Terry Spear's Blog, page 430

SEAL in Wolf's Clothing!

Woohoo, I found SEAL in Wolf's Clothing on Canada's Amazon site, nowhere else yet, but it shows a release date of March 15! I knew it was supposed to be in the spring, but that could have been in April or May...so I'm excited. Only 3 months from the December release of Dreaming of the Wolf to come out, and then the SEAL in Wolf's Clothing will be available!



Now, if only they were done with the cover! Can't wait to show it off!!!



Back to writing! Have a super great Saturday!



Terry

"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."

www.terryspear.com

Being Who We Are

I was just reading an article about a magazine that slimmed Kate Middleton's waist down in bridal picture to nearly nothing. She was perfect, well, better than perfect in the original picture. In the "slimmed" down version, she looks weird.



So leave well enough alone, picture editors!



The same thing happened to another famous person who looked great, and then photo editors had the brilliant idea to make the woman look even skinner. Uhm, she looked totally anorexic. Before that, she looked terrific.



In my books, a running theme is that we should be comfortable with who we are. Sure, we can improve ourselves, deal with issues that need to be dealt with, work on our health if we're not taking care of ourselves. But in the long run, it's not worth it to covet what anyone else has--beauty, wealth, fame, the perfect body, the perfect family...



If you shape-shift into a wolf during the full moon, love it. If you have wings and can't hide them in front of humans, flaunt them.



Sometimes fitting in means just being different. And that's what makes us so interesting. If everyone was exactly the same, the world would be a very boring place.



Sure, not everyone will love us. But we have to care about who and what we are, or no one else can either. :)



And that's my psychology 1o1 for werewolves and winged fae and humans for the day.



:)



Terry

"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."

www.terryspear.com

When the Story Beckons...

Who needs sleep? Well, I do.



But when the story is keeping me awake, I have to write it or I'll keep thinking about it over and over, trying to "remember" it for when I wake. Which can have disastrous consequences. In other words, I don't recall anything I thought of once I wake. Or, I don't ever sleep, and still can't remember what I was thinking of.



So what happens when the story hits in the middle of the night?







I see full scenes.



Sometimes it just happens. Last night, I woke from a nightmare and couldn't quit thinking about work and whatnot, and couldn't get back to sleep. So I forced myself to think about a scene in The Winged Fae I needed to write.



And that's when it happened.



I can stare at my computer screen every minute I have free from work and not get anything written. So sometimes I just have to get away from the computer and brainstorm, and then if it comes to me, I begin to write it down by long hand.



Which is why I'm up really early typing my notes up now.



Well, actually, I never got back to sleep.



It's really a major scene, the turning point in the story. I need to write more that leads up to it. And flesh it out more, but I actually wrote the whole scene--9 pages long. :)



Did it come to me in a dream? Absolutely not. I was fully awake, sort of. Now I'm even less so.



:)



Hope you have a terrific day!!! I've got to run in to do a physical screening, something the city does once a year, and then I'm off on vacation time and I think I'll take a nap! Unless...I think of another scene...



I told you the fae are mischievous!



Terry

"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."

www.terryspear.com

I've Been AWOL!

Sorry, my daughter and son-in-law have been here all week...figured I'd blame it on them. They were leaving Wed and returning Sat, but decided to stay through Sunday and leave after church. But I did try to post on the blog last night, and it wasn't working.



I added a new counter at the bottom of the page yesterday morning and it shows visits from different countries via their flags, which I saw on another blog and thought how cool! I only did it with 60 countries, they didn't allow you to say which ones, but now I wish I had done it with more, just to see where folks are popping in from. Okay, I just changed it to include 248 countries. I had 148 visits already since yesterday, but it reset it to include more countries. I had 23 different country visits yesterday, so thought that was really cool!



Otherwise, I'm still trying to get some writing in, although I'm not normally supposed to go to work until later, I have a meeting to go to this morning and will work a split shift. Never done that before, so we'll see how it goes. Then I can have lunch with my daughter at home.



