Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 68
April 18, 2019
Color Coded
As I was writing Wicked Intention, the second book in the Paladin League series, I realized I had a lot to keep track of. Since I had such good luck keeping track of To Do items with my kanban board, I decided I needed to get another set of Post-it notes (larger and with lines) and use them to try to keep everything balanced.
I'm seriously short on wall space because my desk takes up one entire wall, my bookcase and lateral filing cabinet take up another, the third wall is basically windows, and the fourth wall has the closet door, the entrance to the room itself, and my kanban board. After considering my options, I decided to use the front of my lateral filing cabinet.
I color coded by whose Point of View (POV) I'm in and by timeline. I'm not sure I chose the best colors, though, because I don't immediately remember what's what when I glance over. I have to think about it first.
The thing that is sort of cool is that when I took this picture, my story was pretty balanced between my hero and heroine's POV. Cool.
I'm seriously short on wall space because my desk takes up one entire wall, my bookcase and lateral filing cabinet take up another, the third wall is basically windows, and the fourth wall has the closet door, the entrance to the room itself, and my kanban board. After considering my options, I decided to use the front of my lateral filing cabinet.
I color coded by whose Point of View (POV) I'm in and by timeline. I'm not sure I chose the best colors, though, because I don't immediately remember what's what when I glance over. I have to think about it first.
The thing that is sort of cool is that when I took this picture, my story was pretty balanced between my hero and heroine's POV. Cool.
April 16, 2019
It's Ryder's Turn
***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!! If you haven't read Wicked Obsession yet and don't like spoilers, stop here!***Now let's put Ryder under the microscope. It took a little while for me to understand Langley, but Ryder was right up front from the moment I started thinking about Wicked Obsession. Front the start, he didn't think he was good enough for Langley.
The college thing was really a huge deal for him. I hope the fact that he thinks about it several times over the course of the book shows just how much this impacted his behavior. His father was determined that his three boys would have a better life than he'd had and that meant they all needed to go to college. His two older brothers both did this, but while Ryder tried, it wasn't his thing.
He finished his first year and then dropped out to join the army. When he'd go home to visit his parents, all he'd hear was how proud his dad was of his other sons. But Ryder wasn't around when his dad did a ton of bragging about him and how he was Special Forces. His father is as proud as can be, but has never told Ryder this, so yeah, he believes even his father doesn't think he's good enough.
And then he meets Langley who not only came from an affluent background, but graduated from college with honors (See Langley and perfectionism in an earlier post). She's also lived all over the world, speaks a dozen languages either fluently or mostly fluently and he's like, yeah, as soon as she figures out that I'm not good enough, she's out of here.
But Ryder doesn't see Langley as clearly as he should. She's not a princess like he believes for much of the book. His friends see this easily. Finn and Griff both try to get him to understand that his view of her is skewed. She's tough and smart, but Ryder is stuck on her being a delicate princess.
It's actually his image of her that's interfering with reality. He also hasn't asked her a lot of questions about the nitty gritty of how she was raised. Aside from the bodyguards who were necessary for her protection, Langley wasn't spoiled by her parents. As she says several times in the book, she has more in common with the children of ambassadors from other countries than any other group of people.
By the end of Wicked Obsession, Ryder finally understands that Langley isn't this princess he's been thinking she was, but a strong woman who will do whatever it takes. Like participate in a shootout with the bad guys.
April 11, 2019
The Jarved Nine Collection
***This post may contain affiliate links. Should you choose to make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.***
The Jarved Nine Collection has been released! This contains Ravyn's Flight, Eternal Nights, and The Troll Bridge. Buying the collection saves 40% over buying each title individually!
These are Science Fiction Romance stories set on the alien planet of Jarved Nine. The heroes are Special Ops and there's action, adventure, suspense, and romance!
Buy at AmazonBuy at Apple iBooksBuy at Barnes and NobleBuy at Kobo
The Jarved Nine Collection has been released! This contains Ravyn's Flight, Eternal Nights, and The Troll Bridge. Buying the collection saves 40% over buying each title individually!
