Just add pictures

Some images to go with the sounds....

Soundtrack

Keziah asked what's on the soundtrack for this book, so here it is (at least here's the current incarnation). A lot of fun, sexy, music with attitude for my fun, sexy heroine with attitude : )

Cuz I can - Pink
Don' Cha - Pussycat Dolls
Gimme, gimme, gimme (a man after midnight) - ABBA
Light my candle - (Rent) Adam Pascal and Rosario Dawson)
Let's spend the night together -The Rolling Stones
Settlin' - Sugarland
I want you to want me - Chris Isaak
Girls just want to have fun - Cyndi Lauper
Son of a preacher man - Dusty Springfield
Get the party started - Pink
Addicted to bass - Josh Abrahams
Only the good die young - Billy Joel
I was made for loving you - Kiss
Can't get you out of my head - Kylie Minogue
Sex and Candy - Marcy Playground
Fever - Kylie Minogue
Crazy in love - Beyonce
Come to my window - Melissa Etheridge
Leave me alone - Pink
Bitch - Meredith Brooks
Hit me with your best shot - Pat Benatar
The one that got away - Pink
Sin sin sin - Robbie Williams
Yes I am - Melissa Etheridge

Oops I did it again

I done went and committed new bookage. Not the witchy demon techno magic weirdness book. That one's still stewing.

This is the other one. The bad girl/good boy, what the hell, let's have some fun book. A ModX/Blaze type thing. We shall see. And it gets a pink word count meter because that's just the kind of gal my heroine is. I like her a lot. After only five pages. So that's a good sign.
And him. Well, sigh. He's lovely but he needs loosening up. I've got a feeling she's the right woman for the job : )

I'm still working on the collage...I'll post it when it's done. But I have a killer soundtrack so maybe the oh so contrary writer brain was on to something the other day.

Back to the drawing board

I decided to entertain myself during my long, slow, wet (yay, we have rain but boo, this particular rain seems to be from the antarctic region, didn't stop to warm up any on the trip up to us and brought his buddy Mr freeze your butt off wind with him), drive home by turning on the trusty iPod via the radio and trying out one of the book soundtracks I put together on the weekend. My aim being to see if I could start shaking some story loose in my head.

Instead the conversation between me and the writer brain went something like this:

Me: Hey, this song is cool.
WB: Yes, yes it is. But that's a Wolf 3 song.
Me: Oh, okay. Hmmm. Yes, I see that.

Song changes

Me: How about this one, this is a great song.
WB: Great indeed. For those werewolves.
Me: Sheesh. How about you focus on the book we're trying to write?
WB: Phhhhbbbffffftttt

Song changes

Me: This one isn't a werewolf song.
WB: No. But it might be a (insert name of character from another book entirely) song.
Me: Gah!
WB: Don't blame me, you picked these songs.
Me: You were there, you could've helped.
WB: *looks away* *files nails*
Me: I think I'll take up macrame

Song changes

WB: You know, you really should do the soundtrack for (insert name of character from another book entirely). That would be cool.
Me: Perhaps if you told me what it was about?
WB: If you pick them, it will come.
Me: You need to look like the young Kevin Costner to to pull off that line, buddy.
WB: Oh ye of little faith
Me: Well, you weren't much help with the one we're listening to so far. How about you help with that?
WB: Phhhhbbbffffftttt

Song changes

Lather, rinse and repeat.

I think I've ended up with 4 songs so far that writer brain likes for this book (the soundtrack was intially 10 or so). And the start of a soundtrack for a book I'm in no way ready to write. And a nagging 'what the hell music works for (insert name of character from another book entirely)?' running through my head.

Bah humbug.

PS Suggestions for good witchy demon techno weirdness music accepted here : )

Itchy fingers

I'm circling a new story. Or the girls are. They're at that wriggle, giggle, ooh shiny, look over here at this stage where everything floats in the back of your head and feels ready and cool but then they only show you bits at a time.

I'm putting together a collage and a soundtrack (though that is not proving the easiest task) but the sticking point is the heroine's job. For which there are two possibilities. I need to decide because it will change the first chapter significantly.

Until I work that out I'm thinking about another new story but nothing is forthcoming about either what the hero looks like or the actual conflict, so that one might be a bit further off.

In the meantime, I have itchy fingers. I haven't written for a few days. So maybe I need to play with one of the more long term wips. Or maybe not. This stage of a book is frustrating. The not quite there stage. Things are simmering away. Which is necessary and is actually writing work but doesn't get that little progress bar zooming along again. And we virgos like the tangible proof bit.

A meme for the morning

The American Film Institute has released an updated 100 best films listing. Bold those you've seen, strike out those you couldn't make it through (er, I'm putting *'s around them...can't make blogger do strikeout today), italicize the ten *you'd* have put in the top 10. (by which I'm assuming it means your top ten movies in the list...)


