Page proofs... spawn of the Devil!

I'm checking the page proofs of this mofo at the moment... and as usual it's driving me nuts!

I'm sure I'm not the only author who dislikes this stage of the publishing process. As a dear friend on Twitter just pointed out, manuscripts are like children, and when you've sent them off into the wild blue yonder, all growed up, you do not want them back again so soon, hanging around the house starting niggling arguments over relatively minor issues. Especially when the come back influenced by others, outside the home. ;)

I like this book. I really do... It's not great literature, but there are story elements in it that I've really enjoyed writing, employing themes of yearning and reunion that have always touched my heart. But going through it and having to pick nits in it, several times over, makes it hard for me to remember the magic of its creation and to anticipate the joy in sharing my little story with others...

Checking page proofs just slaps you in the face with things you suddenly feel you might not have got quite right... just when it's far to late to do a lot about them.

Obviously, it's a very necessary evil. It's quality control. It's making sure there are no typo snafus to spoil the reader's enjoyment of the book...

But boy does it drive me to distraction and back again!!!! Grrrr....

Why, Charlie, why?

Boo hoo! Your curls! Why? Why? Why?

The summit of Mount To Do

I have an enormous amount of jobs to do today! A veritable mountain of them, and if this peak was the list, it only represents the summit... there's a lot of crap to be dealt with in the foothills too...

I've got emails to send, quite important ones too. I've got parcels to wrap up ie. returning a hat I bought for which my head is too big [no jokes!]. I've got to ring up my bank about some tedious stuff - it's good that they have security measures in place, but it makes for a time sink for us law abiding citizens, honestly! I've got a story I ought to be getting on with, due on the 21st. I've got a new book to get stuck into!!!! I'd love to write some more proposals and outlines. I've web stuff to do, invoices to send. Emails to chase up that probably never arrived because my stupid crapacious ISP [which I will be dumping after RWA, I think] never sent them or got them lost because their anti spam measures seem to allow spam through, whilst blocking bona fide mail...

And that's just a fraction of it... and I'm still sitting here, dawdling over my breakfast and not yet dressed... sigh...

State of Rage

Crikey, I wasn't half in a mood yesterday! And I don't know where it came from, really. Naturally I've got the usual worries and minor crap going on in my life, but who hasn't? But I don't think any of it is enough to explain the state of psychotic rage that descended on me late yesterday morning and seemed to grip me until early evening.

It's funny, I was fine in the morning, and even managed to accomplish a task that usually turns me into a snarling beast - parcelling up books to send out - in a calm and reasonably contented manner. Then everything changed and I seemed to turn into Jack Torrance or Victor Meldrew on benzedrine or summink. Just total rage. With everything. I'd say it was like PMT, but I should be past all that crap... Maybe it's like some unexpected sunset upwelling of the hormones before I settle down to being a mildly grumpy old woman on a fairly even keel? Who knows... But it's a miracle I didn't break a lot of stuff yesterday, and some of it expensive. Thankfully, I confined my destructive tantrums to a bit of paper crumpling and mild throwing about...

Needless to say, me being me, I selected the most stupid job to do yesterday afternoon, given the above mentioned foul mood. Catching up with my accounts! Sigh... Thankfully last years are all sorted and submitted to the mendacious gouging bastards who like the bleed the average working woman in the street dry aka. the Inland Revenue. But this year's are in a bit of a muddle and need bringing up to date. Just the job to get stuck into when you're feeling like a cross between an axe murderer and a chain saw killer... But then I never did have much good sense...

The good news is that I feel quite chipper today... not ecstatic, but not enraged either... Let's hope this mildish mood survives the rest of the day, eh? :)

Parcel rage and greedy piggery...

Ack, I hate wrapping parcels, packing things up in padabags, labelling etc etc... It's an activity that induces a state of extreme rage in me. It's the securing that gets me, and the fact that modern sticky tape seems to be designed to only stick to things that it's *not* supposed to stick to! Try getting it to adhere to the surface of a padded bag, and you have to put *another* layer of sticky tape on to stick the first layer to the ****ing bag!!!! By the time I finished the three parcels I had to prepare this morning I was in a blind, towering fury, I'd nearly smashed up the contents of all three parcels and my throat was sore from screaming in frustration... at the b*ggering sticky tape!

