Honor Code: A Review

Soooo....




 Back in Crazy Crazy November (aka NaNoWriMo), I teamed up with an awesome group of women, and we became the Dangerous Divas...writing to help the Dead Sexy team win the Entangled Smackdown  contest. 

Cathy Perkins was one of my team members, and in the middle of all the crazy, crazy writing, she sent me a copy of her latest release, Honor Code . 

The blurb:  In a small southern town where everyone knows each other's business, veteran detective Larry Robbins must solve the disappearance of eighty-year-old widower George Beason.

When evidence arises that Beason may have left town on his own, it would be easy for Robbins to close the case, but his gut instinct tells him more's at stake. As he uncovers clues about Beason's deceased wife and his estranged daughter, Robbins must untangle conflicting motives and hidden agendas to bring Beason home alive.


What a good read!  I've always loved mysteries--my first "real" book memories are of Nancy Drew, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, and let's not forget Encyclopedia Brown (even though I could never figure out the clues).  I'm a little better at guessing what's going to happen these days...as Blake Snyder (the Save the Cat guy) said (and I'm paraphrasing here, because I'm too lazy to look up the exact quote), It's not so much WHO dunnit as WHY dunnit. 

I think I knew pretty early on WHO dunnit...but the WHY was quite the conundrum...and as the detective, Larry Robbins, follows the clues, I was reminded that nothing is ever black and white.  Every life has it's dark moments and bright spots, and people get twisted up by the decisions they make, which sometimes lead them down darker paths that are better avoided. 

I would like to get to know Larry better...during the course of his investigation, he begins to question some things about his own relationship with his wife, and he makes a couple of turns himself.  I thought that was cool. 

Honor Code is linked to Cathy's other release, The Professor , but it's definitely a stand alone book.  I haven't (yet!) read The Professor, and didn't feel like I was showing up at the party after everyone was already two drinks ahead of me (which happens to me almost every time I start a series any where after the first book). 

So anyway.  Shameless plug for a new friend:  Buy Honor Code!  Read it!  Enjoy! 

Merry Eight Days Til Christmas!

Uh, oh. 

Did you know that Christmas is only eight days away? And, okay, seven shopping days, because our family starts the party on the 24th. Gah! I finally went shopping yesterday, though. Go me. Got--sort of-- done. Granted, I did some shopping online and there will be gift cards. 

Anyway. I spent last week cleaning up my NaNo manuscript. I participated in this Entangled Smackdown thing through the Savvy Authors website. The group I was in, Dead Sexy, won--which means that our imprint (Dead Sexy is the romantic suspense line) scored the most points for showing up and suiting up--and the authors who participated earned the opportunity to compete for the chance to be published by Entangled. 

We got an email last Monday from editor Nina Bruhns that said something along the lines of Hey! Send what you've got, with your beat sheet and a query letter, and one of you will get published.

To which I said to myself, You've got to be freaking kidding me.  Not only is this not finished, the story changes directions sixteen times in the 68,000 words I have written. 

Not to mention how many "that's" and "her eyes looked" and "her fingers felt" there are in there.

But hey...what do I have to lose? Okay, maybe I could get my email automatically added to the Dead Sexy spam list, but otherwise, what do I have to lose? 

I enlisted the help of my friend Laura, who graciously looked for as many overused and misspelled words as she could find (why don't I notice the spellcheck suggestions myself?).  I managed to edit SOME of the manuscript. I put together a beat sheet that explains the story I'll be telling once I've rewritten the thing. Wrote a real live query letter and sent the whole mess off. 

And now I have renewed motivation to get back to work and finish this book! I think I'll be buying a few more gift cards to finish out the Christmas shopping, and see if I can hire an elf to do some wrapping so, I can "wrap" things up on my book. HA HA HA. I crack myself up.

Merry Almost Christmas and Happy Belated Hanukkah, and Joyous Whatever Else You Might Be Celebrating! 

I WON!

Phew.  It's over.  I did it.  At least as far as NaNoWriMo is concerned.  I got my 50K words done over the weekend, added a few thousand more, and pasted it into the word verifyer a few moments ago. 

And while the internal editor is still in her cell in the basement, I'm going to try to finish up...I think I'm about to put the villian, the hero and the heroine all in the same room and let them fight it out...hopefully the right two will be making out at the end. 

So what did YOU do this month? 

Yes, it's That Time of Year, Kids!

And I'm not talking about All Saints Day.  Or three weeks until Thanksgiving.  Or less than two months until Christmas.  It's NaNoWriMo!  Woo Hoo!  Love it, hate it, ignore it or whatever, it's here.

The first year I played, 2010, I "won", which means I managed to type 50,000 words in somewhat organized sentences.  Didn't get too far with that project, but it was a good experience, and it might get ressurected as the second book in my Napier County series (which exists mostly in my mind, but I have the tropes in mind).

