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Today was one of those days where nothing particularly unusual happened,* but all of the usual happened all at once and never let up for a second.

I’m exhausted and tapped out and calling it a day before my nose hits the keyboard for the third time and I have to explain the odd checkerboard pattern embossed on my face to everyone all morning.

Actual content tomorrow, I promise.

Meanwhile, Janet Reid has some information on an interesting contest for aspiring, unpublished, American (sorry!)  novelists (again, sorry!).  It’s being sponsored by Fine Print Literary Agency and the prize looks pretty good.

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*Including, I’m sorry to say, the Incident Report I had to file this afternoon.  I think things would be far less complicated if young men had antlers they could smack together—outside, if you don’t mind— to take the edge off.

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Happy Leverage Day!

The third season of Leverage premeires tonight on TNT!

Why do I love this show so much that I’ve checked the DVR three times to make absolutely sure I won’t have to wait a single second longer than necessary to get my fix once the kids are in bed?

It’s fun, it’s clever, it’s got snappy dialogue and cool stuff and great people . . . it works.

If I were to sum it up—and I had the talent and software to put clips to music, which I don’t—I would say this:

(Yes, that was Wil Wheaton as the Evil Hacker)

And this:

Oh, and Happy Father’s Day, too.

Writing is . . . Vengeful

Injury to Insult . . .

My Netbook has contracted a nasty virus—don’t know what it is, yet, since my three antivirus anti-spyware programs (which I update every blessed morning) don’t seem to see it.

Luckily I have backups of my documents everywhere—including hard copies, since I like to red pen my revisions.  I’ve learned that lesson,* if not the one about not allowing my family to use my computer while I’m at the day job.

If anyone knows what nasty computer bugs\worms\wolverines fill up the taskbar with little red shield warnings and the screen with messages asking me if I really want to scan my system with infected programs (booga, booga) ,while throwing up multitudes of Internet pages,** please let me know. 

And if you might know how to get rid of the $#%$ thing(s), have pity on me.   I’m running Windows XP from an EeePC Netbook***—or I would be, if I could get through!  I’m going to try a system reset as soon as the latest scan is done.

In the meantime, it’s back to legal pads and library computers^ for me . . . which might not be a bad thing.  Maybe trying a different format will help me get back in touch with my characters.  And I could use the time to summarize what I’ve done so far, maybe work up a timeline.

So, maybe it’s not such an injury after all  . . . until I give up and have to pay someone $150 to clean my Netbook.  But by that time, I might have something worthwhile to type up.

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*Holy Cow, have I learned that lesson.  I have flashbacks about learning that lesson.  Way back when  floppies were all one had (the 3.5″ ones, not the big ones, which I do remember, thank you and shut up),  I lost a twenty pages of a twenty-three page term paper the night before it was due.  Because floppies are delicate creatures and I only had one copy.  Oddly enough, the computer lab hadn’t kept a copy on whichever workstation I’d been using before. .  .

And if that wasn’t enough, I also once lost 53,000 words of what was clearly a potential Pulitzer-Nobel-Booker-Los Angeles Times-Faulkner-National Book Critic Circle–Etc. Award Winner, once I finished it and found an agent and a publishing house willing to take a chance on my creative vision.  It was about a 1906 librarian who was swept from her own time and place to lead a quest to a Manticore to exchange a mouse for the True Crown of the Kingdom of Wendell.  Okay, well . . . my mother liked it.

**Ads for anti-viral software, viagra, and a variety of porn, what a surprise.

***If you’re an Apple user, please don’t bother with the smug comments.  If I could afford an iAnything, I’d buy one.

^Note to my day job supervisor:  before work and on breaks, I swear.

Bear with me . . .

I’m reaching that lovely point in my current WIP where all my characters turn to cardboard and start glancing, glaring, blinking, shrugging, and twitching, not to mention sipping, drinking, and taking long swallows of caffeine, single malt, or diet Pepsi—write what you know, yeah?— while turning  cups and glasses in their hands and staring into them.*

My POV characters have the personality, insight, and sheer charisma of dried mud.  They also want to solve the main mystery now, which probably means the main mystery is a subplot . . . which means I need a new main mystery.

My plot is spinning its wheels in the mire of the mundane.  Plus, my metaphors suck.

And Thursday is my fortieth birthday.** 

So I started this blog.

Because nothing cures the “I suck at writing’ curse than more writing and a nice place to vent, ramble, and (occasionally) rock.

And chocolate.  Godiva chocolate.  The big box.

Hey–it’s my birthday.

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*But not moodily.  I’m not that far gone.

**That may seem like a non sequitor to you, and maybe it is, but you’d think the voices in my head would give me a break, considering.