1. Citizen Kane
2. The Godfather
3. *Casablanca*
4. Raging Bull
5. Singin' in the Rain
6. Gone with the Wind
7. Lawrence of Arabia
8. Schindler's List
9. Vertigo
10. The Wizard of Oz
11. City Lights
12. The Searchers
13. Star Wars
14. *Psycho*
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey
16. Sunset Boulevard
17. The Graduate
18. The General
19. On the Waterfront
20. It's a Wonderful Life
21. Chinatown
22. Some Like It Hot
23. The Grapes of Wrath
24. E.T.
25. To Kill a Mockingbird
26. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
27. High Noon
28. All About Eve
29. Double Indemnity
30. *Apocalypse Now*
31. *The Maltese Falcon*
32. The Godfather Part II
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest
34. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
35. Annie Hall
36. The Bridge on the River Kwai
37. The Best Years of Our Lives
38. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
39. Dr. Strangelove
40. The Sound of Music
41. King Kong
42. Bonnie and Clyde
43. Midnight Cowboy
44. The Philadelphia Story
45. Shane
46. It Happened One Night
47. A Streetcar Named Desire
48. Rear Window
49. Intolerance
50. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
51. West Side Story
52. Taxi Driver
53. The Deer Hunter
54. *M*A*S*H*
55. North by Northwest
56. Jaws
57. Rocky
58. The Gold Rush
59. Nashville
60. Duck Soup
61. Sullivan's Travels
62. American Graffiti
63. Cabaret
64. Network
65. The African Queen
66. Raiders of the Lost Ark
67. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
68. Unforgiven
69. Tootsie
70. *A Clockwork Orange*
71. Saving Private Ryan
72. The Shawshank Redemption
73. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
74. The Silence of the Lambs
75. In the Heat of the Night
76. Forrest Gump
77. All the President's Men
78. Modern Times
79. The Wild Bunch
80. The Apartment
81. Spartacus
82. Sunrise
83. Titanic
84. Easy Rider
85. A Night at the Opera
86. *Platoon*
87. 12 Angry Men
88. Bringing Up Baby
89. The Sixth Sense
90. Swing Time
91. Sophie's Choice
92. *Goodfellas*
93. The French Connection
94. Pulp Fiction
95. The Last Picture Show
96. *Do the Right Thing*
97. Blade Runner
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy
99. Toy Story
100. Ben-Hur

Not too bad a showing...there are some I'd still like to see. And some I've never heard of *shrug*. And my personal top ten favourite movies would be quite different to this list...

Catching up

Another week speeding by.

And I have been enjoying not writing (though I do have some characters starting to tap their feet at me, so hopefully I'll get some stuff done this weekend on them) and lazing around in the evenings reading.

I've had a swag of good books lately on the Fantasy/UF front - Magic Lost, Trouble Found, Kushiel's Justice (not Scion as my end of book fogged brain wrote earlier) which I devoured too fast Tuesday/Wednesday and now I'm reading Talyn by Holly Lisle which is also proving to be very cool. I'm hoping my copy of Stray will turn up soon.

In between reading there had been watching Gilmore Girls DVDs and getting up way too early this morning for a day job day trip to Sydney.

Tomorrow is the day off...which might be a real day off, unless the muse wakes up all chirpy. We shall see...

Done!

And tonight I'm announcing the arrival of a bouncing 357 page manuscript.

The book, eet iz done.

A little short for now, as always, but I'm confident it will thrive nicely and put on some length during the revision process. Which is sometime in the future that I'm refusing to think about just now.

Because now is all about the la la la, done done done, snoopy dance land of finished!

Non-writers don't quite understand what finishing a book feels like. I can't really describe it either, but trust me, it' s pretty damn good!

PS. Guess who's going to pick up her copy of Kushiel's Scion tomorrow? : )) Guilt free, I might add! That's right, me. Because I am done!

Frustration

So up until 4pm today, this had not been a good writing weekend. A couple of pages eeked out like yanking teeth from my head with pliers on Friday. Nothing really yesterday, which is okay given it was Lulus. Today I sat down at the computer about six times this morning and the fingers wouldn't move on the keys. Ditto this afternoon. When you're sitting at 311 pages out of 360, that's pretty darn frustrating. Usually the end of the book picks up speed for me. But nope, missy muse and friends were not playing.

Until 4pm. At 4pm, they suddenly went yeehah, let's go. Since then I've written thirty pages. With an hour off for Grey's anatomy and another half hour or so for dinner. Plus a bit of emailing. So now I'm sitting at 341 pages, 19 pages or so to go...just starting the big climax scene and then I have two or so aftermath scenes to finish. Maybe more than nineteen pages but there's no way I can keep typing much longer today. I have to work tomorrow and my brain is getting fried. If this is full of typos, then that's why. But I can feel the story boiling inside my head, just waiting. I haven't had that sensation for most of this book. I'm pretty sure if the muse has just decided to wake up a few hours earlier, I might have finished this sucker today. Instead now I have to go to bed and hope it keeps flowing tomorrow.

