Monday, May 18, 2009

Several thoughts on several things

So here we are, trying to get back in the groove. The third Demons book is due July 1st, which means Some Serious Work Ahead for me.

But, it also occurred to me yesterday that it's May. Which means it's almost June, which means it's almost summer, which means it's almost time for another Summer Series. (My typo almost led me to write "It's almost sumer," which would imply a superagricultural Mesopotamian event about to occur, but no.)

Which means I have to decide to what subject to dedicate at least part of my summer blogging. Any suggestions? What would y'all like to hear me blather about? I doubt it will be quite as involved and lengthy as the Strumpet series--remember, July 1st deadline--but if the topic is meaty enough I'll simply delay it until after said deadline has passed, when I have a bit more time.

(I haven't forgotten my plans to expand last summer's Strumpet series and turn it into a PDF, by the way. Look for that by the end of the summer, too, as part of my new website.)

I feel all disoriented still. It's weird but great to be back, but it's also hard to settle back into a routine. At least, a routine other than the "Watch 'Good Eats' in bed every night on DVD" one we've got going here. I do love Good Eats, though. We also have several seasons of The Office (US) to catch up on, as only the first two have been shown in the UK (I think--that's all we've seen, anyway).

What else? I had several topics to discuss when I started this post (hence the title) but it all seems to have disappeared into the ether. Sigh. Perhaps part of my problem is that, while I'm digging the Mac, I'm finding web-surfing more difficult than it was. Not because there's a problem--sort of--well, okay. Here's the thing. When I type a web address in the address bar, it isn't saved there in Safari like it was in IE. This is how I used to flit around the net; I had several addys up there and the rest in my Bookmarks. Now I don't have my Bookmarks and I don't have a drop-down address list thingie, so I have to manually type the addresses in, which sucks. Any advice?

Oh, and here's something interesting. Moviegoods.com has done a list of the 100 Sexiest Movie Posters--at least, according to them. The hubs and I strongly disagree with some of their choices; it appears in at least a few cases they're looking at it in a "Half-naked woman automatically=Sexy" way, or going for one with a famously sexy actress on it rather than an actual sexy poster. (We also feel it's a bit of a cheat to include Bond movie posters, because, duh.) What do you think, if you feel like following the link and taking a look?

Goodness this is a dull post. I apologize, everyone. I will be back up to snuff soon. My mind is otherwise engaged at the moment; I'm still not sure how happy I am with my revised version of CITY OF GHOSTS, and what to do about that. Everyone else (that is, my editor, Caitlin, and Psynde) likes the book and says it's great; they liked it even before the revisions that I think made it better. But I can't help but think of what it *could* have been.

Yes, I know this is in large part simply how I work. And how a lot of others work. I love my books for the first 30k words or so. After that I generally think they're garbage. Rereading them usually assuages that, but...it's not really happening for me anymore. The last three of my books that I've read I have not particularly liked, or rather, I haven't felt they were anywhere near good enough. Perhaps this is because I know they're going out into the world, into (hopefully!) the hands of people who actually paid money for them? People who will be justifiably angry if they buy the books and find they're a jumble of incomprehensible mess? (Intellectually I know the books are not a jumble of incomprehensible mess. But still.)

I suppose it's better to think of lots of people buying and hating them, than of nobody buying them at all. Neither brings me much joy, though.

Oh, and by the way, the second Downside book is now called UNHOLY MAGIC. That is the permanent title. CITY OF GHOSTS, which has been through quite a few title changes, is officially CITY OF GHOSTS again. So, the first three books in the series are officially:

UNHOLY GHOSTS
UNHOLY MAGIC
CITY OF GHOSTS

And I will have back cover copy for UNHOLY MAGIC pretty soon.

Now I've whined long enough.

8 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

Even now that I'm off I don't have half your energy. If you lived over here I'd suspect you were on meth! ;)

writtenwyrdd said...

I didn't find any of those posters listed sexy except Sin City's! I always figured that nudity or seminakedness is not necessarily sexy, and those posters prove the point. These were a bit blatant.

And I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks my stuff is crap when I hit 30k. At least you keep going. I have a difficult time marching forward at that point.

Angie said...

Good Eats rocks. :D I love that it gives techniques and skills rather than just recipes, plus the food science and nutrition and nutritional anthropology. (Deb Duchon is awesome.) I'm not into the Recipe Of The Week type cooking shows, but I watch Good Eats religiously.

Definitely looking forward to the third Demons book, and the new series. :)

No clue about the Mac problem. :/ That's pretty crazy; it seems like there's got to be some way of saving URLs. I mean, short of opening up a Word document and copy/pasting them or something. Ick. I hope someone who's used a Mac more recently than I have has an answer for you.

If not, the only other thing I can think of is to get a Delicious account -- http://delicious.com/ -- and start storing your URLs online. That way you can access them from any computer. It's set up as a social-network sort of thing, but you don't have to use it that way. You can use a whole pile of tags on any given bookmark, so it's easy to sort and search for what you want.

I'm about this close to finishing my urban fantasy, which is indeed going to be a novel, although a shortish one. I'm just short of 50K words right now, and I'm looking at probably another 10K to go. Of course, I suck at estimating how long something's going to be, so who knows? [wry smile] At that point it'll just need some sandpaper, and then I'll shoot it off to my publisher and start biting my nails. :)

Angie

BernardL said...

I agree with your take on the movie posters. There are some very strange ideas of 'sexy' in that lot. :)

Stacia said...

Lol, Charles, no. Caffeine and energy drinks, though. :-)


I agree, Written. I thought some of them were sexy, but certainly not all of them. And hubs and I were frankly astounded that they left the poster for "Jade" out. Awful movie but sexy poster. :-)

And yeah...I'm hating everything I write these days, sigh. Apparently we're not alone; I had a livejournal commenter say the same thing.


Oh, yeah, Angie, Good Eats totally rocks. Alton lives here in the Atlanta area. I'm considering stalking him. :-) And thanks re Demons 3. I'm a bit shy about it since it's been so long since I've written one; the second was written August-October 2007!! So it's a bit weird getting back into it now.

As for the rest, thanks as well. I will def check that out. :-)


Yes, Bernard, there are, aren't there? And some of them are so obscure. I can't imagine there weren't sexier ones out there.

Sandra Cormier said...

I use Firefox on my Mac. Is it not on the newer Macs? I have several bookmarks, categorized in different folders. I have my Writing one, plus Agents and contests and such.

When I type the first few letters of a site I visited recently, it shows a drop down to choose from. I don't think it works with a brand new session, though.

Anonymous said...

I switched to MAC about a month ago, and love it. I was frustrated with Safari, so I don't use it. I went back to Firefox, which runs beautifully and remembers my links. I can also import the bookmarks from IE. I don't know if you can do that with Safari.

I'm hoping I can download IE onto the Mac, because one of my clients ONLY allows billing online and ONLY via IE.

I'll find out when I try to invoice this Friday!

Stacia said...

I will try getting Firefox, then, and see how it works. I can re-bookmark sites and that's not a problem, it's just keeping them in the address bar; some of my most frequent sites I just kept up there (this one and livejournal, for example.)

I'm pretty sure you can download IE for the Mac; I'm running the Mac version of Office so I can still use word, and I know you can even do Windows for Mac, so I can't believe you can't get IE for it.