Mashed Wordtatoes

Holy crap, this heat is unfreakingbearable. It probably wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so relentless. The outside air is oppressively thick and smells like a mix of molten asphalt and dead animals.

My car is a damned oven. Forget about trying to roll with the windows down. Air conditioning all the way, baby. At home, we're keeping the curtains and blinds closed in an effort to not bake and to preserve the functionality of our beloved air conditioner. I'm essentially hiding from the outdoors.

I have two quotes that I heard/read last week and loved, so I'm sharing.

“When you're fortunate enough to have success and love what you do, you have a choice: Be kind and grateful, or be a dick. I choose the first.”

- Wil Wheaton on his blog and Twitter, I think.

"Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing the right thing in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend."

- Possibly Stephen King. I didn’t get it from the source himself. Regardless, I love it!!

Speaking of Twilight/Stephenie Meyer, what in the sparkly hell are her books doing on lulu?




That site is usually for self-publishers. Speaking of self-publishers -

Interesting fun fact – John Grisham originally self-published A Time to Kill! Nuts! It was later picked up by an actual publisher, of course.

I read that in Janet Evanovich's How I Write, which I got on loan from boss lady. That's a good book, btw. I don't think you could depend on it to learn all components of the novel-writing process, but some useful tidbits lie therein. Plus Janet Evanovich is funny. And she likes food.

She reminds me of my aunt.

This week I'm editing the remix project. I shouldn't say 'editing'. I should say 'intensively rewriting and expanding'. The first draft is entirely too short. I think it ended up at 57000 words at the end.

During the rewrite, I'm looking for parts that need clarification or more thorough description or opportunites to better develop characters. What I've lain down in rough draft is like a sketch I plan to flesh out.

My special friend this week is an editing binder. It's purple and has a couple of magazine pictures of gardens in the clear plastic on the outside. Inside are manuscript pages, loose-leaf paper, notes from when I plotted out the novel, and some printed research material on developing photographs the old school way in a dark room.

My protagonist is a wannabe photographer. I did take a photograpy class when I was in high school like 14 years ago or whatever, but I've forgotten the specifics of the procedure so I'll have to look into that again.

Hey, I just realized that I mentioned like FIVE authors in this post! I must be in an extra bookish mood. Anyway, that's all I have for now. But then, wasn’t that enough?

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Hey, want some free reading? Check out the fiction freebie page on this very blog!
There you shall find links to two free ebooks on Smashwords and novel excerpts on Scribd.

Other places to find me:
http://www.LeaRyan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeaRyan1