Spirit Day

While I'm not part of the official Authors Against Bullying event that's going on today, I still wanted to post something on the subject, because I think it’s an important problem that doesn’t get as much attention as it should.

I'm lucky enough that I was never really bullied in school. Teased, sure. I think most kids are at one point or another. And I was a good candidate for teasing, as I was never part of the popular crowd (nor did I want to be: I had nothing in common with them and many were your typical “mean girls”). I was shy and quiet and awkward, with glasses and a frizzy perm and not the greatest fashion sense (even for the 80s). And I was smart, which is always the kiss of death when you’re a kid. But I was okay with my lot in school, because I had friends and no one bothered me too much.

Except on the bus. I lived close enough to grade school to walk, so middle school was my first experience being bussed to and from school. I was excited at first because it meant no more walking in the snow. Unfortunately, there were a couple of boys on that particular bus that decided I was a perfect target with my introverted demeanor and nerdy appearance. I don’t remember much about what they did, though for the most part I think it was generally verbal taunting more than anything physical. But one incident will always stand out in my mind.

On one particular day in seventh grade, the boys were sitting behind me and the bigger one (it’s always the bigger one, isn’t it?) decided it would be funny to pull my hair. So he leaned over the back of my seat and began to tug out my hair one strand at a time. It hurt, but I tried to ignore him because that’s what they always say to do when someone is bothering you. After a few minutes, however, something in me snapped and I spun around, yelled “stop it!” and smacked him across the face, hard enough to leave a red mark.

It takes a lot to get me really mad. I’m generally an even-tempered sort of person, and even when I do get angry, I tend to bottle it up inside and keep it to myself. I still don’t know what it was about that day that made me snap, but it’s the first and only time I can remember actually hitting someone. I know violence is never the answer, and it’s not something I would ever suggest anyone else use to solve their problems, but in that particular situation I can’t deny it felt pretty damn good.

Until the bus driver stopped and got up to face us. I was all ready to be in trouble, braced for a lecture or punishment. I don’t remember exactly what she said anymore, but she surprised me by not yelling at me. Oh, I think there was some sort of half-hearted “we shouldn’t hit people” in there, but what I remember most is that she essentially told the boy, “You asked for it, dumbass.” Except without the dumbass part. That part was understood.

Those boys never bothered me again.

Okay, so maybe my story isn’t the best example of how to deal with a bully, but for a painfully shy girl who never spoke up for herself, it was a big thing for me. I shocked myself almost as much as I shocked the brat that was tormenting me. (I probably shouldn’t still feel glee at that memory, but I’m only human.) If there’s any moral to my story it’s that once I finally stood up to the bully, he left me alone. Not so much because I hurt him: I was way too weak for my little slap to do more than sting for a second. Maybe I embarrassed him, or maybe I let him know that I wasn’t going to put up with his treatment of me any longer. Maybe he stopped because the bus driver was watching him more closely from then on. Whatever the reason, he stopped and I didn’t dread those bus rides any longer.

By the time high school rolled around, my family had moved to Florida, I got contacts, dumped the perm and was lucky enough that the 90s didn’t have much in the way of fashion. Concert t-shirts, jeans and flannel shirts were all you needed to be stylin’ back then. No one on my high school bus bothered me and the only people that teased me were my fellow band geek friends. All in all, I was pretty lucky.

For a post with a much better moral than mine, go check out Rachel Caine's about the role innocent bystanders play in bullying that I think makes an important point.

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Kitchen is done!

As mentioned in the last blog post I wrote, my spare time lately has been filled with a big kitchen reno my family has been doing. Interior design is a hobby of mine, so I had a lot of fun with this. Once upon a time, I considered trying to become a pro designer, even started an at-home course for it, but eventually realized that I only really enjoy interior design when I’m doing my own interior, to my own taste. :) So hobby it is.

After months of work (mostly on weekends, so it’s been stretched out), we have DIYed ourselves a pretty nice-looking kitchen for about 1/10 the cost of those renos you see on HGTV all the time. In other words, instead of spending $30,000 – $50,000, we did everything for between $3000-$4000. Not too shabby. Granted, we saved a big chunk of money by not getting new appliances, but our current appliances work just fine. I love HGTV, but after a while it gets tiring to watch show after show talking about how every kitchen HAS TO HAVE granite counters and stainless steel appliances. Sorry, but that’s just silly. Your kitchen can look nice without them. Sure stainless would look nice with what we’ve done, but it’s not worth the added expense just to be more matchy.

Some before-and-after shots, because photography is another hobby and I couldn’t resist snapping a lot of photos. (click each for a bigger view)

     

For those interested, here’s what we did:

New paint on the walls and ceiling. (After scraping off the horrific popcorn. I’m not sure we’ll ever attempt THAT again.) That alone made a big difference, given the dark green we used to have on the walls. Replacing the florescent light fixture wasn’t an option, since it was recessed into the ceiling, so we tweaked it a little by adding moulding around the edges and recessing the plastic light panels some. An inexpensive change, but it looks a lot nicer and makes the ceiling feel a little taller somehow. This is a closer view of it:

Cabinets: The biggest project. We couldn’t afford to replace them, so we refaced them instead. First, we removed the row of uppers over the sink to open the room a little more and clear the view into the living room. We have so many cabinets, we were able to rearrange all our junk into the others with no problem. (We have 39 cabinets total, and that’s after removing the 8 uppers.) The next step was getting rid of those awful wood strips/handles. They were attached with screws and a little glue, so not too hard to get off, but we had to replace them with something because without them, not all the doors covered the entire opening of the cabinets behind them. So we went to Home Depot and found some strips of wood that were nearly the perfect height/depth to match up, cut the lengths to size and screwed them in. There’s a slight line where they meet, but it’s not very obvious unless you look for it, and it was a hell of a lot cheaper than new custom cabinet doors would have been! After that, we primed everything (the doors aren’t wood, but a laminate-covered board), then painted them a dark brown. We’ll probably end up getting some kind of sealer to paint over it though, because we’ve noticed even with the super-sticky primer, the paint chips and scratches pretty easily. New hardware completed the updated look, and the whole thing cost just under $200!

