Lauralynn Elliott's Blog, page 38

Stuck in an Elevator!

You know when you see those movies where people get stuck in elevators and they are between floors so they have to jump down to get out? Yeah, that was me. When the dinner at the conference was over tonight, we all went to the elevators to go back to our rooms. (Anya had already gone up to the room earlier.) All the doors were open and it said the elevators were out of order. We were supposed to use the service elevator. So nine of us got into the service elevator, and it gave a little lurch and stopped. I have a little bit of fear of elevators anyway because of the aforementioned movies. And I’m very claustrophobic. We knocked on the door, rang the emergency bell, BEAT on the door to no avail. Finally, one of the people in the elevator yelled that we were stuck. A voice on the other side said, “Are you really stuck?” Seriously? In the meantime, someone on the elevator called 911. They were about to send the fire department. But finally, they were able to pry the doors open. They had to get us a chair to step down on. All I could think of then was a movie or two that I’ve seen where someone is halfway out and the elevator starts up again and cuts them in half. *shivers* As soon as it was my turn, I was out of there. Then I had to WALK up to the 9th floor. Because I had told the people in the elevator I was claustrophobic, one of the ladies found out my room number and called me to make sure I was okay. She said I shot out of that elevator and ran away, out of breath. I was REALLY out of breath when I got to the room!

My question to myself is…will I be able to step into that elevator in the morning to go home? I hope so, because I can’t imagine lugging my suitcase, backpack, and purse down eight flights of stairs.

Delay of Release & PubIt!

It looks like the release date of Soul of a Vampire is going to have to be delayed. I had forgotten about our revival, so going to church every night made editing impossible. Also, I agreed to beta read, so I felt like I should get that done first. She’s always quick to get mine done. Not to mention that I’m REALLY enjoying the story! I’m taking my laptop with me to Tallahassee in the morning, so hopefully I can get some things done while I’m gone this weekend. I’m taking Anya with me and we’re manning a booth, hopefully selling products from my day job. Something funny…one time I was at one of these shows, and we were so idle at our booth, that I wrote almost the entire short story, The Beast in the Mirror. So I MIGHT actually do some stuff while I’m sitting idly twiddling my thumbs working.

Have any of you that use Google Chrome for your browser had any problems with PubIt? I tried to log on to check my sales last night, and the login button wouldn’t work. I thought it must be a glitch. I tried again this evening with the same results. On a whim, I went to Internet Explorer and tried from that browser. No problems! Has PubIt decided it doesn’t like Chrome? I hate it when a site only works with certain browsers!

Wednesday Update 10/3/12

What do you mean, it’s October? LOL Where does the time go? I’m loving our fall weather after so much HEAT this summer. So here’s what’s going on:

Writing: I’m still in the midst of editing Soul of a Vampire. My hopeful publishing date was Oct. 4, but I had completely forgotten about our revival at church. Plus, I’ll be in Tallahassee Fri-Sun for a work trip. If I can swing it, I might get it done by the 4th (isn’t that tomorrow?), but we’ll see. Also, I haven’t started on my next WIP yet because of the aforementioned revival. I will probably start on Thursday.

Health: I’ve been faithful in my workouts so far. I’m very, very sore. I’m still working on the eating habits, but I did leave about a third of my lunch on my plate Monday. So that’s progress.

How are the rest of you doing?

Going to Vegas Next Year!!!

I am absolutely on cloud nine. Because of this.

RNConvention

One of the cover models I use on my books is putting this event together. His name is Jimmy Thomas, and he’s not just a pretty face, um, or body. He’s a savvy businessman who launched the website romancenovelcenter.com. It’s a place where authors, cover artists, editors, readers, etc. can get together. It’s a great networking site.

The convention includes classes, seminars, parties, a costume ball, meet and greets, and so much more. There are so many things to do, I can’t list them all here. And the price is all inclusive! I think it’s a reasonable price for the hotel rooms, the classes, the food…awesome. Anyway, you might want to check it out. Just click on the link above and you’ll have the info you need. There are some things they haven’t gotten completely worked out yet, like the full schedule, but it’s almost a year away. I can’t wait!

Goals for Round 4 2012

It seems like forever since I’ve had to state goals. I did well last round on writing goals, but not on health goals. Why are those so hard? You might wonder why some of us state health goals in a writing situation. Here’s why. The healthier you are, the more you feel like doing things. Your brain works better. So you can see how that would be beneficial to authors, right?

Anyway, to the goals. I’ve decided I’m going to go ahead and write the book my husband thought of. It’s an awesome story if I can just do it justice. The cover is already pretty much made for it, so that’s good inspiration. My husband didn’t really want it to have romance in it, but I told him if he wanted me to write it, then it WOULD have romance in it. The goal for writing that book is to sit down at the computer an hour a day, five days a week. No word count goals, although I do keep up with those anyway. I just don’t set a goal for them. My goal is the hour. If I do more, then that’s even better.

My health goal is to work out at the gym 3-4 days a week, depending on what time I have. Another goal pertaining to this is to eat less. No fries if I want a burger. Two slices of pizza instead of four. Have a few vegetarian days a month. Eat half of my food at restaurants and take the rest home for another meal. Those little changes that add up. I might add the goal of eating healthier food later, but right now, this is all I can handle.

The last goal is to not beat myself up when I stumble on the above goals.

