When it rains, it pours.

Life can suck sometimes. Bear with me and my long story. I think typing it out will help me deal with my pent up frustration.

So some asshole broke the window in my car, while my husband was using it. He was inside a restaurant for a work function for only like 1.5 hours. The probably meth monster stole about $2k worth of stuff.

We make a glass claim with our insurance company because the only problem we found was a window was broken. While the glass company repaired the window they found that our regulator was broken, the mechanism that rolls the window up and down. When we made the original claim we were told that we had a $100 deductible, so all we had to pay was $100.

But noooooooo. Since a "mechanical" failure came into play, it no longer qualifies for the glass deductible, it now falls under the comprehensive deductible. Since there is a $500 deductible on our policy, we'll owe another $400.

Here's why this pisses me off. Several people told me that since the mechanical thing wasn't found until the glass people were working, it should fall under the $100 deductible. But the claims adjustor saidi that the $100 deductible is no longer in effect, it's now the $500 deductible, minus the $100 I already paid.

Let me break it down for those of you who have still continued with the story. The parts and labor for the mechanical failure will be about $322. Then there's the $100 I already paid toward the glass claim, so a total of $422 out of pocket. Right? Oh no! It gets worse.

The claims adjustor said that since the $100 glass deductible is no longer in effect, I now have to pay up to the $500. Which means The remaining $78 will be used by more toward glass!!!!

This is what bothers me. If I would have just stuck with the glass claim, I would have paid the $100 and done the mechanical thing out of pocket and not told the insurance company about it. So I would have paid $422. Now I have to pay $500!!!! How in the hell is that fair? I don't even know if this makes any sense to you. It's sort of hard to explain.

You may wonder why I went through with the claim. Well, as I was asking my insurance company about my policy and what my options were, they added it to the claim! So there was no turning back.

To make things worse, my hubby got a speeding ticket today. As I said before, when it rains, it pours!

Still truckin'

Slowly but surely I'm still working toward finishing the first draft of my MS. In some ways it's easier than I thought, but in many ways it's harder. I find myself spending a lot of time thinking ahead. I want to write a vampire series, but I'm not sure if this MS and storyline could be developed into a series. So I'm debating on whether I should just write it how it comes and possibly start a series with a different book, or spend time prepping it for a potential series. There are two male characters other than the hero that I see becoming hero's of their own books. But I'm not sure if the connection between the vampire and heroine I developed (that destines them to be together) is strong enough to work. Maybe I'm just not being confident enough.
I am also struggling with the humor a bit. I really like humorous romances and I want my romance to be one, but it keeps coming out more serious than I had expected. But I figure that during revisions I can add humor and fix the characters to be a bit more funny.

Gosh, then there's the revisions. Oye, that's going to be time consuming. It makes me wonder if I should be one of the people who edits as I go, but then I figure I'll never finish that way. I'm banking on the fact that once I have a full first draft, I'll be motivated to revise it and it won't be too bad.

The one thing I do know is that I need to have a revised and ready draft by the Romantic Times conference in May.

I MADE 50K

I can't believe it but I hit the 50k mark. Yeah, it's brainspew, I know. But I have 50k words down and that's a great feeling. I still have a lot more to go and I hope I don't loose any momentum.
I'm really excited about working on my next book idea so hopefully that will keep me motivated to properly finish the first. I don't want to be that person waiting while trying to sell my first book and not working on the next. I'm determined to make this dream a reality.

Okay, enough sappy stuff. I'm happy to see that so many of you hit your goal - great job!

On an unrelated note, I learned today that there is a Gerard Butler convention in Scotland in January. That's so awesome! I guess there's one in Colorado next year. Pretty neato that there are so many fans of his out there. When I began adoring him years ago I couldn't find another fan for the life of me, but thanks to great casting and Internet improvements, fans are being connected everywhere!

I made a Web site - woohoo!

I've caught up with technology, well sort of. I used a cheaters tool (a site building program) to build the damn thing, but it worked. I used to know HTML, but I don't have the energy to give it a try now.
I keep reading that writers should have a Web site, even if they aren't published. So I thought I'd give it a go. I've been doing okay with the livejournal thing so this is a natural progression. I just need to find some better photos...

I know that the color pink probably makes many of you sick and seems odd for a paranormal romance writer, but I just can't help it. When I see the color pink I am instantly happy. I don't know why. I found a 6 foot PINK Christmas tree (pre-lit) at Meier and Frank. I'm so tempted to buy it but it costs too much. But a pink tree for a pink fanatic? How can you go wrong?

