Fixing What You Didn't Know Was Broken

How do you fix what you didn't know was broken?  Sure, other people can point out it's broken, but until you see it for yourself, you still don't believe it. 

Case in point...

I took some interesting criticism during my Secret Agent Contest entry last week.  For now, we'll dismiss the obviously out there and address the two key points that seemed to be a running theme.

Point 1)  From the first 250 words, it sounds like YA.

I don't see it.  Sure, it starts on Jo's 18th birthday and she's a little immature (naturally), but this is the key focal point upon which rests the book - and the whole series if the other books ever see the light of day.   For me, the reader needs to see where she was to understand where's she's gotten and why she reacts the way she does to the events that unfold. 

Point 2)  I started in the wrong place.

This one, I can kinda see.  I'm notorious for starting in the wrong place anyway, so it's not surprising that I get this criticism again.  How do you know what the right place is?  I'm damned if I know because I've actually started this book in several different places and this one feels the most right.

Of course, it could be that I just need to shuffle a few things around in those 250 words to make it have more impact.  Which I will look into.  But ugh, I hate the thought of touching this manuscript again.  If I had a nickle for every word I've rewritten on this thing, I could afford to self-publish.  LOL

Of course, of course, it also could be that it's fine and those critters just needed to keep reading to see how awesome the beginning was.

But I doubt that's the case.

What about you?  How good are you at recognizing when something is broken?  When someone else points it out, are you all like 'well, duh, why didn't I see that' or are you more like 'what are you talking about... there's nothing wrong there.'?

And in case you missed it, Silver James wrote an awesome post over at The Unpublished Writers' Guide to Survival yesterday.  Go forth and read - after you comment here, of course.

Query Letter Help?

Anyone got a minute to look over this query letter I've reworked for Djinnocide?  I don't want to send it to a group site for crit.  I just need to know if I've headed in the right direction with this damn thing and I'm too close to see it.

Cuz, like, I hate it and every previous incarnation of it.  Hate it with the flame of a thousand rugburns.

Let me know either in comments or via email.  (If you've already read the book, that would be a big plus, but if not, you can at least tell me if the letter makes you want to read it.)

Bloggery Stuff

Okay, so Google screwed everyone with it's bonehead play of dropping Google Reader.  But the dashboard still worked.

Except not quite.

It won't let me add new blogs for one thing.  And some days it keeps telling me I have no blogs in my list - "would you like to add one?"  :eyeroll:  Why yes, I would like to add one, but you won't let me do that anymore either.  Turds.

So I'm slowly working on moving my blog reading over to Feedly.  So far... meh.  But then again, I'm a creature of habit.  Not hard to see why, when I've been reading blogs in my dashboard for freakin' years, I'm not exactly jumping up and down about a new way to read blogs.  Bleh.

And this morning I discovered that my dashboard has been hiding blogs from me.  (Not that it wasn't doing that before.  For weeks, it was telling me that the last post by Jeffe Kennedy had been posted in May.)  Today, I found out that Rob Thurman hasn't been absent for months.  She's been posting but dashboard hasn't been telling me.  Bastiges.

Anyway, if you haven't seen me for a while, blame the dashboard.  I'm working on getting everything transferred to Feedly, but there doesn't seem to be a way to just transfer all the damn blogs I read over at once, so I have to input them one by one. Not a project I had slotted time for, but I'm getting there.

Right now, I'm still swinging back and forth between the old dashboard and the new feed.  Depends on the day and my mood and the vagaries of technical gremlins where I'm coming at you from.  :shrug: 

How much you wanna bet as soon as I get comfortable with Feedly, they'll change it or cancel it or implode or something?

What do you read blogs on? 

Today

Today I will celebrate my ability to walk the streets of this amazing country with my legs and arms bare, and my face showing.  Hell, I'd run around buck naked if I didn't think I'd gross people out. 

Today I will revel in conversations with my husband - who sees me as his equal and never tries to quiet my words.  Although he does groan from time to time at my off-color jokes.

Today I will tell off-color jokes that make my husband groan (and sometimes laugh while groaning).

Today I will worship at that bastion of capitalism, Wal-Mart, and buy goods - like peanut butter ice cream sandwiches and kitty litter and paperback books - with my hard earned cash just because I can.

Today I will not stand in line for a loaf of bread, or a bag of flour, or a pair of shoes.  Well, except for the checkout line - in which I will happily stand because it means other people are shopping, too.  Retail therapy... Ahhhh.

Today I will not weep for the thousands lost to this insanity.  I will get pissed instead and I will rail against the oppressors of this world for being the fucked-up assholes that they are.

Today I will not ask permission from anyone to think, feel, and express myself in whatever way I see fit.  As if.

Today, I will write.  Because those countries who have sought numerous times to crush us wouldn't want me to do so.  They'd want me to be a good little burka-wearing, eyes-averted, 'yes, sir, may I have another beating', quiet, mousy, little incubator for their future homicide bombers.  Either that, or they'd want me dead.

Well, I don't think I'll accept that today.  Or any other day.  FYVM. 

What will you do today?

Sunday...

Okay, so it's Sunday.  I'm busy working on polishing Djinnocide again because damned if I didn't find TYPOS in it on my re-through.  I'm also hip-deep in the edits for Nanotechnology.  Basically I'm switching off - working on one and then the other - as I sit in the living room watching football. 