Otherwise, writing on The Winged Fae a little bit, and got a lovely fan message from a new wolf reader who read the whole series this week!



Now that's what I call a wolf marathon! :)



Have a super, super Thursday!!!



Terry

"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."

www.terryspear.com

On the Run!

I watered until midnight! I couldn't water until 1 AM....not with work looming.



And my daughter and son-in-law arrived last night so he could meet with his work here locally to do some training. So my daughter and I get to have lunch and they'll be staying the night again tonight.



Unexpected and totally welcome!



So I'm on the run....



Have a terrific Tuesday! Mine just got better!



Terry

"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."

www.terryspear.com

How Did It Get to be Monday Again???

I know, I know, I've said that before! But when you work both Fri and Sat, Monday comes waaaay too soon.



I woke at 2 AM, couldn't sleep, so what does every good writer do? Check emails. Hey, I TRIED to sleep.



And voila, here's my last edits for A GHOST OF A CHANCE AT LOVE. So what does every good writer do? Download it, email receipt, and go to bed? Nope. Starts working on it.



Just a little. Because I still have to work on Monday...all day. And not only that, because of our continued drought, I've got to water from 9 PM to 1 AM in the morning tonight. That's it. No other times, just in the middle of the night in the dark. One day. Tonight.



Okay.



And I still have to work Tuesday and all the rest of the week.



But I have to water or I'll lose my trees and shrubs and ground cover. We never bother watering the lawn. It burns up in the summer and you don't have to mow it.





I've been asking everyone to do a rain dance, or something. Nothing seems to be working.



This is the worst I think it's ever been. 110 temperatures every day. Not a cloud in the sky. And not a drop of rain for weeks.



I'm off to work on A GHOST OF A CHANCE AT LOVE. It's due back on Friday. And then it's done. I think. And it will be released in September!









Hope you have a super great Monday! Mine is going to last until 1 AM....



Oh, and I just looked at the extended weather forecast--maybe rain on Sunday. Of course, because I can water on Monday! But really, if it rains buckets, then that will be great! If not...*sigh*



Terry

"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."

www.terryspear.com

Sunday is a Day of Rest!

NOT!!!

If I didn't get some writing done, I'd never get to it. In fact, I'm working on the newsletter early, early this morning first thing to get that off. I meant to do it after work last night, but I watched Monsters and Mazes--dumb movie, but it was funny because Tom Hanks was a college student in it! Tom Hanks was that young???

I was listening to a historical audio book where Sunday was a day of rest and they couldn't prepare meals or wash dishes or do anything. That's fine if you don't have a day job on Monday, but if you do, then it means getting up at the crack of dawn on Monday to do the dishes and then go to work.

And it means Saturday, you'd have the additional duty of having to cook the meal for Sunday.

And then Sunday, you just sit around and do nothing. What's the fun in that????

Nah. Sunday is a day of work. Getting caught up on everything, or some of everything that you didn't catch up on during the week. So that you're prepared for Monday. Or kind of. I don't think I'm ever prepared for Monday.

I'd rather believe in: Never put off tomorrow what you can do today.

Yep. That's my motto. Well, most of the time. Now, if I'd posted my newsletter last night, I would have really been living the motto.

Last night when I got home from work, I had an email from an artist, Deirdra, who sent me the most Powerful Woman Writer Award! Thanks so much to Deirdra, who makes the world a better place with her fantastical artwork!



And now I'm truly off to work on the newsletter and will get that off to you!

Have a super, super Sunday, whether it's full of rest or happily productive! Make it the best!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."
www.terryspear.com

Story Ideas...

Okay, really, really, I need to finish The Winged Fae. And it's getting there! 14,000 more words to go.

But I woke up in the middle of the night with an Irishman, different story, something to do with my driving on the wrong side of the road, etc, and getting asked out to a nice dinner...

