One of my favorite music videos: Christopher Walken and Fatboy Slim

I love this video primarily because it features a well-known actor doing something you'd have never pictured him doing. Reminds me that we ought to keep in mind that our characters should never be predictable either. :)

Milestones and sharing

Today is my anniversary. I can't say how long we've been married because then you'll start adding, LOL. But it's been a long time.

Part of being married is learning to enjoy some of the things your spouse likes. It's a give and take. We tend to like a lot of the same things, but then there are those things that we each tolerate on some level (football, me; antique stores, hubby) for the sake of the other one.

And then there's the things we discovered together. Those are the most fun of all, and I usually don't remember whose idea it was in the first place.

So, for the fun of it, here's 10 things that we love (or love to do) that we discovered together (in no particular order):

1. Listen to Tom Jones. It's been 10 years since one of us said, "Hey, what's the deal with this Tom Jones guy? Didn't women used to go crazy over him or something? Wasn't he about as popular as Elvis at one time?" Tom is way cool. Even Jordin Sparks chose a TJ song during Idol (and sang it twice).

2. Stargazing. We took an astronomy class together a few years ago, and both decided we loved spending nights under the stars, slewing a telescope toward little points of light. In Europe, we had star parties on mountain tops, complete with wine and snacks. :)

3. Gadgets. Hubby is the gadget guy, always up on the latest info regarding the coolest toys. Somehow, he enmeshes me in his web, and I find myself wanting to go to CompUSA just to gawk at the gizmos. Weird, huh?

4. Wine. We met in Germany. Hubby was a beer guy, and I cut my teeth on sweet German Rieslings. It took a few years, but our tastes gravitated toward reds. Now, we love to split a bottle of Bordeaux or good American Cabernet, Shiraz, Merlot, etc. We have a wine bar right down the street, and love to go tasting. Neither one of us blinks at a $25 bottle, though we don't buy that too often.

5. Independent or arty films. We still love a good Hollywood blockbuster, like those Bourne movies, but we love to watch movies about people as opposed to explosions. Movies like The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Lost in Translation, Broken Flowers, Big Night, The House of Mirth, Good Night and Good Luck, The Matador, etc.

6. Food. We'll pretty much try anything once (within reason -- it has to be edible in America, you know), and we're very eclectic in our tastes. I think we both love Italian food the most, but not the kind of Italian you get when you go to the Olive Garden, for instance. We love the real deal, the stuff we got in Europe, the stuff that doesn't have a meatball in sight. I don't think we're foodies in the sense that we're food snobs, but we do like good fresh food prepared simply.

7. Anthony Bourdain. He's a recent pleasure, and we both love to watch him combine our two favorite activities: eating and traveling. I'd add that he's a fine writer too, at least in the vignettes he writes for the show. Haven't read his books yet, but they're on the list. He can be a jerk, but he's hilarious as well. And he really WILL eat anything once. (Steer penis soup? I don't think so!)

8. HGTV. Probably, hubby loves the shows like Groundbreakers and Landscaper's Challenge more than the decorating shows, but he still likes Designing to Sell and House Hunters. I'm sure I tire him out with HGTV, because I will view it non-stop, but he enjoys it too (just not as much as I do). We get ideas, and we talk about what we'd like to do in our own house.

9. Fresh ground coffee. We didn't drink coffee when we first met (young enough not to have acquired a taste for it yet), so that was something we discovered together. We went through the foo-foo phase, where we bought flavored coffees. We went through the Coffee Mate phase. Now, we grind our coffee fresh every morning and drink it with half & half. 100% Kona is our favorite, but that's hard to get now. And expensive when you don't live in Hawaii anymore. :(

10. Battlestar Galactica and Firefly. Other than a passing Star Trek fancy, neither one of us was a big space opera kind of person. Now, we've watched the entire Firefly series at least twice (and we're getting ready to do it again), and we're seriously into the new BG. We missed Season 3, due to moving and all that, but we're impatiently waiting for it to come out on DVD. And the DVR is already set to start recording Season 4.

