S.J. Pajonas's Blog, page 124

Sunday Update – October 18, 2015

Well, it was quite busy around here this week. I started out the week with a lot of bathroom renovation. All Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, I stripped wallpaper from the bathroom walls, scrubbed them, and cleaned them. It was exhausting! My arm felt like it was going to fall off. But in the end, the walls looked really nice. In fact, I was able to paint them this week! I’m really glad that all of the wallpaper is gone. I spent all Friday painting in the bathroom, and I love the green that I chose for the space. We now need to get a plumber in to install the new vanity, but we’ve already installed the new toilet. The room is really coming together.

I then took off a few days, and I worked on REVEALED edits. I should be done with REVEALED by the end of today! I’m looking forward to being done with it and moving on to my next project. Later this week, I should be able to reveal the cover and post the links for preorders, and I hope to get it out to my ARC team as well while it’s being proofread. Whew! Another book done! That makes 3 for the year! I think I like this writing and publishing pace and I hope to sustain the same pace through 2016.

NaNoWriMo is coming up next month, and I’ve been thinking about participating. Usually each year I have trouble writing during November. There’s always a lot going on, and my kids have many days off during the month. But now that I’m giving dictation a real go, I think that I can do well during the big event. In fact, I’m dictating this blog post right now. And I plan on writing a blog post about dictation this coming week. It has taken a lot of practice, but I really like it.

What else happened this week?

Bathroom Before…

Bathroom After. The paint all dried evenly and looks really nice now!

I waited until after I was done stripping the wallpaper to give myself a new Jamberry manicure. I love this one! So adorable.

The leaves are starting to change around here, and it got down to freezing levels last night which does not make me happy. I miss winter already.

I stayed home this weekend instead of going north to Rhinebeck like I do most years. I spent the day working and then watched my MSU football team win an awesome game. Wooooooo! It was amazing!

Coming up later this week, a Book Chat (hopefully), a post on dictation, and another one on my favorite yoga app. See you all later!

Random Thoughts On… Present Tense

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m going to write my next book. Not just thinking about what I’m going to write, but how I’m going to write it. This includes spending my time outlining ahead of time, doing all the research, and reading up on what cozy mysteries are all about. On all of the message boards I go to, I see the same comments over and over again: people just do not like reading present tense. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve groaned reading the comments on message boards about how much people hate reading present tense. Because I write in present tense! When I was in college, I took a lot of screenwriting classes and screenplays are written in present tense. This is how I honed my skills and became a good storyteller. So present tense comes very naturally to me, and it’s not something that I’m likely to give up easily. But I want people to read my books! And a lot of people will not even touch my books if they are in present tense. Sigh. What should I do?

Well, the obvious solution is to write in past tense. And I love a good challenge, so I’m going to try it for my next book. I figure it can’t really hurt to try, right? But you can imagine the anxiety turning circles in my head right now, and how I must be worried about trying something this drastic. I’m already switching to a new genre, and I’m phasing in dictating, and now I’m going to try writing in a different tense? Boy, do I have my work cut out for me.

So tell me, do you have a preference for what you like to read: past tense or present tense? I realize that everybody has an opinion about this kind of thing, and it really shouldn’t matter to me all that much. But the hatred of present tense is so vehement on the Internet, I figure I should try to give past tense a go and see if readers like it better. Wish me luck!

NYC Vintage Post 2004 – The CIA

Here’s a post from my old blog! Obviously this post was written after I’d had a really horrendous commute into work one day. Every now and then, I would run across the craziest people on the trains. And really, all I wanted to do was read my book…

According to the crazy woman on the F train to manhattan this morning, the CIA owns all of the poppy and marajuana fields in Afghanistan. They own and run the Washington Mutual Bank. Mormon CIA members (yes, Mormons.. Those god-loving, don’t-even-dance conservative church-goers) also run Starbucks and use it to distribute heroin and crack-cocaine. Special Agent Bill (can’t remember his last name though she said it like 50 times. I’m horrible with names.) from the CIA will gladly dispute these accusations if you just pick up the phone and call him. You can also ask him about the major drug bust in New York reported within the last week or so (according to crazy train lady, though not found on a google news search) where black and hispanic men were found with $11m and drugs and “why is it that the blacks and hispanics are always found with money and drugs? If they had $11m would they be living in the projects, I ask you?” Her logic astounds me. Someone get out the Nobel Prize, I think we have a winner.