Needless to say, none of the above is conducive to settling down and writing beautiful prose. Or even writing fairly horrible prose. Instead of getting on with what I was supposed to be getting on with, I settled in for an extended coffee break, half an episode of Numb3rs [with less Charlie than I needed] and more chocolate than I intended to eat. I had a nice piece of a Hotel Chocolate mini slab that I was going to eat half of... and guess what... I ate the whole piece without realising it. And now I feel like a fat, bloaty whale... bleck...

And even now, I'm not in the mood to write. I have a medical appointment this afternoon, and I won't be 'settled' until that's done with. It's only routine, nothing to really get het up about, but still I'm uneasy. And by the time I get back from that, it'll be nearly tea time and we've got fresh brussels sprouts for tonight, and they'll need peeling.

The one good thing in this is that it was persisting it down with rain up until a short while ago... and now it appears to be fine. Although there are some dark clouds on the horizon. And much as I hate and loathe them, I don't want those m***********g parcels to get wet when I go out with them!!!!

Updated to say:

It's absolutely peeing it down outside now! Will be drenched 30 seconds after stepping out of the door! My day just gets better and better...

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Telly: Numb3rs
Choc/Yummy: Hotel Chocolat
Mood: parcel psychosis
Writing: not a bleedin' thing
Reading: A Kingdom of Dreams - Judith McNaught
RSI/FMS: so so


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

temper tantrums

I'm having one of those sorts of days again. Just feel swamped and aggravated and in that mood when if anything doesn't go exactly as I want it to, I'm likely to crush, mash, smash or grind it into bits.

I've been trying to get a few things organised, but the process of trying to get things into some kind of order just seems to create more disorder. I think I'm in some sort of twilight, inverse zone where the opposite of what I intend happens. Grrrr....

The only actual achievement today is finishing the second round of proof checking on ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT, and sending off the corrections to the editor. These proofs weren't too difficult a task, just one or two scrappy bits here and there, but now I've finished them, I've to start out on another set, for THE RETREAT. A cursory glance at the latter doesn't reveal anything too serious though, and it's only a fairly short novella.

When this is done though... I *must* get back to IN TOO DEEP!!!!! Again, I seem to have lost contact with it, but not too badly I hope. I keep seeing the next bit of it in my head, just a particular image that has really touched me somehow. I think it's in my mind because I'm watching a lot of Numb3rs at the moment, and Professor Hottie is quite clear in my mind.

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Telly: Numb3rs
Choc/Yummy: lots
Mood: deranged
Writing: proof checking
Reading: nothing really
RSI/FMS: really bad fibro type aching plus cough


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

Rage

This was me, yesterday, raging at almost everything! [only I have better teeth] I did no writing and spent most of the day in a state of fury at 'stuff' and inanimate objects that all seemed to conspire against me to stop me achieving anything positive! My printer was playing up, telling me there were paper jams when there were nothing of the sort... Tried to do a back up to my new[ish] Porsche designed hard drive... Porsche? Don't make me ****ing well laugh! The speed this stupid thing was transferring had more in common with that trolley thing that pulls Space Shuttles out of the Vertical Assembly Building, only in this case, towed by geriatric snails! Had to abandon the back up as my calculations predicted it would take around seven years... grr... Obviously something is wrong there, and I suspect it might be my USB driver or summink like that... Only trouble is if I start getting into diagnostics that's just another thing to stop me writing!

On a plus note, I did manage to free up a bit of space at the side of the bed by moving some books and throwing out some papers, but it's just marginal really. I can move there now, though, so that's a plus...

Today, I am going to write something! I'm not going to get distracted by 'stuff' and I'm going to resist the urge to hang out too long at my favourite blogs and boards. And I'm not going to get sidetracked into promo stuff again today either... either written, or graphicky... Like I said, if I don't actually write anything, what the bleeding hell is there going to be to promote????


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If you love you some Portia click here and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE every day until 31st October!

Agh!

... I just can't seem to get any writing done! I'm drowning in sort of writing related/promo related jobs and I'm just not getting to the actual fiction... which is frustrating and worrying because if I don't do any, what the **** will I have to promo in the future? I'm just going to have to cut back and not get as involved with stuff. Discipline myself to just a visit or two per day to my fave sites, and no more. And not take on anything else that I just don't have time for!

But on the plus side of things, here are two new reviews of Hotbed! First one is by Ashley Lister, a connoisseur of fine literature if there ever was one!

Review of Hotbed at ERWA by Ashley Lister

The second is by the legendary Harriet Klausner. It's a little odd, but she seems to like it, so thanks, Harriet! :)

Review of Hotbed by Harriet Klausner


And here's a nice review of Eyes of Desire by Deb at SensualReads.net

Review of Eyes of Desire by Deb at Sensual Reads.

