Terry Spear's Blog, page 447

The Flooding Saga Continues...

Night before last, a patron had not had their movies unlocked after checking them out at the self-check out. We have signs posted all over saying remember to have them unlocked. If I see someone at the self checkout, I try to remind them to come over to have the movies unlocked if they're heading out the door instead. But we get busy with patrons and can't always see this.

Anyway, the woman was pounding on the front door. We were closed. Had been for half and hour, and she was making motions to the janitor that she wanted her movies unlocked. I had 3 people come in the next day who hadn't done so. But the thing of it is, we're open every single day. So you can't watch a movie one night. Find something else to do! And just how important is it?

The janitor was relating this to me while I was unlocking this woman's movies, and the woman looked horrified that the janitor had been so cruel. Legally, the janitor couldn't unlock them, nor can she unlock the front door to let patrons in or do library type work. I told the woman that this wasn't like having a leg amputated, that if the individual didn't have it done pronto, she would die. People really need to get a grip.

I talked to my daughter last night about her flooding situation. They made her move all her furniture out of the apartment. But they just said, "Move it. We're reflooring the kitchen, redoing the walls, replacing the carpeting, and the ceiling."

"To where?" my daughter asked, as if she had a storage facility all lined up.

The woman finally gave her an empty apt and my daughter had to arrange for friends to help her move. And 4 other apts were ruined as well. Now, that was a nightmare. That was something to be concerned about.

Getting a movie open is not. :)

Hope all your problems are of the locked movie variety and nothing worse!!!!

Have a super great Tuesday!!!



It's going to be wickedly cold tomorrow--freezing weather, snow and ice. So I'm bracing myself and keeping the heat on and the faucets dripping. And remember to comment on Casablanca tomorrow--that's when I have my brilliant post. :) And the chance for a free copy of the ARC of Heart of the Highland Wolf!!!

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

5 Blood Drops for Wolf Fever!

Wolf Fever by Terry Spear
Title: Wolf FeverAuthor: Terry SpearPublisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca/ www.sourcebooks.comISBN: 978-1-4022-3752-2Genre: Paranormal Romance; Shape-ShiftersPages: 399Price: $7.99Rating: 5 Blood DropsReviewed by Amy Ramsey of Ramsey's Reviews



Wolf Fever is a sizzling hot read! Every page radiates with action, romance, mystery, and suspense. Terry Spear is an expert in her field of writing, storytelling, and creativity. The characters are vividly expressed, grabbing the reader from the start and the plot (I don't know how Terry comes up with these great tales) is spot-on throughout the entire read. Thank you, Terry Spear, for once again ensnaring me with one of your books. Wolf Fever is highly recommended to anyone who loves shape shifters (the were-wolf kind) and lots of sultry romance. . YUM! =)

Thanks to Amy Ramsey, who gave such a delightful review!!

Mondays are Mondays--way too busy even though we're open every day of the week and we're horribly short-staffed. So getting such a nice review first thing on Monday is a delight!

We have a little break in the frigid weather today, but by Wed it's bad news again. But it's also my day to post the hot kiss from WOLF FEVER at Casablanca and the day you all must comment, or anytime during the week afterward, to be eligible to win the unproofed ARC copy of HEART OF THE HIGHLAND WOLF. Just think--it's the first chance to read the 1st of the Highland wolf tales way before it even is released in June!!

In the meantime, other authors continue to post their kiss scenes from their books, and the top prize, 10 books, to be sent by a grand prize winner will be coming from Sourcebooks!!!

So be sure and comment EVERY day at Casablanca for a better chance at the grand prize!


With heavy duty writing, I actually managed to finish 2/3's of THE HIGHLAND WOLF IN PARADISE with 30,000 words to go. How did that happen???

Getting closer to the end is always fun because the excitement and problems are building and building and building, and someone's got to win. Well, the good guys, of course, but how???

I'm working on that. :)

I don't immediately know. Don't plot out my stories.

The heroine, Shelley Campbell, decides to take the bull by the horns and calls the bad guy. When her hero, Duncan MacNeill, asks what she's going to say, she doesn't quite know. She'll wing it--once she hears what the bad guy has to say.

