Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 48

First Draft - Done!

I did finish the rough draft of Wicked Salvation last week, although it was a couple of days later than I'd hoped. My second COVID-19 vaccine knocked my brain out of commission for about a day and a half. I was exhausted (oh, so exhausted!) and achy, but it's totally worth it! It's proof my body will fight off the invader should it encounter it.

As I write this (on Sunday), I'm doing the read through of what I have and making notes for things that need to be fixed. I should finish that today and then I'll get to work fixing those things.

I'll be honest, I don't remember what I wrote in last week's post about the book--I'm far too focused on the book itself to keep anything else in my mind--so forgive me if I repeat myself.

Griff is a sweetheart, but he makes his life harder than it needs to be. If you read Wicked Intention, you know that Finn just went and helped Zo without asking for permission. Griff insisted he couldn't do it this way. And of course, he wasn't getting permission, so he had to find an alternate means of engaging.

His heroine, Cat, is every bit as stubborn as Griff is. It was fun to see how evenly matched they were in a lot of ways. She's got a little problem with being too impulsive. (Griff considers it a big problem.) This is probably their biggest difference.

Kyle Winter, the newest fourth musketeer, gets some screen time in this book. His story will be the next one up. He surprised me. He was quiet through Wicked Intention, with only an occasional smirk, so imagine my surprise to discover that not only is he a smart ass, but he enjoys stirring things up just for the fun of it. I'm a little worried about writing his book now. ;-)

And a character who made an appearance in Finn's book (and wasn't given a name because he was never supposed to become even a secondary character) showed up in Wicked Salvation. I tried to not give him a name again, but that got awkward as I wrote, so he got a nickname. By the end of Griff's story, I knew this character was going to have a story, too. He wasn't in my plans for the next set of Paladin League books. Now he is. I'll just have to figure out a way to work full time and write faster.

Writing, Writing, Writing

As I write this blog post, I'm nearly done with the first draft of Wicked Salvation! I'm writing this on Saturday, so hopefully, by Thursday when this posts, I'll be finished. Then I'll read through the entire thing, make notes for myself, and start revising.

After I revise, it goes to my developmental editor. Multiple times. :-) She sees things I never think of, maybe because things are so clear in my head that I forget to write them down. Maybe because I simply didn't think of them.

Then, when developmental edits are finished, they go to a line editor who checks for grammar and missing words, typos, etc.

Formatting is next. And website updates. All this seems a long way out.

But I wanted to let you know that this book is on track to be released at the end of August as planned. To find out more, visit the Coming Next page of my website, complete with a link to preorder.

Lots of Interactions

[image error] This year at work we have a new health app we need to use to monitor our health rewards. Some of the health rewards are tied to using this app.

So every day I have to go in and check off things and earn a green heart. One of the subjects is: Relationships.

My options are: No interactions. Some interactions. Many interactions.

I'm an introvert. Not just a little introverted, I'm a lot introverted. My ideal choice of those three options is SOME INTERACTIONS. But if I choose that one, I don't earn my green heart.

The only way to earn the green heart is to choose Many Interactions.

I'm like, my dudes, are you serious? This must have been created by extroverts because my idea of a horrible day is to have Many Interactions. After Many Interactions, I'm drained, crabby, and want to collapse on the sofa and watch television without anyone talking to me. This is a not a green heart feeling.

Some Interactions on the other hand is perfect for me. I'm energized, I'm happy, I'm able to be productive. And this gets me a yellow, warning heart.

So I lie. It's stupid.

Discontinued

I always buy backups to my backups for my favorite things, especially shoes. This is nowhere near as important as it is with running shoes. For example, I loved version 6 of my sneakers, but didn't like version 7 nearly as well. 

BTW, this picture is not of my pair of shoes. I bought it from a royalty free site because I'm too lazy to go to my bedroom and get my shoes for a photo shoot. :-)

Anyway, back to my story. I'd been waiting and waiting for version 8 because I was hoping it would be more like 6 had been. Six was like my nirvana in running shoes and I had bought backup pairs, but I'd gone through all of them and I was forced to wear the newer version.

I checked and checked and checked, but apparently I hadn't checked for a while because when I checked a couple of weeks ago, I discovered the company had DISCONTINUED MY FAVORITE RUNNING SHOES. Gah! I wanted to stock up on the unloved version 7s, but they'd cut the style earlier in the year and there was literally not a pair to be found anywhere online in my size.

I should have bought backups for the pair I didn't love.

I'm super picky about my shoes. It took about six months and I don't know how much shipping back and forth before I found my discontinued style. Now I was going to have to go through it all again?

