frustration...

ugh. the world has opened up a can of whoop-@$$ on me. but that's ok.

apart from that, i'm venturing into more uncharted territory for myself: the world of paranormal thrillers. i have an idea that i'm beginning to develop *because i just can't push myself to finish this ONE CHAPTER before i start querying again, and i think it's a mental block of "omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg, i'm scared."* so yeah. i'm subconsciously holding myself back. at any rate, i feel totally nuts thanks to the required research for the new idea, which would be serial killers... i'm looking for a distinct pattern. so i'm making myself play detective, and the internet can only take me so far...

i'm making myself finish chapter 9 before i venture out into the world of new ideas. lately i've been so frustrated with non-writing things, that it's sucked the joy out of writing. i'm pushing my pen to the end, a forced labor of love, i guess. and then i'm going to hit querying again. i'm on the verge of a great letter, so...yee haw. right now, though, i just want to go to sleep and have things be right when i wake up... ugh.

so, i say to you that if you know anyone who sells avon in the cincinnati, oh area, please warn them of marybryan77@yahoo.com or any variation of that email address. this is a scam artist who will ask for products, send you way too much for them (usually $1350) and then ask you to send the remainder back. the check is NO GOOD. please pass this on if you can. because this "lady" needs to be caught.

i need the adam walsh of catching scam artists to get on this case...

ADD strikes again...AGAIN.

i canNOT concentrate. rewriting chapter 9 has taken two days because i can't concentrate. it doesn't help that i try to accomplish this between the hours of 11PM and 7AM (i know, jack bauer would have had this done by 1130, and then he would have saved us from terrorists between 1-2AM), but this is pretty much when i have quiet time. so...yeah. chapter 9, WRITE THYSELF!

in other news, there is no other news. there are things i'm excited about, but no other news.

i'm looking forward to the start of football season, b/c it will be tim tebow season before it's chris-evans-in-blue-spandex-for-the-third-time season. sorry, folks. i'm excited. don't know if i mentioned yet that the former human torch of Fantastic Four fame will be donning the red, white, and blue of Captain America, but he is. hellz yes. whoever claims women aren't visually stimulated never met me and never saw this:

(picture this, in blue spandex.)


and now that you are sufficiently distracted as well, i shall continue. i'm working on paring down word count. chris evans has not helped with this, nor will he, although i'd like to cast him in the movie adaptation of the book. i'll make up a character if necessary.

(while we're in comic book land) i'm excited about the new batman game. i'm sure you remember my batman: arkham asylum lovefest from a few months ago. prepare for another one sometime next year (january, maybe?) the sequel will include lots more baddies and will be "darker" than the first. should be interesting given what they did with the first one. despite the fact that it takes place entirely within arkham asylum, the first game was absolutely phenomenal. it was nice to be able to take advantage of batman's stealth and various gadgets. maybe in the sequel, we'll get to take the batmobile out for a spin or fly around gotham in the batwing? pwease? the trailer only shows harley quinn nursing joker, most likely clearing his body of the titan serum (there's a blood transfusion going on; joker's weak). in all likelihood, joker won't be a major player, which leaves room for two-face and mr. freeze, both of whom have been confirmed by their respective voice artists. talia al'ghul has been confirmed as well, though it will be interesting to see how they decide to involve her. her father is presumed dead in the first one (he's in the morgue outside of penny's office, one of the solutions to riddler's riddles), so it's more likely that she'll lean toward friend more often than foe. her love story arc with batman might make an introduction and raise the stakes. what sucks more than losing your lady love? robin might also be in it. i kinda foresee him in a support role similar to oracle's, or maybe as a partner in certain parts of the game. i don't think he'll be terribly involved.

ok, enough of that. i really need to get back to this chapter 9 deal. it's 4 AM. maybe i'll have it written by 7... prollie not.

good news, everyone!

found my flash drive. i was looking in the wrong pair of pants.

so now, revisions can continue.

i finished reading teek yesterday. pretty good book, and enjoyable. just got my mind to thinking about how popular the whole genetic manipulation thing seems to be in YA, and i'm wondering if anyone knows of examples in adult fiction? i'm having trouble finding any. teek, ava, maximum ride... all concern YA protags that were genetically altered somehow. le sigh.

anyway, onto fun hotel bizniss.

one of the breakfast attendants just called a few mins ago around 445. she's due in at 5, but has hit a snag that i won't go into. now, here, we're not cross-trained on breakfast stuff. we're learning our ways around maintenance issues (because maintenance stuff only occurs when we have no maintenance around), working with the crappy HVAC units or resetting TVs or whatever, but i do NOT know anything about breakfast. granted, it's a saturday, and i'm doubtful that we'll be hit with an early morning rush before she comes in, but...blagh. not cool. i feel bad for her, and it's really not her fault. i just hope that we don't run into irate guests because i don't know how to fix breakfast. it's bad enough i can't build additional rooms to suit people...or make channel 9 magically appear so some people don't miss modern family...

also today, instead of trying to write a creative non-fiction thing that's destined to make me cry (wouldn't be good for guests to see that), i'm going to plug in my revisions. can't wait to see my word count after this...

i will keep writing until someone reads me!

and then i'll stop. but until then...

i think i'm having a day like lisa and laura over at www.lisalaura.blogspot.com. the weather outside truly is frightful, and even though i've lived in the midwest for six or seven years, i never get used to the wind up here! i'm from Appalachia, where there are mountains that block this stuff out. and today, wind gusts of up to 60 mph. *hangs head* northern ky/ohio needs mountains.

anyway, the whole editing thing isn't working so far. turns out i'd missed an entire section in the rewrites that had to be added in. so i'm still over 118,000 words. but i'm just through the first seven chapters (i think), so i have 28 left to go... i wrote way too much. and to think, i was worried about making length.

thinking that next week i'll start on query letters while at work. take all the "selling yourself" advice i've looked at online and go for the gold. i just know that if i can't get this monster pared down toward 100,000 words, i'm not going to have much luck. so after preliminary revisions are done, i'm going to have to see if there are any sections i don't need, or chapters that don't push the story forward. i'm also debating the dreams, but those serve foreshadowing purposes (at least in my brain), so i don't know. just because i like those sections doesn't mean that anyone else will.

there are also a few fight sections i'm considering rewriting. having the panther take center stage works well in my head, but it doesn't flow as well on paper i've been told. i'm trying to show the rift between dima's human side and her panther side by having the two sides be in charge of different things. the panther takes care of hunting and climbing and panthery stuff while the human side thinks and reasons and does humany stuff. but keeping that in first person would cut out a lot of words. well, not a lot, but a possibly significant amount. what's a girl to do?