For a writer, well, for me, this is one of the most frustrating feelings I know, being so close to the end, with everything working and not being able to just keep going. Thirty pages is a LOT in one day. The most I've ever written was 32 and that was starting a lot earlier in the day than 4pm. So argh. But yay, the end is sight.

And did I mention argh????

Yay

I'm very happy to announce that Wolfy won the Romance Writers of Australia Single Title and Loving contest, judged by Shauna Summers. Yay! Congrats also to Bronwyn Clarke, fellow GH finalist, who came second and third.

Much champagne has been drunk at lulus today to celebrate.

And in other news, I still have writing to do, so if you want something pretty to look out, check out Jenny Crusie, Eileen Dreyer and Anne Stuart's gorgeous Unfortunate Miss Fortunes site. The design is based on the book cover, which is another gorgeous SMP cover. There are some lovely downloads for desktops, I've got one now and the blues and night tones are very evocative for my world.

75

Yay, I made it to my 75k goal. I've written 35 pages this weekend, not bad considering Saturday was an Official Day Off. And more than I've written in the preceding two weeks, I think. I've cracked the magic 300, I know what has to happen in broad strokes for the rest of the book, so I'm hoping I might even finish it in the next week or two. I also have to do the final polish on my partial and rewrite the synopsis to get to Miriam.

Then I have to decide what to work on next...I'm thinking another Urban Fantasy. Not Wolf 3. Because I want to wait and see what happens with 1 before even polishing 2 terribly much. There's too much likelihood of stuff changing in 1 if it sells to get too far down the track with 2 or 3 without causing a lot of rewriting for myself.

I have an idea, one that I played with a little a few years back before deciding to focus on the short contemps for a bit. Maybe I'll take that out and dust it off and see where it goes. It's slightly more futuristic UF so that could be fun. Or there's the contemp island book or the one with the Pink-like heroine and a strait-laced hero who isn't quite sure what's hit him. I guess I'll have to see what Miriam thinks. But yay, new worlds ahead. By the time I'm done with this draft of 2, I will have written over 200k in the Wolf world in 9 months, so something fresh might be just what the doctor ordered.

Also

Only one month to Dallas!! Squeeeee!!!

Tagged

And oops, I've just been catching up on some blogs and realised I got tagged a little while back (sorry, Keziah).

So here goes...eight random things about me:

1. I used to play the oboe.
2. I love pretty much every shade of blue.
3. Peeling potatoes can make my legs itch.
4. When I beat eggs, my tongue wriggles.
5. I read faster than just about everyone I know (except Miriam).
6. My hair has been pretty much every shade of blonde, brown and red (never black).
7. I am addicted to Diet Coke.
8. One of my favorite smells is horse's breath.

And now who to tag? How about Keri, Robyn, Freya and Carolyn aka my fabulous crit buddies.

It's a miracle!

Well, I don't know quite what's happened but something shook loose today and I've managed to get down 17 pages. That's after several weeks of absolute crawling along. Maybe it was taking the day off completely yesterday, maybe it was a dose of ballet. Who knows? But whatever it was I like it!

Those of you paying attention might notice that I've revised the wordcount down a little. Somewhere in the middle of whining to Keri last night, I remembered that my wordcount for the first draft of number 1 was 90k, not 100k. I write short not long in first draft. Lots of talking heads and [insert reaction here]. So I decided 90k was the aim for this one too. Somehow having 80 odd pages to go just seems a lot more do-able right now than 120 odd. It doesn't make much logical sense, the rest of the words still have to be written at some point, after all, number one is now something like 110k but for some reason, 90k is making the muse much happier. Some I'm going with that. No-one ever said writing was a completely rational process. And if they did, they were wrong. Irrational works for me.

So yay me. I might just make my target of 75k by the end of the long weekend and if I do, I've got about sixty pages to go after that. Which seems doable, even if I start freaking out about Dallas (note to self, do not freak out about Dallas). Yippee and yeehah. I have suitably rewarded myself with another dose of PoTC 3 (much Jack and Will love) and am about to follow that up with McDreamy and co. Life is good!

Jumping, jumping

I seem to be going through a blink and another few days has flown by phase. Less than five weeks to Dallas now...when I first decided to go it was probably five months. Eeek. Time going too fast. Too much to do.

Unfortunately something that's not going too fast is the book. My muse is being a bit ADD, giving me snippets of scenes but not whole scenes. At least not easily. I've jumped ahead a bit because I can't quite work out a transition. I know what has to happen to set up the climax and the ending but not sure how to get there.

Hopefully a brilliant answer is about to materialise...otherwise my first draft will have a big chunk missing that says "stuff happens here until this happens". Scintillating prose if ever I saw it.

I saw Breach on the weekend which was a cool little quiet thriller. And freakily contained references at the end to a supermax prison. Which is a concept apparently invented in Australia (yay, us...er, maybe) and one that I had only heard of for the first time about thirty minutes before I left to go to the movie when I was doing book research. Sometimes synchronicity is a little weird. Things like that often happen when you write. Which is part of the cool stuff. Stuck on plot is not.