So that's it. Ten things my sweetie and I like, or like to do, together. I'm sure I could think of more, but that's a good enough list to remind me of why this man is my favorite person in the whole wide world. As if I could forget. :) What sort of things have you discovered that you like to do with a significant person in your life? (It could just as easily be a child, or maybe even a parent.) Would you have discovered this thing, or liked this thing as much, if you didn't have someone to share it with?

Further tales of the Borg

When I was in Madrid 3 years ago, I ate at Botin's, the restaurant that Hem sends Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes to. This restaurant is right down the street from Botin's, and I had to laugh at the sign. I guess Hemingway's books don't translate well since the sign is clearly for an English-speaking audience. :)

Still, it's brilliant, really. If you can't lay claim to having a great American writer get drunk in your restaurant, you can at least proclaim he never was there, right?

Maybe I should make a sign for my office that says "Hemingway never wrote here." Hmm, wonder if that will inspire me much?

Nope, probably not. I admire some of the old boy's work, that's for sure, but I'd have probably hated to be in his circle of friends. If writers are neurotic, and we know we are, can you imagine Hem ringing you up to discuss the rotten state of his current WIP?

::shudder::

Anyway, not being a good old lush of a writer who sloshes around cafes and hunches over a creaky manual typewriter, I decided to check out this Scrivener thing that's been mentioned. (Jean mentioned it in comments, and I saw posts about it on one of my loops recently. And if anything can help me be more organized, and even get more accomplished, then yeehaw and where do I sign up?)

OMG.

I downloaded it immediately. Scrivener (and I'd love to link to it, but that's something I've yet to figure out with Mac -- control c and control v don't cut it anymore) is this cool writer's program that features word processing, outlining (not that I do), a corkboard for research, and then you can export your draft to more popular software, like Word, for final editing and printing (if you want). It is SO cool. There was a program being sold somewhere that was far more expensive, and far less cool, that I tried on my Toshiba a couple of years ago.

Scrivener is $34.99. You get to try it for 30 days free. I haven't bought it yet, though I probably will. First, I wanted to see how long it would take me to learn some of the features, like the outlining. Will I really use it? OTOH, I love the look of the manuscript in the Scrivener edit mode. You can scroll through it seamlessly, and in the statistics portion of the program, Scrivener will actually tell you how many BOOK pages your manuscript would be in comparison to how many mss pages it is. You can change the parameters, too. The default is 350 words to a printed page, but you could make it anything you want.

Want to know if you're on target for Desire? Count how many words are on a Desire page and plug it in. (You'd have to be really anal retentive, but still. You could do it if you wanted, and that's cool.)

So far, so darn cool. Now, the goal is to actually write the book, not play around with toys and computers. Would Hemingway have gotten anything done if he'd had the Internet to goof around with? I don't know. He managed to drink like a fish, party like it was 1999, and gamble away his living money (in the early days) while still writing for a newspaper and hammering out ground-breaking fiction.

I think I have no excuse. Any cool writing toys (computer or otherwise) you've discovered?

I am Borg

I've been assimilated. I have trod the Apple lane and been converted surprisingly quickly. I didn't want to be converted. I was perfectly happy with PC. I didn't see why I should spend more money to get less computer and then have my new less computer not be compatible with websites and programs, etc. (It really isn't less computer.)

Here's the Mac experience thus far: open the computer, plug it in, it works. That's it. The darn thing works, right out of the box, without a lot of wrangling. We have the MacBook and an iMac. They both work, they both set up the network, they go online, they get their updates (the first time you turn them on), they're done. No configuring needed. No fighting with DSL. When I changed to DSL, I had to put BellSouth's stupid software on my PC. When I set up the iMac, we plugged the DSL in and it worked. No software needed. And then we set up the Airport Base Station. No software (other than what came with the base station). It just frickin' works. I still can't get over it.

My Mac doesn't have lots of little icons for junk software I don't want either. No free AOL trials, no Quicken teasers, no junk that sits there and can't be gotten rid of. I can't stress that enough -- NO JUNK.

If I had to use one word to sum up these two computers, it'd be CLEAN. They're clean, they work, and they make sense. The learning curve is slight, though PC does some things better in my opinion (usability things primarily, which might be things I just have to figure out and set preferences for with the Mac).