These are Science Fiction Romance stories set on the alien planet of Jarved Nine. The heroes are Special Ops and there's action, adventure, suspense, and romance!
Buy at AmazonBuy at Apple iBooksBuy at Barnes and NobleBuy at Kobo
April 9, 2019
Let's Talk About Langley (She Won't Mind)
***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!! If you haven't read Wicked Obsession yet and don't like spoilers, stop here!***Now that Wicked Obsession has been out for oh, about 2.5 months, I wanted to talk a little bit about Langley.
There were two big influences in her life that shaped who she is today. The first, of course, was being the daughter of an ambassador and being cautioned about causing issues by making people feel uncomfortable or causing a scene or doing anything else that might reflect badly on her or her family or her country.
Because of how young she was when her parents began to tell her this, it's second nature to never show what she feels and to conceal anger or hurt with politeness. It's also a facet of her perfectionism and how detail oriented she is.
Just in case you've been wondering, she's working on this. People don't change overnight, but now that she's aware of how potentially destructive it can be to a relationship, she's stopping, taking a step back, and making new decisions. I wanted to highlight this more in the epilogue, but there was so many other things to address and space was limited, so I'm afraid this didn't get called out as much as I would have liked.
The second big event that changed her behavior was the attempted rape when she was 13. Because of that, she hates being weak or even perceived of as weak. You might have noticed throughout Wicked Obsession how she kept commenting on how she didn't want to be weak. It's why she wanted to have training to be able to defend herself. She's the one who convinced her father to get her some advanced self-defense training. It's why she never balked when Ryder added to her training. She never wanted to be in a situation where she was helpless.
You can also imagine that when Ryder grabbed her out of that shack in Puerto Jardin and she believed he was a mercenary, that she felt fear. That part of the reason why she whacked him in the head with the rock and escaped was that she was afraid of being assaulted before this (believed) mercenary ransomed her back to her father. It's a pretty big deal that she trusts Ryder absolutely when the story takes place. She doesn't trust easily.
I hope you found this a little bit interesting. In the future, I'll take a look at Ryder and talk about how I saw him and some of his issues.
April 4, 2019
Stop Asking Me
Does anyone else get opinion surveys all the time?
I go to the doctor, I get a survey. I go to the car dealer to get service done, I get a survey. My house cleaner comes, I get a survey. I login to a writing group, there's a request for members to fill out a survey.
Stop asking me stuff all the time. I'm busy.
OMG, it's survey overload! I'm sure this does help them fine tune their operations. Usually everything is awesome when I go to the doctor. I rarely have to wait, not in the outside waiting room, not in the patient rooms. Everyone's friendly and things go smoothly. I'm sure the surveys played a part in this and that's great, but still.... Can we have a year off from the surveys?
And let me talk about the survey I got from Ford after I brought my car in to be serviced. I actually filled this thing out because while I was warned I'd have a two hour wait, I did not expect to be there for 5 1/2 hours! That was ridiculous. But I get to the end of the survey and they're going to tie my name and phone number to my responses. No. Absolutely not. I do not want to have a phone conversation with anyone from the dealer about why I was unhappy to spend most of my day in their service department waiting area.
Even though I'd spent quite a bit of time on this survey, I chose cancel rather than submit.
When you throw these surveys on top of all the retailer emails I get, I'm on overload. I'm even starting to unsubscribe from some of these emails out of self-defense. But retailers can be easily deleted. I always feel bad about deleting the surveys because (in most cases) I want the higher ups to know the person I dealt with was awesome, but I really just need everyone to stop asking me to rate them and comment.
I go to the doctor, I get a survey. I go to the car dealer to get service done, I get a survey. My house cleaner comes, I get a survey. I login to a writing group, there's a request for members to fill out a survey.
Stop asking me stuff all the time. I'm busy.
OMG, it's survey overload! I'm sure this does help them fine tune their operations. Usually everything is awesome when I go to the doctor. I rarely have to wait, not in the outside waiting room, not in the patient rooms. Everyone's friendly and things go smoothly. I'm sure the surveys played a part in this and that's great, but still.... Can we have a year off from the surveys?