And that's exactly how it goes. He starts to talk, she thinks of what to say, and voila! The scene is written. Well, not all of it. I still have to go back in and layer it with more emotion, actions, etc. But the scene is now ready to make real. Scenes like that have been playing in my head all morning--they're all vying for a chance to be in the book, but only the right ones are allowed. :)

A fan wrote to me that she wanted to reach through her computer monitor and hug one of my heroes, she felt so bad for him. I loved it!!! That's what we as authors strive to do. Create characters that are so real, so endearing, so evil, so frustrating that readers want to love or throttle them.

Then we've done our job.

In the old days, werewolves were only the stuff of legends--and never of a romantic nature. But now, why even they might bring their loved ones something special for Valentine's!



At Wolf Park, they have a special "Wild Valentine's" for the month of February--discussing wolf love. Wish I lived closer and could participate!


What was the nicest thing you ever received for Valentines???

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

Valentine's Early!

It's time to share the love, and so not only will we be giving a whopping big prize package at Casablanca, but one lucky, very lucky winner, will receive an advance reading copy of Heart of the Highland Wolf , due out June. Just comment on my Casablanca post on February 9 [winner announced a week later, so everyone who comments has a week to drop by] for a chance at an early look at the upcoming book!

You see, what happened was, I couldn't get hold of Gerard Butler to read a copy. *sigh* But that's good news for everyone who comments, because now some lucky wolf (I would never call anyone a dog), has a chance to read his copy. You can ignore the lipstick kisses on the first page. :)


I'm excited to see what everyone thinks of Highland wolves...in action. :)

Pucker up your lips and get ready, because many of us all month long are talking about that first kiss.

What about your first kiss? Was it truly remarkable?

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

Always a Bridesmaid and Never the Bride...but Then...

Okay, so it might be a strange analogy, but that's the way it usually is. Everyone around us is getting snow. We have predictions of snow. It's supposed to snow. 40% chance. 60% chance. No snow.

I get up this morning at 5:30, make hot tea, no snow, I knew it and begin working on The Highland Wolf in Paradise, return 4 hours later to get another cup of tea,



and voila, four inches or more of snow on the ground!



Now, before my Northern friends start laughing too much, we rarely, rarely get any snow. So it's a big deal. LOL :) Just like rolling blackouts and frozen pipes.



It was very dark and gray out, but I didn't mind. I was at home working on my manuscript...but today when I have to go into work, that might be a different story!

The worst of it was, I got a call from my daughter's apt manager last night because she was in classes and they couldn't get hold of her. Her apartment had been flooded and the ceiling collapsed. Ruined her computer, tv, some of her college books. argh. She'd had the same problem as me--frozen hot water pipes. Insurance will hopefully cover it. Luckily she wasn't home when it happened and she had her laptop with her. What a mess. But it made me realize how important it had been to stay home until my pipes had thawed out before I left for work on Thursday.



Happy Snow Day! And hope this was the worst of it!


Valentine's with the Casababes
Comment to win! The Sourcebook Casablanca authors are having a party! Prize throughout the month and a grand prize! The party is here: http://casablancaauthors.blogspot.com/p/valentines-with-casababes.html [image error]
Leave a comment on our blog and you'll be entered to win drawings throughout the month. Also, EVERY commenter gets an entry in our drawing for a grand prize pack featuring more than TEN SOURCEBOOKS.
You can get one entry a day for the Grand Prize so come by daily! Starts February1

The more you comment, the more chances you have to win. Good luck! And Happy Valentine's Month!
Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."
www.terryspear.com

Humor in Cat Form

When the weather and rolling blackouts gets you down, it's time for some humor.

Have you ever read Humor in Uniform? Well, this is Humor in Cat Form.

Talk about security issues. You really have to want to fly, if you're willing to risk taking THIS plane. But these big cats aren't dumb. They've found the only shade and the red carpet treatment to boot for miles around. :)



Ever feel like the momma cat? Pretending that junior isn't doing what junior is doing?



This reminds me of "x" marking the treasure, cat style. And the treasure? The dish of cat food that's nearly out of reach.



All we need is a little loving, or better yet, a big lot of loving...



A good meal...



And a good bed to keep us toasty and warm!



Thanks, Susan, for sending some humor my way! With more rolling blackouts scheduled, this is certainly welcome!

