Julia London's Blog, page 55

The Christmas Secret

If you are a fan of my series, The Secrets of Hadley Green, you will remember that in the Year of Living Scandalously, Declan O'Conner had a younger sister Eireanne, who was tainted by scandal and deemed a little unmarriageable (is that a word?).  When last we saw her, she had been sent off to a girl's school in Switzerland in the hopes of makings some advantageous connections.

A Christmas Secret is an ebook exclusive novella that features Eireanne and her Christmas homecoming.  But when she comes home to Ballynaheath, her brother has married, her new sister-in-law's family is ever-present, and her friends, Molly and Mabe Hannigan are up to their usual tricks.  There are secrets and some surprises, and what Eireanne does with them will either sink her deeper into the scandals that have surrounded her family, or send her to London to find a titled husband who will hopefully add some dignity to a family who can't seem to stay away from scandal.

You can read about it, purchase it, and post about it here.

I hope you enjoy this Christmas novella.  And good luck to Eireanne, because she really needs it.

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America Rocks: It Could Have Been a Turnip Patch

So I was going to post some cool carved pumpkins in honor of today, but as I was looking them up, I ran across something I did not know. I read this on Wikipedia about symbology associated with Halloween:

"The carving of jack-o'-lanterns springs from the souling custom of carving turnips into lanterns as a way of remembering the souls held in purgatory. The turnip has traditionally been used in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween,[7][8] but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which are both readily available and much larger – making them easier to carve than turnips."

A turnip? Really? Yes, really. Here are some jack-o-lanterns made of turnips:

Isn't that sad?  There is nothing spooky about a carved turnip.  It's too small to do anything cool with.  And it's a hard root vegetable.  I think it would be really hard to carve.

Well thank goodness for Americans, who saw the pumpkin for what it was:  Not the best gourd around, but definitely the one with the most art potential.  Here is just a smattering of some carved pumpkins for your Halloween pleasure:

Have you ever carved a pumpkin?  Do you have any big plans for Halloween?  Will you be handing out candy or turning off the porch light?

And don't forget The Lovers: A Ghost Story (a short story by moi) available for your Nook or Kindle for 99 cents.

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The Reading Funk

It happens to all readers. You're reading along at a clip, finishing books, starting new ones, and then suddenly, you can't find a book that interests you. Nothing grabs you. You are bookless.

I hate when that happens, but it has happened to me. I am in a major reading funk right now. I have tried historical, and contemporary, and mainstream, and chick lit, and paranormal, and I even picked up a thriller at the airport and leafed through it. I have never been much of a thriller fan, so it's really no surprise I put it down. But the point is, I have nothing to read and I feel naked. I've gone to my favorite authors and am blah about their latest. It's not them, it's me.

I don't know what to do to get out of the funk, exactly. Maybe finish the book that is way overdue and consuming me right now? Maybe trying something completely new? Maybe just take a break?

What do you do when you are in a reading funk? Any suggestion for what to read? When's the last time you had a reading funk?

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HOW DO THEY DO THAT?

As far back as I can remember, we always had a pet.  My parents adopted Tony the cat six months before I was born and good old Tony (who was a prince among cats) lived to the ripe old age of 18.   Tony bore the indignities of being dressed in baby clothes and pushed around in a stroller.  He loved to leave gifts of gold fish on the porch (we have no idea where he'd get them, but someone in the neighborhood clearly had an outdoor pond that was missing a few occupants).   There were numerous dogs over the years, as well as several other cats, a trio of hamsters., and even a rabbit.  All these pets were sweet and loving, adorable and adored.  But based on what I've recently discovered some pets can do, our pets were obviously, well…average, especially when compared to these furry little talents.  For example, this rabbit:

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Ballet Bunny

We had a rabbit. It was cute.  It couldn't dance worth a darn.  In fact, it's biggest talent was chewing through wires–which, as we found out, renders your computer unworkable (not sure if unworkable is an actual word, but it should be because it's what happens to your computer when a rabbit chews through the power cord).

Or how about this cat:

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Now, Tony was a great cat, but a musician he was not.  Hairballs–yes.  Chopin–no.

Or how about this talented squirrel:

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Waterski Squirrel

Now, I've never had a pet squirrel, but based on my very average past pets, I'm gonna say if I DID have a squirrel, it wouldn't know how to waterski.  And where do you buy those tiny life jackets and skis anyway??  And HOW  did that squirrel even know there was such as thing as waterskiing??

Now, I'm not in the market for a pet elephant, but if I was, I'd certainly want one that could paint:

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elephant and self portraitAnd who knew dogs could surf?Hanging 20

 

Nope, our dogs pretty much just barked and slathered us in kisses and jumped around.  They'd fetch (if they felt like it) and could sit and shake hands on command, but not a surfer in the bunch.  Bummer, Moon Doggie!