Counters: This was the biggest expense. There isn’t really anything you can do to a laminate counter to make it look better other than replace it. Granite and Quartz are nice, but too pricey, so we found a good sale at Lowe’s on a Formica Solid Surface counter that would update the room without breaking the bank. It’s a nice stone feel, with much less upkeep than granite (no sealing, and if you scratch it, it can be sanded down like new). It looks pretty sharp with the dark cabinets. We chose the Crema Terrazzo color. Here is a closer image of it:

We didn’t have a backsplash before, and it was something I really wanted, so we spent some time comparing what was available. We finally decided on a mosaic pattern we liked and headed off to Home Depot to buy it, but once we got there with our paint swatch from the cabinets and compared the two, it turned out the colors didn’t go together as well as we expected. Luckily, there was another mosaic in stock that ended up being a perfect match. Not only did the browns go well, but there were little stainless steel tiles mixed in that matched nicely to our new cabinet hardware. Here’s a link to the pattern.

Our old kitchen floor was a gray ceramic tile that, at the time the house was built, was probably a premium add-on. It was nice, but over time we’ve gotten pretty sick of it. For one, it’s so hard (I think the builders glued it right to the concrete subfloor rather than lay any kind of barrier underneath to cushion it) that anything you drop shatters on impact. And for another, due to that lack of barrier, as the house has settled over the years, cracks have started to form in it. Between that and general chipping from use, it was looking pretty crappy. Also, gray wasn’t going to go with our new color scheme, so a new floor was needed. Problem was, we didn’t want more hard tile (or the work that would go into removing the current tile), so we found a different kind of flooring at a local surplus store that works really well with our new design. It’s essentially a laminate wood – the kind where the planks lock together and float over a thin foam under… thing. But instead of a wood face, it was designed to look like tiles. You can’t really tell it’s not tile until you walk on it. The real test will be the next time we drop something. By getting this kind of floor, we were able to install it right on top of the tile. Much less work, and with no grouting to deal with, it’ll probably be easier to clean.

So that’s our new kitchen. Now that the work is done, maybe I can get back to editing that damn book…

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Happy Anniversary!

A year ago this week, I published DESTINED. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year already!

Technically, August 24 was the official Amazon publish date, but I didn’t “go public” with the book until a few days later. I wanted my mother to be the first to see it, as a birthday gift, so August 29th was when I finally came out to the world as a self-published author. Admittedly, I planned to have more books published by now, but the process takes some time, and my next book needs a lot of editing and polishing before it’s ready to go out in the world. And while I’d love to say that day is near, it will probably be at least a few months (possibly more) before I publish again. My goal is to have the next book available in time for the holiday season. Here’s hoping I make it.

My excuse for being so behind is pretty much this: I’m slow. I’m a perfectionist, which slows me down even in the best of situations, but I’m also a procrastinator and easily distracted. These last few months, there have been outside distractions keeping me from finishing my edits, and the book has more or less been collecting dust while I tended to them. I’ve gotten things settled so that there’s really only one major distraction left, and one that should only keep me occupied on the weekends. But it’s a big one.

We’re renovating our kitchen. It’s a lot of fun, and long overdue, but it’s time-consuming and a lot of work. I’d say we’re nearly halfway done at this point. We’ve taken down some upper cabinets that were blocking the view and closing off the space, scraped the awful 1980s popcorn off the ceiling and repainted the walls. The new countertop is ordered (they’re coming to measure for it later today) and we’ve got a basic plan in place for sprucing up the dated cabinet doors. We have too many cabinets to replace them completely given our small budget, be we’re going to do a little refacing to make them more modern, then paint them and add hardware.

Here is the “before” shot. Pardon the mess. (Click to see a bigger version)

As you can see, we have a very 80s/early 90s kitchen design right now. At the time, it was a great thing: our house was built as a model home, with all the fancy upgrades. These European-style cabinets were all the rage then, as well as the mauve carpet that we’ve slowly replaced with wood floors (or newer, not-mauve carpet). The entire house was done in mauve and gray, something I loved at the time because I was a teenage girl and pink was pretty. As we revamp room by room, it’s slowly changing to a more neutral (okay, brown) color scheme. For all we know, in 10 years people will look at at it and go “wow, this house is so 2010s.” But for now, we like it.

This is a before/after of our formal living room, which we redecorated a few years back. Click for bigger, or go here for another view of the finished design.

I also redid my bathroom, bedroom and walk-in closet, but photos of that don’t’ show the results as well. I love interior design. There was a time I thought about trying to do it professionally, but I eventually realized that I only truly enjoy it when I’m designing something to my own taste. I’m not sure I’d be able to design other people’s spaces; not unless they liked the exact same things I like. As it is, I have a hard enough time convincing the rest of my family to do what I want. ;)

Anyway, that’s my explanation for being so absent lately, and for not having the next book out as soon as I’d promised. And now that this blog post is done, I’m going to go do some of that editing I’ve been talking about!

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Update on various things

So far, this year has been a lot busier than I’d anticipated. Good, I suppose, except that I would have liked more of that busyness to be writing-related. Maybe that will be the second half of my year. *fingers crossed* Instead, I’ve been busy with day job stuff, family stuff and more fun (but still not writing-related) trip-to-Paris-planning stuff.

If I find inspiration for a new book while in Paris, can I claim the trip as a business expense? ;)

I admit I’m using blogging today as a tool to procrastinate. I’m in the middle of re-designing our website at the day job, and after spending all week slowly re-coding the old pages to the new layout, I needed a break. Tomorrow, I’m going to see the Hunger Games movie (woo!), so I feel a little guilty that I’m using my one free weekend day to slack off, but that’s what weekends are made for, right?

I do have a feel things of note to mention, but before I get to the actual updating, I felt this post needed a pretty picture. A few weeks back, I took a photography tour at one of my most favorite places, Big Cat Rescuse. It was a Christmas present (thanks, Mom & Dad!), and while the cats weren’t as active as I had hoped, I managed to get some nice shots. Everything, in my opinion, is made better with cats. Especially gorgeous ones like this cougar.

Now for the updates. The next few months are going to be busy for me. Not only will I be editing my next book and preparing for my Paris trip in May, but April is the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. Because of this, I’m aiming to do some extra promotion for DESTINED, in the hopes that whatever interest the anniversary raises will trickle down to me in the form of new readers.

First bit of promotion: I’m donating a copy of DESTINED to Ruby’s Reads Birthday Giveaway Hop, which will be happening from April 12-24. When I have more details, I’ll be sure to post them here.

