Officially on vacation!

Dec22

Out of office At least from the day job. I plan on taking a couple of “me” days off from writing as well, but I have edits to get done and sent back prior to the New Year, so there will only be a little rest for the weary. The rest of my vacation time will likely be spent pounding on the keyboard to get more of my stories done up. Thankfully though I can do that from the comfort of my home, in my jammies since I have ZERO interest in getting dressed when it’s uncalled for, and with an unlimited supply of coffee at my fingertips. Ahhhhh, bliss :)

In other news (like you care) I did complete all my shopping with the exception of one item that I’ve spent three months attempting to find all to no avail. Mainly because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist except in a delusional mind. I’m just not sure if it’s the one who asked me to find it, or the original person who wanted said item. It’s a continual coin toss on that one. I shall spend most of tomorrow on the phone to determine if said item might, however remotely, exist in reality. Should it then I will venture forth into the insanity to procure it with no thought to my own well-being, or sanity. Both of which are sorely in question after spending four hours in a mall, yes…A MALL!, the Sunday before Christmas. I know – I have no clue what I was thinking doing that either.

On the editing front for C&M Security 5, Dangerous Pasts, I’ve had zero motivation since Saturday to do the blasted things. Can’t get into the right mindset for it. Part of that may have been the fact I knew I’d be going *shudder* to the mall for an extended period of time. My mind may have been preparing for the onslaught of insanity, noise, and idiocy that is to be found there. Whatever the reason I haven’t got a lot completed yet. I’ll likely open them up once more tomorrow while enjoying the fact I’m home, in my jammies, while my coworkers are making their way into the office. Might be what I need to get some more done on them. Or at least figure out where the bloody hell I left off.

Usually I’m good about that kind of thing. I leave myself a little note so I can go right to that spot, or at the very least bookmark my last point so I don’t have to slog through. This time though I must have thought I’d remember. Well, hate to disillusion those that know me, I don’t have that great of a memory because I’ve got no clue. *rolls eyes*

Well, that’s it from me for tonight. I have food on the way – as there’s none in the house currently. So enjoy your evening, and I hope you’ve gotten everything you needed to get done, done. ~ Moira

Holiday chaos

Dec20

christmas tree Every damn year I swear I’ll do all my shopping early. Every damn year I’m down to the line to get it done in time. This year is absolutely no different sadly. Maybe next year I’ll actually start early. HA! Yeah, I don’t believe it either. But it’s a truly nice thought.

I went out on the hunt for a few items today, and must brave the masses again tomorrow for even more things. It wasn’t too bad today, did what I needed to do, and even found a few extra bits to add to the gift bags for the family. Tomorrow will be a slightly grander experiment in patience. I hate crowds. I despise people who can’t seem to walk a straight line from point A to point B. And I truly hate the fact that when someone stops to talk to another person they must stand out in the flow of bodies so that everyone needs to squish around them. Really? How is that necessary?

But I know exactly what I’m going for. I will get there at an appropriately early hour so I can complete my shopping prior to the mad crush of people who leave their brains at home, yet bring the attitude. Yes, it should be a rip roaring fun day in the mall. Ugh!

In much happier news I have the edits for book 5 of the C&M Security series. Took a quick look through some of it, and there’s definitely more than a few things I need to tend to. Some are very quick fixes, others are much more complicated but I should be able to get through them before I depart for the familial gathering. At least that’s my hope. Given when it was sent to me I’ll be out of town when it needs to be sent back – not exactly the best of timing I fear on my publisher’s part, but these things happen so I will roll with it, and figure it out.

Book 6 of the series is progressing, though the characters appear to have run off for a time. My trip to the shops may have had something to do with that. Christmas madness isn’t conducive to a creative mind. A homicidal one perhaps, but definitely not anything of a creative nature LOL! I haven’t had any new inspiration on my paranormal story, or the other one that’s in bits and pieces in a Word doc. I’m hopeful that once the crazy time has passed my characters will come out of hiding again and I can get back to writing.

Well, that’s all I have to say today. So I hope you enjoy your evening, and the balance of your weekend. ~ Moira

Taking a short break

Dec13

antike Schreibutensilien I’ve been busily working on the next book in the C&M Security series. Book six is the prequel book for the series, the one that shows how the entire thing got started. It also is the story of Robyn Matthews, the “M” of C&M Security. It’s a little about her, and Shawn’s pasts as well as how she meets her fiancé Grant. My other goal to the book, beyond a bit of history of the two biggest characters of the series -Shawn and Robyn- is to also reveal why Robyn, and Grant are still engaged many years after the fact.

The biggest challenge is ensuring I don’t muck up anything so the other books still work in the series. So far so good since it’s all “history” at the moment. The plus of doing the prequel after the fact is knowing what’s to come since it’s already all laid out.