And let me talk about the survey I got from Ford after I brought my car in to be serviced. I actually filled this thing out because while I was warned I'd have a two hour wait, I did not expect to be there for 5 1/2 hours! That was ridiculous. But I get to the end of the survey and they're going to tie my name and phone number to my responses. No. Absolutely not. I do not want to have a phone conversation with anyone from the dealer about why I was unhappy to spend most of my day in their service department waiting area.
Even though I'd spent quite a bit of time on this survey, I chose cancel rather than submit.
When you throw these surveys on top of all the retailer emails I get, I'm on overload. I'm even starting to unsubscribe from some of these emails out of self-defense. But retailers can be easily deleted. I always feel bad about deleting the surveys because (in most cases) I want the higher ups to know the person I dealt with was awesome, but I really just need everyone to stop asking me to rate them and comment.
April 2, 2019
I Fail Art
One of the things I've always wanted to do is pencil sketch. Sitting down and creating a beautifully realistic piece of art with just a pencil would be amazing. I know I'll never be awesome at it, but I would like to be decent at it. Enough that I could do it for pleasure without getting frustrated.
With that in mind, I streamed a learn to draw class on Bluprint (I talked about how they hooked me in last week). I figured if I was paying for this, I might as well use it to learn something I always wanted to do. I bought about $60 worth of art supplies and started the class. Lesson one was sketch a leaf. It's a brown/red leaf that is pinned with a nail to a light surface and with enough light to cast a shadow.
The instructor walked us through blocking out the leaf before we actually sketch the leaf. Just to give us a framework to draw within.
I failed already. My framework looks nothing like the teacher's example.
Luckily, I bought a large pad of paper so I can restart, but it's so discouraging. I know, I can't expect to sit down and be as good as an artist who's been sketching for years, but still you'd think I could at least do a better job with the framework than this mess. Sigh. Back to the drawing board. Literally.
With that in mind, I streamed a learn to draw class on Bluprint (I talked about how they hooked me in last week). I figured if I was paying for this, I might as well use it to learn something I always wanted to do. I bought about $60 worth of art supplies and started the class. Lesson one was sketch a leaf. It's a brown/red leaf that is pinned with a nail to a light surface and with enough light to cast a shadow.
The instructor walked us through blocking out the leaf before we actually sketch the leaf. Just to give us a framework to draw within.
I failed already. My framework looks nothing like the teacher's example.
Luckily, I bought a large pad of paper so I can restart, but it's so discouraging. I know, I can't expect to sit down and be as good as an artist who's been sketching for years, but still you'd think I could at least do a better job with the framework than this mess. Sigh. Back to the drawing board. Literally.
March 28, 2019
New Cover
One of my older stories, The Troll Bridge, received a new cover. If you've liked my Facebook author page, you saw this yesterday. It made its world debut there. :-)
Troll Bridge is part of the Jarved Nine series and its cover didn't look like the other two covers in the series. I was planning to wait until I had time to expand the story into a book and re-cover it then, but as time has passed and other projects have taken precedence, I realized I needed to just do it now. So I did.
This is a 12,000 word story that I wrote for The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance in 2010. It's also going to be part of a Jarved Nine boxed set I'm working on. Another reason to jump on the cover now so that it looked like the other stories in the set.
I'll pass along more information about the boxed set later. I'm still working on formatting it and don't have a release date yet. In the meantime, enjoy the new cover for The Troll Bridge!
Troll Bridge is part of the Jarved Nine series and its cover didn't look like the other two covers in the series. I was planning to wait until I had time to expand the story into a book and re-cover it then, but as time has passed and other projects have taken precedence, I realized I needed to just do it now. So I did.
This is a 12,000 word story that I wrote for The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance in 2010. It's also going to be part of a Jarved Nine boxed set I'm working on. Another reason to jump on the cover now so that it looked like the other stories in the set.
