Getting Organized

I am not a very organized person. Some people (my husband) might disagree since I like things put away where they belong--mainly so I can find them again when I need them.

But my desk tells a different story. Because everything is within arm's reach, I don't need to compartmentalize. Whet I need is usually in plain sight. Or under something.

I did get tired of my cords getting tangled up, especially since I accumulated more electronics in the past few months--phone, camera, Nook, Ipad. If you've ever tried to insert your phone cord into your camera, you know the feeling.

So I got out my trusty permanent marking pen and labeled the white ones. That left just the black ones to confuse me, but I think I have them figured out. I leave the plug on the telephone cord.

They still wanted to participate in a group hug, however. Outside  of  keeping each cord in  separate room, I had to do something.

Two Hills Brothers coffee containers (Sugar-free Vanilla Cappuccino is my favorite)
Four toilet paper cores (or a tall medicine bottle, but they're harder to get)
Three rubber bands.

And there you are. Nicely nested and easy to get at.

I have no patent on this, so feel free to copy.

This has absolutely nothing to do with writing. I can't even think of a connection. If you can, please leave a comment and share your insights!

Terrible Tuesdays

I am seriously thinking of changing the title of this blog to "Terrible Tuesdays." Tuesdays must occur more than once in an average week, because here it is again.

Today was worse than usual. Okay, so it's hard sometimes to come up with a subject for my weekly rant, although I find if I just start typing something comes to me. But, after a few days spent in a slump wherein I played endless games of  Spider Solitaire and Free Cell, while checking my e-mail every five minutes just to break the boredom, I woke up this morning determined to be Productive (note the capital P).

I have revised "Wherever You May Be" and dozen times and can do no more. It is time to send it out into the world to make its fortune. My big decision this morning was to dig out my historical romance and try once again to finish it.

Now, having observed other people's problems with computers eating or otherwise destroying their precious manuscripts, I saved mine in an external hard drive. So, retrieving it should be simple, right?

It wasn't in the file where I had left it. It had wandered far afield. My first thought was that it was gone forever, perhaps orbiting merrily around Jupiter. My second thought was that I could never, never find the energy (or the wits) to write it again. From scratch.

Then I did a Search. After a great deal of chortling and chuckling, my computer brought forth the file I was missing.

Here is the path: Computer->Sandy Bruney Backup->Documents_>BCK1->Archives->_nsd_C->Documents and Settings->Sandra Bruney->My Documents->Documents->My file.

It took me the better part of an hour just to access the file. Then, my diabolical computer had one more trick up its sleeve. Every Word file had been converted to a .doc.nsz file. Which wouldn't open in any program I could find. At last I tried opening it in Notepad and eureka! the words I had labored over some two years ago came back to life.

I'm happy again, but much too tired and frazelled to tackle the story now.

Productivity will have to wait until another day.

Oh -- tomorrow is the last day to enter the drawing for a free copy of "The Almost Bride" and a copy of your choice of one of my hostesses' romance novels. Just go to http://wp.me/p1Ggnm-cH   and leave a comment with your e-mail address for a chance to win. And thanks to everyone who already dropped by. Your support means a lot to me.

Practice makes perfect -- almost

Are you writing anything new? What's it about?

I imagine writers hear this all the time. I know I do. I wonder if other writers have the same difficulty in trying to tell what her story is about  before the listener begins to look bored or changes the subject.

And this is with friends.

Now imagine you have three to five minutes to outline your entire plot not to an interested friend, but to an agent who has heard it all before, and is looking for that indefinable something different in your story. This conversation is called a "pitch" as in you are tossing your baby to an onlooker and hoping she will catch it.

I "pitched" for the second time last Saturday at the monthly Carolinas Romance Writers meeting. The first time was also at a CRW meeting (which is why I pay dues and attend meetings...they frequently have publishers and agents as guest speakers). I was horribly nervous, stammered, and made no impression at all unless it was why is this idiot pretending to be a writer?

