Open Mic Wednesday 8/18/10
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
It’s Open Mic Wednesday. What’s on your mind?
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Books by Kaye Dacus
Novel in Progress
Follow the Heart*
Book 1 of The Great Exhibition Series
Due May 1, 2012
first draft completion goal date: 01/31/12
*working title
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Middle Tennessee Christian Writers
I’m character casting again—this time for my new contemporary series. And I know many of you will be disappointed, but it isn’t another Bonneterre series as I’d originally thought. The characters were there, but the stories just weren’t coming together for me. But I’m really excited about the direction this new proposal is going.
The new historical proposal went to my agent on Monday. He was enthusiastic about it, so hopefully there’ll be news on that front soon!
Even though I am disappointed over not having any more Bonneterre books I am looking forward to a new series.
By the way. I’m glad to see the word counter going up. 
Last night I didn’t really feel like writing—I wasn’t sure where that scene was going—but you know what made me do it? The thought Sylvia is going to be disappointed if she doesn’t see movement on that counter.
You’d be amazed how much the idea of not disappointing someone is a motivator for me.
That’s so awesome! I cant wait to read them!
Thanks, Leah!
Kaye, last night you said you’d found a real-world template for a new character. What can you tell us about him or her? Or about your series proposals?
I don’t want to share too much about the proposals until publishers have had a chance to see them. Not that I expect anyone to steal them, and not that I believe in jinxes, but it’s kind of like going on and on about a guy you have a crush on before you’ve ever even spoken to him—something that could turn into a whole bunch of nothing in the long run.
That said, I don’t mind sharing the templates/characters. I could do this Friday what I did last Friday and do a gallery with a brief character description for the contemporary series.
That would be great! I totally understand not wanting to share prematurely. To me, it’s just interesting to see a book/series from the beginning!
I’m wondering if I should try your photo method to spur my story ahead. I like the way you do that.
It’s worth a shot. I’d originally had a specific person in mind for the main male character of the first story in this new contemporary series idea, but decided I needed to choose someone else. I ended up choosing the actor Vincent d’Onofrio, because I could see him as this character in my mind. And when I went online to grab some additional images of him, other than the couple I have in my casting book file on the computer already, I found a bunch of pictures of him looking totally scruffy—almost like a homeless guy—and then, of course, images of him very clean-cut and put together. And it added a whole new aspect to my character I hadn’t even considered before seeing those images.
Around 3 a.m. this morning, after finishing Chapter 2 of The Art of Romance, I was getting ready to turn off my laptop and go to sleep . . . when the laptop froze up. I did a hard shutdown (holding the power button until it shut down) and then restarted it. And Windows wouldn’t start. I fought with it for almost two hours. It would sort-of start in Safe Mode—but even though I could see that all of my software was still there, it “restarted” Windows Explorer every five minutes, meaning it shut down any window/program/control panel I had open and made me start all over again. Not fun when trying to troubleshoot.
I ended up having to completely reinstall Windows—which means it overwrote everything on my laptop, including deleting all of my software and documents. Fortunately for me, my laptop is my secondary computer—all of my documents still exist on my desktop computer. And while I had just done my regular weekly backup on Sunday (I backup the desktop computer daily), I still would have lost some documents if I’d had to restore from that backup. (And, thank goodness, even though I can transfer files directly from desktop to laptop via my wireless connection, both computers have to be turned on to do that, so I’ve taken to e-mailing files to myself when I’m finished working on them on the laptop so I can shut it down. I’d just e-mailed Chapter 2 of ART to myself before the laptop crashed.)
So, take this as a reminder to back up your files every day, whether you do it through an online site like Mozy or an external hard drive (which is what I use). And double check to make sure you have all of the backup discs for your operating system and your software somewhere that they’re easy to find/get to.
I’m slowly getting the baby back to where she needs to be—but when you’re someone like me who likes to personalize everything about a computer, it’s hard to get it back just like it was before.
Oh, that must have been awful!
I’m glad you saved everything as you went. That is definitely the way to do things.
Mine did a weird viral thing last a few weeks ago. Fortunately I didn’t have a LOT on it, because I’d saved it all to an external drive when I had it worked on a few months ago. I ended up able to do a system restore, back to a “good” date, and it’s been OK. I’m still afraid to save anything on it, though, so I’m keeping the flash drive and external drive handy! Computers are such pains, and I can’t imagine living without one.
The same think happened to me. Beware, you could have a rootkit virus. This virus is going around and it is a pain!
Lori
As someone who works in tech support, I feel your pain. I tell all our clients that “Jesus saves….and you should too.”
That’s the great thing about going back and forth between two different computers—both of which have external hard drives for backups—I always have duplicates of all of my files. And since I have taken to e-mailing them to myself instead of waiting until the next day to remember that I have to have both computers on at the same time to transfer them via WiFi drag-and-drop, I have them backed up in a third place as well.
If any of you like Medieval romance books here’s a wonderful one by Deanna Dodson that’s up for a giveaway!
http://roseannamwhite.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-friend-deanna-interview-and-giveaway.html