Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Got it all out now !!!

I do believe I got them all out of my system now you guys. The distractions that is. I spent some time last night trying to tie in some historical facts into my historical based novel. Because I am writing during the Regency era, I am mostly concentrating on some of the early events from the Battle of Waterloo and also the Battle of Trafalgar. I found a very cool website that gives heaps of information that will really help me with tying certain facts and historical figures into my storyline/plot. It even provided different pictures with lots of details and explanations of what was being shown, which is always good  for a writer that needs a visual. Moi. This was one of my "big need to do's" that I had to finish up with, so it's kind of a relief that I tackled it. And with a little fine tuning it should work into the story very nicely. I hope!
Now my next item on the list was a few changes to a couple of my character's names. I originally had my heroine's name as Samantha. I always wanted a name that also comes with a cool unisex nickname, if that makes sense. For example; Samantha could be Sam for short. But after a while Samantha just wasn't working anymore for me. It just sounded boring and not bold enough for her character. So then I changed it to Keira, but no nickname really can be associated with it so that was thrown out pretty quick. Now the whole reason why the nickname and it's importance of being unisex will all be revealed in my novel, so I don't want to spoil anything. Just know that it's important, ok! I had some down time at work one day and came across a very cool website(yes another one) which is everything Regency related. There are endless categories such as names, homes, arts & culture, Navy, Army, food & drink, politics, marriage contracts, and best of all-maps. If anyone is interested, here is the link. click here. Anywhooo...back to the name.
I came across Kit, and thought to myself how perfect that is for her. After I repeated it a few times in my head I got really excited, but first wanted to run it by Chip and also my writing buddy, Andy to see what they both thought. So Kit it is!!! I just need to now figure out her given name. :)   So plan of action for today will be to figure out Kit's given name, and decide on a few other character's names.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

New Addiction...Who Knew ???

Who knew how addicting the little smiley emoticons can be?  I wanted to spruce up our forum's smiley-cons because some of them were frankly, just boring. So I went on a hunt via google, to find some better ones. What I thought would maybe be a day or two project, turned into a week thereabouts. OMG...who knew how fun these little guys can be. They have smileys for just about everything. I seriously can't seem to concentrate on anything else lately, which is vera vera bad.  Between getting sick and these damn smileys, I have manage to get nothing accomplished. So here is me getting them out of my system for good, or at least temporarily.












Monday, April 25, 2011

In A Nutshell !!!

Today's post is going to be short and sweet.
I hate being sick!!!
It always ruins things that you may have planned, which I did. It hit me pretty hard late Friday evening after leaving the movies. When I woke up Saturday morning, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. Couldn't breathe, severe headache, coughing, you get the picture. So my well laid plans to completing my research was a bust. So in a nutshell I didn't get anything accomplished from my to do list.

To be cont...

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Research...My Achilles' heel !!!

So I've been hard at work again with my book. I generally always carry around with me a small notepad & pencil for those just in case moments when an idea strikes or even to add to my things to do still list . When I left for work this morning, I made sure to grab my trusty Things that still need to be decided on notepad, that I previously made quite a few notes in. And boy do I have a lot of things still on this list that need to get done before I can really move further along with the writing aspect. Things like actual geographical locations and places, names of characters, names for the ships, etc. Oh, did I ever mention that my novel is based in the Regency Era and featuring pirates? I don't believe that I have. OOPS...sorry about that. lol
Over the years, I have done a lot of research. I tend to get extremely carried away with my research actually. I am so fascinated with our history. All history to be honest with you. But my favorite and almost to the point of it being an obsession is the Georgian, Regency, and Victorian Eras. I can get absolutely lost in a book that details the aristocracy, royalty, fashion, politics, and architecture for those periods. My husband would give me these weird looks when he noticed that I have a stack of library books about furniture and clothing and even ask me, "How can you actually sit and read this stuff Nicole." Well simply because it fascinates me. Seriously!! So yes, my research is my Achilles' heel because I can lose myself in it instead of doing my actual writing. Now I know that I mentioned in yesterday's blog that I have a new plan of action, which was to write first. Right? Well just as soon as I complete that list I made in my trusty notepad. I figured that from now until Sunday, this gives me plenty of time to accomplish that. I hope.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Starting From Scratch...Kind Of !!!