This time I wrote down my pitch, practiced it at home, practiced in the car riding to Charlotte and practiced it again when I picked up my passenger. I wasn't going to be nervous this time!

I was calm until the "cold read." The agent read one page of our manuscripts and made comments on why she would or wouldn't read further. Her comment on mine? "Another cute meet."

What I thought was a --well, cute-- way to introduce the two main characters and set them up for conflict, was something this experienced agent had seen dozens of times before. She wasn't dismissive, even suggested I change the scene to make it less contrived, but I already knew it was doomed.

I got through the pitch and came home and began revising the manuscript. I did learn two things, though.

Look out for the cliched and overdone introduction.

Practice your pitch until you can repeat it to a professional without stammering.

All in all, a good experience.

A new year, open to possibilities. In 2013, I resolve to try new varieties of wine, and read as many books as I can cram into a mere 365 days. Now that the library has Freading, and I am armed with both my Nook and iPad (which downloads Kindle books) I probably won't have to trudge to the library as often as in the past. Except to take my hubby, who disdains electronic readers and prefers a solid book in his hands.

And since I go in with him, I have to browse the shelves, right? and if there's a new book by one of my favorite authors in finger-tip reach, I naturally add it to his stack.

Isn't it wonderful to have so many choices? And with the explosion of new books on the market, our choices are nearly unlimited. Yum, it's like being in the candy store of my childhood, where a nickel could net you a little brown bag full of goodies.

When I was around four or five, I found a pebble that was flat and perfectly round, like a nickel. I took it to the store and offered it to the clerk. Amused, she allowed me to select several pieces of candy.

Wow! A magic pebble. I found another, and repeated my shopping trip.

The third time, the store owner contacted my mother. She thought it was funny. Mom did not. I was told the difference between a stone and a coin, and sent to  my room to brood upon my sins.

Suppose I had offered a real coin, and was given a bag filled with pebbles? Not so amusing.

With the onset of self-publishing, one can purchase a book and not realize until opening it that she has bought trash and not a treasure. While most of the SP books I have downloaded have been excellent reads, some should never have seen the light of day. Which makes people, once burned, suspicious of any SP book.

I think that, if not in 2013, but soon, there will be a self-governing board to vet SP novels before they reach the market. It can only help all of us who choose that route to publication. Sort of like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

So that's my prediction for the new year.

And my great discovery of 2012 was that I can still ride a bike at age -- ha, ha, I'm not telling!

Happy New Year everyone and may blessing fall like rain upon your heads.

Diary of a recovering serial killer

Welcome my guest writer, Elbert Marshall, author of  "Nomad."  The spine-tingling novel is available now on www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com.

Diary of a recovering serial killer

In writing “Nomad,” a follow-up novel to “Plotz,” which Sandy Bruney and I co-authored as Marshall Bruney, one of the toughest tasks was to assume the role of a serial killer. With my background in newspapering (as a reporter and an editor), the passages about my lead reporter, Evan Parris; the chapters involving detectives with the Glamorgan Police Department; and the written word about a female behavioral analyst flowed freely from past memories.

Becoming Nomad, the serial killer, was not so easy. My Google searches presented me with thousands, perhaps millions, of results to sift through. Finally, I assumed the mental role of a serial killer and wrote “Nomad.”

Afterwards, I felt withdrawal pains through random thoughts and a couple of nightmares. I wrote about it in a June 2012 elbertreble blog – see http://elbertreble2012.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.html.

I have found that writing may ease an affliction, so I penned the following item titled “The Diary of a Recovering Serial Killer.” It is meant to be humorous while seemingly macabre and enlightening.

(DISCLAIMER: No one, including my wife, was injured (or murdered) while penning diary entries.)

Day 1: Woke up early this morning and gave the sleeping wife an evil eye, and wondered “what if?”

Day 2: Same old pattern, but too chicken to ask her to be my next “victim.”

Day 3: Ditto to Day 2.