Second, I’m going to be doing my very own (and very first) blog tour. It’s a short one, due to the late notice (I only got the idea last week. Whoops!) and because it coincides with the Titanic anniversary, which is less than a week. The blog tour will run for 5 days, from April 10 – April 14. The wonderful Parajunkee is organizing it for me, and is currently finalizing the list of bloggers that will be involved. If this tour goes well, I’ll probably do a longer one for the release of my next book. (If I ever find enough time to get the damn thing edited!) Again, I’ll update here once I know more.

Third, I’m hoping to do a series of posts here that same week about the Titanic, as a kind of tribute to the ship’s maiden—and final—voyage. It will depend on if I have the time to write that many posts in advance, but my aim is to do something each day about that corresponding day of the voyage, along with a short spoiler-free snippet from DESTINED that goes along with the day featured.

In blog-related news, thanks to a post I stumbled across today over at Fiction VIxen’s blog, I discovered my own blog settings weren’t really optimal. I’ve remedied that, and now anyone can comment to my posts without having to log in or register somewhere first, and no one should have to use Captcha anymore. Hopefully these new settings won’t get me spammed to high heaven. I really want this blog to be user-friendly, and since I personally hate dealing with Captcha and don’t comment if I have to register first, it was pretty hypocritical to expect my own readers to deal with both roadblocks. I promise, it was never intentional. It must have been the default Blogger settings, and I never caught them before. So thank you to Fiction Vixen for inspiring me check it out!

Now that the updates are out of the way, I think I’m going to use the what’s left of my afternoon editing the still-untitled (I suck at titles) next book.

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Holiday Wishes

For those who celebrate, Happy Hanukkah! (Chanukah? They’re both technically correct, right?) I remember when I was a kid, I was always a little jealous of my Jewish friends because they got presents for 8 days. And even more, many of those friends had parents from both religions, so they celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas. What can I say, I was all about the presents back then. Come to think of it, I still am. I do love presents.

Christmas is my favorite holiday, and not just because of the gifts. I love the decorations, the music, the food, the general merryment of the season … everything, pretty much. It took me longer than normal to get into the mood for it this year, but I think I’m finally there. I still have a little shopping left to do (I’m a procrastinator), and have yet to wrap a single gift, but I’ll get it all done. I always do, even if it’s at the last minute. I baked this weekend, put up both trees, helped with the outdoor lights and listened to lots of Christmas music. I think that’s what I needed to feel like it really is that time of year, since the weather certainly isn’t showing it. We live in Florida, so it’s always warmer than my childhood Christmases were in Chicago, but this year it seems warmer than usual. It was nearly 80 degrees when we were putting up lights! I keep hoping a cold front will come through, just enough to make it a little cooler. I have Christmas shirts I want to wear, but they’re all long-sleeved, and it’s been too warm for them.

I know, not exactly a bad problem to have. I’m not complaining, trust me. I love living here, although I’m a little less excited about it in the summer, when it’s miserably hot and humid.

My original plan for this post was to do a “Christmas on the Titanic” article for Titanic Tuesdays, but I wasn’t able to find enough information to say much. Obviously, the Titanic never had any kind of Christmas celebration, since its one and only voyage was in April, but other ships at that time would have. Her sister ship, Olympic, most likely went all-out and decorated in December, much like cruises do nowadays. I’ve read that many of the ocean liners at the time would put up trees and lights and serve special holiday menus, even hire on special entertainment (famous choirs, for example). I had hoped to find some pictures or detailed accounts online of some of these, but had no luck.

Still, I can’t help thinking Captain Smith would have made an awesome Santa Claus. Don't you think?

I probably won’t post again before the holidays, so Merry Christmas to those who observe it. I’ll see you all again before the New Year. And hopefully once the craziness of the holidays passes by, I can get back to working on my next book. I’m still aiming for an early 2012 release (February, maybe, if I’m lucky), so keep an eye here for more news!

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My new toy

Warning: technogeekery ahead

I realize I haven’t been very chatty online lately, either here or elsewhere. It’s been a busy month, between work getting crazy and my own procrastination. I never seem to start Christmas shopping as early as I should, so I find myself going nuts in the last few weeks of the month, trying to get everything bought. We still haven’t even put up decorations! I think this is the latest I’ve ever waited to decorate. I love Christmas, and am usually wanting to put up the lights and trees right after Thanksgiving. This year I just… never seemed to get around to it. If I don’t do it later today, definitely tomorrow!

I might have decorated yesterday, except I ended up spending most of my afternoon getting a new toy: a Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone! It’s all new and shiny and I already love it. I was due for my 2-year renewal, so I’ve been waiting for this particular model to be released, but Verizon has been cagey about setting a date. They finally announced it Wednesday night, so I reserved one at my Verizon store and went in the next day after work to snatch it up.

Apologies for the crappy quality of that photo. I had to take it without flash to avoid glare, and the light in here isn’t that great. But you can see the difference: the one on the left is my old Drois Eris, on the right is the Nexus. So much bigger! (That’s my iPad underneath them.) Yes, I like technology. I think it’s partly due to being a Taurus. I don’t normally follow astrology much, but whenever I read personality descriptions of Taurus I find myself agreeing with most of them. This bit in particular:

"The key words that best describes Taurus is the phrase "I have" which basically means that you have a nature to own and possess whatever you think is yours; from relationships to material goods. How I have seen this trait in just about every Taurus is the quality of never liking to let go of anything that they have previously invested any time or energy and especially money."

To put it simply: I want All the Things. And once I have the Things, I rarely let them go, unless it’s to get a newer, better, faster Thing. Combine being a packrat with wanting to buy everything you see and you get very full closets. Sometimes I manage to control myself, but if it’s electronic and shiny, chances are I’m going to cave in sooner or later. Most of the time I’m at war with myself: my materalistic Taurus side is usually fighting my spendthrift Bohemian side, and it can get ugly. (Bohemian is what people nowadays would call Czech.) So while I always want these new, expensive Things, I also tend to take a long time reading reviews and price-checking before I finally go out and buy one, to be sure I’m getting the best deal possible. Case in point: the Galaxy Nexus.