I've mentioned before that I have been working on my HR novel for quite sometime now. Each time that I've stepped away from it, I end up coming back and making a lot of changes but never get any further into the actually story. So once again after a few months reprieve, I'm coming back to it all fresh. I sat at my desk last night in front of my computer with every intention of picking up where I left off last; which was the end of my Prolouge. I considered doing a read through but then changed my mind. I'm the worst at editing as I write. Meaning that I will obsess over all the grammer and errors instead of just continuing forward with the story and worring about it all later. So this is something that I'm wanting to change. Starting from scratch as they say. Well sort of anyway since I technically have about 7 chapters written and pretty much all the research completed.  So my new plan of action is that no matter what, I'm just going to write it first from beginning to end, then worry about the editing part later.
Cross-fingers !!!! xx

Monday, April 18, 2011

Back To Work !!!

Ok most of you guys know that the whole point of this blog was to get me back into the writing mode. With the encouragement of many and especially from one dear friend(that I truly do miss), I did get back into that mode. I was doing pretty good for a few weeks, but another opportunity presented itself, so the writing was put on hold. AGAIN.
I swear that if possible, a picture of me would be next to the word 'procrastinater' in the dictionary. I am the absolute worst at starting on something but never finishing it. Whether it's a story that I was writing, or an afghan I was crocheting, or researching for my genealogy project, I never quite follow through with completing it. I really need to stop this habit because if I don't, then I will never get anything accomplished.  But now that I have a little bit of normalcy back in my life, I intend to turn things around, starting with my book. It's pretty sad that I've been working on it for over 10 years now and no where close to having it finished . So to help get the creative juices flowing again, I restocked on pens, pencils and notebooks. I unpacked and dusted off all my research books and  binders and readied my new office. My dear wonderful husband even suggested that we may need to get a new computer as well since I have an outdated one.
My biggest challenge though will be putting my beloved Kindle away for a while. She is my biggest distraction of all but I have to do it if I want this bad enough. Except when the new Sookie Stackhouse and Chicagoland Vamp book's come out in a few weeks. A girl has priorities you know!

So I will go ahead and apologize in advance if I become a little boring over on the PURLS forum, but I won't disappear. This I promise. I'm setting at least a minimum of one hour a night to do nothing but write.  So starting tonight, closed up in my office with some music in the background, I intend to WRITE!!!

To be continued:

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

I'm a Free Betch Baby...Lady Gaga Night !!!

Here is the long awaited famous Lady Gaga post that I have been promising for damn near a month now...Oops
I will keep it short so that I can post the some pictures and even some videos that I recorded. Now please do not judge to harshly if you hear a lot of silliness on my part. I did get a little carried away with my back-up singing, and Jack took advantage of me that night too. All in all, this night was absolutly FABULOUS !!!
Oh...also sorry for all the moving around when you watch the videos. I was dancing a lot, which it's hard to do and keep the camera straight at the same time. lol
Enjoy..
Pic's First




I saw a chick wearing these and just helped myself to them to take a pic. I did ask kind of.
Now for some Videos

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Spring Cleaning with a side of Gaga !!!

With it being spring time I figured a make-over was in order for the blog. I must have spent at least an hour just trying to choose a new background & layout. This is harder than one may think actually. There are so many that you can choose from. Then when you know that you found the perfect one, then it's time to choose the color scheme. This was tougher than choosing the dang background. I needed the perfect pink & blue that would coordinate with each other beautifully and once this part was done, then you move on to choosing a new font. Now this part I had fun with actually. Because I am...well me, I needed a little character this time around, so the standard New Roman Times or Arial just wouldn't do. After playing around with this feature for a bit, I must say that I was pleased with the outcome of it all. So hopefully besides being very chic and cute to me, it won't be annoying or hard to read for others. I mean it's got to be better that the pepto bismol pink eh!

Now for part II of my blog. I know that I have mentioned for some time now that I would post about my AWESOME evening attending the Lady Gaga concert from last month. I recorded a ton of video, along with taking a ton of pics(can never have enough of the Lady). Anywho...I worked on this for a few hours last night and I seriously did not know that getting the stuff off my phone and onto my computer would be all that hard. Apple makes it a little challenging for us iPhone owners it seems, but have no fear because I think I figured it out and will be working on it this evening. Now I will have to warn you folks that I enjoyed myself immensely that night and may have had a cocktail or two. So if the videos do come out ok you may hear some occasional singing and chatter by yours truly in the background. LOL
Stay Tuned!!!

Monday, April 11, 2011

Being In The Right Place - At The Right Time !!!

