First Offenders

It's hump day so get over it

So it's Wednesday. I am not totally prepared today (this seems to be a theme this week), so a few random thoughts:

• I'm trying out the "new" Typepad. I have no idea what makes this one better than the other. So far it looks pretty much the same. 

• I'm working from home today because I'm going to talk to a book group at noon. I love this book group. I've met with them for every one of my books. It's a great group of people who work at our Legislative Office Building up in Hartford. They've always got great comments about my books, and I'm really curious how they liked The Missing Ink because they were lamenting Annie's demise last year when we talked about Shot Girl.

• I can't figure out the obsession with this new TV show Castle. The main character is a mystery writer and he hangs out with a hot police woman to get ideas for his books. And apparently they've gotten real life mystery writers like Michael Connelly to play themselves playing poker. This is a TV show? Oh, and I guess there's a book "written" by Castle for download on the ABC website. I can't get through ten minutes of this show.

• My new favorite show, however, is Bored to Death on HBO. A writer who has read all those pulp detective novels decides he can become a private eye because he knows how it's done. Incredibly clever and funny and you can't beat Ted Danson as his boss, the crazy magazine editor.

• I went out to the Mohegan Sun casino last week for a book event and had dinner at one of the restaurants there before hand. Why when you go out to dinner alone the hostess always looks at you like you're a total loser?

• At said book event I met a really cool guy named Dan Waters who writes really cool YA books about teenage zombies. Check out his blog here.

• And I'm almost done with Victor's incredibly fun Vampire A Go-Go. It makes my commute on the bus much more tolerable, although yesterday the nice Muslim woman in the burka sitting next to me seemed a little startled by the cover.

Do you have any random thoughts you'd like to share?

Karen

Aw crap. It's Tuesday.

By Alison

Keeping up Jeff's theme of forgetting to post for annoyingly stupid reasons, I totally forgot it was my blog day too, because I've been taking care of my daughter, who's home sick with some kind of bug. She's got her appetite but has an on-and-off fever and a bad cough, and I'm starting to feel like I may be catching it from her. No fever, but I'm feeling kinda run down and weak, and I've been coughing like Jack Klugman on a bad day. (Dated references. Another sign of severe illness) Sigh....

So, I'm gonna keep this short and sweet: FOFOs,  how can we get better, fast? Give me any and all of your home and storebought remedies. I hate being sick, and so does my daughter. So keep 'em coming!

It's Monday? Really?

Hey lookee there. The calendar says it's Monday. Man, I know there was something I'm supposed to do on Mondays, but I can't recall what it is. I hate getting old. Feed the dogs? Did that. Get the kid to school? Did that. Go to meeting at school? Did that, too. Hmmm...I wish I could remember. Oh, I wonder what's going on over at the blog today...

Crap. My day to post. Not like I've been doing this very long. It's easy to see how I could forget, right? Only been like four years. Whatever.

So here is my post - I burned my hand on the lawnmower this weekend. I now have an ugly, hideous, gross blister on the side of my index finger and it keeps oozing and oozing and stinging and stinging. Awesome, right? I would take a picture of it but I don't feel like it. So you'll just have to draw up your own mental image. And after I burned it, I had to go play tennis and, uh, it sorta popped and, uh, well this is getting uncomfortable.

Tell us the dumbest thing you did this weekend.
Jeff

BABES IN JOYLAND
When I was 16, I loved Maria McKee. Now that I'm 39...I still heart her. XOXO.

Lone Justice - Shelter
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NOT YET...

I finished a novel manuscript.  I don't like it.  I'm not sure why, other than maybe it's not doing what I set out to do as well as I would like.  I like what I set out to do, and I like parts of the thing I'm reading now as I go back through, but there's still a nagging "Not yet" that holds me back.

I'm working on another one, too.  Same sort of thing.  It's just underway, but I already feel like I'm explaining too much, telling too much, and not just living and breathing the story the way I had originally felt it in the planning stages.  I want to tell this story, I really do, but if it doesn't feel right, then I might as well wait until it does.

Which is what I'm going to do.

Oh, I'll still make forward progress on both of them, but I'm currently in a learning cycle again.  Every so often, you have to really rethink your craft, re-see the things you do that you take for granted.  You have to ask if there's a better way to do it while still maintaining whatever spark it is that separates your style of storytelling from all the others out there.  I'm recapturing ideas that I know pretty well and have read in theory and in practice from other writers.  I'm even thinking of rereading a book I read earlier this year (Lush Life by Richard Price) because the way he told the story has stuck with me, and I want to take another run at it, take the book apart, see how the magic works.