It's true that not every website will work with Mac. I just went to Amazon.com and saw their new unboxed thing for downloading television shows. Turns out they only support Windows, which disappointed me since one of the reasons I held out against Apple was this very issue of not being able to do things I might want to do. But if I really want to watch these shows from Amazon, both my computers will run Windows. So even switching from Windows is no longer an issue because I can still have it if I want it.

Money wise, Apple still isn't cheap. They are less expensive than they used to be in comparison to PC though. My MacBook was 1099, and I still had to pay 149 for Microsoft Office (have to have Word). If you want to run Windows on your Mac, you have to buy it. It's 299. Apple also sells various programs, such as iLife and iWork, that you may want. The computers come with cool stuff already though. iTunes, iChat, iMovie, iPhoto, and who knows what else (still exploring). Safari is okay, but Firefox is better (and free). The free widgets are awesome. You could download a million of those.

Back when my PC crashed in February, Mac wasn't an option to me. Expense was a big part of that. I didn't want to spend so much on a new computer, and fortunately PC recovered anyway. But my hubby's been campaigning for months, especially since we needed a new desktop and since my laptop has been having more glitches (keyboard losing power to certain keys, IE locking up, bluescreen). He insists that the Unix platform on which Apple is built is more stable and more secure. So I finally gave in.

I did not expect to be so comfortable so fast. Another plus on the MacBook is the battery life. When I got my PC, I bought a Centrino laptop because I wanted extended battery life. The most I ever got was right under 3 hours. This Mac has gone around 5 hours before I plugged it in. It didn't give me a warning, but I just decided I better plug it in. I suppose I could take it to the limit and see how far it will go, but I was impressed that it would last 5 hours.

For people who like to play with their computers, who like to tinker with things and change things, maybe a Windows PC is better. I don't know. But if you want to plug the computer in and not think twice about it, then maybe Apple is the way to go. As someone used to tell me, "You will be assimilated." Yeah, I guess I have been. Darn it. Now if only I wasn't so comfortable with that fact.....

Who's your Mac daddy?

Please excuse the mess while the author of this blog is forcibly dragged kicking and screaming into the world of Apple. Hubby insists.

I am on a very cute MacBook and hubby is buying an iMac to replace the desktop. It's different, and there's a slight learning curve, but it's pretty intuitive. So far, not too upset, but things look different. And my home network is refusing to cooperate, not because of Apple, but because we were switching to DSL from cable. The phone company sucked me in and lied about the money they were going to send me. I may have to send the DSL modem back with a note about where they can put it, but we'll see. :)

In the meantime, hope everyone is writing and getting lots done! I hope to be back to normal soon!

Sur-PRISE!

I have a pretty good TBR pile at any given moment. It's because I can't resist the lure of new books. I buy them even when I know I have so many I haven't even read yet. Yesterday, I picked up one that I'd had for a couple of months. It had a nice cover, and it promised me a military hero. It was a single-title mass market book and the spine labeled it as a romance. The back cover copy promised me romantic suspense. Right up my alley!

Things went downhill pretty quickly. I thought that the hero's involvement with whips and chains and sex toys was a cover. Um, no. I started skimming, hoping I was wrong, hoping it would all turn out right. About the time the hero forced the heroine into a sex act involving, ahem, alternative orifices, I'd had it. Naturally, though she protested and didn't want to do it, and he forced her anyway, she found immense pleasure in it by the end. To say I was uncomfortable and a bit furious is probably an understatement.

Now, I am no prude. I will read erotica. I have recently read and very much enjoyed Sydney Croft's Riding the Storm, which is very well written and has a STORY that suits the subgenre. I have Colette Gale's Unmasqued on the TBR pile and I look forward to it. But to force me into reading something that should more properly be labeled erotica when I'm not expecting it?

Angry. And I feel like I wasted my money on a story that I thought was going to be the particular kind of story I like most. Not even close!

Laura Kinsale wrote a historical (Shadowheart) featuring bondage and whipping that was pretty amazingly done. The difference, I think, is that the character who liked to be hurt liked it for a specific reason. Allegreto would never, ever perpetrate pain upon the heroine. Maybe I was more sympathetic to Allegreto because I'd read For My Lady's Heart many years ago and got to see him as a boy first. Though I was still somewhat uncomfortable with the bondage and whipping, I trusted Kinsale to write an amazing story.