Hope you all have a some humorous moments to light your day also!

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

Rolling Blackouts!

We were under a state of emergency yesterday and having rolling blackouts--electricity cut twice for an hour in the morning before I even went to work and twice after I got to work.

People would look at us like we were crazy that we couldn't check them out when we have NO ELECTRICITY, standing in the dark, and when are we going to have the electricity back on? One lady absolutely threw a tantrum, hit me when she slammed her books on the counter because at that point our lights were on, but our computer server went down at the main library where they were pitch black, and it knocked out ours. About twenty minutes later, we were plunged into darkness too.

Okay, folks, GET A GRIP. Getting a library book for your kids OR yourself is not a life and death issue!!! Play games, make up stories! Jeesh!

I do have to say that most everyone was very nice and understanding. But one man was going to call the electric company and give him a piece of his mind.

Having some electric off for a while means we have some electric on, which is a LOT better than having NO electricity at all.

This morning we're supposed to have more rolling blackouts and though I left my water running, my hot water faucets were frozen in one bathroom and the kitchen. I'm working to defrost them now.

When I lived in OK, we had the worst hard freeze ever. Froze back hedges that had grown there 25 years. In Texas, my folks had the same freeze hit them, destroyed the vegetation, froze their pipes, but they also lost their electric for 4 days. Now that, is bad. In another location in OK, our pipes froze and I used a hair dryer to warm them, but it was bad news. The pipes had split during the freeze and then I had a flood. And couldn't get the water valve cut off. It was frozen. And Christmas Day. Plumbers do not work on Christmas Day.

A friend came over and cut it off for me, and his wife helped me to mop up the water while I had a 2-year old clinging to my leg and a 5-year old following me everywhere, wondering why momma was so worried. We had no water until we could get a plumber out!

I just hope that the pipes, when they defrost, don't crack. I wouldn't doubt the turn off valve is frozen.

We're just not weather proofed for cold weather like this, because we rarely get it--maybe once in a decade, if that. The banks outdoor drive-through terminals were frozen. Our back door security lock to the library was frozen. We discovered: there are no emergency lights in the staff bathrooms, and the women's bathroom emergency security light wasn't working.

And none of our flashlights at work worked. :)

A patron said she was in a restaurant and they locked them in when the lights went out. No one in. No one out. Another said he was at a burger place when everything shut down and a man started swearing up a storm. It's interesting to see what people do in a mini-crisis. It's hard to believe what would happen if it was really bad.

We're supposed to have snow today, and we're supposed to have rolling blackouts, and it's my late night. *sigh*

How's your day going???

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

What to Do without Electricity???

Ahem, when I looked up images for black night, this was what I got! :) Not exactly what I had in mind!




I was up at 5 AM, trying to catch up on everything, heat on full blast, writing away on The Highland Wolf in Paradise, which I hadn't saved constantly, like I know I should, and bang! No electricity.


No heat. No hot water for tea. No light for reading books for the Ritas or Daphnes I have to read for contests. No writing on The Highland Wolf in Paradise.

No heat. And it's one degree chill factor.

The only good thing, I'm thinking, is that my frozen food should stay frozen. The bad thing is I can't open my garage door manually, so no work. And the worst thing is...no heat.




And no light. It is blacker than black in my house when there isn't a lick of electricity on at 5:30 in the morning. I usually can wander through the house in the dark to find my way to the bedroom without lights on, but even so, there is scant light. Not so this morning.


I thought I was walking my usual path from where my desk is to the bedroom, but somehow I ended up between a chest and a couch and loveseat. I was so disoriented, I couldn't figure out how to get around the chest, so groping around, I climbed over the back of the loveseat and continued on my way. To bed. The only place I could keep somewhat warm.


And thought briefly about not being able to go to work, about trying to find a lantern so I could call about the electricity, although everyone was getting ready for work, so I figured they'd already had tons of calls. I thought about all the words I'd lost on my mss, after having just typed them all up--note to self, save constantly--and then about where I was going next with the mss. And I think I might have been drifting off to sleep when...

There was light. And heat. And *sigh*...back to the computer, another cup of hot tea before I lose electricity again, and a toasted bagel.

And yes, I lost about 200 words on my mss this morning. Grrr

Hand writing this stuff does have some advantage!!!