Crazy train lady nearly inspired a riot. A businessman, who was trying to read his newspaper, kept telling her to shut up and “could you please give it a rest?” She took this as a sign to test the waters with everyone else in the car. “Who else wants me to shut up? Let’s see a show of hands.” I looked around to find that I wasn’t the only one who’s hand shot in the air. This was a moment of pure joy as most new yorkers go out of their way to ignore weirdos and beggars on the train. She laughed at all those that raised their hands and told them to go to the next car. Thankfully, that didn’t stop Mr. Businessman from berating her much to the chagrin of my fellow passengers. I left the train at W4th street because I couldn’t concentrate on my book, and heck, I had heard it all before. Who needs a repeat of that? This is the second time I have run into her and you wouldn’t know that she was off her rocker just by looking at her. She’s an average, late 40s/early 50s, black woman with short greying hair. Well-dressed and on her way to work, it seems, but the minute she steps on your train, you are in for a earful.

And I’m sure after this morning, I went to work and had a really stressful day. The days that started out like this always ended terribly. LOL. But I’m glad I get to relive it now through my old blog. It’s good to remind myself of why I don’t live in the city anymore.

More vintage NYC post to come in the future!

Sunday Update – October 11, 2015

I’m taking a quick break from home improvement to post this update, so it won’t be too involved. I’m currently stripping wallpaper off the walls of our second bathroom. YES! I hate wallpaper and I’m excited to see it go. But it’s a lot of work and I’m exhausted from doing it yesterday and today. Still, this bathroom will be awesome once we’re done with it. Can’t wait.

This past week was hurried and busy. My littlest went back to school on Monday and everything went well with her cast. I exercised Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday because I knew Thursday and Friday I wouldn’t be able to. On Thursday, I took the littlest to see her orthopedist. They took x-rays, and her arm is healing really fast! Yay! So they took off the big bulky cast and put on a new, lighter one that only covers her forearm. She can now flex her elbow, so that’s good.

I grocery shopped and spent the day on Friday at Panera working, then we met up with our kitchen designer/contractor to go over designs for our kitchen remodel! Woo! Things are really happening around here.

I worked most of the week on my outline for the first mystery book I’ll hopefully start writing soon. The first book of a series is always the hardest. I have to think of the HUGE world I’m building, plan it all out, but then scale back to a tiny piece I’ll write about in the first book. It requires a lot of forethought and planning, but once the first book is written the rest come along quicker. I hope to write the first two before releasing the first book. I’d like to have them all ready to go ahead of time. We’ll see.

Copy editing of REVEALED continues using my trusted tool, AutoCrit. I love copy editing, especially now that my first drafts are cleaner. I’ve learned how to write cleaner the first time through rather than five drafts later.

What else happened this week?

Saw a beautiful egret in the pond on my walk!

I created a little space on my bureau for my books so I can see them every day, and remember how much I’ve accomplished.

The leaves are changing around here. A sure sign of autumn.

And yep, this ugly wallpaper is going away! I can’t wait to paint this room a nice jade green.

That’s it for today! I think this week I’ll talk a little bit more about dictation and I’ll post a few vintage NYC stories from my old blog for you to laugh at. See you later!

Book Chat #20

Wow! I haven’t done a book chat since the end of August. This isn’t because I haven’t been reading. It’s because I’ve been doing a lot of other things. And my for-fun reading book, THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLES, was taking me a long time to read. But I was doing other things on the side! So let’s get down to the audiobooks I’ve been listening to.