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While you're here, please, please, please pop over the the Night Owl Romance Awards and vote for me in the Best Erotic Contemporary Ebook!

If you love you some Portia click here and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE every day until 31st October!

well, thank you very much, Fungal Spore Pollen!

This is what you have turned my brain into!!!!

Barely sentient porridge! Well, thank you very much, you foul little spores, you wait until I have a to do list a mile long, then you render me incapable of doing any of the things on it... f***ers! I think the main problem is not only that the sinuses in all parts of my head are congested and filled with crud, but also, my lungs are crudded up too... which means I'm not getting the oxygen I should, which means my brain is not getting enough of it. And my poor old noggin is in a parlous enough state as it is, without this further diminution in its function.

I've been able to do nothing today. Zero. Nada. Zilch. A big fat empty void of non achievement. I am very annoyed.

--
Telly: nothing much
Choc/Yummy: turkish delight
Mood: bad
Writing: none
Reading: none
RSI/FMS: everything knacked by fungal spore pollen


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

out of sorts...

Have been feeling a bit out of sorts these last couple of days... Maybe it's a sort of 'dislocation' from finishing the first draft of Gothic Heat? Maybe it's health/fibromyalgia issues? Maybe it's health/fibro issues due to 'dislocation'? Who knows? But basically, I just feel as cranky as Predator chappie here...

I should be pleased as punch with myself, but I feel grumpy and curmudgeonly and disillusioned with so many things. And I feel a great difficulty in communicating, which is a bit of a drawback for somebody who, basically, communicates for a living. I feel as if I should be stretching myself as a writer, moving up a gear, moving up a level... or summink. Not just festering along, never really making a big name for myself. I've been writing a long, long time and I've seen lots of writers come along since I started and become pretty big names, while I just moulder away in the backwoods. I've always thought that it's because I can't plot well and can't generate ideas easily. But then I read stuff by bigger names, and sometimes, I think... well, I could have thought of this, but if I had done, I would probably have dismissed it as too silly and too superficial for an editor to take it seriously... And then, of course, I read other stuff and my heart just sinks because it's so good, and the author is clearly a quantum leap beyond me in terms of her imagination and her ability to interpret what's in that imagination as a book that people will want to read and having read it, end up adoring it...

Sorry to seem gloomy, but my hips are aching and I feel like crap today...

On a film note, watched Predator 2 last night, and while I think I prefer the first one, it's still a deliciously crass and bloodthirsty escapist flick. It's sweaty and violent and silly, but I did enjoy it. I just wish some bright spark hadn't put the Alien skull in the Pred's space ship, and generated the whole Aliens v. Predator phenomenon that led to a film that basically crapped on two iconic sci-fi movie franchises. They've ruined both now with AVP... stupid sods!

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Telly: Time/Michio Kaku
Choc/Yummy: Cadbury's Turkish Delight Bar
Mood: horrible
Writing: nowt
Reading: Fantasy Lover
RSI/FMS: awful at the moment


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

how I feel...

This is a bit how I feel at the moment... I'm so zonked out thinking about writing, web design and promo, and so completely incapable of doing any of them, due to the aforesaid zonkedoutness... that I was reduced to scrubbing out the shower and mopping the kitchen floor this morning because my brain just couldn't cope with any higher functions.

And now, of course, I feel physically knackered too. It doesn't take much housework to **** me up... All I really want to do is to sit around reading LOVER REVEALED by J R Ward all day, but I have this freaking demon inside me that howls all the time saying I must be doing this, or I must be doing that... and it torments me so much it makes me crazy and I can't do anything at all!

I am so messed up at the moment...

my mood

I was going to do so much today... even allowing for Snooker and World Superbikes. I had my list all sorted out, and my productive head on... and then stuff happened. Stuff that makes me want to get out into the garage, fire up himself's chainsaw... and go on the rampage!!!

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Telly: World Superbikes
Choc/Yummy: Frys Turkish Delight
Mood: beyond belief
Writing: sod all
Reading: Passion
RSI/FMS: a bit sore


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

insult to injury

And it's not just that I feel poorly... Domestic malfunctions at Chez Portia are adding to the aggravation too... On Sunday afternoon, both the central heating and the water heater decided to pack up! So, no heat, no hot water... This is really the best time to have to cavort around the house with heavy pans of hot water, having a big crick in my neck... yeah!

