Nothing else matters ...

I don't even want to talk about how many free Kindle books I downloaded today. Of course Amazon is glutting the free Kindle book market the month I'm trying to tame that TBR pile. And of course I can't pass up some of them. On the plus side, I only picked up 11 books out of 200 or so.

For those that are interested:
Books 1-50
Books 51-100
Books 101-150
Books 151-200

That's a crazy lot of books. Good thing not all of them appealed to me.

Anyway onto the books that I've actually read.
Book #185 - Angel Burn (Angel Trilogy #1) by LA Weatherly - An interesting take on angels. They're not all fluffy and sweet but rather predatory and wicked. I liked it.
Book #186 - Magyk (Septimus Heap #1) by Angie Sage - Once I got past the first quarter of the book I really liked it.

Okay. I have a Zombie Apocalypse to start. Later.

You know, one of the reasons I have a tendency to keep my rants on the inside is that usually after I've ranted and vented and got everything out something happens that throws me for a loop. So, yesterday I ranted about the sucktastic delivery service Amazon uses sometimes. I wasn't happy. And then. And then OnTrac trundled up at 9:30 last night and delivered my books.

*sigh*

I'm still not happy about it exactly, because I think that's way too late for deliveries. And although it holds true to what Amazon was offering as an incentive (same day new-release delivery), I still feel like I was somehow cheated. I don't think I should have to wait until 9:30 at night to receive something. Seriously, guys, I know I joke about living in the country, but it's not that far in the country. Hell, I live right off a major freeway. I'm not even up in the winding hills or anything.

I don't know. I got my books. I should be happy, but ultimately I'm not. I feel like I wasted a day waiting. And I don't really DO anything all day long so that shouldn't be a big deal. But it's how I feel and I'm not going to say that it's not a big deal because it was. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, not getting my books early in the day isn't important, but that doesn't make my feelings on it any less ... relevant? significant? I don't know. I just know that I'm not pleased.

Anyway. I'm still gearing up for NaNo. I'm ANXIOUS to get to writing. It's so hard to wait. I just want to be able to let this story unspool and tell itself.

And in bookish news:
Book #228 - Ghost Town (The Morganville Vampires #9) by Rachel Caine - I pretty much loved this book. It was fun and fast paced and I love the characters.

30 days of books... Day 45 - Cowboys? Really? Interesting.
Waiting on Wednesday - Counterfeit Magic - I missed the first novella Kelley Armstrong put out this year. I refused to miss out on this one.

Alright. I've said it all.
Later.

Now, don't quote me on this but I think the hot weather might have passed. We had some major fog this morning. I couldn't see across the street for the bulk of the morning. I've had to wear pants for the past few days. I love it.

Speaking of this morning, I went to take the dogs for their morning walk at 5:30 and I had an Amazon box sitting on the doorstep. Now, I highly doubt that the delivery guys were out and about at 5:30 in the morning and I know the box wasn't there when I took the dogs out at 7:30 last night ... so was it delivered after 8 or was it delivered to the wrong house and one of my neighbors dropped it off? That is the eternal question.

Random Blogger story: My book review blog is set up on Blogger and there was a notice on the site that image uploading would be disabled for 2 hours starting at 5 PM today. I, quite naturally, freak out about this and write up all of today's posts in draft because, holy shit!, what if I'm ready to prepare them between 5 and 7 and I can't?!?!

Yeah, so all my posts were composed before 10 this morning. They weren't all posted at once, but they were ready to go.

So, books.
Book #222 - Tarnished Knight: Grimm's Circle #4 by Shiloh Walker - This was the book I received from the author yesterday. I stayed up until 12:30 last night to finish it but I was way too tired to actually write up a coherent review afterward. So I did it this morning. I loved the book, sent the review to the author and I'm feeling pretty good about myself.
Book #223 - Her Fallen Angel (Her Angel #2) by Felicity Heaton - I actually finished this book a day or two ago but I wanted to post a teaser quote from it for Teaser Tuesday so I held off on reviewing it. Angels. Who are fallen. Nice.

30 days of books... Day 38 - High fantasy! Boo-yah!

Okay. I'm determined to get through this round of editing before NaNo starts. De.Ter.Mined. Watch me.
And on that note, I'm going to go.
Later.

I did some major Halloween decorating today. Major. Spiderwebs. Tombstones. Skulls. Bones. Halloween colored lights. I was going to take a picture of it but then it started almost-raining and I decided to go inside. What? Almost-raining. Like, it wanted to rain and I could feel a light mist but there were no actual drops. Almost-raining. I'm sure it's in the dictionary or something. Maybe it's only the dictionary in my head. The one that tells me fifty different ways to describe man parts while writing.