The biggest problem is working on it, it’s all at my characters whim what I manage to get down at any given time. That and my muse who seems to have a bit of a problem these days. She’s got me working not only on C&M, but also a new paranormal. On top of all that she’s kicking around another idea. Nothing solid on the third one as of yet, but who knows what it may end up being. Guess I’ll have to wait and see what all she gives me in regards to that.

Now, on that note I need to get a few things from the store so I’m heading offline for a time. Hopefully when I get back my muse’ll have some more for me to write. Hope everyone is having a great weekend, talk soon ~ Moira

A slightly chaotic rant

Dec6

Figuring I should do up another post on my website I sit here staring at my screen. I have no clue what this post will be about given the number of things tumbling around in my head currently. So I think I’ll let it just ramble out at it’s own pace and see where it might lead. Be warned, this may be long, with some point to point insanity tossed in, and may actually get down, dirty, and plain old nasty. Here we go…

First thing that comes to mind is an issue of piracy. An author friend of mine recently had a release, and as part of the lead up to it had an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) give away. Being the smart cookie that she is, my friend found a way to embed coding into each copy to make them individually unique so when she gave them to the readers who won a copy, she’d know if any of them decided to be a douche. One such person proved themselves to be just that, a douche. This person took the gift from my author friend, and promptly uploaded it to a known piracy site. Because of the encoded meta data my friend put in it was easily traceable.

It’s people like this that make us authors so wary to gift our books. Personally I always do it via a site that has the DRM in place. Not saying this is the be all, end all to stop these folks. But it’s definitely a step in the right direction. The personalized meta data encoding is another. Making each book unique, easily traceable, and so you know exactly who the perpetrator is. Sadly I’m not sure what else you can do. While the FBI has a division set for cyber crime, including intellectual property theft on the Net, what all can truly be done to stop these jerks? You shut down one site, and another pops up. You find new ways to secure books to prevent this from happening, and some jackass finds three ways around it. It really makes me, as an author, wonder why I bother to do prize giveaways. Or at least ones involving my books. It also makes me fucking mad that these people continuously get away with stealing. And that others seem to think it’s perfectly fine.

Yes books cost money, so does gas, so do things like clothing, shoes, food. But not a one of these pirates goes out to steal a cup of coffee, or a loaf of bread because that would be “wrong”. So where the fuck do they get off thinking it’s perfectly okay to steal an author’s work? We spend hours, days, months getting a book just right before we send it into our publishers. Then there is more time in refining it, getting it perfect for sale, and then the hours of pimping the books to garner those sales. This is all time that we, at least initially, are giving away free. Because it takes a damn long time to actually make any money off your books.

Prime example. My first quarter as an author I earned enough to buy exactly 8 XL cups of Tim Horton’s coffee with a few pennies left over. Yes, I am a Timmy’s addict, and damn proud of it – so shush. My second quarter I earned enough to get exactly 16 XL cups of Tim Horton’s coffee (should mention this is prior to the just recent price hike of said XL coffee cup) with a few pennies left over. Yes that was twice as much as the first quarter, but it’s still not enough to live off of. No where NEAR enough. Yet I hear all too often, and this is a paraphrase of several different people, “authors make so much money why are they bitching about one/two/three (whatever number) of their books being pirated – it’s free advertising basically”. Bull-fucking-shit. It is THEFT. Unfortunately there’s no way YET to nail these assholes to the proverbial wall. Yet.

Okay, enough on that topic. All it does is piss me the fuck off which is totally not conducive to getting my head into the proper writing space. Which I need to do soon enough. I now have three, yes THREE damn WIP’s on the burner. Don’t know where the hell they keep coming from but they do seem to pop up to drive me insane.

Second topic of irritation I want to throw out there since I’m in a venting mood – Christmas. It is not the “holiday season”, it is Christmas. In a lot of things I am PC…to a degree. But not on this. I don’t give two shits who I offend, cause it’s my fucking country, it’s Merry Christmas. Every culture has their own version, I say celebrate it accordingly and proudly. But when folks who come to our country for a better life get all pissy because our holiday offends them, too fucking bad. We were here first and it’s our holiday. You get to celebrate your holidays without all of us getting pissy at you. So, quite honestly, if you don’t like it, there’s the fucking door – don’t let it hit you in the ass on the way out.

Sadly too many things are getting all white washed out to ensure we don’t offend anyone. It’s more than beyond time to get back to the way things were. A time when kids weren’t given everything they snivelled for, but had to earn it with hard work. Or where a teacher actually had some authority over her classroom instead of getting fired for giving a student a failing grade – I had to earn my marks, why don’t the “next generation”? Come on, all this is doing is raising a bunch of people who think they don’t have to do anything to get it all. Personally I can’t wait for the reality check most of these little shits will get one day when they are all flipping burgers at McD’s or somewhere similar for barely minimum wage. How you going to afford the latest and greatest toys then?