Of course, I have to go back over last night's notes because some numbnuts decided it was a good night to have a party and the whole neighborhood sounded like an '80s version of MTV Dance Party.  So, I know I wasn't concentrating on the work.  (I really need to find out who that was, so I can casually park my car outside their house at 5am and turn up my Wagner CD.  Ride of the Valkyries out to do it.  Nothing like a little opera to wake stupid folks up.)

:pokes the negativity with a pointy stick so it deflates:

Anyway, I'm making what I think is good progress.  If all goes well, I should be shooting queries for Djinnocide back out again this coming week.  And I should have the first 50 pages of Nano edits typed into the computer at least.

I was going to do yardwork today, too, but it's supposed to be 95 here today and, well, I don't feel like sweating.  Thank goodness for AC.  Instead, I'll work on writerly things and watch pro-football. 

Hope it's as good as yesterday's college ball.  GO BLUE! 

What are you up to today?

They're Killing Me

Last week, Debra Webb's latest installment of her Faces of Evil series - RUTHLESS - hit the shelves all over the country.  So I went to Walmart to get my copy.  It wasn't there.

I figured, 'okay, fine - it's only release day and first thing in the morning to boot, so they haven't had a chance to put it on the shelves yet.'  I went back to Walmart on Friday.  It wasn't there.

I went to Walmart to get it because they've been so good about having these books when they come out.  You know, a why wait for delivery when I can drive down, walk to the shelves and choose a copy kind of thing.  (If I had a choice, I'd always pick out my own copy rather than be left to the hands of some shipping dude who may or may not care if he creases the cover corners when he jams my books into a box.)

So, yesterday I went back to Walmart.  I rolled my cart up to the book aisle.  IT WASN'T THERE.  But the book stocking dude was.  I said "You're killing me here."

"What are you looking for?" he says.

I walk to the last book in the series that's still on the shelves - REVENGE - and say "The next book in this series.  RUTHLESS.  Looks just like this one, but I think it's got a yellow cover.  You can't miss it."

He says that he hasn't opened all the boxes yet and he won't know what's in them until he opens them.  He's also got some boxes still in the back he hasn't touched yet.  "How long are you going to be here?" he asks me.

I tell him I just started shopping, so I'll check back when I get everything else.  In the course of our conversation, I also let him know that according to many people on Facebook other Walmarts in America have the damn book on the shelves already - ya know, since it came out LAST WEEK.  His reply, "That's strange."

So, I go do all my shopping - which actually takes longer than usual because I was a scatterbrain yesterday morning and ended up walking all over the store because I didn't group the items on my list.  Way in back for the printer cartridges, then back to the middle for toilet paper, then three rows up for these stick-on scent thingies (like Stick-ups, but not), then all the way over to the other side of the store for suet and all the way back for grocery items.  It was like some weird ballet of "oh shit, I forgot the cat food which is over there" and "crap, where the hell are they hiding the stick butter again?"

When I finally get to the last item on my list - a birthday card for Mom - I head back in that direction.  (The cards are right by the books.)  Even before I pick out the card, I can see the book's not there.  Like I said, it has a very distinctive cover.  Still, after I get the card, I peruse the shelves.  It's not there.

Book dude still is, but now he's talking to the Pepsi dude and there are still like three boxes sitting on the floor unopened.  I bet he never even went in back for the other boxes.  So I stand there, being polite enough to not interrupt what had to be a riveting conversation about their weekend activities or some such.  At one point, the book dude looked right at me, standing there, and then turned back to his chat.  I waited another couple minutes and then left - bookless.  :sniffle:

I would order this one to read on my Kindle, but I have actual copies of the others and they look so nice in a row on my shelf that I know I need to have the next one up there, too.  Argghh.

I guess I'll have to order from Amazon and take whichever creased copy they can shove into an envelope.

These people are killing me.  And now that I think about it, they're probably what's killing the physical copy book industry, too.

Bastards.

Repainting the House... the 21st Century Way

Hey, remember in Total Recall (the original awesome one - not that thing they did to remake it) when the secretary was painting her nails?  She just used a wandy-thingie, touched the tips of her nail, and it changed to a different color. 

Well, I'm not quite using that level of technology, but I am using Microsoft Image Composer to look at different colors on my house so we can get an idea of what color would look the best.  (Yeah, Image Composer - which I've had and used since 2000.  They don't even make it anymore and it's not 100% compatible with Windows7.  But I'm used to it and it is awesomely easy.)

Anyway, I used one of the photos I took of the house:

After several false starts, including one where I turned the whole picture B&W, I got into the 'tools' in the program and chose the 'colorization' function to make the orange part white (for a better canvas):

And since then, I've been trying various shades of wood tones.  Anything to get rid of the orange.  I even tried to match the wood - using the 'color picker' tool (it sucks the color off any other image and puts it into the 'paint') I tried to match our sunroom paneling:

And ended up with:

Way too yellow...

I tried to pull colors off one of the does:

But everything looked flesh toned...

I tried using a fawn's coat:

But the background was making every attempt pull too much green.

Anyway, I'll probably play with it some more today.  I may even go out and take a full frontal pic of the house to get a better canvas to play with.  :shrug: 

Yeah, I probably should be writing...

What are you up to today?  And once you get done answering that question here, please go over to the Killer Chicks and answer it over there. 

kthnxbai