As far as writing progression goes, I'm so close to hitting the 50,000 mark for NaNoWriMo. I can taste it! About a third of me feels great that I typed so many words and they are in a quasi-logical order. But then there's another third that is uneasy about the fact that I'm just passed the halfway point because I'm writing a single title (80-100k). And the other third of me is absolutely dreading the revisions. Right now my manuscript feels like brain spew and I know I'm going to have to go back and make sure that the story lines up, there's enough characterization, foreshadowing appears, etc. But I know I'll be the better for it once it's done.

I also had a moment of inspiration for my next book. It will be a contemporary. I figured that would be wise, in a career sense, in case the paranormal market falls out before I'm finished with my MS, I can try and sell a contemporary.

Okay, back to writing. Stop distracting me journal! :-)

Oh yeah, the site is www.lisapulliam.com (creative, eh?)

Oops

I kind of forgot about my live journal for a few days. I was reading a friend's blog and realized that I have my own journal. Silly me :-) I do have a good excuse though - NaNoWriMo of course!
So I'm at about 18,000 words. Behind by about 10,000 as of today. Hopefully I'll be caught up by the end of the weekend.I had my plot die on me a couple of days ago. I had written the beginning and was approaching the middle when I got frustrated on where to go next. So I wrote the ending. Then I realized that there wasn't any, let alone enough, tension and conflict between the hero and heroine. So guess what I did? I reached out to my fellow WriMo's on the boards of course! I posted an extremely long summary of my story and what I was looking for. So far I've gotten some great ideas and I've taken one and adapted it for my story. Now I feel recharged and it gave me a couple of conflict events that I can put in my story. One where the hero gets upset at the heroine, then they make up. Then the heroine gets upset at the hero, then they make up. Happy days are here again. But now I have to go back and fix and rewrite some stuff. I did the strikethrough feature in Word on that stuff so I knew not to read it, but I kept it for word count purposes. Sneaky sneaky.

And I've decided to go to the Romantic Times conference for sure. It would be too valuable to pass up. I just need to find 3 roommates so my room will be cheap :-) If I can reach that goal, the hotel cost for 6 nights would only be about $270 per person - is that enough to convince you? I have good hygeine, I don't snore and I generally keep to myself so I'd make a good roommate. :-)

Take care all and I hope your NaNo's are going well.

So far, so good

I'm a slack-ass when it comes to this journal thing. I didn't realize it's been five days since posting. Oh well, I've been busy with NaNo so I have an excuse.

The writing has been going well so far. As of right now, I have 7,266 words. Pure crap, but at least it's written. I keep telling myself that I can change it later but that sounds so daunting! It's going to be a total rewrite because my brainspew is exactly that, spew, upchuck, barf. But, once again, at least it's out of my brain and on paper.

I've been pretty much going in chronological order. But I had an idea for some dialogue at the end so I wrote that, and I keep going back to stuff I've written to add things in that I think about later.

I am happy that I spent so much time thinking, planning and plotting. I would have ripped my hair out by now. But I also see why people like to see what shows up on the screen when we type blindly. I've been having a combination of both.

For example, I knew that my hero and heroine would "officially" meet at the Highlander Ball. She'd be exploring the castle (she's writing a book on castles) and go into a room where she found him snooping in the dark. He's a vampire so he can see well in the dark.

I also knew that the conflict in the story would primarily be the bad guy against the hero and heroine. I had an idea of what the conflict would be, but not much more than that. I couldn't plot how she would find out about and plant little seeds of doubt and stuff.

But low and behold as I'm typing the scene after the hero and heroine meet and she goes back to the ball to tell her best friend, who is snogging with a waiter at the party, and began typing an on the fly idea. After the girls left, the waiter goes to report to the owner of the castle and party-thrower (the bad guy) about the girls. He reports that the girls met the hero and then we learn a bit of backstory and foreshadowing to the climax.

This would probably be more meaningful and make sense if I actually explained the storyline a bit. But maybe that will come another day.

So all in all, I'm happy that I spent time pouring over the plot and I'm also pleasantly surprised by what gets written in the spur of the moment and how it can help advance a story.

Back to writing. If I could only include what I wrote here in my word count I'd be so much closer...

Which convention?