I didn’t really need such a fancy smartphone. Hell, I probably don’t even need a smartphone at all. I have the iPad to use at home, and unless I’m at work (where there are computers), home is usually where I am. So it’s not that often that I need to check my email or a website on my phone. Need and want are two different things, however, so I’ve had a smartphone for 2 years now and couldn’t imagine going back down to a regular cell. So fine, there are plenty of smartphones out there that are free with contract renewal, why not one of them? Because they aren’t NEW. I like new, and I like having the latest Thing. My old phone, the Droid Eris, was great when I first got it (because it was new: Droids had only just come out), but it wasn’t long before they stopped selling it, then stopped updating it. It’s been a dinosaur for about 1 1/2 of those 2 years I’ve owned it. The Android OS was ancient (I’m not even sure it ever got an upgrade to 2.0, and if it did, not much past that), it was sloooooow and every time I tried to look something up online, the web browser would crash. I had come to hate it. So when it was time to get a new one, I had to be sure I picked a phone that wouldn’t fall into the same black hole of non-updates. I’ve been researching Verizon smartphones since early November, making sure when I finally bought one, it would be the best choice for me. And even though I was sure by Thanksgiving that I wanted the Nexus, it wasn’t out yet, and everyone was doing these great sales on the other new ones that was tempting me to stop waiting because that Bohemian side of me can’t resist a Good Deal.

I almost went with the Droid RAZR or the HTC Rezound back then, because both were being sold for almost nothing online in Black Fricay/Cyber Monday sales. I liked the HTC part of my Eris (the big clock with weather widget was nifty), but the fancy audio didn’t really matter to me, and without that it seemed like any other smartphone. The RAZR was cool-looking, but felt too wide in my hand, and I read some negative reviews about how bad Motorola is about updating their phones. The Galaxy Nexus had many things going for it: one, it was preloaded with Ice Cream Sandwich (aka Android 4.0, the latest version of the OS). Two, it has one of the biggest screens of a smartphone, which with my bad eyes, is a godsend. I hated my tiny Eris screen. I couldn’t read anything on the damn thing most of the time, which only added to the reasons I hardly ever used it. Also, the Nexus screen is HD and absolutely beautiful. Bonus! Three, it’s a “pure Google phone,” which means (so they say) it will be among the first to get updates in the future. Also, by being a “pure Google phone,” it didn’t come preloaded with all the crapware most smartphones have. Crapware being all those apps you didn’t want, won’t ever use, but can’t delete because the carrier won’t let you get rid of them. The only apps on the Nexus were the basic Google-centric apps and a couple of Verizon apps that I suspect all their phones have to have (one to view your account and I don’t know what the other is for). Nothing that bothers me. And four: it’s really pretty. And shiny. Have I mentioned shiny?

So that was my excitement for the week. A shiny new toy to play with. And it’s not even Christmas yet!

Enough with the geekery. I’m going to go play with my phone some more. I still haven’t tested out how the HD video works. Where are the cats?

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Fun with Genealogy

Before I get to the post, some news: if you’d like a chance to win a copy of Destined, check out this great giveaway being hosted at Starcrossed Reviews. The lucky winners will not only get a copy of Destined (paperback for US winners, ebook for International), but a whole lot of other great books (about 20 in total). Contest rules and details are at the link above. Starcrossed gave Destined a fantastic 5-star review not too long ago, in case you missed it.

Also, it looks like the ebook for Destined has finally been sent to Kobo, for those who were waiting for it to be available for that reader. I’m still waiting for it to show up in their catalog, but am hoping it won’t be much longer. I will post to Facebook/Twitter when it finally becomes available there. I apologize again for the delay. Apparently Kobo was seriously backlogged.

Now that the news and promos are out of the way, I can get on to the actual post. Which I am now writing about an hour after the first part, due to discovering that my scanner no longer works on my new computer. (Apparently Canon couldn’t bother themselves to make Windows 7 drivers for it.) So now I either need to buy a new scanner or a new printer that has a scanner included. The last time I bought a new printer, I intentionally didn’t get the all-in-one kind because I already had a perfectly good flatbed scanner. It seemed like overkill (and a waste of money) to buy one with a scanner when I didn’t need that feature. Now I feel like it’s silently taunting me.

So what was all the scanning fuss about? I got a card this week from a cousin I reconnected with a few years back while doing genealogy research on my dad’s side of the family. She sent along some old photos another cousin found that included my great grandmother, and while it was neat to see some new (to me) photos of her, it reminded me just how important it is to label your family photos. The few that were written on were mostly just names, and I suspect those were written recently rather than at the time they were developed. The caption on this one? “Sylvia & Indian.” I have no Native American blood in my family (that I know of), except for way, way, way back on my mother’s side. I have ancestors there who, in 1704, were attacked by a tribe of Caughnawagas (a branch of the Mohawks, I believe) and had four of their sons captured and taken to Canada. One son was later bought back by the family, while the other 3 were left behind and grew up with the Indians, eventually assimilating into the tribe. One was even adopted as the chief’s son, if the stories are correct. But anyway, that’s not my dad’s side of the family, so I can only imagine the photo here was taken on some kind of vacation. There’s another photo of her and the older Indian, without the younger boy, one of her with two of her cousins in front of the same store, and another of her by herself in what appears to be the same outfit, standing at a wooden railing overlooking some kind of gorge or waterfall. No sign of her husband or son around, even though she’s old enough that they’d both be in the picture (no pun intended).

I can’t help wondering, who were the Indians? Did she know them, or were they just hanging around the store, posing for photos with strangers, the way Egyptians do? (Photo to the right is from a trip I took to Egypt in 2005. I have no idea who these two men are. They posed for my father while we were touring an old site and soon as he took the photo, they demanded a tip.) I can’t help wondering what my descendants will think 60-70 years or so from now when they look at my photos? I suspect they’ll be seriously confused, since I hate to be photographed, and the few photos I am in tend to include minor celebrities (I went through a big soap opera phase a while back and have stacks of pictures of myself with actors from General Hospital.). The photos I’ll be passing down will be mostly scenery from vacations and cats. And none are labeled, either.