I did finish listening to ARMADA by Ernest Cline. But I have to say, I wasn’t very pleased with the end of the story. The whole climax felt a little boring to me, so I kind of wonder what happened to Ernest Cline between Ready Player One and this book. Oh well. I enjoyed listening to Wil Wheaton narrate this.

After listening to ARMADA, I went on to listen to THE MARTIAN again! God I love that book. It’s so good. I can’t wait to see the movie very soon. It was even worth listening to the audiobook a second time through.

After I was done with THE MARTIAN, I went on to listen to THE ANDROID’S DREAM by John Scalzi. This is another Scalzi book that I really enjoyed. It was a lot of fun, even though the plot was slightly crazy. There were times when I had no idea what was going on, and I had trouble following a lot of the extra plot lines. But it was still good, and I enjoyed it.

I then tried to listen to the new Star Wars book, STAR WARS: AFTERMATH, by Chuck Wendig. But after two chapters, I was bored and I couldn’t go on. Sigh. I really wanted to like that book. For some reason, all of the dialogue and the descriptions seemed very choppy, which is not a style I enjoy. I checked out the Amazon reviews and a lot of people had the same issue that I did.

I’m now listening to a really great audiobook that I’m enjoying a lot. It’s called WWW by Robert J Sawyer. It has a bunch of different storylines that I haven’t figured out how they connect yet, but they are all interesting and they are keeping me engaged. I listen to this audiobook whenever I have a free chance.

Wow! That’s a lot of audiobooks for the last month!

In regular books, I just finished THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLES. And I’m happy to say, that it’s still my favorite book. I saw lots of nuances in this reading that I hadn’t seen in previous readings. So this one book continues to be one of my favorite stories.

I’ve also read a few nonfiction books on the side.

All of these books were really helpful in guiding me towards writing my next novel! I highly recommend them.

Yes, I am including dictation in my arsenal of novel-writing weapons and I’ll talk about that in a future post.

Celebrating 12 Years of Blogging!

If you look back at the archives of this particular blog, you’ll see that it only goes back to 2011, so why would I be celebrating a whole 12 years then? Because before I decided to makeover myself as an author, I was just a regular person with a blog that started in October 2003. I wrote about Harry Potter, movies, New York City, my travels, and eventually I blogged a lot about knitting. For the longest time, my life was centered around my blog, in such a good way. I met people all over the world from Japan to Scotland to Australia, in a time before Facebook, and I’m still friends with a lot of them to this day.

Prince Andre and Chappatsu Nezumi

My first blog was a lot of fun and ushered me through a huge life shift. I learned who I was, who my real friends were, and that my passion for writing and creativity knew no bounds. I learned a ton about web design, programming, and a stupid amount of backend knowledge like how databases work or how to navigate around a UNIX server via a shell. I took photos and became an avid photographer. I knit a lot and designed my own knits. I got married, became a mom, and switched jobs, but through it all was the writing, writing on a blog and dreaming up fiction in my head.

I sometimes forget that blogging is part of my writing career which is why I don’t think I’ll ever give it up. Getting my thoughts down and out, editing them for a public audience, and publishing regularly has helped me be a better fiction writer and self-publisher. I have years of this ingrained into me! No wonder I have a crazy work ethic.

As a little treat, I found this post from October 2, 2003 called Tap Dancing on 42nd Street…

Nope, I’m not about to comment on the musical “42nd street”. I had some downtime about 10 minutes ago, so I decided to walk over to the Duane Reade in Times Square and pick up a prescription and some other goodies. As I was walking along 42nd street between 6th ave and Broadway, I came across a group of people (about 20) staring into a store window on the north side of the street. I then remembered that there was no store there but some sort of performance “art” center that regularly has displays in the window. I was chagrined to see some woman animatedly tap dancing on a platform to some pop song (I think that it was Pink or one of those other woman-of-the-minute-i-like-pop-but-want-to-be-really-aggressive-to-throw-people-off singers). This woman was hauling-ass. Tap dancing her little heart out…

Upon returning from Duane Reade, she was giving tap lessons to other women in the window while 30 people watched them from the street. I wish I had had my camera.. (I’ve been saying that a lot lately… I think that I need to carry it with me everywhere I go… or get one of those attachments for my phone.. hhmmmmm).