I'll pass along more information about the boxed set later. I'm still working on formatting it and don't have a release date yet. In the meantime, enjoy the new cover for The Troll Bridge!
March 26, 2019
Heroine Takeover
I had something strange happen recently. Strange as in I've never had anything like this happen to me before. I had this idea for a series, but I'd been stalled working on it because the hero and heroine from the first book were just, well, blah. They bored me and I spent no time with them.
Then--without warning and while I was supposed to be working on another story--I hear a woman tell me her name. After I worked it out that it was her first name and not her surname (It could go either way), I tried to figure out which series she belonged to and received a no to everything. But when I asked if she was from a new book, I got another no.
Eventually, I worked out that she wasn't an addition to a series, she was taking over as the heroine in book 1 of the stalled story, the one I wasn't supposed to be working on.
And boom, just like that, the story wasn't boring any longer. She had personality. She took that story over and made it interesting. It became even more glaringly apparent that her hero was now a problem. He was still a boring cipher. I was emailing a couple of my writing buddies when an epiphany struck, one that affected all three heroes in the series to some degree or another.
It also made the entire series more interesting to me and inspired me to put some time in on it. It still needs a lot more work--I have no clue what the internal conflicts are for any of the characters and only a vague sense of the external conflict for some of them as well--but for the first time since this idea came to me, it's got some spine to it, something more than characters milling around helplessly, no story in sight.
But this was the first time I've had a heroine come in and takeover for another heroine. Major weird.
Then--without warning and while I was supposed to be working on another story--I hear a woman tell me her name. After I worked it out that it was her first name and not her surname (It could go either way), I tried to figure out which series she belonged to and received a no to everything. But when I asked if she was from a new book, I got another no.
Eventually, I worked out that she wasn't an addition to a series, she was taking over as the heroine in book 1 of the stalled story, the one I wasn't supposed to be working on.
And boom, just like that, the story wasn't boring any longer. She had personality. She took that story over and made it interesting. It became even more glaringly apparent that her hero was now a problem. He was still a boring cipher. I was emailing a couple of my writing buddies when an epiphany struck, one that affected all three heroes in the series to some degree or another.
It also made the entire series more interesting to me and inspired me to put some time in on it. It still needs a lot more work--I have no clue what the internal conflicts are for any of the characters and only a vague sense of the external conflict for some of them as well--but for the first time since this idea came to me, it's got some spine to it, something more than characters milling around helplessly, no story in sight.
But this was the first time I've had a heroine come in and takeover for another heroine. Major weird.
March 21, 2019
I Hate Sleeves
I'm not sure if I blogged about this or not, but I started knitting my first sweater months ago. Many months ago. I have dropped it a few times to work on other projects, so I'm not this slow. Although, I am a slower knitter and time is limited.
So I finally reached a point where it was time to start the sleeves. I'm excited! Sleeves!
This is a top down, raglan, seamless sweater (knitters know what I'm talking about) and I have to pick up stitches for the sleeve. This is when my excitement about sleeves crashed and burned.
When I picked up the number of stitches the pattern calls for, I'm left with a huge hole near the raglan. HUGE!
I had to undo the row I knitted and now I'm contemplating what to do next. Do I pick up extra stitches beyond the pattern's instructions? Do I try to pick up the stitches in a different place to avoid the big gap? I'm not very experienced with picking up stitches, so maybe I'm doing something wrong. I don't know.
It's not both sides of the sleeves. On the one side, the hole between sleeve and raglan isn't that bad and I could stitch it up the way the instructor explained in the video. It's the second side as I come around that's giving me fits. That hole is simply too large to be patched.
This has devastated my enthusiasm and changed my happy thought of "I'll have my first sweater done in a couple of weeks" to OMG, why is this so hard? :-(
I'm tempted to work on something else until I figure out what to do. We'll see.
So I finally reached a point where it was time to start the sleeves. I'm excited! Sleeves!
This is a top down, raglan, seamless sweater (knitters know what I'm talking about) and I have to pick up stitches for the sleeve. This is when my excitement about sleeves crashed and burned.
