Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 54

Introductions

We are now 3 weeks and 3 days away from release of Wicked Intention ! This seemed like a perfect time to introduce you to the hero and heroine of the story.
You met Finn Rowland in Ryder and Langley's story, but while you might know how he got his handle of Stone Man, it wasn't revealed why he was so stoic. Finn grew up being shuttled around foster care and he learned to hide his thoughts and feelings. It was survival. He also changed his personality to fit in with whichever family he'd been sent to.
When his team goes undercover, it's usually Finn in the pivotal role because how good he is at becoming who he's pretending to be. And when he meets his heroine, he's playing mercenary and small-time gunrunner.
His heroine is Zofia Parker. She dropped out of her PhD program two years before she and Finn meet to work for the Paladin League. Griff refers to her as a firecracker at several places in the book. She's looking for a missing friend, which is why she and Finn keep bumping into each other. Of course, she's not telling a mercenary--a man with fluid allegiances--what she's up to. He could sell her out to gain favor with the man with whom Finn wants to negotiate a weapons deal.
How to describe them as a couple? Hmm. They're both used to focusing on their goals/missions and not being distracted, but from the moment they meet, neither one of them can stop thinking about the other. Also, neither one of them likes this.
I hope you'll enjoy their story. It's almost time!

What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks

I love bright, sunny days. Usually. But not on the one day of the week that I can sleep in. You see, my master bathroom window faces east. It's the only window in my house that faces that direction and in summer when the sun rises early, the light is bright enough to wake me up.

The window is frosted, and it's position over the tub makes blinds impractical. I'm short enough that the cords would be hard to reach. I thought about those automatic blinds, but those are battery operated. It would take a ladder in the tub to reach the top of the window to replace them. Also impractical.

Option three would be to close my bathroom door so that the light couldn't glare into my bedroom. The hangup there is that I don't like sleeping with that door closed. If I get up shortly before the sun does, I will close the door and that does solve the problem, but it's predicated on my waking up 1) before the sun, but 2) late enough that closing the bathroom door doesn't bother me.

It's a work day when I'm writing this. I had to get up super early and guess what? Cloudy day. It seems as if it is always cloudy on days when I have to get up and sunny on the day I can sleep in.

Is it a big problem? No, and I do love the sunlight that comes with summer. Summer is my favorite season by a long shot and moving to Atlanta didn't change that. While I don't love the heat and humidity, I like it a lot better than the colder weather. I love running around in short sleeves. I love not wearing socks. I love being able to leave my jacket at home.

On the whole, I'd rather deal with the sun waking me up than winter, so I guess that's that.

Point of View and Hidden Truths

Point of View (POV) is an interesting thing. In the past, I've been dinged for staying strictly in the characters' POV because (for example) the heroine believed something that clearly was wrong. She never discusses it with another person over the course of the story who could point out she was incorrect, and some people took it as gospel rather than as how one character viewed the situation.
Usually, though, I (the author) have a higher level perspective on the situation and know when the character's POV is skewed. Until the Paladin League series.
It seems that Finn Rowland, the hero in Wicked Intention, is frightening. Something I was clueless about.
He made his first appearance in Wicked Obsession as the best friend of that story's hero. Ryder's heroine was not scared of Finn. The heroine in his book, Zo, didn't have even one second of concern about him. In fact, she went toe-to-toe with him when she thought he was a mercenary.
Now Finn did have a thought in the story about how he scared people bigger and stronger than his heroine was, but I didn't give it serious thought.
And then I started working on Griff's story. His heroine was frightened of Finn. And I've also been giving thought to the epilogue that I'll write at the end of the third book and learned that heroine was scared of Finn, too. What?
This got me wondering what the difference was with Langley and Zo versus the heroines in the next two stories. Zo was easy. She's Finn's heroine and she's going to see him differently than anyone else. Langley, though, confused me. I think I got it. When she met Finn, she knew he was Special Forces, so although his hair was long and he had a beard, she wasn't concerned about him.
The other two heroines meet him while he's undercover as a mercenary and gunrunner. They believe him to be these things. And so with his size and appearance, he does frighten them.
Like I said, POV is interesting. I only had Langley and Zo's POVs until recently and so I only saw Finn through their eyes. I hope I can write a scene where Zo learns the other two women were frightened of him and she's shocked. Because she was totally shocked when I ran a version of the epilogue in my head. That might not be the version I write, but I'd like to get this across somehow.

Podcast Backlog

You all know that I love podcasts. Whenever I find one I like, I recommend it here. Something I love, though, might end up getting old for me and I'll drop it, but I'm always finding something new.
My podcast listening habits, though, have been severely impacted by months of working from home.
You see, I mostly listen to podcasts while I'm at work. The open office concept means a heck of a lot of noise all the time, so I'd listen to podcasts to tune it all out. I don't have that level of noise when I work from home. Mostly. (See the post about the Hopeless Family.)
My other go-to time for listening to podcasts was my commute to and from work. Which, of course, I haven't been doing.
So major, major backlog for me on podcasts I need to listen to.
I turned a lot of them off so they no longer auto update with new episodes. The only ones I kept on were my favorites because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything. But those are backed up, too. Big time. My very favorite podcast currently sits at 40 episodes, and since most episodes are 90 minutes or more, this is a lot of listening I have to do.
I also found an article online shortly before the pandemic hit that recommended a whole bunch of new podcasts and I'd downloaded one episode from all the shows I thought sounded interesting. I haven't listened to these either.
But you know what? Despite losing podcast time, working from home is so much more productive than working in the office. I'll figure out something else for my podcast habit.