Lol. An attachment for my phone! I think I had a tiny Nokia phone back then.

Me, writing and blogging now in 2015.

Anyway, not only does this post highlight just how old I am, but also how important I think blogging is. It helps me chronicle my life (like Instagram now does for me too) and keeps my writing chops fresh. There are times when I take breaks because I’m super busy and other times when I’m blogging every day, but I don’t think I’ll ever give it up. Blogging is a natural part of who I am, and I’m so grateful for it!

Blogging is here to stay. Happy 12th anniversary!

Random Thoughts On… My Continuing Education

Just this past week I made two purchases which I hope will usher me along my path to a more productive author.

I bought the Learn Scrivener Fast training. I had heard about this training a lot on Facebook and was really curious about how well it worked for people. Now, I’ve been using Scrivener for about four years now, and I know a lot about it because I use it almost every single day. But there are a lot of features in the program that I really don’t use all that often, like the corkboard, outlining, and metadata features. So I thought I would try to teach myself those features, but I just never have the time to get around to it. I would have to do a million Google searches and I really don’t have the time to find everything that I need. When I saw that there was a free webinar available for me to check out this training I decided to jump in. And I was really blown away by how well all the videos were constructed, and how many different topics the training covers. So I decided to invest! And already I’m really, really happy with the training. I’m excited about what I can do now with Scrivener that I haven’t been able to do before especially since I’m about to start writing a brand-new novel. I hope to put into practice some of the new things I’m learning with this new novel!

Folks, here’s a confession: I really know nothing about how to use Microsoft Excel. I should know how to use Excel, but I’ve resisted learning for many many years mainly because it’s just so boring. LOL. But now that I’m keeping track of how much money I make or how many books I sell or all of the different places that I buy advertising, I really need to know Excel. There is just no avoiding it anymore! So I purchased this Go Skills Excel Course for $25 from AppSumo this past week. And I’m going to learn enough Excel to definitely get by.

I said I was going to teach myself new things this year! I’m getting started on the right foot. Now I’m wondering what I’ll want to learn next!

Sunday Update – October 4, 2015

So, we had a really crazy week here. Last Sunday, right after I posted my Sunday Update, my daughter fell off the monkey bars at the playground and broke her arm. Unfortunately, it was a really bad break. She broke both bones in her left forearm and needed surgery. So my Sunday and Monday and Tuesday were all spent either worrying about her or at the hospital. It was really scary to watch her go through surgery being so young, at only five years old. I’ve never broken a bone in my life! And I’ve also never had surgery, so I had no idea what to expect. But like the trooper she is, she came through with flying colors. She had pins put in her arm under surgery and now her arm is all bound up in the cast. She actually really loves her cast! And a week later she is doing well.

With everything that happened, I didn’t get much work done this past week. My daughter needed to stay home and rest, so I stayed home with her and we played or watched TV together or colored together. It wasn’t until yesterday, Saturday, that I got any work done, and I finished REVEALED! I’m really excited about finishing another book! And I hope everyone who loves the Nogiku Series will love this book too.

Other than dealing with the bad break, I didn’t do much of anything this past week. I spent the time cleaning up the house, or baking or cooking, or just relaxing and reading. I really hope that next week has a lot less drama.

What else happened this week?

The hospital we were at was really nice and kid friendly. While my daughter was in bed suffering the pain of a broken arm, they brought her toys and playdoh. We made a few hearts together while waiting around for surgery.

When we were finally home from the hospital I needed a GIANT drink. GIANT.

I made a batch of applesauce which will go nicely with the oatmeal I’ve been eating a few times per week.

And yes, I finally finished REVEALED. I have no idea when I’m going to publish this. I need to start working on a cover for it later today.

And that’s about it. I plan on posting a few times to the blog this week. We’ll see how that goes!