And I fully realize that my own biases are coming into play here. I find NOTHING sexy about pain and humiliation. A hero who likes to hurt women, even women who like to be hurt, isn't deserving of the hero label as far as I'm concerned. But that's just me. Others are certainly entitled to feel differently.

You can bet that I won't ever pick up another book by this author. If I could take this one back for a refund, I would. A look over her Amazon comments tells me that people either love or hate her. And those who love her know what she's writing. I didn't, and I'm mad for being duped into buying a book I thought was going to be something else.

There's a place in fiction for this type of story, obviously, but don't fool me into buying it by labeling it as a straight romance. It wasn't and I'm not amused.

Have you ever bought a book that turned out to be something entirely different? Were you mad or did it introduce you to a type of story you might not otherwise have read? If you were me, would you throw this book away, keep it as a prime example of you can't judge a book by its cover, or donate it to the library (anonymously, of course)?

Underdogs

I'm not a celebrity gossip kind of person. I don't care who is dating whom or what is going on where, and I'm heartily sick of Paris Hilton. But, dang it, I was really really rooting for Britney at the VMAs. I wanted her to kick it old school, you know?

I didn't watch, didn't even know when it would be on, but then my hubby told me yesterday that Brit blew it (he was reading CNN online). So I went and read it. And viewed part of the disaster. OMG.

Yeah, I know she has more money than sense, and that she's been pretty privileged so far, but I think it's the writer in me that wanted her to show everyone she still had it. I wanted her to strut out there and leave them all wowed. Far from it, she's actually attracted more pity and censure.

When we write, we're supposed to really sock it to our characters. We have to stick them so far down in the muck that it seems impossible they'll ever get out. And then we watch them change and grow and claw their way back even better than before. You ask yourself what's the worst thing that could happen to your character and then you make that happen. The beauty of a romance novel, however, is that your character will survive. She'll get it all back and then some.

And I love that part of the process when I'm reading. I love it when a writer is able to wrench at my emotions and make me root for the character. I love it when the character emerges triumphant.

But life isn't always like that. Britney didn't kick it old school. She sunk even further into the muck and it was damn painful to watch. She's made some dumb choices (K-Fed, anyone?) and earned a lot of rancor with her train-wreck lifestyle these days, but I still hope that won't define her. I want her to come out on top so I can go back to ignoring her the way I always did. I want her to show that young women sometimes choose the wrong guy, and give up their careers for a man, but that they can get it all back again, that they can emerge stronger and wiser for the experience.

I hope she ignores the comments about her belly (puh-leeze, most of us would love to have that body, even with the post-baby jiggle). I hope Madonna calls her up and tells her to persevere. I hope she rebounds. Yeah, if she were my character, I'd probably take her down a few more notches before letting her succeed.

Is Britney really an underdog? My hubby says no. I say yes, at least in my writing brain where characters get kicked around a lot before they manage to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. I'm just a romantic at heart. :)

(Note: pic isn't from the VMAs. It's an older photo of a more successful Britney.)

Company here, company gone

Since moving closer to relatives, they tend to come visit more often. This isn't a bad thing, but it sure does mean I don't get anything but the barest of essentials done. It's the darned Southern hostess gene. The gene that dictates you must see to your guests' comfort at all times, that you must accomodate their wishes and be available to fix them nice lunches or big dinners every day.

I can't work too well with people in my house. I feel guilty, like I'm ignoring them, even when they don't seem to require my attention at that moment. It's easier, as an uncontracted writer, to drop everything and go take care of them. And then there's the cycle of guilt that comes from that, from knowing that a real writer wouldn't drop a thing to make sure his or her father-in-law has his coffee at the crack of dawn every day.

But, the two week cycle of company is over for now (and we had a blast with our first guest, the very self-sufficient and always fun Mark who posts here on occasion -- though he did drag me to a botanical garden in high 90 degree heat). I have to reorient my brain to work. Today's lunch with Problem Child should help me think writing again. And this weekend, Heart of Dixie has a big writing workshop that I'm looking forward to.

What's on your writing plate these days? Getting lots done, or trying to dig out from the post-holiday malaise?