I think part of the reason I got so interested in genealogy was because I’m a writer. I love uncovering stories about people I never knew existed, or learning new things about the people I did know. A perfect example is a story I learned about my great grandmother (the one posing with the Indians). While researching her family, I came across a census record that showed a child in the household named Georgiana. I had never heard of my great grandmother having a sister: just two brothers. I asked my father, who also hadn’t heard of her, which made it even stranger as he was very close to that side of his family. Georgiana wasn’t on the next census with her family, but she would have been 21 that year, so it was possible she’d married. Still, it was strange that she vanished so completely, and the online marriage records for Chicago end in 1920, so I couldn’t find anything there. There were no death records matching her maiden name, so if she had died young, I found no proof. She just disappeared! Or so it seemed. And then I found this photo in my grandparents’ things:

The only writing on it was Sylvia’s father’s name and address on the back. It wasn’t Sylvia’s wedding: we knew what she looked like. It also didn’t look like her brother, Anton, or youngest brother, John. We had no clue who this was. The style of clothing was very 20s, but Georgiana was a teenager in the 20s, and I didn’t think it could be her. Sadly, my grandparents had already passed away by the time I started my research, so I couldn’t ask my grandfather. My father and aunt had vague memories of a story that went around about a family member who was killed, but weren’t sure what the details were. Eventually, between them searching their memories and reconnecting with the previously-mentioned cousin (who is the daughter of one of Sylvia’s brothers, and knew the true story from her father), we found out what happened. Georgiana was indeed their sister. She married young (that was her wedding photo after all) and had a son in 1927 at the age of 18 (perhaps that was why she married so young?). She and her husband later became separated, and she was preparing to divorce him, but he didn’t take too well to the idea and one day showed up at her house and shot her, their 2-year-old son and then himself. Her brother Anton was living in the apartment one floor above her and heard the shots. He left his own baby daughter (my cousin, who later told us the story) and his wife upstairs to go see what was happening, and found the bodies. Georgiana died on the way to the hospital. One of the family rumors says that her husband, Joe, had a priest in his family and confessed to him that he was going to kill his wife before going to her house. Back then, there were no laws requiring priests to go to the police with such confessions, so he wasn’t able to warn anyone. It makes for a good twist to the story, but I never found anyone in Joe’s immediate family that was a priest, so it may not have been true.Then again, he’s buried in a Catholic cemetery (Resurrection Cemetery, famous for Resurrection Mary), which strikes me as odd given that he was a suicide. Signs of a family connection to the Church, perhaps?

As for poor Georgiana, she’s buried in Chicago’s largest Bohemian cemetery (that side of my family is from Czechoslovakia), all by herself. The rest of the family is in a different cemetery, closer to where they later lived. It’s almost like her death was so traumatic, they tried to forget about her completely. I guess back then people didn’t talk about unhappy subjects, and this kind of family tragedy was kept secret. The only mention I ever found of her, other than a newspaper article about her murder (where all the names were misspelled, so it took some serious Google-fu to unearth!), was in one of her mother’s obituaries. Everywhere else, in obituaries of her siblings, father and others of her mother, she’s never mentioned. It’s kind of sad to think she was so close to being forgotten. And after learning her story, I can’t deny a part of me wants to write a book inspired by it. It would make for a good ghost story, don’t you think? The house is still there: when we visited Chicago last year, we found it and the paranormal-obsessed side of me couldn’t help jumping to the conclusion of “ooh, maybe it’s haunted!” It had a For Rent sign in the window, though, so no one was home. Not that I’d have the guts to knock on the door and ask.

Here’s a photo of Georgiana’s grave in the Bohemian cemetery. Jirinka is the Czech spelling of her name. The line at the bottom loosely translates to “here also rests my son,” so I can only assumed Joe Jr. was buried with her. Sad that he didn’t get his name on the headstone. Even sadder that the photo on the stone is the only one we have of him, and the only non-wedding photo we have of her.

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What next?

Long time, no blog. Last week was hell at the day job, so I didn’t have as much free time to blog or do much of anything else online. We had a nasty lightning strike at work (the joy of living in Florida) that fried our phone lines, killed our network server and generally wreaked havoc with everything else. As the closest thing to an IT person they have, it somehow landed on me to oversee a lot of the repairs, and as such I was stuck at the office more than usual. Good for the paycheck, bad for the writing career. But it seems to finally be winding down now, so I’m trying to get back in the groove of things.

Now that Destined has been out for a little over a month, I’m starting to think about what book to work on next. I know I still need to keep up with the marketing and promotion, because let’s face it, sales aren’t stellar yet. I get a couple a week on Kindle, a couple a month in paperback and Nook, and have no idea yet what my sales via Smashwords (iBooks, Sony, etc.) are. It’s still not on Kobo because of some backlog they have, which means anyone with a Kobo reader is stuck either waiting indefinitely or buying the ePub directly from Smashwords and uploading it manually to their reader. Not optimal, but I guess it’s better than not being able to get the book at all?

Anyway, I realize that sales take time. Getting the word out about a new book without a marketing department backing you up is tough. I don’t have the budget for splashy ads everywhere, so I’m relying mostly on reviews, which are good so far, but not yet plentiful. I can be patient, though, and wait. My Facebook page, which was stuck at 24 likes a few weeks ago, has now jumped to 186 and counting, thanks to an ad I placed there. Now if only likes would translate to sales, I’d be a happy girl. Patience…

So, while I work on my patience (never my strong suit, sadly), I’m turning my thoughts to the next best marketing tool: releasing more books. I have two completed novels still unreleased, one that’s almost completed, and a couple that are barely started. (One of which is a sequel to a completed book.) One of the completed books is going to be next up, but I have yet to decide which.

The first, which I was originally sure was going to be Book #2 for me, is a light mystery: think Janet Evanovich meets Medium. It’s funny with a dash of romance, and may even become a series. I was nearly done with my first editing pass, however, when I decided I really wanted to add another character to it. The main character needed a best friend to talk to, and up until now all she’d had was her parents and sister. Adding a brand-new person into an already-finished book isn’t going to be a quick fix, so I think I got a little frustrated by that. Another issue I have with the book (still untitled because I suck at coming up with those) is that it’s too short. Though I suppose for a mystery, 65,000 words isn’t that short, but Destined was about 89,000, and anything shorter than that just doesn’t feel long enough to me. Adding in the new friend will give me extra words, so that should help some. We’ll see what happens.