Have you read and reviewed FACE TIME? Enter the 2015 Reviewer Appreciation Giveaway!

Hi all! This offer went out to newsletter subscribers just the other day, and now I’m spreading the news wide.

In an effort to boost reviews and visibility of my books before the holiday season, I’m asking those who have read my books to review them on Amazon and enter this giveaway!

FACE TIME is my top priority right now because it’s only 1 review away from the 50-review benchmark! I’d also love to have a sale on this book before the holidays, and the more current reviews the better.

In order to enter this giveaway, you must leave an honest review of FACE TIME on Amazon.com. That field in the Rafflecopter below is mandatory. You can then leave reviews of my other books to gain more points! Reviews must be on Amazon.com to qualify (sorry, but Goodreads or your blog does not count since advertisers only look at Amazon to determine if I can buy ads with them or not). Reviews should be at least a sentence long and can be any star-rating, positive or negative. Just be honest. (Please include the statement: “I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review” at the end of your review, if you did not purchase FACE TIME and instead got your copy through my newsletter.)

You can earn an extra point each by leaving a review of any one of my books on Amazon.com. Old reviews count as well! I appreciate all reviews, old or new, positive or negative. Here are all of my books on Amazon.com.

There are 15 days left in the giveaway and only a few people have entered so far, so your chances of winning are good!

Up for grabs are three $15 gift cards to Starbucks! There will be three winners! Good luck and thanks for stopping by.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me – Food Edition

These Top 10 Tuesdays make it easy to come up with good blog material, no? So today I’m going to give you the food edition of things you didn’t know about me. I don’t consider myself to be an extremely picky eater. I like a lot of different kinds of foods and I’m willing to try things with new flavors and textures, but I definitely have my own food quirks. Let’s get started!

1) I’m a pescetarian.

A lot of people have questions about this, so I’ll just put it out there. I’m a pescetarian. I used to be a vegetarian for over 10 years, and my husband used to be vegan. But a few years ago, I decided I really wanted fish back in my life. I grew up eating fish a lot and a lot of other meats but somehow I missed fish the most out of everything. I attribute this to being Japanese in a former life. There was a time when I sneaking fish into my diet behind my husband’s back (lol) while he was traveling, and then one day he confessed he was actually eating fish while he was traveling! We had a good laugh at each other and started eating it at home too. Now I cook fish regularly. My husband is still dairy free though. So I don’t eat meat excepting fish.

2) I could eat rice every day.

Yep, I love rice especially sushi rice and could eat it every day. I’m not sure I could ever grow tired of it. (See number 1 about being Japanese in a former life). My rice cooker gets a permanent spot on the kitchen counter.

3) Peanut butter is my life.

I’m really glad neither of my kids is allergic to peanut butter because I eat it every day. Every weekday morning I eat toast and peanut butter with a veggie sausage for breakfast. I love chocolate and peanut butter together. Peanut butter in waffles, on noodles, in pastries. I love it all. It’s my favorite thing ever.

4) I always eat the bottom of the bagel first.

I’m not sure when I started doing this, but when I eat a bagel on the weekends and it’s sliced in half, I always eat the bottom part first. The top is my favorite part so it’s a whole “save the best part for last” thing.

5) I actually hate cooking.

Really, as much as I love food (and I do love it), I think I’d be fine with food in pill form. I really do not enjoy cooking at all, even though I’m good at making a few standard dishes. I just hate how laborious it is, all the chopping, the cooking, the hot burning oil. If I had a million dollars, I would totally hire a personal chef. I’d rather clean than cook any day, but it’s my job, so I do it. I try to make the time of cooking enjoyable by listening to audiobooks while I do all the prep.

6) I’m allergic to avocado and cantaloupe and aspartame.

I became allergic to avocado after I gave birth to my oldest child. I would eat it and be in pain a few minutes later, all through my esophagus and my upper digestion area. It felt like really painful heartburn so I thought I would be fine if I ate Tums or Zantac prior to eating avocado because I really loved avocado! But no, that didn’t help either. It was just too painful. So I looked it up and it turns out that if you’re allergic to avocado, you can experience bad digestive pain. So I tried to stop eating it. I would try it and be in pain, wait a few months, try it, and be in pain again. This went on for several years before I gave up and stopped altogether.