Tell me about your pets–what adorable (or not so adorable) things do they do?  Is your pet average or can it do extraordinary things?  If you don't have a pet, what's the most unusual thing you've heard of an animal doing?  Hope your week is going great!

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Ten years??? Ten years???? HOW did that happen?

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The very first birthday....

Today is my daughter Catherine's tenth birthday, and I'm sitting here wondering where the heck the time went. (I'm also sitting here, a bit like Kathleen, wondering what the heck to blog about!). So today is an homage to my little girl who's not so little anymore!

Shhhhh! Don't tell her, but here's a rerun of one of my favorite Catherine videos. This same little girl did Karaoke at a local carnival recently and, as you can see at the bottom, is looking quite grown up.

Fair warning: this is one of those songs that will stick in your head! This video was taken in Beijing at night on my camera, so the lighting is a bit dim, but it still rocks, imho! And, alas, no one in the family remembers what inspired her to come up with these particular lyrics!

And from a few months ago with her daddy:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LITTLE GIRL!!

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Being Lady Gaga

For Halloween, I'm sure many people will do just that, dress up as Lady Gaga, have a ball, and take off the costume at the end of the night. Lady Gaga never gets to stop being Lady Gaga. It must be exhausting! [image error]

I was thinking about it in the car the other day. How do you live that way? The endless pressure to be shocking, new, different? All while writing new music, staying cutting edge, performing, and speaking out for causes. How do you have a normal life?[image error]

When you're Lady Gaga, I guess you don't want a normal life, Sure, she carefully constructed her image and built that fan base. But she probably never could have imagined it would grow so fast, become so huge. She dropped out of NYU's Tisch school in 2007 to focus on her career. Her dad said that he would pay her rent for a year, and he expected her to go back to school if it didn't work out. Wow, Dad, look at her now, a major International superstar in less than four years.[image error]

But when you're a global force, who do you trust? Who do you love? Who loves you? Underneath it all, she's still Stefani Germanotta.[image error]

Or is she? Do her dates call her Stefani, or Lady Gaga? Does she even have dates? Who could ask Lady Gaga out for dinner and a movie? If she could pull it off, slip on a pair of jeans, a simple top, and head right out without anyone noticing, would she want to? Or is the mere threat of being seen as a normal person going to be the brick to make the whole facade come tumbling down? Once people see that you can be normal, do they stop expecting this?:[image error]

And then what happens? [image error]Is there a path to personal happiness and true love beyond the fame and glory?

 

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Blogging on the Edge…

Once again, I couldn't find one topic that could hold my interest for a good seven hundred words, so I'm scouring the net for news and information to share. It's all part of my new non-profit organization, Filling Up the Cerebelum's Kavern with Useless Particulars.

First, the world is about to become host to seven billion humans. According to the New York Times, (because the Times is all about knowing everything about everyone), the earth didn't reach one billion until the early 1800s, and didja know that most of the population in the early 1800s were dukes (mostly hard-hearted and cynical) and red-haired impoverished misses who… talked… with…pauses (because everything I know about history I learned from Barbara Cartland). We hit four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987, six billion in 1998, and hoo-ah, we're about to roll Lucky 7! The article goes on to say that we'll hit ten billion by the end of the century, but I think we need to shoot for 11 billion, and then we'd be rolling craps, and the money would really start to flow.

We Are the World!

The rest of the article is actually pretty boring. Needs lots of food, blah, blah, blah. High fertility rates, yawn! Dirty water? I know, stop me if you heard THAT one before. Anyway, one more useless bit of trivia for a mundane Monday!

I played Angry Birds for the first time last week. I was in the airport and extremely bored, and Scrabble wasn't cutting it, so I loaded up Angry Birds. I don't like this game. It's very hard. My birds never flew high enough, and I think physics is involved in determining trajectory and velocity. I tried to find Angry Birds cheats on the web, but ended up hosed. I did master the first phase of level one, but level two is kicking my angry bird butt, so any hints or help would be appreciated.

Gawker has a fascinating piece on hackers going after kiddie porn users. OpDarkNet is marching into Lolita City, which sounds a whole lot like a video game to me. Apparently Lolita City lives in the anonymous shadow world, called "dark net" a node on the Net created to protect those wacky Arab Spring protesters so that governments couldn't go after them. And now, the dark net has become its own sort of Sin City, home to cybercriminals, hackers, pedophiles and drug dealers.

