Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 207

Snip, Snip, Snip

I finished the first draft of my short story for Nocturne Bites on Sunday night. That was the goal, and though I had to push to reach it, I did succeed. I also thought that I was 2000 words over maximum word count and I'm like, okay, there are lots of places I can get, including an overly long fight scene in chapter 2, but 2000 words? That's like 14% of the story!

I wasn't quite frantic, but I was concerned. Mentally, I ran through the story, trying to think of places where I could do some...

Making Room For More

I snuck in a reread of Eternal Nights this week. While I do reread my stories when they first come out (or when I get ARCs), it's rare for me to reread an older book unless I need a specific bit of information from it. I had to scan through both EN and Ravyn's Flight real quickly before writing The Troll Bridge for The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance because I wasn't 100% sure of a couple of things, but it sure wasn't a reread. I was looking for specific facts I needed to verify.

This w...

Happy New Year!

Wishing you a healthy and happy New Year! May 2010 be a magical year for you and your family!

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All Consuming

At one of the Romance Writer of America (RWA) conferences, I heard a luncheon speaker say something along the lines of most people want to win the lottery and quit their jobs to have fun, but writers want to win the lottery so they can quit their jobs and have more time to write. I'm afraid that while the idea stuck with me, the speaker and which conference she said that at aren't in my memory banks. I don't even have her exact words memorized and I wish I did. I wish I had the speech on r...

Review: The Cat From Outer Space

I mentioned before Thanksgiving that my family watches movies on the holidays and that I was going with Disney classics since those are about the only films we can all watch together. I like action and adventure and my parents don't. On Thanksgiving, we watched The Boatniks and that was a huge hit, so I decided to try The Cat From Outer Space, another live-action Disney movie. It's from 1978 and stars Ken Berry as Frank and Sandy Duncan as Liz.

Warning, there will be spoilers!

The basic prem...

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a safe and wondrous holiday! Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!

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Old Friends

Over the weekend, I felt a driving urge to read In the Darkest Night, my April 2010 book, and revisit Kel and his heroine. I don't know why since since I've had the Advanced Reading Copies (ARCs) of this book for a couple of weeks now, but I couldn't resist. So Friday night while I was doing laundry, I went through and read all my favorite parts.

And then I had an after-the-book moment come in. I've mentioned this before on the blog, but I almost always get scenes that happen after each of ...

After the Worldbuilding

With the bulk of my world building done for two different projects, I'm ready to think about the next phase. Series arc and each individual story within the arc.

These are tied together for me because each individual story needs to fit into the overarching plot. I might only know two paragraphs worth of the final story in a trilogy, but it's enough to give an editor an idea where the story is going and I always know what the goal of each book is. I liken it to a framework of a house--you ha...

Kindle Revisited

I've blogged a couple of times before about my Kindle, including reviewing how much I liked it. Now, nine months into my ownership, I've discovered a few drawbacks I hadn't considered or discovered back then. I still love my Kindle and it's awesome to be able to take more than 150 books everywhere I want, but there are a couple of issues.

The big one is something I discovered just in the last week or so. I'm reading a research book at the moment and fervently wishing I'd bought hard copy in...

Christmas As It Never Was?

I've been listening to Christmas music the past couple of weeks. I prefer the classics sung by the classic artists--you know like Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Doris Day, etc--but there are a few newer performers, too. Josh Groban's O Holy Night is awesome and I downloaded Darius Rucker's Candy Cane Christmas when iTunes had it available for free and it's totally wonderful. It's a new song, but done with the heart and soul of the old classics.

The thing that I find interesting is...