Unfortunately, while I was starting the add-a-friend project, my attention began to wander from it to my other completed book, Bloodstone, which is the first in an Urban Fantasy series and has the opposite problem: it’s too freaking LONG. At one point, it was over 200,000 words. It’s actually my first novel, written about a year before Destined, which is probably why it’s so bloated. Years ago I managed to cut it down some, but it’s still over 170,000. It needs some serious hacking and slashing before it’s publishable (I’d like to get it down to 100k). The only thing that’s going to get it cut down to that degree is removing an entire storyline, and that’s not going to be easy. That said, right now it’s the book that I’m more excited about editing, so that’s where my attention has been focused. I was doing pretty good until I got to the first candidate for major cuttage: a love interest that could easily wait until a later book to be introduced, or never introduced at all. He’s not the main guy in the story, so his presence creates a kind of triangle, which is pretty overdone lately, so it might be best to chop him out for good. Logically, I know if I do this, I can shave down the word count significantly and possibly even make the story better. Problem is, writing isn’t always logical. You get attached, and I’m finding it hard to cut him out. For now, I’m going to read ahead and see if there’s anything else that could go instead, despite knowing deep down that he’s my best option. He isn’t central to this book’s plot, and in the end he might even be a detriment to it, adding one too many storylines for people to keep track of. Cutting him makes sense. I just wish it weren’t so hard.

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Recurring dreams

First, my apologies to anyone who might have been looking at the blog on Thursday. I was switching to a new template, so the place probably looked a mess. Everything’s all spruced back up again, with some new features (social networking links) and easier navigation. And in happy news, I’ve gotten a few more reviews for Destined. One is by SexxyBlogger and the other two are over at GoodReads. (GoodReads reviews are weird sometimes: it’s not always easy to find them amidst all the “added to to-read shelf” notations. I’m not quite sure how their default sorting works.) The new ones are all 4 stars, which sometimes I think is better than 5, since people tend to take 4-star reviews more seriously. So I’m pretty pleased with them.

Now on to the blog post. One of the themes in Destined is recurring dreams. At the start of the book (I don’t feel like this is a spoiler, since this chapter is available in the excerpt online and in all the free samples), Apolline is thinking about a recurring dream she’s had all her life, where she is on a ship that’s in some sort of distress. Due to her lifelong obsession with the Titanic, she assumes that’s the identity of the ship, and the reason for her dream. Of course, we find out later it’s much more than that. ;)

As for me, I haven’t had a true, recurring dream since I was a kid. The last one I remember having was when I was in grade school. In it I was a teenager, with a bunch of teen friends in an empty movie theater (truly empty: no seats, just a big, dark room and a tall screen), being chased around by cartoon ghosts. It was pretty strange, especially since it’s the only time I can remember dreaming about myself as older than my current age. But after that, the closest I come to a recurring dream is recurring themes. When I first moved back home from Miami, I would dream all the time about my teeth shattering and falling out. I later looked it up in a dream dictionary and found the generally-accepted symbolism was concern about finances. It made sense: I’d just quit a full-time, salaried job and moved back home to take a part-time job while I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. (10+ years later, I’m still trying to figure that out, though I’m enjoying “author” so far.) I had school loans and credit card debt, and very little income to pay for it. After my grandparents passed away, and I was able to use some of the inheritance to pay off my debts, the dreams stopped. Thank goodness, because those teeth dreams really freaked me out.

I have a lot of travel-themed dreams as well. In almost all of them, I’m in Paris. I’m not sure why: I’ve been there twice, and while it is my favorite destination so far, there are so many other places in the world I’d like to see. Maybe it’s the familiarity? Whatever the reason, I’m always in Paris, either just arriving and stuck in some airport store or shopping mall because I realized I forgot to pack something important like underwear. Or pens. I shop for pens in dreams a lot. I have no idea what that’s all about, but my dreams tend to be of the weird, what-the-hell-did-I-eat-last-night? variety. In the other version of the travel dream, it’s the end of the vacation, we’re packing up to go home, or checking out of the hotel, and I suddenly realize I didn’t see anything I wanted to while we were there, and I spend the dream panicking about how I’m going to see it all in the short time I have left. A lot of times one of the things I forget to do is climb the Eiffel Tower, so I race over there to get in line. Another time I dreamt I was stuck at the top and couldn’t get down. When I first started having the Paris dreams, they came almost weekly, and I was always traveling with the same person: a friend from high school. I dreamt it on a pretty regular basis, until we finally decided to go there together in reality. After that, she doesn’t pop up in my Paris dreams much anymore, and I don’t have them nearly as often.

Another common theme for me has always been school. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been a big nerd? I actually liked school: I was an honor student, went to college, did the whole big education thing. Even contemplated grad or law school until I decided I didn’t want that much debt hanging over my head. When I was younger (in my 20s), I dreamed mostly about being back at high school, though often times, the school interior would actually be that of my old middle school. In the dreams it was usually the end of the year/semester, and time for exams, and I would suddenly realize there was a class I’d forgotten to attend, and had no clue what would be on the test. Or, I would suddenly forget my class schedule and spend most of the dream trying to remember where I put it and/or trying to get the administration office to give me a copy. (Or trying to find the admin office.) Other high school dreams would center around my locker. Either I wouldn’t be able to remember where it was at all, of I’d find it and forget the combination. The locker dreams were the most common.

Now that I’m in my 30s, I don’t seem to have the high school dreams as much. Now, I have college dreams. In those, I usually find it’s the start of the year and I’ve just moved into my dorm room. My roommate is sometimes my real college roommate from back when I was at the University of Miami, or it’s my childhood best friend or one of my close high school friends. Occasionally it’s a complete stranger, or I have no roommate at all. These dreams are almost always set entirely in the dorm or dorm room—I don’t think I ever dream about being in class (and I’ve never had that naked-in-school dream most people do). A lot of times, classes haven’t started yet, but rather it’s that time before the semester starts where everyone’s settling in and getting ready: setting up their rooms, buying textbooks, figuring out their class schedules. I sometimes have the “can’t remember/find my schedule” dream like in the high school dreams, but most of the time my back-to-college dreams find me either realizing I left important things back at home (my computer is a common one, as is a TV. I need my TV!), or trying to figure out which textbooks I need or which classes I have to go to or, in some cases, trying to find my way around my dorm building. There have been a few times where the dorm in my dream is humongous, like a massive shopping mall, and I get lost trying to find my floor.

