Optical illusions

Read out loud the text inside the triangle below.

More than likely you said, "A bird in the bush," and.......
if this IS what YOU said, then you failed to see
that the word THE is repeated twice!
Sorry, look again.

Next, let's play with some words.
What do you see?

In black you can read the word GOOD, in white the word EVIL (inside each black letter is a white letter). It's all very physiological too, because it visualize the concept that good can't exist without evil (or the absence of good is evil ).

Now, what do you see?

You may not see it at first, but the white spaces read the word optical, the blue landscape reads the word illusion. Look again! Can you see why this painting is called an optical illusion?

What do you see here?

This one is quite tricky!
The word TEACH reflects as LEARN.
Last one.

What do you see?

You probably read the word ME in brown, but.......
when you look through ME
you will see YOU!

ALZHEIMERS' EYE TEST

Count every " F" in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE

SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI

FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH

THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...

(SEE BELOW)

HOW MANY ?

WRONG, THERE ARE 6 -- no joke.

READ IT AGAIN !

Really, go Back and Try to find the 6 F's before you scroll down.

The reasoning behind is further down.

The brain cannot process "OF".

Incredible or what? Go back and look again!! Anyone who counts all 6 "F's" on the first go is a genius. Three is normal, four is quite rare. (My dad and I both got 3. I tried it several times before I scrolled down and still couldn't find them.)

Why am I so tired?

Why am I tired?
For a couple years I've been blaming it on lack of sleep, not enough sunshine, too much pressure from my job, earwax buildup, poor blood or anything else I could think of. But now I found out the real reason:
I'm tired because I'm overworked.
Here's why:. .
The population of this country is 273 million.
140 million are retired.
That leaves 133 million to do the work.
There are 85 million in school.
Which leaves 48 million to do the work.
Of this there are 29 million employed by the federal government.
Leaving 19 million to do the work.
2.8 million are in the armed forces preoccupied with killing Osama Bin-Laden.
Which leaves 16.2 million to do the work.
Take from that total the 14.8 million people who work for state and city governments.
And that leaves 1.4 million to do the work.
At any given time there are 188,000 people in hospitals.
Leaving 1,212,000 to do the work.
Now, there are 1,211,998 people in prisons.
That leaves just two people to do the work.
You and me.
And there you are sitting on your ass,
at your computer, reading jokes.
Nice. Real nice.

Is it Sept. 5 yet?

I'm going to request September 5 off of work. Can you guess why? It's the release of Lover Awakened, the latest book in J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood Series. Zsadist's story. That's going to be some steamy stuff. And there's no way I'll make it through the work day waiting to read it when I get home. So, I'll use a vacation day.

I keep reading the excerpt to it to help pass the time. I think I've read it so much I can recite it. Well, to my surprise there is now an excerpt for Lover Revealed. Man o man does that look like it will be good. The emotion and sexiness packed in just that little excerpt is incredible. She's a fantastic writer.

This brings me to a question. On the "brothers" page on J.R.'s site it reads: "Tohrment: the steady one, the calm one. He is the one whose betrayal by fate will cut the deepest."

How do you interpret that? That he will betray the Brotherhood and it will cut them the deepest? Or he will be betrayed by fate and he will be cut the deepest? I just can't stand the thought of him betraying the Brotherhood.

Her Pinkness, my inner-Diva with pinkitude says: "Lisa, it's fiction. Chill your ass out. They. Aren't. Real."

Blogger ate my posts

Well, the few posts I did in the last week have disappeared. Blogger decided to eat them. Grrr.

In other news, I leave for Atlanta on Monday night. Woohoo! My first RWA conference and I am very excited about it. I've picked out all of the workshops I'm going to and I'll post that schedule this week. Maybe some of you are going to the same ones.

I signed up to volunteer at the registration table all day Wednesday, but I'm first on the waiting list. If I make it in there, be sure to stop by and say hi. I'd love to meet you all.

So, who else is going to Atlanta? Anyone want to bring me to some publisher parties ;-) *wink* *wink*

Review: Angel with Attitude by Michelle Rowen

From the back cover:

Falling naked into the killer whale tank at MarineLand is always bad news, but it's a real bummer when you've just been kicked out of Heaven. Former angel Valerie Grace is determined to reverse her banishment -- Earth's just no fun. Her best friend is a slightly perverted human-turned-rat (note to self: never cross a powerful witch) and she's being tailed by a sexy Tempter Demon named Nathaniel who's trying to lure her to Hell with kisses that are almost worth the trip.

With the talking rodent sneaking peeks down her shirt and Nathaniel getting more irresistible every minute, this ex-angel has only one hope: find the stolen Key to Heaven and go home. Then the oddest thing happens -- Nathaniel starts to show signs of loyalty and love. And soon Val is asking herself if it is such a bad thing to have the hots for a demon.

