Aim For The Heart

We bought the latest Futurama movie last Tuesday. It was about as funny as the last one, which means it wasn't as funny as the TV show, but there were still plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. The problem with the movies is that they don't pack as many jokes into the time as they would into four equivalent episodes. The Futurama staff is funniest when they're constrained by twenty-two minutes. Not that I won't be rewatching the movie and soon, most likely. But I wish they'd go back to doing episodes.

Speaking of movies, I'm hitting the theaters this weekend to see Angelina Jolie's new movie, Wanted. (Hey, anyone remember when Ms. Jolie was wild and ever-so-slightly insane instead of the sedate mother of five who gives millions to charity? I like this version better.)

So, I have an entire week off, and I'll be able to spend it writing full time. I can't wait. I'm hoping to get 1/4 to 1/3 of my book edited in that time. Probably closer to 1/4, but any progress is still progress.

I signed up to Twitter the other night and set it to notify me via phone. There's something weirdly addictive about sharing random thoughts with people and hearing their own thoughts.

And speaking of random segues, I finished with Janet Evanovich's Fearless Fourteen. I bought it last week at a bookstore in Plano where Ms. Evanovich was having a signing. Unfortunately I didn't get a signed copy, because when I got there I found out it was going to be four hours before I could get an autograph. I couldn't afford to wait that late 45 miles from home, so I just bought the book (along with Jeff Somers's The Digital Plague) and left. It was a wasted trip, but I don't regret going. I've never been to a signing for a super popular author, and if I hadn't gone, I wouldn't have known they were that popular.

I suspect a couple of the authors whose signings I have gone to are soon going to find themselves in that boat, though.

Or, Why I Didn't Get As Much Done On My Book As I'd Intended

It was only supposed to be a fifteen-minute chore. Wash the car and fill it up with gas. There's even a car wash a block away from my house. But then we decided it needed waxing.

And there went our afternoon. Did you know that waxing a car for two hours is as much exercise as a forty minute jog? Do you know what waxing a car for two hours feels like? Like more than a forty minute jog.

On the other hand, check out that shine!

My agent wants me to brainstorm new titles for my latest book, which she's about to start submitting. Please, someone save me from this horror.

Thankfully, a couple of really smart people have been helping me brainstorm ideas, and I've come up with four respectable choices so far. I'll probably spend part of today seeing if anything else comes to me and then get that damn email out of my drafts folder.

In important gaming-related news:

Rock Band is really fun, and I'm almost finished with Bioshock (the game's longer than I thought it would be). I just bought the Axis & Allies Revised board game, and once I finish Bioshock plus at least one of my Wii games (Resident Evil 4 or Super Mario Galaxy), then I'll probably move on to either Mass Effect or GTA4.

Update: I just finished Bioshock.

Bioshock is awesome. Still. I'm a little over halfway done and it's still as addictive as hell. If you've been looking for a shooter with a strong storyline and haven't picked this one up yet, I highly recommend it.

Also, on my trip to CostCo today, I picked up an XBox360 and Rock Band. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, because I had chores to do. (What's the definition of an adult? Someone who buys a game console and a game, gets it home, tears into the package, and then sets it aside until she has time to play. Really, this adulthood stuff is highly overrated.)

I actually have a decent DVD player in the living room now. Don't buy $30 DVD players, even if you can't afford to purchase a good one and your last one broke. Utter crap.

OK, short post, because I have a console to dig into. Once I finish Bioshock on the PC and Resident Evil 4 on the Wii, I plan to buy either GTA4 or Mass Effect for the XBox360.

I've been reading Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. It's a fascinating look into the psychology of superstition and why people continue to believe in things like UFOs, psychic phenomena, crystals, astrology, etc. I'm a big fan of logic and reason. Even as a child I couldn't figure out how breaking the chain letter could possibly cause me to get run over by a car, or how a black cat crossing my path could do anything to my luck.

The next book I buy will be
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man: How Ponzi Schemes and Pyramid Frauds Work... and Why They're More Common Than Ever . I'm going to do a book with scammers as the bad guys.

I'm also thinking of buying Bioshock. I even went so far as to see if Wal-Mart had it when I was shopping today. I'll likely end up ordering it off Steam. (I just checked, and it's $30 there, so I'm almost certain I will.)

If real life were like a D&D game:


1) If you got caught up in a convenience store robbery and killed the robber, you'd think nothing of taking his wallet and gun.

2) Any time you needed money, you'd hit up a nearby mall, school, or military base and just help yourself to whatever you found.

3) You'd expect Wal-Mart to take anything you brought to them and give you cash in exchange.

4) Fights in public would be almost unremarked on. You could kill a man who attacked you in the middle of downtown, loot his body, and walk away, without anyone so much as asking you what happened.

5) "He needed killin'" would be a legitimate legal argument.

6) People would walk around, even in town, fully decked out in armor and weapons and carrying their entire life's belongings on their back. They would be ready to fight at a moment's notice, even if they're just eating dinner.

Taking a page from my friend, Dempsey, I present my first YouTube music video of one of my favorite new songs of the year. Also, check out dempsey's blog.



Work is going well. Busy busy busy.

Guess what, boys & girls? I have a job! It looks like it's going to be an incredible opportunity, and I can't wait to get started. Plus, I get to go clothes shopping, and that's always fun. (In short spurts. I get bored of it pretty quickly.)

And this was the weekend in which my life played good news/bad news. First, I had the job interview on Friday, and it went well (obviously.) Then I got home and had a rejection letter for a short story. Then when my husband came home, we decided to go car shopping. (Other than the timing, this wasn't an impulse purchase. Our truck is eight years old, and we knew we were going to have to do it shortly whether I got a job or not.)

The crazy thing was the car we bought. Sensible and affordable? Pshaw. Perish the thought. No, we bought a 2008 Mustang Bullitt. There are only 7700 of these in North America, and we have number 219. They only had one in stock, it was sitting in the showroom, and they didn't even let people test drive it unless they were really serious about purchasing it.

So, we get home around 10 pm Saturday night with a brand new car. Wake up the next morning to clean house in preparation for a D&D game. And find out the water heater is broken. Irreparably. Fortunately, it didn't do any damage, but it meant we only had cold water all day Saturday. Then I got the call from my future manager offering me the job.

And then Sunday was spent replacing the water heater.

Also, the broken water heater proves my theory that my house knows whenever we're doing something financially risky and decides to laugh at us. Two weeks before my husband was going to take an extended leave from work after his last contract position ended, our air conditioner broke. Again, irreparably.

And that was my weekend!

My agent, Janet Reid, is offering query letter critiques. Head over to her blog and read the details. And if you didn't already know about it, Bookends has been doing a series of 100-word beginnings contests in various genres. I'm not sure how many more they'll be doing, if any, but they have a fantastic blog nonetheless.

Update: She has all the queries she wants and has removed the blog post.