Last night, I had the college dream again, which is what brought on this post. This time, I was sharing my dorm room with … actually, I don’t remember now. I think it was my actual college roomie, but I can’t be sure. I have a very hard time remembering dreams once I’m awake. If I don’t wake naturally from a dream, I forget it within seconds of getting up, and even if I wake slowly, I have to actively think about the details for a while to keep them in my head. Today, being Sunday, I was able to wake without an alarm, so that’s probably why the dream has stayed with me somewhat. Anyway, in the dream I was fretting over textbooks, trying to find my schedule so I would know which ones to buy. For some reason I’d waited too long to move in to the dorm, and it was already the first day of classes, and since I still didn’t know what classes I was taking, or have the books needed, I was skipping them. Not something I did much in real life (again, I was a nerd), but I skip classes in dreams a lot. The only other thing I remember is that I was trying to see if I could buy the books for my Kindle. If only Kindles had been around when I really was in college. It would have saved me so many sore shoulders!

So those are my recurring dreams. I notice that the most common theme throughout all my recurring dreams seems to be of me forgetting things. I’m sure that says something about me, but I always forget to look it up. ;) Anyone else have interesting recurring dreams?

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Well, there goes my productivity

I’m a nerd. Always have been, most likely always will be. I was pretty much the American version of Hermione Granger in school, as my friends can probably attest. Though I was also shy, so I don’t think I was as bad as her when it came to raising my hand. I don’t remember being the obnoxious “Ooh! Oooh! Pick me!” type; I just liked when I did well on tests and knew answers the other students didn’t. Man, that sounds snobbish, doesn’t it? Maybe I really WAS Hermione. Anyway, that’s me: nerd, geek, dork, they all apply. I’m competitive when playing games, because I love to win, though I do try to be a good loser when I don’t. (Which happens just about as often as winning does, whether I like to admit it or not. Especially when I’m playing against my father.) I love trivia of all kinds. And I LOVE puzzles.

So when I saw this online today, I got far too excited: The Great Global Treasure Hunt. This is totally my kind of game! They put a sample puzzle in the Telegraph today, so people could get a feel for how the game will work.  Here's a link for that. I have a feeling it’s an easy version of what will be in the book, because I knew the answer as soon as I read the text. I thought for sure it was too obvious, but the clues in the picture only confirmed it, so I guess I was right. (I love it when I’m right!) I’m not entering the contest, though, since I don’t live in the UK, and it seems kind of silly to try to win a trip that most likely will leave from London. But I do plan on getting the book (or the ebook, if it’s released soon after the book), and playing the big game. €50,000 is a pretty nice prize, especially since that comes to about $72,000. I think this is the first time I’ve actually been happy that the dollar is doing so terribly.

You know, I’ve always thought it would be fun to write a mystery novel that involved a big, elaborate puzzle that the reader could try to solve along with the hero/heroine. I love books like that. (I think that’s why I enjoyed Ready Player One so much. Well, that and all the 80s nostalgia, and the dystopian future angle. I’m a sucker for a good dystopian future plot.) Problem is, as much as I love to read those kinds of books, I don’t think I’d be very good at actually creating the puzzles. I’m better off just trying to solve them, so that’s what I’m going to do. I just hope it doesn’t suck up all my free time, because I have a new novel to promote, and another one to start editing.

Speaking of which: obligatory shameless self-promotion: Buy Destined!

And before I go, a quick “stay safe” to all of those on the East coast of the US today. Living in Florida, I’m usually the one bracing for a hurricane, so it’s a little strange to be watching it heading for someone else. While I’m relieved that my family and I are safe, I’d rather it wasn’t heading for anyone right now. I have friends up there, and I hope they get through the storm without too much damage. Hunker down, everyone!

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Momentum stalled

Last week, I was really moving along. I had my Kindle formatting done, my ePub created and ready for a quick scan, I’d created a Facebook page and even finished and uploaded my web site. The only thing left, for the most part, was starting the print version. I was hoping to get that done this week and maybe, finally, start getting serious about setting a release date.

Unfortunately, all that momentum ground to a halt due to a family emergency, which is why I’ve been so quiet everywhere. My mother went into the hospital and needed surgery, which she finally got on Friday. She’s recovering now, and we’re hoping she can come home next week. Crisis averted, but it’s going to take a little more time for things to get back to normal. My day job will at least get a little less crazy next week, since the manager I was covering for finally returns from his vacation on Tuesday. So maybe once we get into August I can get back to my old routine and get to work on that pesky print book.

I’m unwinding today by going to see the Harry Potter movie in between hospital visits. Maybe it will help lower the stress a little.

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Back in Business

Last weekend, I had a small setback in my self-pub plans. The goal was to finish the Kindle formatting and move on to print and/or ePub research. Instead, I got to spend the weekend setting up a new computer. My old computer, which is about 5 years old, had started freezing up on me ever since a storm last week. We had a momentary power outage – enough that everything electronic shut off – so I think there was enough of a surge, even with my surge protector, that something happened to it. I kept having to reboot it, and at one point it started doing a CHDSK, so I let it go to see if it would help. It found some bad sectors (I forget the exact error message now), and some online searching led me to many forums where people with similar CHDSK results were told their hard drives were about to die. Cue my panic, as naturally, it had been a while since I last backed up my files. All the work I’d been doing on my novel – multiple edits, html formatting for Kindle, cover art, etc. – was in danger of being lost.

On the bright side, I’ve been looking for an excuse to get a new desktop, so it wasn’t completely bad news. I was lucky that whatever’s wrong with my old comp isn’t quite so bad yet that it can’t run, so I was able to copy all of my files onto my external drive and save everything. Then it was off to Best Buy, where I spent far too many hours comparing desktops (not to mention also going to other nearby stores, but I always tend to end up at Best Buy). I’m picky about computers. I usually prefer my processors to be Intel rather than AMD or the others, though I don’t really know why. My laptop is AMD and it’s perfectly fine.  But then, I don’t use my laptop for anything too heavy. My desktop gets a good workout when I’m doing graphic design, so I wanted to be sure it could handle it all. I ended up with [warning: this is where I let my inner computer geek out]a Gateway that has 6MB of RAM a 3.2ghz dual-core Pentium Intel processor and 1TB hard drive. And it’s smaller than a normal desktop, so it’s all cute and fits on top of my desk rather than on the floor at my feet (like the old one did), where I’d have to lean down and fumble in the shadows every time I wanted to plug in a flash drive or memory card. I love it.

Unfortunately, upgrading computers is tedious and time-consuming. So I ended up spending all weekend getting my files transferred and my programs installed. I’ve had some other personal tasks to attend to as well, which has made me put the self-publishing goal on hold for a few more days. Hopefully by next week I can be back to my normal routine and finally get some of this done!