Let the Countdown Begin!

One month! Finally, after all this time, Wicked Intention is one month from its release date.
Revisions are finished and now the book is with a copy editor who will double check my grammar, punctuation, and make sure there aren't any other mistakes. This is getting real!

Finn and his heroine have been with me for more than ten years. I checked. I'd written a proposal (three chapters and a synopsis) in 2010 for this story and it had been percolating in my head longer than that. I'd been working on revisions when I was forced to put it aside to meet another deadline. Then life stuff came up and the writing took a back seat for a long time. Too long.
I never expected this story to take as long to write as it did, but it has a bit of a different structure and I had to feel my way through that. This structure is also why I'm nervous about its release. There are people who I know aren't going to like how the story is setup.
But this is the way it wanted to be told, and while I did try to guide them to a more mainstream format ten years ago, I surrendered. Those of you who read the blog regularly might remember that my characters are in charge and I'm only along for the ride. It's a pain.
Despite this, I love Finn and Zo and their book is one of the books of my heart. I've been lucky enough to have three of those. These are the characters and stories that won't go away no matter how much time passes or how many other projects I work on. And for ten years, Finn and Zo have been in my head, showing me scenes--some of which didn't make the book because 1) there wasn't room for them and 2) they didn't advance the story.
As excited (and scared) as I am to share Wicked Intention with you, I'm also sad. While Finn and Zo will hang around for a while, it won't be too long before they leave me. It's like friends moving away and I've been spending time with this couple for a decade, so it's really going to be sad to see them leave. The bright spot is that the epilogue in the book that closes this suspense arc will be their wedding. Maybe they'll hang around to get me through that.
In the meantime, I've turned to the next couple in the Paladin League series. Griff and Cat. I'm writing chapter two now and yeah, this should be interesting. Stay tuned.

The Home Away From Home

Tuesday's blog post and the realization that I must not have blogged about it already was inspired by a search of the old Chicago homestead that my dad was raised in. I don't have pictures of that in digital format at all. I might not have them in any format although my dad probably does. In the boxes and boxes and boxes of photos we moved from Minnesota. So the image I'm using to pretty up the post is just some random house. It doesn't resemble any of the homes I'm going to talk about.

When I was at the gym recently, one of the trainers mentioned she was from Chicago. Both my parents were originally from there, but moved to Minneapolis before I was born. It got me thinking about some of the homes my relatives owned (and sold).

The first house I thought of belonged to my favorite cousin and her parents. I found pictures online because it had sold recently enough that they were still available to view. There were changes made--the carpet was gone, revealing hard wood, the walls were painted, and a new deck was put on the back. The yard looked completely different, but it was still the house I remembered.

Next, I wondered if the old homestead had pictures up. This is the house my dad was raised in after his father died. I remember staying there whenever we visited Chicago because my dad's aunt and his sister lived there. The house was sold when my dad's older sister went into a nursing home.

This house had sold in spring of 2019, so yes, indeed, there were pictures. This house had undergone a bigger makeover. The kitchen was completely revamped, and in all honesty, it probably needed to be because there had been no kitchen cabinets. All the dishes (and everything else) had been stored in the pantry. The bathrooms had been remodeled as well. Also needed. The upstairs had been a half bath and now it was a full. Also at least one bedroom--maybe two, it was hard to tell from the pictures--was gone and an upstairs family room put in its place. The basement looked nothing like I remembered.

The third house I looked at belonged to another of my dad's older sisters. That had been sold after her death by her children. This house hadn't had the good fortune of the other two. Whoever bought it from my cousins must have trashed it because when they sold it, it went for 65% less than what they'd paid! Both sales happened after the housing crash, so that's not the explanation. There weren't really any pictures here and probably for a good reason.

Of the three, the people who bought the homestead did the best job. They kept the character of the house (it had been built in 1910), but renovated it enough that people today would enjoy living in it. This made me a little nostalgic. We had so many good times visiting, so many evenings around the dining room table talking and laughing. Running around with my cousins, playing games.

I haven't had time to develop these deep, deep attachments to any of the homes I owned. I was getting there with my house in Minnesota, but then I was relocated to Atlanta. Since I've been here, I've lived in a condo and two houses. Maybe I can bond with this house.

Don't It Turn My White Chair Blue

I had a really weird thing happen with an article of clothing I bought. Let me preface this by saying that I always wash clothes I buy before I wear them, so this happened after a run through the washer and dryer.

Okay, now the story. I bought a pair of jammies with navy pants. And the first time I wore them, I noticed my fingers were taking on a navy tint.

