bye bye blogger...

I've finally changed over to my wordpress blog, so this blog will no longer be active. I'm not sure how to do a automatic forward, so if you just click this link, you'll be switched over to the new blog.

Hope to see you there!

finally...

I got some book writing done yesterday. It might have been done between bouts of watching the cricket, the V8 supercars racing, and playing Fear, but at least it was done. Of course, it was on Mercy rather than Riley, but with the way the muse is at the moment, I'm not complaining. Writing is writing. And I have to say, I'm really liking this story so far--the hero is dark and dangerous, and the heroine has a sarcastic edge and a tough outer shell (though you just know she's a marshmallow inside ;) ). I'd be happy enough if the muse stayed with this one, but she's still rather flighty at the moment. Which means I'll probably be writing Riley or the Quinn short today.

the new look...

website is now up and running. And it looks smashing, if I have to say so myself. Many thanks to Justin from Stonecreek Media for doing such a great job. The only thing left to do is to switch over my blog--which may take a couple of days. Until that happens, the blog link on my site won't work--it'll just give a 404 error message. But I'll keep updating this one in the meantime.

In writing news, I've been asked to submit a story for a UK vampire romance anthology, which will be released middle to late next year. The muse got all excited about this, and started working on a short that's been sitting there for a little while waiting for inspiration. This one (unlike the other two anthology stories I've submitted this year) is actually based in Riley world, and is told from Quinn's pov. The story itself is set between Tempting Evil and Dangerous Games, so at this point in time, Kellen's in it as well. Whether he stays will depend on how the story goes.

edits and games...

I'm still totally enjoying playing FEAR, so I'm afraid the writing is coming along at a slower pace than it should be. The same can be said for the website redesign--though I've got the majority of the pages swapped over now, and it really shouldn't take that much longer to get everything up and running.

Except for the fact that I have more Riley edits in. Thankfully, there's only one page of them this time, and it's more sharpening up the motivations of some of the characters and fixing the ever-present spelling errors than anything else. (I do wish you Americans spoke and spelled the same as us Aussies. It would make my life so much easier. lol ) I'm planning to get the edits done today, so I can do a read-through tomorrow and ship it back to my editor on Tuesday.

Then, maybe, I can get back to writing Riley 7. If the muse can tear her blood thirsty self away from FEAR, that is :)

the problem with....

having a large website (or rather, a website with a lot of pages) is the fact that when you decide to update the look, it takes forever to transfer the information over. And it doesn't help when Frontpage decides to play funny buggers. Yeah, I know, it's a microsoft product, therefore I shouldn't expect it to do what I want, but Frontpage has been out for a while now and you'd think they'd have at least sorted some of the bugs out. But no...

For some damn reason, it took a disliking to the excerpt for Chasing the Shadows. Every time I put the excerpt in on the right hand column, the links block on the left hand side moved down to the end of the column. I have no idea why--it didn't do this on any other page, and most of those excerpts are longer. I couldn't see any problem in the coding, but just in case there was a gremlin I couldn't see, I saved it as a text file then pasted it in. No difference. The links box still travelled down. Very frustrating. I thought maybe I'd stuffed the template somehow, but when I did the excerpt for Kiss the Night Goodbye, it behaved itself. For some odd reason, it's just Chasing that's the problem. After spending three hours on the flaming thing, I have officially given up. The excerpt for Chasing is now rather short. Sorry about that, but blame stupid Frontpage.

I've still got lots of pages to transfer over, so the site isn't going to be up any time soon. But it does look great so far :)

Writing wise, I've done exactly zip. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get back on track.

I don't get it....

Halloween, that is. I know it's an American tradition, but it's never been an Aussie one, and it's really only been in the last few years that the whole idea has grabbed a foothold here. Why, I have no idea, because--as I said in my intro--I just don't get it. Oh, I know the history behind the celebration and such--I wrote about it in one of my books--what I don't get is its relevance in today's society. Or rather, I don't get the relevance of the way it's celebrated in today's society. I mean, think about it. For three hundred and sixty four days of the year, we tell our kids not to talk to strangers, not to take candy from strangers, blah, blah, blah, but on Halloween it's suddenly okay for them to beg for candy off strangers? Am I the only one that sees the wrongness in that?

And yeah, in America it may not just be about the candy, but here in Australia, that's all the kids care about. Bugger the pumpkins, bonfires (which we're not allowed to light anyway) and the costumes, just give them the candy. We had several lots of kids knocking on our door last night (I'd actually forgotten it was Halloween until then) asking for candy, and there wasn't a parent in sight. Now, some of these kids were barely in their teens, and I'd certainly never seen them before. Yet there they were, knocking on the door of a stranger, asking for candy. Sorry, maybe I'm an overprotective parent, but there's no way on this earth I'd be letting my kid do that in this day and age. I never let Kasey do it when she was younger, and we knew just about everyone who was living in our street at the time.

Now, if Halloween was more like Christmas or Easter--a time for families getting together and having fun--that I could handle. It's just this whole walking the streets taking candy from strangers that creeps me out.

games ahoy...

I felt the need to run around and shoot things this weekend, so I got Pete to load up a new shoot-em-up on my computer. There's a few he's got that I haven't played, mainly because I really haven't had the time lately. But with Riley 6 handed in and a slightly more relaxed schedule ahead of me, I've finally have the chance. I love shoot-em-ups--but only the kind where you don't have to think too hard. I hate the ones that throw up puzzles and make me think--games are my relaxation from the strain of writing (yeah....it's an excuse, but hey, it sounds good :) ). Duke Nukem was one of my favs, simply because it had a sense of humour, but the more recent ones like Soldier of Fortune, Unreal, Half Life and Far Cry feature good game play and great graphics. So, what did Pete load? A game charmingly called FEAR--and can I just say that the bloody thing is living up to its name? I've only reached the third level, and it's already creeping me out. Pete reckons its not a game to play at night, and I think I'll be heeding his warning. And that weird little kid who keeps popping up gives me chills...

When I wasn't running around shooting things, I spent time watching DVD's. The Magnificent Seven TV series, to be precise. I bought it mainly because it had Michael Biehn in it, and I just love that man. Luckily, it turns out that the series wasn't all that bad--not fantastic, but very watchable. It also had Eric Close in it, who's not too bad on the eye either :)

Between the game and the DVD, I did surprisingly get a little writing done--six pages, in all. The plot track that carries through this book and the next has began, and tonight someone walked into Riley's life who she's going to have a mighty hard time getting rid of. Does she want to? Oh yeah. Well, maybe.

And that's about it for spoilers tonight.