It also isn’t helping that I’ve decided a large part of the last few chapters needs to be rewritten. *sigh*

Oh! I do have a Twitter now, though. I’m still getting set up there and finding people to follow. Haven’t had as much time, obviously, but it’s another thing I plan on doing more of next week. I’m @AllisonKraft there.

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Happy Birthday to Me

Note: this post was supposed to have been published yesterday (May 12). I have no idea why it didn't. I guess Windows Live Writer wasn't playing nice.

 

Today is my 35th birthday. It still feels strange to say that number. I don't feel 35. Hell, half the time I don't even feel 25! I never got to the point where I felt like I was finally a grown-up. Maybe because I don't have kids of my own?

Anyway, years ago, I decided that my life's goal was to be a published novelist by the time I was 35. So here I am... 35. Not published yet. Maybe that's why I'm jumping on the self-pub train (I refuse to call it a bandwagon, because that implies that it's a fad or short-lived trend). Well, I may not have been published by the time I turned 35, but damn it, I'm going to be published WHILE I'm 35! So I say that's good enough.

While toying around with ideas the other day, I came up with what I thought was a good plan: set the release date for my book to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Titanic's launch. I knew the ship was launched from the builder in Belfast sometime in 1911, but wasn't sure of the exact date.  If the date hadn't passed yet, I thought how perfect!  Well... the ship launched May 31, 1911.  So I may be pushing it to aim for that date.  That would give me less than 20 days to finish my edit, get the Kindle formatting flawless, get a website designed and running, start possibly doing some promotion, and get a paper version ready to go. I could maybe get the Kindle version up by then, but the rest?  I don't know. It doesn't help that I have yet to settle on a title or come up with a cover design I like. Without any of that, I can't start the website. So May 31 is out.

I discovered something in my research of this possible release date thing: you can't set a future release date for a Kindle DTP book. That's a little upsetting, to be honest. I liked the idea of having a future release date I could announce, and having the book ready to go and up on the site so people could see that it was going to be available soon.  I wasn't looking to have it sit there for months before it was released, but a few days, sure. I don't even care about doing pre-orders (I know at first my sales will be limited to my friends and family), but it would have been nice to be able to see it go up on the site and have everything there (I hear the product description doesn't always show up right away) when it's officially released. Maybe it's something they're working on, but for now, it doesn't look like you can do it.  Oh well. At lest now I know.

I'm going to spend most of the weekend finishing my edit and getting it ready for Kindle. After that, maybe I'll start on formatting it for print in InDesign. (I'd like to be able to have both versions out at the same time, since the majority of my friends/family don't have ebook readers.) I'm still debating the pros and cons of CreateSpace vs. Lulu: more research is needed. After I get that going, I can then focus on the other ebook formats. I'm torn between using SmashWords and doing each platform individually, so that requires some more research, as does iBooks.  I hear it's hard to get a book in there, so I need to do some reading around on that. Good thing I like research! (Gee, how many times can I use the word "research" in one paragraph???)

On a side note: tomorrow would have been my grandmother's 86th birthday. She's the grandma I got my pen name from, so happy birthday Grandma, and thanks for the name! :)

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It's hot

I know it's summer, and it's pretty much hot everywhere (unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere, that is), but I live in Florida, where it is really hot. According to the Weather Channel's site, it's 88 degrees with 49% humidity, but I swear, it feels hotter than that. Maybe it's the heat of the sun beating down? I don't know, I only know that it's HOT. The highs this week are forecast anywhere from 91-95, and with humidity and whatnot, the heat index (aka "feels like") tends to be a few degrees above that. So we could be nearing heat indexes of 100 later in the week. And it's still only June. Ugh. In the winter, I love it here. I grew up near Chicago, and I do not miss those winters AT ALL. The summers, on the other hand, can get pretty miserable here. The price we pay for mild winters, I suppose. Though this past winter was hardly mild. We had a few big cold snaps (low 20s sometimes) that killed a lot of the plants. Yards looked awfully sad for a while there.

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Where I kick my own butt just a little

So, as the title of this blog states, in addition to being a writer, I am also a designer and a crazy cat lady.  In a perfect world, I can juggle all 3 in total harmony.  Sadly, the world is not so perfect, and sometimes things have to take a backseat.

All month (more than that, really), one of my cats (Ana) has been having an allergic reaction to something.  Most likely a flea bite, but really, it could be anything, even the pollen in the air.  Whatever it is, it's making her extremely itchy, and she's licking off a good amount of her fur.  The other cats have also been somewhat itchy, but not to the extent she has.  I've tried everything: flea collars, other flea treatments, bug bombs in the house.  Finally, this week I decided to bite the bullet and take her to the vet.  She'd been getting worse, and was clearly miserable.  She'd taken to sleeping on top of me every night, as though she was trying to find solace from her troubles in me.  It was sweet, but also heartbreaking to know she was suffering and I couldn't help her. Then she started shaking her head all the time, sometimes rather violently, and I figured it was time to get medical attention.  Her sister had also had a weird balance thing, so I thought maybe there was an ear infection going around, and hauled them in.  They were not happy.  And at the end, neither was I.  $400 spent, and no real answers.  Just a few shots (for the cat, not me) to help the itching and heal some scabs from all the scratching, a box of Revolution flea treatment, a couple of ear tests that came up with nothing substantial, and a bottle of ear medication to give them anyway, just in case.

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Well, that week was a bust

I had the best of intentions this week, I really did.  I was going to do more agent research, settle on a couple “top choices,” and send out at least one query. If I was feeling really productive, I was even going to dust off one of my other completed novels and start polishing it up.

Instead, I had a minor personal crisis come up that took away all my focus, and I never quite got back to my plans before the week was up.  My vision disorder (I have cone dystrophy, which means my vision cannot be brought all the way to 20/20 with a prescription. Instead, it’s about 20/60 with glasses/contacts) caused me to fail the eye test when I went to renew my driver’s license, and I had to make an emergency visit to the eye doctor.  Thankfully, I was still within the parameters of Florida law, and didn’t lose my license. Cue the HUGE sigh of relief. I love to drive.  I love my car (a 2010 Kia Forte SX). I did not want to lose either the car or the right to drive it.  So naturally, the fear of such a thing happening shook me up for a few days.  By Thursday I had my new license in hand and could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

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