Okay, I’d better stop before I really get myself worked into an unholy tizzy. Time to take some of my annoyance and put it into my writing. I need to get to work on those otherwise there’s not much coming out from me in the New Year. EEEK! Not good. All right. Sorry again for the rambling, spewing crap I tossed out. But I needed to get it out of my system. I hope all of you have a lovely weekend, and play safe out there in the malls, and stores. ~ Moira

Happy Sunday ya’ll

Nov30

The sun is shining on a very chilly temperature here in my city. But with coffee in hand, wrapped in a nice toasty warm sweater, and the heater up a little higher than normal I’m quite comfortable. Enough so that I can get to work on my WIP’s. At least while the characters are chatting with me anyway.

I never know how long they’ll be willing to converse with me so I can write out their story. Today though they seem relatively chatty, so I’m going to take advantage. Get what I can down on the page before they decide to meander off once more as they have been wont to do of late. Little buggers are driving me batty.

Edits are all in for book for of the C&M Security series so now I’m waiting on my cover art, and a date of release. A little impatiently I must admit since it was originally projected to come out in November. Obviously this didn’t happen as we’re now sitting on the last day of the month, but that’s fine. It took a little bit of time to get it just right, and personally I’d rather have the book “right” then rushed. Though I will admit that I really, really want to see what the cover will be for this one. Evernight’s cover designer is pretty flipping phenomenal so it’s always a fantastic surprise to find a cover mock-up sitting in your in-box waiting for you. I’m very sure this one will be no different.

Only downside to another month going down is that we’re now that much closer to Christmas. I am so not ready for the holiday. I really have to figure out a way to get all my shopping done early or I’m going to totally be screwed. Especially since I always go up to see the family for the holiday. But even that’s a little screwy this year because of a trip that is mucking up when we’ll be celebrating. Oh well, we’re all adults around here. At least until you have to wait to open your presents and then it’s like we all revert to little kids, lol!

Last bit of info to pass along as well. There is only a few more days to vote in the Evernight Publishing 2nd Annual Readers Choice Awards. The polls close on December 5, 2014 – this coming Friday. To vote all you need to do is click the image below, and it will take you directly to the voting site.

Remember, I have 2 books in 2 different categories to vote on. One is in Humor – Forever Kind of Love; and the other is in Suspense – Dangerous Lines, C&M Security 3.

That’s all I have for today, really gotta get to work on these WIP’s. Have a great day everyone ~ Moira

A teeth chattering chill

Nov28

We are definitely getting the “cold shoulder” from Mother Nature in these parts. I don’t know who pissed her off, but apologize already! Only good thing about such weather is it gives me a damn fine reason to stay inside where it’s toasty warm. Because there isn’t a chance at all that I’ll go out until the mercury starts crawling back up unless I absolutely have to. Sadly my boss insists that going to work is one of those absolutes.

Thank goodness it’s the weekend, LOL! I can stay warm at home, I don’t have to get dressed for any particular reason, and I can work on my two WIP’s. Plus there is an unlimited amount of coffee available to be had. Oh, and cookies too – totally forgot about the cookies.

Not that I didn’t wish I was somewhere much warmer of course. The place above would do. I don’t even care where it is. There’s blue water, a couple hammocks and lots of sunshine. I think it’s the perfect place to relax, and write. Oh to have a view like that for inspiration. Okay, maybe it wouldn’t do well for inspiration, but it would do amazing things for my already winter weary mental state lol!

All right, I need to go and do something productive. Like writing I do believe. I hope everyone has a great weekend. Stay toasty ya’ll ~ Moira

Needed a little inspiration

Nov23

So of course I went digging through all the many images I have kicking around. I needed the inspiration mainly because my characters went and wandered off yesterday. No note, no calls, nothing. Just abandoned me to do gawd only knows what. While I adore my characters greatly this is highly unacceptable behaviour even for them. Little buggers.

When I started digging around I had absolutely no clue what I was looking for, or what I needed the inspiration for specifically. Whether it’s productive to the purpose I originally went looking for I still haven’t decided, but I definitely have a few interesting ideas going round and round. LOL! But being the generous soul I am I thought I’d share what I dug out from the folders. So enjoy.

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And now I’m off to see if this sparks anything for my two current WIP’s. Have a fantastic Sunday ~ Moira

Totally shocked!

Nov22

Found out on Friday that I was in two, TWO, categories for the 2nd Annual Evernight Readers’ Choice Awards. I’m so excited! Forever Kind of Love was nominated in the Humor category, and Dangerous Lines was nominated in the Suspense category. I was hopeful that maybe one of my books might make the cut, but to get two books up there is making me seriously giddy.