The Gym, Blogspot, Abbreviations

Sometimes I just like to talk about various things. I’m diverse like that.

Today was day two at the gym. I think I might have overdone it since my arms felt all weak and shaky. But my friend here at work, who has worked out most of his life, said that’s normal. I have a feeling, though, that I won’t be able to get out of bed easily in the morning.

Does ANYBODY know if there’s a way to subscribe to comments on Blogspot? When I comment, I would love to be able to see if the blogger answered me. I noticed there was a link to “subscribe to comment (atom)”, but when I click on that, it tries to make me save a file called “default” onto my computer. Um…no. I can’t believe there’s not a way to subscribe to comments! Am I missing something?

How do you all feel about abbreviations in Twitter and other social media? Someone followed me today, and I always check tweets before following back, and this person used “u” and “2″, etc. all the time. I know it’s a good way to allow more content with the character limit, but I just can’t READ that stuff. It makes my little reader/writer heart hurt. Am I just crazy? I don’t even do this when I text. Neither does my youngest son because he can’t stand it either. LOL Maybe it’s just a weird quirk with me, but I just don’t like it.

Okay, I’m done now. Have a nice weekend.

Upcoming Events

My tentative date for e-publishing Soul of a Vampire is Thursday, October 4. That’s one week from today. Notice I said “tentative”. It seems like something happens most of the time when an author sets a particular date for publishing. There are some issues pointed out by beta readers that I need to tend to. I have to decide which suggestions I want to take and which ones I disagree with. I usually agree with most of them. The funny thing is, my two main beta readers didn’t have issues with the same things. (This doesn’t count simple typos, which they both might have caught.) There was only one sentence in the entire manuscript that they BOTH thought should be changed…and they each changed them slightly differently. There was a phrase they thought should be put in a different part of the sentence, but they put them in different places! What I DO know is that both of their sentences sounded better than mine did. LOL The point I’m trying to make in such a long-winded way is how important it is to have more than one beta reader.

I’ll probably do a giveaway with free ebooks and swag not long after SoaV is published. It depends on when the “swag” is ready. LOL. ALSO…I’m planning a Halloween giveaway mid to late October featuring my book, The Gnome, and the grand prize is totally cute. At least I think so.

That’s all for now. Most of you have been awfully silent the last few days. Where are my people? LOL

I Joined a Gym!

I finally did it…again. I really like working out on machines, but the last gym where I was a member just got too crowded. I was having to wait on machines all the time. The employees were SO pushy. And they seemed to think they were too beautiful to bother themselves with the rest of us. Yeah, that’s the feeling I got from them. I was locked in for either 2 or 3 years (don’t remember which), and it was about $40 or $50 a month. And the location wasn’t convenient at all.

So on to this new gym. And it IS new to our town. It’s called Workout Anytime. The hours when they aren’t staffed, you just slide your card to gain access. It’s much smaller than the other place I was going. I went to sign up during my lunch hour yesterday, and it wasn’t crowded at all. And the guy who signed me up wasn’t pushy, just down to earth and friendly. The machines look like good quality, and of course they are new right now. The best thing? There is NO CONTRACT. That’s right, no contract. And only $15 a month!!! Yay! What’s the downside?

So I’m going to try this and see if I can figure out a good time to work out. I was going to go at lunch, but I realized I already have lunch obligations two days a week, which only leaves me three weekdays. So I think I’m going to try going before work. I don’t plan to do my cardio there…I’m perfectly happy with my treadmill at home. So I could work out with weights for 20 minutes. Weight training rarely makes me sweat. So if I leave home about 30 minutes early, I can work out for 20 minutes, then drive 10 more minutes to work. I would probably change clothes at work instead of at the gym. And if everything goes well, I’ll probably eventually leave earlier and workout a little longer. We’ll see how it all works. I’m really excited. *happy dance*

Various and Sundry Things

I’m back from the ladies’ retreat. Although I had fun, I had a much better time with Anya last weekend. Too many people together for a long period of time wears me out, and there were 23 of us. And I didn’t like the person to bathroom ratio. But still, fun was had. And the game room! The cool thing was the arcade game. It had all the old ones. Centipede, Galaga, Space Invaders. (Some of you are too young to remember those!) There was a pool table, foosball, and air hockey. And a big screen TV.

I’m putting off looking at what the beta readers marked in my manuscript. LOL. One of them that liked it a lot said there were still some issues I needed to address. I’m just too tired right now. I was awakened at 3:00 this morning by someone falling off the top of a bunk bed (she’s fine), and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Then there was the 3 hour drive home for church.

My cats are still doing fine since their surgeries. I still can’t believe how fast they bounce back. After two days, they acted like nothing had happened.

I’m now certified in First Aid. I took a four hour class last Wednesday.

That’s all for now.

Another Retreat

Well, here I am on another retreat. This time, it’s a church group and there are about twenty of us in this cabin. And only four showers. I enjoyed most of tonight, but I’m realizing more and more that I’m mostly an introvert. I’m sleeping downstairs in the game room on my air mattress with a good friend of mine. They begged us to sleep upstairs where there are a bunch of them on air mattresses (they let the older ladies have the bedrooms), but I didn’t want to be there. I think my friend really wanted to stay up there…she’s a true extrovert…but she chose to stay with me. This game room is awesome. More on that later.

Time to go to bed now. If I can sleep with the women upstairs making so much noise. LOL