Let me start by saying - I loved it. Michelle Rowen's writing and wit really works for me. When I'm looking for a light, humorous read there are only a few authors I know I can turn to and get what I'm looking for and Rowen is definitely in that category.

The concept of this book was great. A fallen angel named Valerie Grace (I love the name) must face a tempter demon whose sole purpose is to tempt her down to hell, while she's trying to make her way back to Heaven. She has no idea why she was kicked out of paradise and when she eventually learns the reason, it doesn't make any sense. But Rowen's great writing helps the reader understand why she was kicked out, even if Grace didn't.

The secondary characters like Reggie the womanizer-turned-rat by his witchy girlfriend, and the seven-foot-tall demon who writes romances, kept the book very entertaining. The reader meets a lot of other creative characters while Grace takes a trip to the Underworld to obtain the Key to Heaven, namely biker fairies.

Rowen did a great job with the plot throughout the book and the conflict. How can there not be conflict when the hero and heroine are an angel and a demon? I also appreciated how Rowen was able to make Nathaniel, the hero, lovable even while he was doing his demonic duties.

I would also like to say that I really liked the ending and the twist at the end (I won't give it away) of why Valerie was kicked from Heaven. It was a realistic ending, which is a nice turn from many romances that end unbelievably with the hero and heroine getting married after knowing each other less than a week. You'll still get your happily ever after ending, don't worry!

If you're looking for a funny, creative book with entertaining and lovable characters, and fresh ideas (a rarity these days), then run out and get Angel with Attitude. Click on the picture above to go straight to Amazon to order it, and while you're at it grab her first book Bitten & Smitten. She's currently working on the sequel to that.

Also, swing by my Web site to read an informative interview with Rowen where she shares with us how she writes and edits her books. I'm always fascinated to learn how other people write, and I love to pick up tips.

Contests scores: part 2

Let me start by apologizing for not being on here much lately. I just moved. It sucked. Hard. End of rant. Wait, I need to add that dads are awesome to have around. Mine has been a lifesaver with this move. And my cute little house is ADORABLE. I'll post pictures.

On to the main reason for this post: another contest entry. I entered two contests about the same time. The feedback from the first results I got back were helpful. There was criticism, but it was constructive. So I'm ok with that.

You know how people always say that contest feedback ranges quite a bit. And how everyone will probably get feedback from one judge that maybe went a little too far. Well, I'm proud to say I'm a member of that club. I just got results from the other contest I entered - same entry as the other. I was judged by two people, one was published in something outside of romance and the other was unpublished.

This contest included a sheet with scores and rankings for all of the other entrants in that category. I received the lowest score the published author gave, 15 points below the next lowest. I was middle of the pack for the unpublished author. However, the average between the two put me in last place because of the published author's score. Oh well, I wasn't in it to win. I was in it for feedback.

But this feedback - yikes! I'm going to break it down for you. First of all, the scorings were a scale of 1-5, 5 being the best. Everything was 1s and 2s except I got a 5 on "do you as a reader feel the emotions of the main characters" (sweet!) and I got a 3 on "do you get a vivid picture from the writing." I felt good about that, obviously compared to everything else those were things that this person liked. And those were things I didn't think I did well, so maybe I did better than I thought.

These are direct quote comments from the published author of something other than romance (I cut out a lot of comments directly relating to events in the story or plot points, this is general stuff):
* like about heroine - "she knows a hottie when she sees one"
* dislike about heroine - "she's a lemming. No brains. A chick lit bimbo"
* favorite parts of story - "description of the hottie; good sexual tension"
* parts of the story that didn't resonate - "her voice - standard chick lit with no originality; her stupidity; excessive efforts to be sassy; plot is dumb"
* "if you stop trying to imitate a chick lit voice you will find you already have a voice that works fine (but what if my voice is naturally chick lit-ish?)"
* "lot to like here but it's 'like' totally buried in chick lit bullshit verbiage"
* "cut all the explaining, the head chatter and the girly-girl crap"

I whole-heartedly appreciate the time this person put into the feedback and for pointing out holes in the story. He/she filled out the score sheet thoroughly and took extra time to write suggestions and comments on the back of two pages. And this person practically line edited the entry. I'm really thankful for that, especially with the number of entrants in the category.

The unpublished author gave me a much higher score, but didn't leave any comments or suggestions. I would have liked to know why some of the things worked for this person. Even though I was a bit put off by the published author's brashness, this person took a lot of time and energy on my entry. Thank you.

So, there's a contest entry folks. I made it through another one. My skin must be thicker than I gave it credit for because I'm not in the least deterred by it or upset that someone thought it didn't do well.