The good thing is that now I know I like a 4mm drop on my shoe, so I did an online search for different styles to try, read some reviews, checked out some prices, and picked on to try. I got lucky on the first try. I really like this new brand and style. Not as much as my old 6s in the other brand, but still.

The absolutely only thing I don't love is the interior of the shoe is rough and that means I have to wear socks. I do wear socks when I work out, but when I'm running to the store or another errand, I don't. Now I have to.

Which means I have a sock problem. The ones I have slip. I've begun my search for the perfect running socks. Stand by.

Challenge and Motivation

I'm trying to stay motivated until my gym reopens sometime in July, so I signed up for some online challenges. One of the companies--who I bought three challenges from--has yet to send a single one. Very unhappy with them. But I did find a company that delivers on its promises.

The Conqueror's Challenge has a variety of options, but of course I signed up for The Ring of Kerry challenge.

(BTW, I receive no compensation of any kind from this company and I bought my challenge at the price on the website.)

The idea is to walk, run, bike, swim, etc for the equivalent of 124 miles. There's an app to record your distance. I did try to use their automated check in with my FitBit, but it didn't work right and I needed to manually enter my totals.

Along the route, there are street views, which I looked at after every entry. It was fun to see what the different areas look like. And at various points along the ring, I received virtual post cards with information about a location. This I also liked. And they plant trees when you reach for every 20% of the route covered. You set your own time frame for covering the distance. I thought it would take a long while, but surprising, I covered the distance pretty quickly.

The picture is of the medal I received for finishing the Ring of Kerry. Each challenge has its own special medal and the one I received is hefty. And best of all, it arrived promptly. Unlike the first company who shall remain nameless. Grrr.

Anyway, I enjoyed it so much, that I enrolled in another challenge. Ring Road which is around Iceland instead of Ireland. This one will take a while. It's 828 miles long, but it'll be a fun time!

It All Went Dark

I forgot to tell this story when it happened, but the panic is still planted firmly in my memory, so here we go.

When I took my dad for his second vaccination in March, it was raining. If you remember, the only appointment I was able to get him at the time was 45 minutes away. So we reach our destination, I dig my umbrella off the floor in back, and we head in.

This time, he was brought back right away, we waited our 15 minutes to make sure he was okay, did a little shopping, and then went back to the car. And my screen in the console stayed dark.

Okay, this has happened before when the system has been updating itself. We'll wait for a few minutes, it will come up, and we'll leave.

Only it didn't come up.

This meant no backup camera, no radio, no navigation (although I use my phone more than the car's GPS, and a few other less critical features.

I carefully backed out of the spot and drove the 45 minutes back home. I really expected the screen to come back at any moment, but it didn't. My last hope was that it would return the next time I started the car, but that Saturday, when I went out for groceries, it stayed dark.

When I left the first grocery store, I was trying to think of things I could try to get the screen working again. My mind was as blank as the screen.

My one and only thought was it's a touch screen, so what if I push? I pushed.

I don't know if it was a coincidence or if I really did something, but the system rebooted (like I'd expected to earlier in the week) and everything was back to normal in a few minutes.

It was a huge relief, but man, I'm dependent on that backup camera.

Review: The Final Countdown

***Since this movie was released in 1980, there will be spoilers.***

On Friday night, I was looking for something to watch and started flipping through the movies on Amazon Prime. I was about to give up, when I saw The Final Countdown. I'd seen this movie on television years ago and I knew it involved time travel, so I was in.

The movie stars Kirk Douglas as the captain of an aircraft carrier, Martin Sheen as an efficiency expert from the Defense Department, James Farentino as the air group commander, Charles Durning as a US Senator, and Kathleen Ross as his secretary.

The aircraft carrier is out near Hawaii on maneuvers when it encounters a strange storm. When it clears, the ship is undamaged, but the radio broadcasts are strange. They sound as if they're pre World War II. When a plane come backs with recon photos showing Pearl Harbor as it looked on Dec 6, 1941 and ships that have been long destroyed are sitting there, they begin to contemplate time travel.

This movie is seriously not the best ever made. It's cheesy in spots, and I'm sure it was cheesy even in 1980. Something about it, though, is extremely entertaining and I was engrossed for the length of the film.

There are issues. Oh, so many issues. None of the characters are really fleshed out, maybe because there are so many of them, and there's never a reason given for the time travel. The captain had sent out his ship's airplanes to attack the Japanese on their way to attack Pearl Harbor, but the storm reappears and they're forced to abort. And they're returned to 1980 with nothing have happened to be a compelling reason this ship was transported. I wanted a why!