What's actually sort of creative is that the hackers uploaded clips from "To Catch A Predator" with racy, kiddie titles so that the creeps would think they're legit pics and videos. Actually, I think it'd be pretty cool if the videos could read off user names and IP addresses and then when the perv began viewing the clip, the voice of God could announce: "What the f*ck are you doing, Bob? Do you think this is healthy, Bob? The cops are going to bust down your door in 3 seconds, and your career is over.." And then a motherly voice could come on. "Bob, this is your mother. This is disgusting, Bob. Did you learn this from your father?"

The possibilities are endless, and I predict a future SVU episode featuring this very plot. Actually, there was a similar plot in SVU a few years back, but the hacker was a perv, and the computer graphics were 1970. Hello! We're in the next century now! Hire a real geek if you want it done right.

According to Market Watch, the EU once again has a plan to settle the Greek debt crisis. Ha, ha. This is about the seventh time in about four months that I've read that sentence and each time, much like those people who predict the end of the world, it doesn't happen. Much like the US Super Committee who is supposed to trim 1.2 trillion off the US deficit over the next ten years. They have until Thanksgiving to come up with their plan, or there will be no Thanksgiving, because Washington is overrun with turkeys and none of them want to serve themselves up on a political platter.

Deficit Supercommittee At Work

I myself can envision a few Congress-folk on a political platter, preferably left alone in the "dark net" with the voice of God playing in their ear for all eternity. And I don't even write suspense. I bet Dee could come up with some really good tortures, because underneath that sweet, cheerleader smile lurks the mind of a really twisted soul.

And that's the "Filling Up the Cerebelum's Kavern with Useless Particulars" report for the day.

What do you think? Is the earth going to survive eleven billion (because I think the educated professors who actually predict this using elaborate mathematical models are wrong)? Do you play Angry Birds? Do you like it? What's Your Personal Procrastination Pastime of Choice? If you could sick the hackers on a group of people, who would they be and why? And lastly, will the EU ever figure this one out? Will the Germans bail out the rest of the PIGS (and who comes up with these acronyms? Mad Magazine?)? Will the US Supercommittee do the adult thing and work together to create a feasible fiscal framework? Do you like alliteration? Do you start alliterating and then find yourself unable to stop?

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Just Give In…

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My First Venture

So I've just had my first venture in to the world of re-releasing backlist.  My holiday romantic suspense novella, Still of the Night (orginally in the Anthology Silent Night), is now available for download on both Smashwords and Amazon.com.  It should be available on Barnes and Noble and iBooks shortly.  It's definitely a brave new world.

In the still of the night…

Christmas is coming and Jenny Fitzgerald couldn't care less. She's getting divorced, and her life is in tatters. And just when she's thinking it couldn't possibly be worse, her husband is killed on the job, an undercover operation gone bad. In the midst of her grief, Jenny is confronted with a killer. A hunter who will stop at nothing to see her dead…

Next up—the Time Travel Trilogy:  Everything In Its Time, Wild Highland Rose, The Promise

And congratulations to winners Terri, Jean, Peggy, Glenda, Arianne, Lara, Lynn, Sandi, Jackie, and Lynn!  They each won a hard copy of my A-Tac e-novella Daring!

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To Do or Not To Do… That is the Question.

This morning was all about writing the to-do list.  I'm a big believer in writing to-do lists.  Part of it is the ability to cross things over as they're done, and part of it is fading memory recall.  Usually I like a short, focused list.  Three items: breakfast, shower, write, dinner.  That is my favorite list.  Unfortunately, today's list has 26 items.  CRAZY! 

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One of those 26 items is this blog, so I'm doing the Escher to-do list, blogging about a to-do list which contains the blog.  Whoa, too much recursion for this early.

I have tried several to-do list applications and they work well, but nothing works better than the paper next to my desk.    I tried "Things" which is very pretty, but you have to sync it, it does not sync automatically, which is a total pain and very surprising for an application whose visual interface required so much thought.

Things

I next tried Omni-Focus, which I like even better than Things, but it's very militant and you have to adapt to it.  The one advantage to Omni-Focus is that it has context.  So I can have a "High School" context, and all the questions or errands that I need to ask/do at the high school, are located in one place.  Very smart.  Alas, Omni-focus is not cheap, although one many's pricy is another man's occupy wall street protest, so it's all in your context.

 

Omni Focus

When I was a Windows gal, I used the to-do system in Outlook, which I think is awesome and the way a to-do list will work.  I just upgraded to OS X lion, which updated the mail and calendar, so I'll play around with that and see if it emulated the Outlook to-do functionality.  I'm noticing that "Reminders" is a lot spiffier than before, so maybe Apple did do some work on it.

Any other list-makers out there?  Do you use paper or an electronic to-do app?

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