doing yourself any favors if your promotion is angering people.

Two Months of the Condor

I blogged back in April (I love Condor Cam) about how much I loved Condor Cam at the San Diego Zoo. I've remained addicted to this live stream of the Condors and I wanted to share some updated pictures. You won't believe how big little Saticoy (the chick's name) has become in such a short period of time!

First, a picture of little Saticoy when he was 11 days old. He's tucked near his mama's wing.
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Here's Saticoy on April 22. He was born on March 10, so he's about 6 weeks old in this picture. He grew fast!
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This screenshot of Saticoy was taken yesterday, May 28th. I'm not sure this gives the best view of how big he is, so let me find another shot.
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Here we go. This one was taken on May 21st and it shows him near the opening of his nesting box. If I recall correctly, that's Saticoy's father sitting outside, guarding the entrance.
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And one last picture because this shot is sooo cute! This is Saticoy sleeping, totally relaxed and oblivious. Isn't he adorable?
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