I'm a big fan of Penn and Teller for several reasons, but the one thing about their magic act is that they claim to show us how they perform the trick.  But the explanation is never actually how they really did it, so that's another form of slight of hand right there.  You're supposed to know the answer now, but you still don't, and perhaps you're even further boggled because of this new layer of magic on top of the first.

Isn't that the best writing, too?  The stuff that looks so easy that you don't realize how difficult it is?

I guess what I'm saying is that for these new works, I want to be a better magician.

Which writers give you that sense of "making the complex look simple"?

Friday Bonus Non-Music Video:

Rocky Mountain High

Lori here~

I'm headed to Denver today for the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association conference. I'll be meeting with booksellers etc., as well as my publicist from Simon and Schuster, and a couple of regional reps.

Cool, huh?

It's the first time I've attended this event. I'll also be signing ARCs of NO MERCY at the author reception on Friday. Maybe signing will give me the feeling this book is actually going to hit the shelves. It's been a long process, I finished writing the book in June 2007, my agent sold this new series in Nov. 2007 and the book wasn't scheduled for release until Jan. 2010.

I'm bringing my laptop, so I'll also be locked in my hotel room working when I'm not in the bar--I mean networking. Saturday I'm helping out in the Mystery Writers of America booth, Rocky Mountain Chapter, which we're sharing with Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. I'll be hanging out with FOFO Mario Acevedo at some point too.

So...think I can convince the NY Publishing folks to try Rocky Mountain Oysters when we're out to dinner Friday night?

Flipping out

A couple years back I got hooked on that TLC show Property Ladder. We were in Quebec City and it was on one of the few non-French TV channels. I was intrigued because as a journalist, "flipping" property wasn't exactly something law-abiding people did. But on this show, regular folks buy a house and then proceed to destroy it to create something that maybe someone else will buy and they'll make a huge profit.

Granted, the show has been in reruns as of late, since the real estate market just isn't producing the type of profit it used to, but I'm still intrigued. People tear apart things that seem perfectly sound: a nicely tiled shower, a great kitchen floor, a stone fireplace. All with the idea that they can make it better, make it more appealing to a buyer and they can make more money. Problem is, usually they end up spending more of their own money because ripping the house apart ends up in discovering even more problems: mostly structural.

This is what's happened with my manuscript. I had 160 solid pages. So I thought. I was moving along at a nice clip, my five page a day regimen was on track. I'd have the first draft done before Bouchercon.

But then I decided to "flip" it.

I went back to the beginning and began to re-read. I do that sometimes, just to make sure I'm being consistent, that I haven't gone too far off the track. And while I'm not sure I was that far off, I started making changes. They were small at first, like ripping out some old kitchen cabinets or removing wallpaper with a U.S. bicentennial theme. Things that needed to be done. But then it got a little worse. "This" couldn't possibly happen after "that," so "this" and "that changed places, and then "this" went away altogether and "that" ended up in a totally different place. That's when the building inspector showed up and said the renovations "failed." Back to the drawing board. A little more action here, a little less there, some witty banter, and then it started to come together again.

It's better now. I'm not ready to have my open house, but I am seeing a marked improvement. I'm back to 160 pages, although now I know I'll be taking my laptop to Indianapolis so I can at least write on the plane. I've gone over my deadline, I've made that extra mortgage payment, but I think it'll still make a profit in the end. Figuratively, of course.

If you're a writer, do you do this? Do you decide halfway through that you have to flip your plot?

And if you're a reader, have you ever read a book that should've been flipped?

Karen

Lady Gaga is in my brain and she won't get out!

By Alison

My eight-year-old daughter loves that Lady Gaga song, Paparazzi. It comes on the radio, my daughter asks me to turn it up. Practically every day, she walks around the house singing it at the top of her lungs -- and since I'd much rather have her singing that at the top of her lungs than that other Lady Gaga song, the one where she wants to take a ride on your disco stick, I more or less approve.

The only problem is, I can't get the song out of my head. For the past three days, papa, paparazzi has been playing in my brain in a continuous loop, and while I kinda liked the song when I first heard it, it is fast becomming the worst form of torture.

I don't know if I'm more susceptible to earworms than most, but it seems like every week, I've got some godawful song in my head like that last guest at the party, refusing to leave -- unless it's to make way for a tune that's even more torturous. Before Papparazzi, it was Shorty Fire Burning on the Dance Floor. Before that... well I don't remember, but probably some femmy thing that Jeff blasts in his car.

The point is, it's a vicious circle. I've had people recommend earworm cures to me -- everything from the Ramones' I Wanna Be Sedated to the Theme from Shaft (He really is a complicated man...) but those only work for a few minutes, it seems, and then I'm back at the goddamned Lady Gaga concert.