Day 4: Changed directions. Went to the Food Court at the mall and nursed a Chick-fila-a sandwich and Diet Coca-Cola for an hour while scoping out my next “victim.” A security guard eventually asked, no, told me to move on, and clean up my table mess. Said I was scaring the children. That wasn’t true, of course. Nomad was no pedophile.

Day 5: Went to Les Myers Park and occupied a bench for about an hour. No prospects.

Day 6: Went to Walmart and sat on a bench at checkout, checking out the checkers out. Got some mean looks from boyfriends/husbands. Decided to move on before I got my ass whupped – in public. Or, got arrested. I can hear the dialogue now …

      “But officer, I’m not a real serial killer! I just write about them in my new psychological thriller, ‘Nomad’!”

      “A serial killer? Jeez! In Concord!”

      “Hands behind your back! Cuff him, Dano!”

      “Let’s take a ride uptown.”

Day 10: Finally convinced the CPD that I was merely a recovering serial killer, and not a real one. A condition to my release, I was asked to avoid public places and ogling blonde women in their mid-twenties.

Day 12: Withdrawal pains.

Day 13: To soothe withdrawal pains, read Pages 30-33 of “Nomad” – once, twice, thrice to ease the desire.

Day 14: Doing better. Only read Pages 211-215 one time.

Day 22: On the wagon. So I begin researching a flashback section of my follow-up to “Nomad” by asking my Facebook friends what they remember about 1977. No replies.

Day 23: Still no replies about 1977. What happened in 1977 that everyone back-erased their memories? I pick up “Nomad” but resist re-reading Pages 30-33 and Pages 211-215.

Day 27: Jeez! 1977 must be a blur to everyone. In despair, I fell off the wagon and read Pages 211-215. Feeling somewhat better, I finished off my “high” by reading Pages 30-33 and all of Chapter 29.

Day 28 (early morning): My wife is missing! Horrors! I search every room in the house – including under our bed and the bed in the guest room, plus every closet. Even the basement. No wife. I stand on the edge of the deck and look for unusual humps in the back yard. What have I done?

Day 28 (later in the afternoon): The cellphone rings. It’s the wife. She’s in Virginia visiting her daddy and wants to know how I’m doing. “I miss you,” I moaned.

Day 28 (late night): Decided to go back on the wagon – starting in the morning.

Day 29 (10 a.m.): Re-read Chapter 29, then Chapter 30 and Chapter 31 of “Nomad.” Felt some better, but had to read the Epilogue to really feel better.

Day 29 (high noon): Officially went back on the wagon. No more serial killer thoughts.

Day 30: Had bad thoughts all day but didn’t feed my disease with “Nomad” readings.

Day 45: All right! Fifteen days sober and counting. Oh, does a teensy flash across the brain count as falling off the wagon? No, I decide.

Day 46: The wife returns. Happy days are here again!

Day 60: A full month sober. “Who Slew Bonnie Blue” research progressing well. Thank goodness Google doesn’t have a memory lapse about 1977.

Day 90: Another month, another day without a s.k. thought. (I abbreviated serial killer so that I wouldn’t get a vivid picture of Nomad stalking, kidnapping, toying with, leaving his signature in blood, and murdering another female victim).

Day 90 (three minutes after above post): I’m reading Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 of “Nomad.” Jeez! Off the wagon! Thank goodness I bookmarked all of the chapters devoted to Nomad!

Day 90 (ten minutes after above posts): “What’s wrong with you?” the wife asks as I hungrily thumb through and read page after earmarked page.

      To which I replay, “Would you like to play a game with me?”

      “What!” she inquires.

      “Serial killer meets his sweetheart.”

      To which she replies, “How about serial killer meets his end”; and she clobbers me over the head with her handy, 75-pound purse. Twice! No thrice!

Day 90 (a split second after above post): I am no longer a recovering serial killer. My mind has been freed of stalking, kidnapping, toying with, leaving a signature in blood, and murdering female victims.