Last year, I didn't finish.  Just fizzled.  I can't even remember what project I was working on.  Huh.

Well, this year is different.  I really mean it this time. I plotted.  I Beat Sheeted.  I joined a study group.  Okay, it's not a study group.  It's a very cool thing that Savvyauthors is putting on, in association with Entangled Publishing, called the Entangled Smackdown.  It's part of their NaNoWriMo bootcamp thing.  The Entangled thing is cool, because you get to sign up with one of their imprints (I went with Dead Sexy, the  Romantic Suspense line), and the editors log on and critique your synopses and stuff.  Pretty cool, no?

And then they broke us up into teams--there are five of us on my team, the Dangerous Divas (how cute is that?).  We get points for writing every day, for meeting our goal, for doing little challenges, cheering each other on.  And I'm always up for meeting new virtual people.

So, anyway, that's what's new with me.  Writing.  Happy November!

Wrangling Teenagers

What did you do last weekend?  I took five teen aged girls to a Boy Scout jamboree.  I win.

Actually, it was a lot of fun, and there was minimal drama, but I did come back with a fair amount of plot fodder, should I decide to start writing YA. 

First some background:  I am an associate advisor for a Venture Crew, which is a division of Boy Scouts for older teens, and is Co-Ed.  We do high adventure stuff like whitewater rafting, climbing and rappelling, backpacking...none of which are things that I'm really geared towards, but I'm trying to get in touch with my inner badass and get my 14 YO daughter off the couch, so there you go. 

Anyway.

The Troop that we're associated with graciously allowed us to bulldoze our way along to Peterloon, which means...I don't know what the heck Peterloon means.  But it's an event where 6100 scouts and a few adults go and spend the weekend doing scouty things. 

I ran into exactly two other crews that had girls, and there were only 2-3 girls per crew, so we had the most girls there.  I was a little nervous about keeping track of my girls, so I went a little Victorian Nanny on them, not letting anyone out of my sight without another girl in tow, but I needn't have worried.  The boys in our Crew peed in circles around them, so they were safe, at least from outside attack. 

I did run into a few things that I need to remind them of before the next trip:

1) The cool trick where you can change your bra under your t-shirt is indeed cool, but it still should be done out of the view of 60 boys. 

2) It's never a good idea to put the flashlight down in the middle of the tent before you change clothes, as there is a silhouette thing that happens.

3) You may not sit on the lap of any boy in camp, even if he's not your boyfriend and you don't like him that way.  Really.  And using his knees as a back rest when you aren't sitting on his lap is a no-go, too. 

I can't wait to be briefed on back country feminine hygeine before our next trip...

How Many Swords Can I Throw Myself On Today?

ARGH! 

So, I got to work this morning and realized I've made a huge, expensive, too late to change it MISTAKE.  I ordered the wrong stuff for an experiment, and it's a no-refund kind of a thing.  I said some bad words, then went to fess up to my boss.  Who is a saint.  She is really, really mad at me, but she didn't throw anything at me or fire me, or curse at me (at least not in front of me). 

BUT BEFORE I REALIZED THIS MISTAKE, I did some laundry at home.  Before I was down to my last pair of panties without holes in them.  I thought I was really being a good kid.  Then I took the wet stuff out of the washer, and this is how it went:

Me:  Hey, what's that in the little groove inside the door?

 

Other Me:  Huh.  Looks like you left your lip balm in your pants.

 

Me:  Crap! 

 

Other Me: That's okay, the lid's still on it.  No harm, no foul. But look, there's something else in there.

 

Me:  Crap!  It's my flash drive, which contains the semi-revised first draft of my first ever completed first draft. 

 

Other Me:  Well, that's okay, it's your back up, right?  Right?

 

Me:  Ummm.  Well, yes, but it's the back up for my laptop, which, as we know, erased itself the other day.

 

Other Me:  It might be time to rethink that whole sobriety thing. 

 

So that's how my day is going.  How are things in your neck of the woods? 

 

(The good news is, I just plugged the flash drive into my desktop at work, and my files are still there, and I re-backed them up!)

Getting Geared Up

Hey!  I know, you prolly aren't out there any more, since my brilliant and relevant posts have dropped off so dramatically, but whatevah, here I am today!

I'm getting fired up for this year's NaNoWriMo.  I'm outlining. I joined a Bootcamp group over at Savvy Authors.

 I'm exploring writing software.  Not neccessarily because I think it's gonna make me a more organized, productive writer as such, but like a diet, if I invest money in something and master the learning curve, I'm more likely to power through.  Okay, it doesn't usually work for diets, but it worked for my computerized sewing machine and my iPhone.

Do any of you use special writing software?  If so, what kind and what do you like and dislike about it?

Bueller? Bueller?