So I'm asking you guys: Are you as plagued by earworms as me? And even more important, what's your favorite earworm cure?

Punched In The Face

Okay so I've had a pretty crappy couple of weeks. Do you ever get to that point where it seems like no matter what you do, there is someone standing around the corner, waiting to punch you in the face? And then you think they won't be there this time, so you turn the corner and BAM! You take another one to the face. You ever feel like that? No? Well pretend you do.

I need good news. Happy things. Happy thoughts. About anything and everything. Make us laugh and smile today. Before I get punched again.
Jeff

BABES IN JOYLAND
Okay so this isn't really a Babes in Joyland song, but I heard it on the radio last week and it did make me smile. It also probably made me a little gay.

Owl City - Fireflies
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PURE FUCKING POETRY

Today, I got some in-grown toenails torn out, and they hurt like hell.  There's a lot of noise in my head right now--noise meaning paaaaaaain--that I'm assured will settle down tomorrow, and then onward towards a new life without chronic toe throbbing, amen.

So today, I'm just going to post one of my favorite poems by Richard Brautigan:

Fuck me like fried potatoes
on the most beautifully hungry
morning of my God-damn life.

Any fave lines of poetry you'd like to share?

Friday Bonus Music Video:

Will Young Light My Fire lyrics

My Love Will Not Change Video - Will Young Light My Fire Music Videos

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Standing On The Edge Of The Abyss

Lori here~

In July I was notified by the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce and the Allied Arts Foundation that I was selected as a 2009 Rushmore Award Recipient for my contribution to the arts in the Black Hills. Talk about shocked. And humbled. Over the last twenty years, artists, musicians, dancers, sculptors, teachers, authors, philanthropists, visionaries from this area have been awarded this honor. And now little ol' me.

Gulp.

The award ceremony is tonight. My family will be there supporting me, as they have since day one in this crazy career. My official portrait will also be revealed. A portrait I have not seen. That portrait will hang in the Rapid City Civic Center, alongside previous winners.

So when the photographer contacted me a few weeks ago to get a feel for what I envisioned for the setting, we both discounted the idea of me sitting at desk, pen in hand, a stack of my books by my side. I wanted an outdoor portrait. Since the South Dakota setting in my books is practically its own character, I suggested a sweeping vista of the Black Hills or the rugged high plains with a view of The Badlands. Or Bear Butte, since that plays a big part in the Julie Collins series. Scratch that idea. Paul Goble, a Caldecott winning author from this area who pens and illustrates children's books featuring Native American fables, specifically Sioux fables, was photographed there a few years back for this award.

We chose a place and a date. I showed up in the outfit I'd agonized over and the photographer's first question was: Do you suffer from vertigo?

Luckily, no, I don't suffer from fear of heights. Put me in a cave? Different story altogether. We hiked in with his equipment so I knew where he'd be and he indicated I'd be 1000 feet across the canyon from him. On top of a 200 ft. sheer rock cliff. Because we'd be a considerable distance apart, his assistant (his wife) and he had walkie talkies to communicate. This area is a popular spot for hikers and rock climbers. She and I drove down to the the next walk in spot and hiked in damn near a mile, up hill. Along the way, were memorial flowers for those souls who had died falling off the cliffs.

Double gulp.

The weird thing? In high school I partied up at "Falling Rock" all the time and I had NO IDEA there were cliffs around, let alone cliffs of that magnitude.

Once I scrambled onto the section he'd chosen, and situated myself with my books, yes, I hauled in ALL the Lori Armstrong as well as all the Lorelei James books in with me, because otherwise, I figured people would see the portrait and wonder what the hell *I* did to get on the wall of fame. Anyway, I could scarcely see the photographer, but I knew he could see me, as the lens on his camera was as big around as the bottom of a coffee can and as long as my arm. He directed me to turn left, to turn right, chin up, chin down, smile, move your hair, stand up, etc. all via walkie talkie. After the first two thousand shots on the inset cliff, he had me move to the edge of the cliff and sit on a rock outcropping. The drop was 200 ft. straight down. Rock climbers were scaling the opposite wall. Rapid Creek was rushing below. Wind whispered through the pine trees and the golden glow of the sun surrounded me. It was almost magical. I knew we'd chosen the perfect spot.

Still, I'm more nervous about seeing the picture than I was standing on the edge of the cliff because the photographer got to choose the official pose, not me. But I'm confident the portrait reflects the beauty of the area where I live.

What would be a definitive spot in your neck of the woods?