When I picked up the number of stitches the pattern calls for, I'm left with a huge hole near the raglan. HUGE!
I had to undo the row I knitted and now I'm contemplating what to do next. Do I pick up extra stitches beyond the pattern's instructions? Do I try to pick up the stitches in a different place to avoid the big gap? I'm not very experienced with picking up stitches, so maybe I'm doing something wrong. I don't know.
It's not both sides of the sleeves. On the one side, the hole between sleeve and raglan isn't that bad and I could stitch it up the way the instructor explained in the video. It's the second side as I come around that's giving me fits. That hole is simply too large to be patched.
This has devastated my enthusiasm and changed my happy thought of "I'll have my first sweater done in a couple of weeks" to OMG, why is this so hard? :-(
I'm tempted to work on something else until I figure out what to do. We'll see.
March 19, 2019
Series Oddities
***WARNING!!!!*** IF YOU haven't read Wicked Obsession yet and you want the ending to the suspense to be a surprise, do NOT read this blog post!***
First strangeness: This is a proposal I started before I moved from Minneapolis to Atlanta. Which means it's around 8 years old. I've touched it briefly off and on over those 8 years, but not enough to really count as working on it.
A big gap between starting a project and actively working on it isn't completely odd because I've had gaps with some of my previously published work before, but the biggest gap to this point was 18 months for In the Midnight Hour. An 8 year gap is another story all together. No pun intended. :-)
Why I find this so strangely interesting is that the story has actually crystalized rather than fading in my memory. Normally projects I'm not actively working on because less concrete in my mind.
The other thing that intrigues me is how steady the characters have stayed over the years. This kind of cements my belief that my characters come to me fully formed and it's a matter of me getting to know them rather than shaping them myself. I knew this hero and heroine exceptionally well from working on their proposal eight years ago and they've stuck with me over the years.
The second strangeness is one that I've never experienced before--this book was supposed to be the first book in the series.
Actually, this book was odd before number two. Originally--as this series was created--the same hero and heroine would have been the main couple in all three stories with an emotional arc for them across the books. Things happened, though, and Griff and Kyle showed up (as did their heroines) and it went from being a trilogy with Finn to a trilogy with Finn, Griff, and Kyle. And I think it works better this way, TBH.
Anyway, Finn, Griff and Kyle. There was no Ryder (hero from Wicked Obsession), but a funny thing happened when my friend, Trish McCallan, mentioned writing connected books--Ryder showed up and so did his heroine.
His story became Book 1 in The Paladin League. I think this worked out right, too.
First strangeness: This is a proposal I started before I moved from Minneapolis to Atlanta. Which means it's around 8 years old. I've touched it briefly off and on over those 8 years, but not enough to really count as working on it.
A big gap between starting a project and actively working on it isn't completely odd because I've had gaps with some of my previously published work before, but the biggest gap to this point was 18 months for In the Midnight Hour. An 8 year gap is another story all together. No pun intended. :-)
Why I find this so strangely interesting is that the story has actually crystalized rather than fading in my memory. Normally projects I'm not actively working on because less concrete in my mind.
The other thing that intrigues me is how steady the characters have stayed over the years. This kind of cements my belief that my characters come to me fully formed and it's a matter of me getting to know them rather than shaping them myself. I knew this hero and heroine exceptionally well from working on their proposal eight years ago and they've stuck with me over the years.
The second strangeness is one that I've never experienced before--this book was supposed to be the first book in the series.
Actually, this book was odd before number two. Originally--as this series was created--the same hero and heroine would have been the main couple in all three stories with an emotional arc for them across the books. Things happened, though, and Griff and Kyle showed up (as did their heroines) and it went from being a trilogy with Finn to a trilogy with Finn, Griff, and Kyle. And I think it works better this way, TBH.
Anyway, Finn, Griff and Kyle. There was no Ryder (hero from Wicked Obsession), but a funny thing happened when my friend, Trish McCallan, mentioned writing connected books--Ryder showed up and so did his heroine.
His story became Book 1 in The Paladin League. I think this worked out right, too.