Then recently it was melon season and I saw cantaloupe at Whole Foods. It looked so good and I hadn’t had it in a long time (cue doom music) so I got some. Oh my god, I thought the painful reaction to avocado was bad but cantaloupe was a hundred times worse! I was in so much pain I actually vomited it up and had to take Benadryl in the middle of the day and pass out before I felt okay again. Turns out that avocado and cantaloupe are related. Who knew? Well, I do now. Sigh.

I’m also allergic to aspartame, that artificial sweetener stuff they put in all the diet drinks and gum. I have to read labels now to make sure it’s not slipped into random foods. I wrote my first two books fueled on Coke Zero and one day I was drinking it and suddenly everything tasted weird. Everything I ate or drank tasted strange and sickening, to the point that even my sinuses were weird (I wish I could describe it more than “weird”). So I stopped drinking it for a few days and tried again. Again the same issue. I tried chewing gum and it was there too. That was when I realized it was the aspartame. And now I use Splenda in my tea and haven’t had a diet soda in several years.

7) There are several foods I used to hate but love now.

My husband likes to point out that I used hate mushrooms, HATE THEM, and now I love them and can’t get enough sometimes. I also used to hate olives and I love them now. This is why I continue to keep trying things I may not like or haven’t liked in the past. I always give it a try to see if my tastes have changed. I can be flexible like that.

8) Lunch is the hardest meal for me.

I often will stand in the kitchen and despair that THERE’S NOTHING TO EAT when in fact there’s plenty to eat, I just don’t want to make any of it (see number 5). The main problem here is that I’m often alone and have to make food just for me. Breakfast is easy because I eat the same thing almost every day. Dinner is a bit easier. Often my husband will mercifully tell me what to make so I don’t have to decide. But lunch? It’s all on me. I therefore try to buy things that’ll be easy to make. Salads are a mainstay throughout the summer but I often don’t want them in the winter. If I eat processed foods like frozen pizza or burritos, it’s mostly at lunch. Also, I try to eat leftovers at lunch though I don’t like leftovers much either.

9) I get nervous eating meals while out with other people.

I’m always afraid people will be confrontational about my lack of meat eating or I’m afraid I’ll have a reaction to the food (ala avocado or cantaloupe, because those came out of nowhere) or, this one is the worst, I’m afraid I’ll swallow too much food at once and it’ll get stuck in my esophagus. Does that ever happen to anyone else? I HAVE TO EAT SLOW and remember to chew really well or food gets stuck on its way down to my stomach. Not choking like stuck in your windpipe, but in my esophagus. This is also really painful and causes nausea because my body wants to get rid of it. Sigh. Thankfully it’s only happened at home because it’s not pretty at all.

You thought this was just going to be about the food I like and don’t like, right? HELLO.

10) I haven’t eaten McDonalds in over 15 years.

Yep. People talk about stopping off to get fries or a milkshake or a Happy Meal for their kids, and I think, “I haven’t stepped foot in a McDonald’s in over 15 years.” My kids only know Happy Meals from the TV. Lol. It’s for all the reasons you would imagine (see number 1 above): factory farming, chemical laden food, animal cruelty, etc. I’m a firm believer in voting with my wallet, so I don’t give them my business. This is how I deal with most everything I don’t agree with: certain books or authors I don’t agree with or like, certain companies I don’t like, certain charities I disagree with, etc. They don’t get a penny from me. McDonald’s is something I can live without. I should note that once or twice on a long road trip I have eaten at other fast food establishments but still not McDonald’s. It’s just the way it is. My husband is with me on this so it’s a family decision.

So there ya go! Ten food related things about me you probably didn’t already know! Drop your comments in below. Did you suddenly become allergic to foods out of the blue? Do you like to cook? Let me know!