I recently joined the Romance Writers of America. I had planned to go to the national convention in Atlanta next July. Thought it would be a great way to network and learn more about writing, and the meeting with an editor or agent would be rad. Right? Well...

So I remembered that I wanted to check into the Romantic Times convention. Well, I did and it's in Daytona Beach! The reason this is significant is because I used to work at Disney World and I've been DYING to go back there. Daytona Beach is only one hour from Orlando and one hour from St. Augustine, the other place I really want to visit again. The problem is that it costs so much. I don't know anyone to go with so I may end up looking for roomies. I'd really like to spend a couple of extra days and rent a car to go to Orlando and St. Augustine but why does it have to cost so much! Argh!!! Registration is like $450, airfare probably $300, $119/night for a single room plus the costs for a rental car and a few extra days. But I do have free passes to Disneyworld :-)

I'm just going to pout for a while...I can't write right now because I'm thinking about the possibility of visitng Epcot...

The gauntlet is about to drop

That's right, it's nearly D-Day. Seven hours and 13 minutes to go. Am I ready? Who knows. I've planned and plotted and thought and hoped, but is it enough? Who knows. I know I don't. I'm anxious to see how it all turns out. About 1,700 words a day doesn't sound too bad, but I guess that's because I didn't try a practice run to see how long that actually takes.
How is everyone else doing? Have you hit midnight? If not, are you staying up until midnight? I probably won't. I'll be dead at work tomorrow if I do.

A discovery

I've discovered something. All four Backstreet Boys cd's are all that are needed as inspiration to write a romance novel. Now I know you're rolling your eyes, but hear me out. The songs cover almost any possible topic that could arise while writing such a novel - love, a crush, intimacy, adultery, drama and more. I stumbled upon this discover while I had my IPOD on shuffle. For some reason 1 of every 2 songs was the Backstreet Boys and I was spewing novel outline information.

A very useful tool - if you like, or can stand, their music. For me it's a childhood thing that I haven't gotten past. And probably never will. At least I still don't sleep with Care Bears, eh?
Oh yeah, character profiles suck arse. They're hard and I don't like them. But I know they'll pay off beginning November 1 when the NaNo gauntlet drops.

Uh oh, "Break Stuff" by Limp Bizkit just came on my IPOD. For some reason that song makes me crazy - the world's best workout song. "I hope you know I pack a chainsaw. I'll skin your ass raw. And if my day keeps going this way I just might break something tonight."

Signing off as I headbang and write a romance novel...somehow those don't seem to go together

Plotting like crazy

So far so good...er...well...decent. Planning for a novel is a rather exciting experience, much like a roller coaster. One day I'm extatic about my plot and the next I'm frustrated that it's not interesting enough.

I had a bit of inspiration. I went to my first Romance Writers of America meeting (by the way, I finally told someone, outloud, at work, that I read/write and enjoy romance novels - a big step for me) the other night. The group was extremely friendly and I felt like it will be a great group for critiquing and such. The other nice thing is that published author's still go to meetings and provide lots of advice.

An author gave a presentation on outlining a plot at the meeting. She is someone who outlines books like crazy, which was good to hear because I'm doing that too. It seems most people I come across fly by the seat of their pants. Well, she recommended a few books (that I ordered and am looking forward to getting):

• Techniques of a selling writer
• The Plot Doctor Workbook
• The Writer's Journey
• Goal, Motivation and Conflict

She gave some great, realistic suggestions for a manuscript to be interesting and potentially publishable. However, she writes inspirational romance so we didn't get much advice in the love-making plot department :-)

And I found a great book that I LOVED - How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire by Kerrelyn Sparks. It was fantastic. Not what I expected by reading the back of the book, it was much better than it sounded.

Now I started reading Kiss of the Vampire in the 3-short story set Highland Vampire. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's difficult to read an entire story in Scottish dialect. How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire had it, but it was only a couple of the characters. Anyway, I'm not sure how much I like the story so far. We'll see, I'm about half way through it.

I think I'll read a couple of contemporary romances next, I haven't yet veered from paranormals.

Best of luck for the rest of you NaNoers getting ready for the 1st!

Progress so far

I've been outlining my novel like a fiend. I once had a class in college that was spending the 10-week term writing a 100 page paper or so. My professor told us to do such a heavy outine that all you have to do is add the adverbs and you have your paper.

