NEW RELEASES
Go for the single syllable and save yourself
I don’t know about other writers, but all kinds of things make me think of stories. Songs on the radio can send my mind reeling with story ideas. An over heard conversation can set a whole scene to take shape. I try to keep track of these things – I have an actual notebook in my car dedicated to receiving important ideas or solutions to problems I’m currently trying to work through. I have a notebook app in my iPhone as well. I tell things to Siri and she notes them for me.
One thing I have a bunch of in my various notebooks is names. I love to collect names. Prospective names of heroes and heroines, horses, villains. First names. Last names. Crazy names and thoughtful names and ones that make me laugh.
The thing about names is, they seem perfectly acceptable, even very good, until you have to type them 75 thousand times in the course of the story.
Take my current hero, Christian, for example. No really, take him now (Thank you, Mr. Youngman). Christian started out as a secondary character in my first book, Lady Belling’s Secret. Then he participated quite a bit in the second book, Miss Goldsleigh’s Secret. Book three was always envisioned as Christian’s story so that’s what I’m writing right now. The problem is I am really growing to hate his name. I never type it right the first time – I always type Christina. Also, I’ve never been that crazy about that name in the first place. I have no idea why I chose it to begin with. If I could get away with it, I’d change it but it’s a bit late now.
In a new project I’m working on I chose the name Dashielle – a nod to one of my favorite authors, Dashielle Hammet. It’s pronounced Dash-el. My Honey vetoed the name when we were looking for one for The Bandit. I thought Dash Bright was perfectly acceptable but there was vigorous head shaking. So, instead, I get to name one of my other children Dash – and it totally fits his character.
Now, I just need to write books for Benjamin, Samuel, Finnegan, Linus and Flynn. They’ll probably all fall in love with the feisty Camille, Ettienne, Imogene, Marisol and Evangeline.
You know what though? I’ll hate those names by the forth chapter of their books anyway so it doesn’t matter.
In Our Humble Opinion . . . we deserve an award for showing up to work, the award should be we get to go home.
In Our Humble Opinion…customer service is large-company code for “we’re not going to help you but we are going to let you become very familiar with our phone system”.
In Our Humble Opinion . . . when dropping your kids off at school, the correct response to “I love you” is not “Fine” even if you are eleven years old.
Why book dealers are nothing like the cable company
I ordered some books from Barnes & Noble last night. They’re research books which is always a gamble on the internet. As I’m sure you can imagine, I love buying books and the best part of buying them is the shopping part. I really love sitting on the floor in a book store surrounded with piles of books and sorting through them till I find the one or seven I’m looking for. With the internet, even with the Look Inside feature, you can’t leaf through the pages, check out the pictures, or really dig around in there to make sure it’s what you need.
The books I need happened to be used and really cheap so I gambled. They came from some of B&Ns vendors, the used book dealers that contract with them. I got about 500 emails from the two different vendors basically telling me the received my order, they found my order in their warehouse, they’d put it on the work table to pack, and then that they’d packed the book in a box with styrofoam peanuts. After all this excessive communication I finally got the message I was really waiting for. The book had been shipped.
I should “expect delivery in 5-21 business days”. 5 to 21 days? Really? Is this just the most extreme example of under promise, over deliver or what? Jeez if it goes the entire 21 days, I’ll have long forgotten what I ordered. Maybe the book dealers are taking cues from the cable company for their times of arrival to work on your Internet.
Alright, Mrs. Bright, we’ll be there sometime between Tuesday at 8am to Thursday at 5pm. Someone must be present at the house or we’ll never come back and you’ll be Internetless for all time. Bwa ha ha ha ha. Don’t try to run to the store or even spend an excessive amount of time in the bathroom while you wait for us. And then the cable people twirl their little mustaches and sneer at you.
So, you guys wanna start a betting pool on when my books will arrive? I put $5 on eight days. Who’s in?
In Our Humble Opinion . . . Glenn Beck is insane.
In Our Humble Opinion . . . it’s clearly time to buy new jeans when even the rubber band trick doesn’t work anymore.
In Our Humble Opinion . . . Wednesday should be a day off just like Saturday and Sunday.
Dear Peyton Manning . . .
The Quill Sisters were out having lunch today at their favorite chicken and waffle joint. The food is delicious there and all three of us had the house special – chicken and waffles, just so you know. We really do hope there’s a chicken and waffle place in Denver. Anyway, while we were eating, Peyton Manning came on the TV. There he was, all smiling and happy – quite a different scene from the tearful goodbye to the Colts a few weeks ago. The Sisters aren’t really into men who cry but we’ll talk about that later.
Included in our salary would be advice about wearing conflicting stripes
The bottom of the screen said “96 million Dollars”. Well, that certainly got our attention. We don’t like football but we do like money. Actually, we like hockey because that’s a real sport and the men don’t cry. More on that later.
To catch you up, here’s the conversation:
Ava started to choke on her waffle – “96 mil for 5 years??? We can’t even get a freakin’ plastic fork where we work!! Does he have a wife?”
“I have no idea,” added Amylynn, unhelpfully. “We don’t like football.” That’s true but still not helpful.
“We do now,” said the ever wise Kelli.
We kicked around what we could do for Peyton that would cause him to share his 96 million with us. Yep – you got it but we had to reject that idea since we’re five to ten years older than him and not modelish. We felt none of us had a shot at getting him to divorce his wife (if he has one) and marry one of us. He also might not like the fact that we come as a set, lots of people don’t.
Since we’re writers we decided we could write his life story for him. We’ll set it
We know some hockey players who would kick his ass for this
in the future and he can talk about what a great 96 million dollar life he had with the Broncos (I sense a horse theme here, Peyton.) and how he’s sorry, truly sorry, and embarrassed over crying about the Colts like a broken-hearted non-hockey player. We’ll make him look like a superstar quarterback instead of someone who has to settle for the Broncos 96 mil . . . wait a minute . . . what the hell was all that crying about??? He’s crying over the opportunity to move on to 96 million??? To be the starting quarterback for the Broncos??
Just forget our offer, Peyton, but the least you can do is send us a box of forks.