Day 200: Okay, it’s been a “clean” 110 days. However, after doing my research for my “Who Slew Bonnie Blue?” flashback to 1977, I’m on the brink of another addiction – maybe two or three combined. It seems that 1977 was a pivotal year that altered “free sex” to “protected sex/abstinence,” when drug use was at an all-time peak and pornography, thanks to a Supreme Court decision on the First Amendment to our Constitution, became an in-home pleasure – thanks to Beta and VCR machines.

To be honest, I think I am too old to be a sex-drug-porno addict. I think I’ll go back and re-read Chapters 1 and 3 of “Nomad” – and take my chances as a recovering, not-recovering, recovering serial killer. Seems safer to me.

When Do You Know It's Christmas?

One year I nearly missed Christmas. We had just moved to the sunny South and summer seemed to linger on...and on. December came with balmy breezes and shirtsleeve weather. Without the first snowfall to alert me, I failed to shop, to send cards, to bake...to do much of anything until the boys, then 7, 10 and 12, stuck their wish lists in my face and shocked me into awareness.

Sometimes we get so caught up in preparing that we skip right over the event. Usually, though, there is one moment that defines the season. Maybe it's when the gifts are wrapped and under the tree, and you peek in at your sleeping children and wonder at their innocence before going to bed yourself.

Or it could be in the morning--the early morning--when you hear their excited giggles of anticipation.

It might happen before that. One time it was during the Christmas Eve service when we sang "Silent Night" with only candles to illuminate the words. We didn't need more light; we knew the song by heart. The peace and joy that filled the sanctuary was a miracle in itself.

Once it was after all the excitement was over: presents unwrapped, dinner eaten, the family sitting in front of the TV watching a cartoon special. I stepped outside to do something, take out the trash or shake the crumbs from a the tablecloth, when I looked up and saw the stars. The air was crisp and cold, and they shone like diamonds, so close I felt I could reach up and grab one in my hand.

The same stars that blazed in the same sky over 2000 years ago. And I felt the miracle of the birth they celebrated.

When does Christmas come for you? Do you savor the moment and hug it to your heart? Does it cause your breath to stop because the emotion is too much to bear?

I hope so. Then you know Christmas is really here.







 

The Grand and Frenzied Traditions

If anyone is unaware that Christmas is fast approaching, she has been confined to her home with no newspaper, radio or TV access.

Or children (or grandchildren) with lists.

I am amazed by the articles written about how to take the stress out of the holidays...simplify your holiday...cut down on the hassle this year...

Why? You might as well forget all about it as leave out all the traditions that make the holiday uniquely your family's. I'm not saying you have to go crazy, but don't those people who have their shopping done by July 31 have a teeny little feeling that they are missing something? The decorations, the music, the hum of excitement in the air?

My particular frenzy is baking. In 2010 everything I made burned or was underdone. I swore never to bake again.

In 2011, I forgot my oath. Everything came out just fine. I plan to bake up a storm this year, confident that my mojo is back. I will make ginger cookies from my great-grandmother's recipe (identical to one I found that was supposedly from Thomas Jefferson's kitchen!). As I roll out the dough and cut out the stars, angels and bells, I will remember the year the three boys iced them all in blue icing. Letting them ice the cookies was part of our tradition and I usually left the room and let them have at it. It was a mess when they finished, but they did have fun--and for a change, shared an activity without arguing.

I will make sugar cookies, so thin and crisp they have to be handled very carefully. They melt in your mouth.

Then there are the pinwheels, a combination of vanilla and chocolate layers rolled together and sliced. There is nothing Christmasy about them, but they are my oldest son's favorite, so they are on the list. Also chocolate and peanut butter fudge, and peanut brittle. Pecan pie. Caramel corn. Orange Crush pound cake.

The list is small compared to what Mom used to make. Fondant, Divinity, dates stuffed with peanut butter and rolled in sugar, fudge, jellies, pecan roll, and cookies, cookies, cookies. We ate Christmas cookies until Easter.

I don't intend to simplify my holidays one whit. That said, I don't intend to forget what it is all about, either. Not family, friends, and being together, but the greatest reason to celebrate there is: the birth of our Savior.