Saturday, June 30, 2007

Happy Weekend


I don't know about you, but I am GLAD it is the weekend finally. Work kept me swamped this past week.

I did some character work in the way of free-writing autobios on my characters. It was a first for me. Writing as though I am the character and this is my story. But it definately gave me insight into who they are and where they come from and what battles they're up against.

Now I'm hoping to get a couple of pages written on the story. That's pretty wishful thinking right now. But we'll see how far I get.

How's your weekend going?

April

update: I've gotten a ton done on my wip this weekend! I'm at 20,750 words, with another 10,000 or so that need to be revised. Woo Hoo!

Saturday, June 23, 2007

And...

I'm back. Seriously. That break did me a world of good! And to top it off, I spent today at my local chapter's meeting getting revved up and ready to write thanks to Leanne Banks. If you ever have a chance to hear her speak, I recommend going!

I'm getting ready to delve into my wip. Hopefully I'll get a full hour of writing in tonight. I think that's what my goal is going to be for now. An hour without internet... oh the horrors... but an hour none the less.

Then I get to have a cup of ice cream! Yeah, the real stuff. I have to have a cup of milk with it to help offset the sugar. But the milk in it helps too.

I was very skeptical about this whole insulin resistance diet thing. But in the week I've been on it I lost 2 lbs. Which is good since I thought I'd gained 5. I've had cheese burgers and slim jims, all sorts of stuff and I have to eat every 3-4 hours. How could I possibly loose weight? But I did. Hopefully that will continue!

Since I skipped the hero post at Word Flirts, here's some eye candy for everyone:


How are you doing?

April (who is happy to be writing again!)

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Yes, I AM Still here

Well, actually today I am over at Word Flirts, so visit me there. I promise I'll be back HERE soon!!!

April

Friday, June 08, 2007

It's HOT!


And I'm not talking about what I'm writing. I'm talking about the weather!

This time of year, I begin to hear an often muttered phrase around town... "It's not the heat, it's the humidity..." Sure it is. With a high today of 98 and a heat index of up to 103, I would say it's both.

When I was in college it was fun to watch all of the students who were transfers from cooler climates. You could pick them out from four blocks away because they looked like they were melting to the pavement.

Our doggie, Buckley, and I have been hiking each afternoon. We started over a month ago. He because he has anxiety with storms and it's a great way to use up his excess energy, me because I HAVE to loose weight. So we began hiking 45-60 minutes a day in a local state forest. It's beautiful and when the temps were in the 70's and 80's it was terrific.

For the past week though, we've only gotten to hike once. Most days we had brief afternoon storms. Enough of a storm to make going hiking on red dirt a bad idea, not enough to help our drought. Yesterday it was clear, so we dashed for the park. And it killed us both. Nearly.

Buckley is always full of energy. When we walk, he darts from place to place checking everything in the forest out. And if I walk ahead of him, he zooms past me. By the end of our walk, he was lagging behind me and when we stopped for water, he looked at me as if to say, "Do we HAVE to keep going?" We did. But it was a shorter walk at only about 30 minutes. And it was a WALK. No jogging or speed walking.

So today even though it isn't storming, we decided to take it easy and stick to the cool air of the house. Maybe I'll convince Buckley to get on the treadmill with me. Although he seems skeptic.

That's me, what's it like in your neck of the woods?

April

PS I did not put Buckley in clothing. Believe it or not, that was dh's doing. It's a jersey for our local university. It lasted a full ten minutes before Buckley showed his unhappiness and it came off:o)

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Check out...

My post at Word Flirts where I'm discussing "name" issues :o)

April

Monday, June 04, 2007

The Habitat...

While I have what many might consider to be an overactive imagination, I have found when writing that it helps me to have pictures. And I don't just mean pictures of heroes ;o) But pictures of where they live and the cars they drive.

I'll probably never get so detailed as to really need the pictures, but they help me just the same. And I wanted to share with you all some sources for these items if you haven't discovered them for yourself yet.

Realtor.com will allow you to search the MLS of any area in the US and they are actually affiliated with the National Association of Realtors and the MLS services, so it's a complete listing. As far as I know. What's great about it is, as opposed to many websites for individual realtors, you don't have to enter any private info to search the database and look at info on a property. Then you can save the pics and info to a file on your hard drive and you have a REAL house in a real area and you know the price range and all! Note: the MLS changes when a home goes under contract or sells, so be sure to save the info. If you bookmark it, it may not be there when you go back to it.

For cars, one of the simple pleasures I derive out of research is building cars. Not physically, but virtually. Go to any major manufacturer and they have an area on their website where you can look at specs for a car model, pics, and even build your own custom car. And they'll even tell you the price. No point in settling your struggling-to-make-a-living heroine or hero with an $80,000 Audi.

The truth is that I just enjoy building it. Until this year, I would go and build a Ford GT each time just for the fun of it. I love this car. Sadly, they aren't building them right now. :o( Not that they built that many when they were building them. At a starting price of $150,000, only a little over 4000 were produced in the two year production run which began in 2004. Of course the first one went for over $500,000 and they routinely sold for over $300,000 despite the $150,000 base price. With a V8 and top speeds of 200+, the car was highly prized.

I saw one a few weeks ago, to my immense surprise. We were driving around downtown and hubby said, "Look, a GT!" He knows about my obsession with them.

I was shocked. We don't live in big-city-USA and so I never expected to see one. It looked a lot like the picture below.


I know it seems silly to obsess over a car. Especially one I couldn't ever own, or wouldn't know what to do with if I did own. But I still love the thing.

Not sure when this post turned into a diatribe about GTs... What was I blogging about?

Oh yeah, resources... While you can't build GTs online, you can build tons of other cars, and save the pics to your hard drive. If you find you need the info.

Really, it helps me make sure I don't give a character a Honda in one scene and a Pathfinder in the next...

What about you? Do you look up housing or cars for your characters?

April