In a way, I'm taking that approach. I want to write the 50k so badly, but I worry that with work, school, a husband, freelancing and the obstacles life spews at us on a daily basis will hurt my progress. So if I outline and add some adverbs, I'll have several thousand words I can pump out quickly.
I'm also feeling torn about how they count words. Part of me is happy that they will strictly go off word count like the Microsoft Word word count feature. Because once I reach 50k, that will probably be more like 60 or 70k in publisher's word count. Once I do the proper spacing, marging, font, etc. then multiply the number of pages by 250. So by the end of this I may just actually have a full novel.

I saw a posting on a message board about some cool software called yWriter2. It's novel writing software that lets you write by chapter or scene. I kind of like that. It's less intimidating than a ginormous Word document. This way I can pull up chapter 3, write a bit then close it and pull up chapter 7 or whatever. It also lets you do outlines, timing, etc.

Right now I'm anxiously awaiting November 1 so I can get started. My husband just got a new job that has him working horrendous hours, I'll definitely miss him, but that will give me time to work on my novel without him feeling like I'm ignoring him.

I also just wrote the first short story I've done in years. I wanted to practice writing fast and furiously without self-editing. It's crap, but I feel good about it. Very dialogue heavy which is weird for me, I'm definitely a narrative writer.

Ok, I'm done rambling. And by the way, I'm still not used to this live journal thing. It's weird not knowing who or how many people are reading this. And it's weird to write about things and have it float away in cyberspace. Sort of creeps me out but I got to keep up with the times. Time to go to kickboxing class and cry over how much I hate the instructor... ;-)

Not what I expected

I am blown away by the NaNoWriMo site, as well as its users. I knew a lot of people participated, but I never anticipated so many of them to be on the message boards, especially this early. I'm very impressed and pleasantly surprised.
Lately I've been trying to make contact with others writing novels, particularly romance, even more particularly paranormal romance. I didn't know how to go about finding people to talk to, then NaNoWriMo fell in my lap. It's amazing that I can post a question about anything and within 8 hours I'll have responses, and helpful ones at that.
Kudos to all you Wrimos who participate in the message boards. As a newbie, I'm finding it incredibly useful. I'm hoping that the meet-ups are just as great and hopefully I'll meet some people working on paranormal romances too.
I do find the server slowness frustrating however. It takes forever to bounce from thread to thread. And I wish some of the individual areas were more broken down because there are hundreds of threads on some boards.
Oh well, such is life. I'm definitely more grateful for the program than frustrated by the technology.

Now my next goal is to educate myself on Edinburgh, Scotland so my setting is realistic when I begin writing.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

I registered for NaNoWriMo yesterday. I'm looking forward to it, but not sure how I'm going to find the time with working full time, taking six graduate credits and freelancing. But it will be an interesting month.
I'm going to write a paranormal romance, yup, romance. I NEVER in a million years thought I'd read, let alone write a romance. I'd finished all of Anne Rice's vampire novels and was looking for something else. I stumbled upon a list of vampire books on Amazon that someone put together, basically a guide to vampire books. I bought Katie Macalister's vampire romance trio. I didn't realize they were romance when I bought them, but when I began reading I just couldn't put the books down. They were funny, romantic, great sex scenes and had a happy ending.

I then had a epiphony - I should write vampire romances. I've always wanted to write vampire novels, but I wasn't sure if I could make my characters as deep and dark as the author's I've read such as Anne Rice. I'd never read vampire characters like Katy Macalister or Lynsay Sands. It was so relieving to think I could write the love story with a vampire I always wanted, while keeping it light-hearted and fun instead of dark and dreary.

Here's my plot so far:My novel, titled "To Dream of a Vampire," is a parnormal romance about vampires, and is the first in a potential series. This is the plot so far, but I seem to make little changes all of the time.
Bianca has had the same dream her whole life (she's in her mid-20s during the time of the novel). It shows her waking up on a bench in the middle of a garden maze. She begins wandering through the maze (it's at night) and comes to a castle. She sees a man in the window staring at her, then the dream stops.

The backstory to the dream is that her mother was a part of a vampire worshipping cult. She was impregnated by a man in the cult, who injected blood from the vampire leader into his veins. Thus Bianca was born with vampire blood. That makes her a half/quasi vampire. She doesn't need to eat/drink blood, but she does have a great immune system and has heightened senses.

Back to present day, she is on a trip to Scotland with her best friend Jules. She is traveling the country taking pictures and studying castles for a book. Her first stop is a castle owned by Flavius, who happens to be a vampire. Throughout the book he strongly courts Bianca, but she can't get herself to be interested because she's fixated on the man she dreams about.