There must be extra dye, I thought and changed to a different pair so I could run the pants again the next time I did laundry. Only they were still tinting my fingers blue even after I washed them two additional times.

And then I caught sight of my faux leather kitchen table chair. You know, the WHITE faux leather chair. It was tinted navy blue, too. And the cleaning products I used didn't get it all out. Gah!

I immediately did some online searching. I can't be the only one this has happened to. But the instructions I saw for salt and vinegar only applied to things you self dyed. It was a waste of time to use either item on a manufacturer dyed garment.

When no better solutions turned up, I took matters into my own hands. I washed those navy pants in hot water, trying to forced the dye to bleed out.

I've been too afraid to wear them since I did this. My chair still makes me cringe. Yikes!

Review: Knives Out

I'd been hearing a lot of good things about the movie Knives Out, so I decided to watch it. I also heard there was a major twist at the end and to not read any spoilers ahead of time.

I normally love spoilers, but I've had a suspense movie ruined for me in the past because I accidentally caught the last few minutes and I wasn't going to have another one go down the tubes, so I carefully avoided spoilers. I will not give away any spoilers here!

The movie is about a millionaire crime novelist who dies after his birthday party. The police are ready to rule it a suicide, but a mysterious detective shows up to investigate. There is plenty of family members with a motive to kill the old man and plenty for the detective to investigate.

The movie stars Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit and Ana de Armas as Marta Cabrera, the old man's nurse. The family members include Jamie Leigh Curtis, Don Johnson, Chris Evans, Michael Shannon and others.

I knew going in that there was a big plot twist at the end, so I spent a lot of the movie guessing at what it would be. I thought I knew, but I was wrong. I'm rarely wrong, so that was a win for the movie, although the actual plot twist was a bit anticlimactic compared to my guess. :-)

I'm a very harsh critic of movies and television shows because I'm always picking apart the writing. Occupational hazard, I guess. Knives Out kept me entertained throughout and I was willing to forgive a couple of convenient moments that happened in the plot. Daniel Craig's detective started out slightly irritating to me, but as the movie progressed, I grew to like him and Nurse Marta as his sidekick was a very likeable heroine.

The structure of the movie is a bit unconventional with the current-time story interspersed with flashbacks from various characters of their last conversation with the deceased crime writer. (Among other scenes.) This could have been distracting or confusing, but I thought it was handled very well.

I would have liked the plot twist to be a little more twisty than what I got, but it was a twist and I really didn't guess what was going on until right before it was revealed.

Bottom line: I recommend the movie, but probably wouldn't pay full price to see it. One thumb up (instead of two).

Airline Memorabilia

I have a fair amount of airline memorabilia, which isn't a huge surprise since I work for a major US airline. After Northwest merged with Delta, I wished I'd kept more things.

For instance, I only had a couple of flight schedules because I tossed those when they brought out a new one. Back in the days with paper schedules, of course. :-) I also wish I'd bought more sweatshirts and other apparel. Northwest's employee store had a lot, but because they carried high-quality items, they were expensive and I didn't buy much. After the merger, a lot of stuff was picked over.

I'm starting to collect Delta stuff now, too, although I don't have as much as I have from NWA. I don't think I do at least.

But a while back one of the retirees at work went around the office and passed out paper cups from Eastern Airlines. Not the current incarnation where I believe someone simply bought the name, but the actual Eastern from back in the day. I'm trying to figure out what to do with this.

On the one hand, Eastern has a major airline is defunct and this paper cup really is memorabilia. On the other hand, I never worked for Eastern, and while a lot of the older Delta guys have connections to Eastern because they were based in Atlanta, I don't have that. I lived in Minneapolis until my job got moved to Atlanta--long after Eastern was dead and buried.

There's also the super big problem of how do I keep a paper cup intact? I don't exactly have a shrine to the airline industry in my home. What I do have is a drawer filled with old NWA stuff and a model NWA 757 on my fireplace mantel. The cup? I just don't know what to do with it.

I'm grateful that the retiree thought of me when he was handing them out, but ????

Living with Glasses

I wear glasses. I used to do contact lenses, but I had extended wear lenses for years and messed up my eyes. I can still wear contacts, but have opted not to do so and getting my eyes lasered scares me, so yes, I wear glasses.

The pair I have now are really cool. They're blue and tortoiseshell mixed with pink swashes across the top of the frames. I like them.

Mostly.

There are a number of inconveniences, but the thing I hate most? The coatings.

I've invested in pre-moistened lens wipes and use them multiple times a day, and no matter how many times I clean my glasses, the coatings will still smear up, making it annoying. In the past, I've gone without the coatings to avoid this issue, but I've grit my teeth and gone with it the past two years because it does work (I think) to cut down the glare when I drive. It's still irritating. I wish someone would create a coating that didn't mean glasses would be a mess 24/7.

On the plus side, though, I took my dad to get his glasses adjusted and the store had some super cute frames in! The lady working there remembers us and commented on how I headed right for the brand new, colorful frames they just got in. I do love my color.