I've always been a firm believer that things happen for a reason. Even the things you wish didn't happen.
We kind of sort of had a mini vacation this weekend down at the beach which is about a two hour drive from home. What was suppose to be an early start Friday morning for us ended up turning into a long stressful day. I sometimes tend to not pay attention to the little things that are kind of important, like for instance the drop off hours at the kennel. I stood outside like a dumbass with both my dogs, pounding on the door even though the sign clearly stated they were closed between 12-3. Ya it was 1:00. I was so pissed but what could I do except  to wait around until they finally re-opened and drop my babies off. We finally made it down there and after settling into our really awesome room, went out to dinner then headed to the beach. Only by then it was pitch black out so you really couldn't see anything at all. We ended up looking & chasing hermit crabs for a while before we headed back inside because it was really windy and chilly out.

Now Saturday morning went a lot smoother thankfully. We woke up early, packed a beach bag with some  goodies and headed back out to the beach. Now I took a few pic's with my iPhone, but I just can't even describe what we saw. The beach was completly deserted which was really strange and also nice because I didn't have to feel all fat in my bikini. :) The hidious part was that the beach was absolutly covered with seaweed. A GREAT WALL of seaweed folks. I have never seen it like this EVER down there before. It  was just really gross and oh how it stunk! We did try and attempt to make a small path to the water, but the tide was really high and just kept washing more and more seaweed up so we just gave up and decided on POOL TIME. 

For the most part we still had a really great time.Some of our really good friends drove down not far from us because he races in Corpus Christi at their local track. I felt so bad because he has worked very hard on his new racecar, but luck was not on his side that night. He was leading the race and had the fastest car when his engine blew and couldn't finish the race. Now this is were the story really gets good.

All the guys wanted to go out to eat but it was after midnight and the gals were sleepy, so we agreed to drop off his wife at their hotel. Chip was driving us out of the parking lot and headed back to the highway when I noticed a horse trotting on the opposite side of the highway's access road. I yelled out real quick 'OMG there is a horse running over there.' He stopped in the middle of the road(it was very late so no traffic) and rolled his window down and saw the horse too. Now I am a huge horse lover you guys. I grew up around them and even owned one. So I immeadiatly was like, "OMG we have to go back for it Chip." After we dropped the wife off at her hotel we headed back to where we last saw it, which didn't take us long at all.
Sadly the horse at that point was making its way up on the damn highway, completely saddled but with no rider. My heart was in my throat. I started yelling at my husband to hurry and try to figure out what we're gonna do. Chip was like hurry and call the cops and I was like, Chip you need to call the cops. Well I eventually called the cops while Chip pulled up behind the horse and put the truck's flashers on to try and give some form of protection for her. This became vey scary because it could potentially turn out very very bad for not only the horse but for us too. The traffic was light on the highway thank God, but still it was so nerve wracking. She kept a steady trott for a ways before she thankfully decided to take the next 'exit'. We continued to follow her until the cops finally found us, drove a little ways ahead and tried to block her path. The officer got out of his vehicle and just stood there while reaching his hand out very slowly.
 Bless this horse's heart she actually slowed down and walked straight to him. Chip was like," Go Nik." So I practically jumped out of the truck before he even had it completely stopped. I called out to the officer that I am very experienced with horses and he smiled and said, "Thank God because I'm not and I'm scared of this thing."
I walked slowly to her and took hold of her reins which sadly were still tied to the saddle horn. I wanted to cry so bad for this beautiful creature because she was in really bad shape. I released the pressure from her head after getting the reins untied from the saddle, walked her to a grassy area and just started to rub her and talk to her. You guys this poor girl must have been running for quite a while because she was absolutley drentched with sweat and her legs just wanted to buckle out from under her. Chip came over after parking the truck and started to talk and soothe her, just to help calm her even more. We were able to get her to drink some water that we poured into the officer's hand once her breathing became normal again. We stayed with her until finally dispatch notified us that the owners were on their way. Man did I have something that I wanted to say to them but of course I didn't know the whole story of what happened so I kept my mouth shut. When they did arrive they explained how she got away from them while they were loading their other horses into the trailer. When they finally realized that she was gone, they also started to look everywhere for her, except the interstate. They were very grateful for our help, but I just did't want to let her out of our site. In the end though, I had to say goodbye to 22 year old KK and was just so thankful that we saved this animal from possibly being hit by a vehicle. As soon as we got back into the truck to head to the resort I was silently thanking God when Chip said, "See honey there was a reason why we came to the race tonight and stayed as long as we did."
We were in the right place at the right time for KK!!!!

Here are some pic's