Fortunately, himself is on the case, and should be able to fix the above mentioned appliances once he's sourced the parts. Hopefully he'll get some of the bits today, and get hot water back on tap within the next 24 hours. It's very, very useful having a chap around who knows how to mend more or less everything!

Sorry to seem such a downer... it's really quite funny in a grim sort of way that everything seems to go wrong at once. I suppose I could cite all this crap as my excuse for not writing, but it isn't really... I'm just in a state of writer's bleck at the moment. I can't focus my ideas, and even when I try to, those ideas are so bitty and stupid that I just give up on them. And everywhere I go, writers seem to be blossoming with ideas and they all sound like great ones... and here I am futzing around with scraps of horse plop that make no sense, or have been done a zillion times before and a gazillion times better by other authors.

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Telly: UK History
Chocolate: Nestle Heaven
Mood: peed off
Writing: nil
Reading: the labels on medicines
RSI/FMS: back neck

in one of my grrrrr moods...

so what's new?

Yes, I'm feeling particularly curmudgeonly at the moment. In that frame of mind where I'm just feeling so out of sorts and out of step that I'd just love to go on some sort of rampage, telling folk just what I think of them, and beating some sense into them with a large frying pan! I'd love to commit some wild and destructive act, like throwing a lot of stuff around the house and screaming my head off! I know it won't do any good at all, and the causes of my acts of mayhem will not be affected by them... but I'd still like to do it. Just to let off steam...

Maybe I should get on my exercise cycle and pedal like fury? Exert some energy? I've already done my half hour, and I'll probably get saddle sore... but it might be one way to open the safety valve. I hate the way this anger just screws me up all the time... and it ****s up my writing too. It disempowers me... but I'm so prone to it. I always seem to be a bit cross about something... If it's not the stupid government, or the bad, bad people in the world, or imbeciles on the telly, it's the publishing scene and the stuff that I happen across in it...

I think I'm probably more suited to being a boxer or a lumberjack than a writer...

--
Telly: new CSI
Chocolate: cadburys biccies
Mood: see above
Writing: not yet
Reading: nothing yet
RSI: a bit sore

oops, I did it *again*!

Forgot to post... or wanted to post, but got so waylaid and weighed down by 'stuff' that when it came to it I just didn't have the psychological energy to communicate...

Ack, 'stuff'... so much of it at the moment, and at just the wrong time. I want to be pushing ahead with Buddies, and striking while the iron is hot with one or two other projects/ideas, but always these complications of various sorts get in the way and take huge chunks of my time and mental pep. My brain has never been the kind that can multi task and compartmentalise, so if there's crap in there to do with one thing, it knacks up just about everything else as well. I just seem to be in one of those phases where everything seems to come with extra complications... something must be in retrograde or whatnot... I can't think of any other explanation.

I want to write, and when I do get a clear run, and find my writing heart, I can see inklings of ways to make Buddies work. But then a whole bunch of other 'stuff' will pile on in and I'm muddled again... eg. this morning, got a bill from an email service that's been cancelled, so have to sort that out. Then, upgraded Omnidrive and it stopped working and stalled my computer... nice. Great upgrade there. Not. Oh, and a zillion other things too... Got a new accounts program, and though I'm sure it'll be fun to use and work well when I'm used to it, it's gonna require time to learn and adjust to... [Thanks, you gits at Quicken for discontinuing your program in the UK... I'm sure I'm not the only one you've right royally f***ed up!!! I hate you bastards!]

And I need to develop some more book ideas. My agent would like to see a couple of more proposals from me, based on some v. flimsy ideas I sent to her a while back. But nothing exists of them but a paragraph or two, and suddenly I need to build two whole 'worlds' and completely rewire one of the plots to make it romantic, and give the other one a whole other, non romantic plot and conflict to make it viable.... Waahhh!!!!!!!!! Me brain hurts! I'm having enough trouble with Buddies... Think I'm really, really gonna have to finish the first draft of that before I launch into these other things... I really don't know how writers who juggle several projects at once, at different stages of development, do it! I've only room, really, for one set of story people in my head at once... otherwise it gets like a scene from Heironymous Bosch in there [many apologies for the spelling of that famous artist's name, I'm just wildly guessing...]

And I haven't done my static cycling yet, either! And I say again... Waahhh!!!!

--
Telly: some crap about cooking
Chocolate: Tesco Belgian Milk
Mood: hysterically aggravated and frustrated by 'stuff'
Writing: wot be that, I ask?
Reading: annoying post
RSI: so so