I don’t think I stopped grinning the entire night, lol! It’s just, wow. I’m completely awed, and stunned that my readers thought so much of my books to nominate them. I can’t do this job without their support, but to see it showcased so amazingly is heart warming to say the least. It definitely makes the long nights of arguing with my characters to get a scene just right, working and reworking a particular patch of dialogue, and of course the terror of seeing what the editor has done to fix my gaffes all worth it.

All I can say is thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! I have amazing readers, and I love you all to bits for your vote of confidence in my works. You guys rock, and make me want to write even more for you to have.

But not right off, I have to do a few boring things first like grocery shopping and such things. Then I’ll get to work on some more of that words to page. I’ve already started on C&M Security book 6 (the prequel) that stars Robyn and Grant. I’ve also started a paranormal story too. Not exactly sure where that one is going, but it’s apparently quite happy to lead me on a merry little trail as I meander along with it. It popped into my head, and now it’s not letting go. Sucky thing though is I’m only getting little bursts, bits and pieces really, to add. I think the characters are still trying to figure out where it’s all going to go so they’re only giving up what’s needed to keep it fresh in my head. We shall see.

For now I’m off to get busy with a few things. Have a fantastic weekend – and don’t forget to VOTE! Click any of the Readers’ Choice Awards images in the right hand bar of items and you’ll be taken right to the voting form. ~ Moira

Relaxed into writing

Nov15

It’s amazing what a haircut will do for the brain. Not literally of course… But all that time sitting relaxing is a great way for the mind to sort through things. There’s no pressure, no deadline, just down time. Between the wash, and scalp massage, the actual cut, and all the finishing touches the stylist does it’s a great way to let the mind just be. Mine started to think, to plot, and in the end gave me the start to the next book in the C&M Security series. So thank you to my stylist Sam for getting things back into gear for me.

Also thank goodness for the technology to start putting it down into a doc before I got home. If not for that handy dandy phone of mine I might not have gotten the first pieces quite right. A short shopping trip for some necessities helped shake loose a few more bits and pieces, and now I can settle in for the balance of the night and just write. I’ll have to remember this for the next time the brain gets stopped up. Not that I have enough hair to do this every week, but maybe a massage the next time would work much the same way.

At any rate, I’m just happy to get started on it. It’s been bugging me for over two weeks now not knowing how to get started. But now I have a plan, a loose plan mind you, but definitely a plan.

In other news my impromptu submission for the Uniform Anthology with Evernight was accepted. I hadn’t originally planned on writing anything for it, but again the old brain had other plans for me. It interrupted my finishing of C&M 5 to get it all written down. I actually had the just under 10k words done in about 8 hours. Never done that before. But the words were flowing so it’s not like I could stop because of something as silly as exhaustion at four o’clock in the morning. Pssht! Who needs to sleep when a story is flowing? Apparently me actually.

Well, now that I’ve goofed off for a few minutes to update my site I think it’s time to get back to work. Happy Saturday to everyone ~ Moira

Another month bites the dust

Nov1

I can’t believe how fast they are going by. It’s crazy, crazy I say! As a kid you feel like a year drags by – except of course for your summer, and winter holiday breaks. Those blast past at shockingly high speeds. Then as an adult you’re finally able to “enjoy” life, pick a pace, and do your thing. No one ever mentioned that the older you get the faster the years speed past. And I’m pretty sure it’s picking up speed at some horrific rate.

That said I definitely need to get some time in on my book, and finish the sucker. This weekend is when I’ll be spending a good chunk of my time writing it. I’m all set too. First cup of coffee into the system, a movie on the TV that I’ve seen a few times so I’ll use it as background noise save for the couple of scenes I have to stop and giggle over. Fridge is full of snacks, and pizza will be the dinner of choice tonight so I don’t need to stop to cook anything. Barring anything catastrophic occurring *knock on wood* I should get in several solid hours of writing.

Now, before I get down to business I want to give a shout out to my winners from the Evernight Halloween Facebook Party. I had a fantastic time chatting with everyone during my hour, meeting new folks, and basically having a spooktacularly good time discussing all the fun things we do on All Hallows Eve. The winners were, as follows:

1 copy of a Back List Book – Kimberly T.
1 copy of my upcoming ARC for C&M Security 4, Dangerous Circumstances – Liz C.
And the flash giveaways for the $5.00 Amazon Gift Cards were – Lynne R., Kat B., and Marie M.-W.

A huge thank you to the winners, and everyone else that participated. It was a blast, and a half of fun to say the least. Now I need to get to work on the next instalment so I’m off to other parts of my computer. Have a great weekend ~ Moira

Moira Callahan

Tag Archives: WIP