Despite the problems, I enjoyed this movie a lot. I started to wonder if maybe the script originally had an explanation for the time travel and it was cut from the film version. So I did an online search. And discovered I'd have to pay for the script. No. I guess I'm going to have to live with the questions.

I guess ultimately despite the deficiencies, the idea of a film is to entertain the audience. I was entertained. Recommended.

Prices, Ouch!

I can't remember how I ended up looking at some of my older books on Amazon, but I did and I saw the prices. Ouch!

My friends and readers, I have no control over the prices on the books licensed by Tor and Harlequin.

I was first published in 2002 which means traditional publishing in New York City. While I was able to get the rights back to my very earliest work, I do not have the rights back to my Light Warriors series (controlled by Tor Books) and four titles in my Blood Feud World series are also under contract (controlled by Harlequin).

Believe me, I wish with all my heart I had the rights on those stories, especially my Light Warriors books. I have ideas for more books in that world, but have no plans to write them because I can't control pricing on the first four books.

Things are little different with Blood Feud. First, as far as I know, Harlequin priced them at $2.99, which is where I would have priced them as well. Also, all the books stand alone and I have the rights to the first story and one of the middle ones. I do have an idea for a three-story arc, a series within a series if you will, and I do plan to write those some day.

So I apologize for the outrageous prices on the Tor books. Believe me, I'm as appalled as anyone else who saw the price went WTF? That was my response when I saw it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get the rights back, but if I do, I guarantee you, the prices will be in line with the books I'm currently writing.

First Person Revisited

 

Last week, I talked about first person and its limitations. I stand by this. The success or failure of a book written this way is incredibly dependent on the characters having strong voices.

As it happens, the next book I picked up to read was also in first person. Here we go, I thought, but I decided to give it a few pages anyway.

I was pleasantly surprised. The heroine had such a fun and strong voice and I was able to read the entire book. The hero's voice was more ordinary, more bland, but as I thought about it, I wondered if two strong and unique voices would compete against each other too much?

In fact, I was so excited about the book that I was thinking of some ideas I had in first person. I probably wouldn't write them this way because seriously, not my favorite tense, but the book I read was so good.

This kind of ties my two posts together. A talented author with the right characters can make first person a pleasure to read. But (and this is a big but) most characters don't have voices that are this strong. The book I blogged about last week? The author should have gone with third person.

This week's author pulled first person off beautifully. I'm leery, though, about reading her other books written in first because what are the odds that her other heroines have voices this strong without feeling as if they're echoing the heroine I just read? I don't know, but I enjoyed her story enough that I'm probably going to find out at some point.

The One Where I Rant About First Person POV

 

I'm going to do a little craft spiel. I'm not sure readers will find this interesting, but maybe writers will?

Apparently, there are a lot of first person books out there now. I'm not a fan of first person--not as a reader and not as a writer. The problem is all the usage of the word I. It grates on me.

But there was a free book deal with one of my jams--I love the friends to lovers trope--so I decided to give it another try. This sat for a while before I had time to get to it, so this isn't a recent book. (And no, I will not reveal the title or author.)

And I found something else to frustrate the hell out of me as a reader. Actually, I can probably separate it out into two things.

First, neither the hero nor heroine had a strong enough voice to carry the narrative. And second, both characters read exactly alike. I couldn't see any difference between their voices, not even a little bit.

The one craft thing I've heard over and over about first person books is that the Point of View (POV) character needs to have a strong voice. If both the h/h are POV characters, then both need strong, distinct voices.

This book I tried to read seriously would have done better in third person POV.

I will admit to being a picky reader. I tend to analyze what I read and that does mean the author has to overcome my editor brain. This also gives me trouble watching movies and TV shows because I'm constantly studying what the screenwriter did. I had another writer tell me years ago that this phase would pass, but it hasn't. I'm still constantly analyzing everything I read or watch. So, like I said, it makes the bar harder to get over. And I pick apart my own writing even more intently!

And now I want to experiment. Could I write a first person story with both h/h as POV characters and pull it off? It would take the right two characters because I don't want them to sound a like and they should have an interesting voice.

The second question is do I want to even try? First of all, I have enough other stories I want to write. Secondly, while I wrote part of a short story in first person (BLOOD FEUD), I seriously do not like first person. The only reason BLOOD FEUD is partly first person is because Isobel insisted. But despite all this, the idea of trying has lingered in my brain. Maybe it goes nowhere and I scrap it, but maybe it could be fun?