And then, I began thinking of a picture of a lovely redheaded girl that I have and want to make into a cover (maybe brought on by the Irishman dream, although he was not a redhead), and I began thinking about The High Elf. Which would be a sequel to The Shadow Elf.

And I couldn't let it go.

I tell myself, I might not write the story. That I loved The Shadow Elf, but hadn't "programmed" in a sequel because I'm writing Tom's story, and need a vampire YA sequel, and I'm already thinking of the sequel to The Winged Fae. And I've started the next jaguar book. And I still need to finish edits on Ghost when I get them. Yet...this new story has caught my attention. Soooo....who knows!

This morning, it's going on a page, with a title and the opening idea. Sometimes that's how a story begins. Slowly, and then with a burst of writing.

So if anyone loved The Shadow Elf...The High Elf might be on his way! :) Never can tell!

But today, I'm off to work. I really hate working both Friday and Saturday and then having only Sunday off before the awful hectic Monday coming up.

*sigh* Hope you all have a delightful weekend!

I'm off to think about fae and elves, and werewolves and such!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."
www.terryspear.com

It's Hump Day!!!

I know, I know, it's not Wednesday. But if you work Thurs, Fri, and Sat, it is hump day!

And the next two days are going to be really bad. Even yesterday, there were only two of us working and we had 3 bins of books, well 4, but who's counting, that we couldn't check in because we were working at it while we kept up with checking out patrons, since that's our job. As it was, we had to let the books just fall on the floor in a big mountain in the book drop room since all the bins were full. And the books on the cart for the hold shelf, we couldn't get on the hold shelf either.

So when I go in this afternoon, maybe it will all be done. :)

Anyway, the number of us working for Friday and Saturday is horrible. So it will be the same.

And then? I only have 1 day off to recuperate before I have to work on Monday, and start this mess all over again.

I read a sign in a business that said, "No whining allowed."

And yeah, I'm whining. But I have good reason to whine. The workload is frustratingly overwhelming, and we're told we're not getting our jobs done. Right. You can only do so much in a workday with as few of us as there are and with as much work that's getting piled on top of us.

But hey, a patron was angry that we weren't watering the plants out front and they died.

Hmm, add that to the schedule. Water plants when we have time. (Although, that's not our job.)

:)

Off to do more enjoyable stuff--write!!! :) You see why I do this? To take me out of the real world!

Have a terrific hump day, even if yours is already over!!!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."
www.terryspear.com

Manipulating Photos

I've been writing on The Winged Fae, but also, I was playing around with manipulating a Highlander. :)

His photo, really. :) First, I had his picture that was taken in a studio with a brown background. He's wearing a red kilt, which doesn't fit with my MacNeill plaid, so I turned it blue and green. Then the background. A brown studio background wouldn't do. No Highland hero would be caught dead in one!

So I gave him a castle. Now, the castle is one that I took a picture of in Scotland, but it appears to be a gray castle on a white background with bright green grass and shrubs. Like the whole setting was in a studio. LOL

Then I had to give it a sky that looked like a sky. Even though the other had a white sky!!!

This one was of blue sky and puffs of gray and white clouds. In Texas. :) But they fit in with the gray stone castle and the blue of the Highlander's kilt.

Let's see, what else. Oh yes, it's not easy doing all this, you know. I experimented with a cut out of the Highlander and the castle against different backgrounds, one of a Texas park, another of a different sky. Then settled on the semi stormy sky. But when I tried sticking the Highlander in front of the castle, he ended up peering over it like he was in Gulliver's Travels. Huh? LOL

Half the fun in doing these is learning just how to do them! The mistakes make it much more interesting. :)

Then, the Highlander looked like a Norman with his hair cut short. That wouldn't do. So he had to grow out his hair. Beautiful. If only I could do that with my hair. LOL

When I have the title on it, I'll share, but for now, just envision a Highlander looking across his lands, the castle looming behind him, the partially cloudy sky overhead, his long hair flowing in the breeze... Yes...

:)

Have a super Wednesday!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."
www.terryspear.com