What do you do when it's pitch dark and you can't do much of anything? Read by candlelight? Or give up and go to bed? And if you're lucky? Take your wolf with you. :)

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

The Joy and Perils of Ice

Aren't these ice sculptures the greatest? Today, it's cold enough that even some parts of Texas could have ice sculptures. Thanks to Donna for sending these to me from Minnesota.

Dallas actually does have ice sculptures, but they're indoors.
Ice is great in this form, but when it's on the road and bridges--that's another story.
We have wind chill in the single digits today and sleet with an accumulation possible of 1 inch with winds of 25-35 mph and gusts up to 40 mph as a strong Arctic front moves through the area. They're warning to wear hat and gloves because of hypothermia and frostbite. I wonder how many will wear shorts today.
My home was shaking in the middle of the night, several sonic booms of thunder lacing the area, and everything is covered in a sheet of ice.
It looks like rainwater. But it's dangerously deceptive.
I've driven on black ice before, several times when I had to--in the military, you don't just choose not to go into work. And I drove in 1st gear the whole way to Fort Hood, Texas, because when changing gears into 2nd, I began to slide off the road like everyone else in front and behind me. So I drove in first, and made it. Only to find that they closed the post for 2 hours. Great to know when there was no other option but to keep going forward. Or into the median, like so many did and got stuck.
I had an accident once, driving on ice, trying to get into work over a mostly closed based at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, but I had duty. I didn't make it.
I nearly wiped out on a bridge driving to Fort Sill--the whole road dry until I hit the bridge, and did a drunken zigzag all the way across it, barely missing the railings on either side until I finally met dry pavement at the end of the bridge. Luckily, the next car coming hadn't made it to the bridge yet.
I was caught in a blizzard, both at Fort Meade, Maryland (at the same time that the plane crashed into the Potomac nearby) and Fort Monmouth, NJ and so nearly had accidents both times as my car decided to go a different direction than I wanted it to as I was trying to get home after work. I needed to take a vacation somewhere in the islands after I got home. As long as I didn't have to drive anywhere to do it.
I remember my mother telling me how she didn't bother going into work in Texas as she was a cosmetic saleslady for a major department store and it was icy like today. But two other women she knew did, and wrecked their car, the one breaking her leg. And she, like I, have to cross twin bridges over a lake to get to work.
And it reminds me that sometimes, it's better to just stay home. Everyone else will anyway.
:) The only thing good about today is the Internet is still up! Normally, it crashes during storms and high winds!
Have a super great day!!!
Terry"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."www.terryspear.com

Dressing...Strangely

by Terry Spear



Or maybe I should say...inappropriately. But then again, to each his own. Maybe this man is so hot blooded, he just can't stand to dress in anything warmer on a minus-twenty degree day.

Maybe that's just white sand beaches. Maybe he's not really wearing snow skies in a snow-filled scene. Maybe those aren't sled dogs behind him, whose owners are wearing parkas and gloves and ski clothing for minus-twenty degree weather.

Or maybe he is just confused, or maybe ready for summer before its ready for him.

I see this all the time in Texas. It's 15 degrees and folks are still wearing shorts. Because, by golly, it's going to warm up--might be another week or so, or longer, but it WILL warm up.
What do you think?
Terry"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."www.terryspear.com

The Mad Hatter-That's Me!

I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!

Do you ever feel like that? :)

It all started this morning with making revisions on The Highland Wolf in Paradise, and I realized after I'd worked on it for an hour and a half that the word count wasn't right. It showed I had 5,000 words left to write today. But I wrote 5,000 yesterday, so I should have only had 2,000 words left today.

Argh. It has something to do with saving it, then moving the flash drive to my laptop. I was fortunate before I had a meltdown, that I had actually also saved it on my external drive before I began working on my laptop. Sooo, that meant that I had the 43,000 words instead of 40,000. But it also meant that all the changes I'd made on the bad version for an hour and a half had to be transferred over to the good version.

*sigh* Which is why I haven't posted a blog until now.

I still have 1,500 words to go to reach my goal of 45,000 words, and the HALFWAY point in the mss! Woohoo!

So with my tea in hand, and despite that I'm late, the Mad Hatter is here all well and good!

Hope you aren't late for anything important today!

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