The man in her dream, Dorian, also lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. There are a couple of plot points that have Dorian and Bianca meeting for the first (and second time) before going on a date. She finds herself drawn to him for some unknown reason and the romance develops throughout the book.

The climax occurs when Flavius learns of Dorian and Bianca and he tries to hold her hostage and turn her to a vampire. If a vampire joins with a human born with vampire blood, they become incredibly powerful. But if the human joins with the vampire of the blood she has in her system, they are unstoppable. Dorian fights Flavius and rescues Bianca.

At the end, Dorian takes Bianca to his castle. She wakes up, on a bench, in a garden maze, goes through the dream sequence - but it's actually happening. So Dorian is the man of her dreams, literally. She goes upstairs, they talk, make love, the end.

So, we'll see how it goes beginning November 1, the start of NaNoWriMo.

The concert...

Let me begin by saying that Franz Ferdinand performs a kick-ass live show. Really, really great show. The opening acts were ok. I understand how this is their shot to gain a fanbase and recognition, but two opening acts took two hours last night, including set-ups between bands. Such is life.

I decided to wait in line for a few hours before the show to make sure I got to the front row of general admission. Why not? Life is short and I don't mind sweat if I'm having a good time. So I'm about the 10th person in line when I arrive, not bad.

Waiting, and reading Tall, Dark and Hungry by Lynsay Sands (I recommend the series). They open the doors and the people I'm meeting haven't arrived so I have to try and leave their tickets at will call. I get through security, and hide my camera down the back of my pants (you have to do what you have to do). I book it to will call so I can still get upstairs and be in the front. They can't find my name on the list. So I wait a few minutes, then a guy comes out with another list, which I'm not on again. So he goes to find another list and comes back to say "here's your two tickets." But I ordered, and payed, for four tickets! After about 10 minutes he finds them.

I'm angry and get upstairs then get even more pissed. By then there were about 75-100 people already crowding the front. The shenanigans downstairs cost me the front row. So I had to sit in the balcony. But all was not lost, since most of the attendees were under 21 and the balcony was over 21, I got to sit at the far side, which happened to be above the backstage part so I could watch people backstage. As I said, it was a great show.

So I have these two VIP passes burning a hole in my purse. Then my friend doesn't want to stay out too late because she had to work early the next day. And I didn't want to be by myself for the VIP party, so my lovely and adorable husband came to the rescue. He hopped right in his car to meet me and go to the party with me. What a nice guy!

At the party, we're hanging out upstairs. The band shows up a while later and as I expected, I got to giggle for a few minutes and while some groupie bimbos shoved their boobs in the guys faces (I'm usually not this cynical, I'm just tired). Someone forgot to bring the CDs for us to have signed so one of the radio ladies ripped a poster off the wall for me to have signed. The guys were nice and I clammed up and didn't say much. I know they're people, but they're on TV and it's hard to get over that.

Then we watched them sign CDs for the rest of the people in the bar and went home. All in all fun. Great concert. And I got about 3 hours of sleep, ooooh yeaaaah.

Got to register for NaNoWriMo tomorrow (http://www.nanowrimo.org).

Franz Ferdinand

So my favorite band is playing in town tonight, Franz Ferdinand. They are an incredible band live and if you like alternative rock or U.K. bands - check them out at http://www.franzferdinand.co.uk/. When it comes to this band, I seem to get lucky.

Last year they played in town and they were playing a private studio show for some lucky radio fans who won some contests. I decided to take a chance and I e-mailed the radio station (http://947.fm/) asking if there was any way I could go to the session. Low and behold - they said yes! So I got to watch the band play a few songs for about 15-20 people. We chatted a bit, super nice guys, great afternoon. Then went to the show that night - great show - and went to the karaoke (sp?) after and they were there drinking and singing - fun to watch.

Fast forward to this year. Last week the radio station held a daily contest to win passes to the VIP party for Franz Ferdinand. Lucky me - I won one of the days! Yeah, that's write, two lucky wins. I know what you're thinking - no one you know ever wins one of those, well, I guess sometimes they do.

So, after the concert tonight I get to chill in the VIP area of a bar, watching the groupie girls throw their half naked bodies on the band and giggle and drink my booze. It will be a good time. I've never been on "the list" before...how very interesting this will be...