Okay, I need to put all the bookish things down before I forget. Because that would be tragic. TRAGIC!
Short story - Steal Me by Tina Folsom - It's a short story. There wasn't a whole lot of room for character development, people.
Book #196 - Seventh Circle (Vampires Realm) by Felicity Heaton - I liked it. Not as much as the other book I read recently by this author, but it was fun and sexy. Score!
Book #197 - Sisters Red (Sisters Red #1) by Jackson Pearce - Okay. Jackson Pearce is doing a 30 Days of Vlogging challenge and her vlogs crack me up so bad that I had to go out and buy her book. Had.To.

Teaser Tuesday - Sisters Red, Unholy Ghosts (love, love, love this book!) and Radiance.
30 days of books... Day 23 - More free Kindle books! I'm like a ninja- sneaking and finding those free books left and right!

Speaking of which, Standoff: Cascadia Wolves Book 5 by Lauren Dane is a free ebook through Borders for a limited time. FREE BOOKS! Oh, and here's a few more free books from Borders.

Look at me! Promoting literacy like a fiend. Read! Read like the wind! Read like a mad thing! Just read! Oh, and visit my book review site and leave me comments! I love comments.

See, I told you I had a lot of book stuff I had to get out before I forgot.
Pictures of the awesome Halloween decorating tomorrow. I promise. Mostly.
Later!

I have one more day to finish my epic werewolf novel before I lose the chance to treat myself to a Kindle book. ONE DAY! I've written a few hundred words today but I refuse to post my word count until tomorrow. I refuse.

Anyway. Bookish stuff that is not the one I'm attempting to write:
30 days of books... day 4

And...
Book #182 - Compromising Positions by Jenna Bayley-Burke
Book #183 - Her Dark Angel (Her Angel #1) by Felicity Heaton

As a random tidbit, while browsing through Amazon last night I was checking out the top free Kindle books (which I do often since I had to stop actually PAYING for books) and there were a ton of new books on there. Books that looked good. I went on a downloading spree. I think I nabbed 11 new books. Sweet! Here ... Free stuff is good. You have to wade through some of the later pages, but FREE BOOKS!

Okay. I'm off to finish that damn novel. Then I get to take a small break and read The Hunger Games series. Then I get to go back to the novel and make it better. Then I die slowly when I send it out to be looked over by a trusted friend. Then I do it all again.

Later.

Happy writing day! I hit my word goal and I told myself that if I did it in a timely manner I could buy myself a few books in the $2 range for my Kindle. Guess who's feeling good tonight? And guess who's going to be heading over to Amazon when she's done here? Yes, it is me! How did you know?!?!

So.

Today: I pushed the story forward a few days, which puts us ever closer to our climactic end scene. I had a fun little back-and-forth between two minor characters that I loved. If I could find a way to get those two together more often, I totally would. The spy with the bad guys is getting antsy to finish his job and get home, but he knows he has one more thing to do before he can get out of there.

Next up: I have to catch us up with our resident psycho and the girl he's attempting to kidnap. Maybe he'll have already nabbed her, maybe it'll be about to happen. It's hard to tell with him. Plus, an impromptu shopping trip is about to going horribly wrong and the hero's going to go batshit crazy over it.

Amazon, here I come!
Later!

I'm expecting a fist pump for this! Are you ready?

I broke my 30K plateau! Which means that I can buy that Kindle book I've had my eye on. Love!

In my imaginary world, I've now given my girl a bodyguard (although she's young and not terribly strong, but strength comes in many guises) and had my guy find out that she doesn't wear panties. Good times.

Next up: napping with the heroes, giving my bad guy a bad day and learning that shapeshifting isn't in the cards for all parties.

Oh, I also finished my book.
Book #130 - Wolfen by Madelaine Montague - Okay. This book? Was good. There was good plot progression, well laid out mythology and it didn't feel as forced as some of the other books by this author. In other words, I liked it. Yes, we're still in the multiple partner genre and there's claiming and marking and hot sex. I'm enjoying this set of books I've been reading. Why mess with a good thing? Danika Whitney has been sent to a small town to study a pack of wolves that have been acting outside the norm. She's noticed some hostility from the natives, but that's small potatoes when a biker gang rolls into town and turns Danika's life upside down. Renting the cabin next to her puts her in close proximity to the five hot, dangerous men and she's having a hard time choosing between them. Admittedly, there are grammatical editorial errors that pepper the book, but I DIDN'T CARE. The book was just that fun. Now I can only hope that Madelaine Montague decides to put out another book in this universe.

Time to troll Amazon for my booooook.
Later.

My baby is hooooommmmmme! He's been in Palm Desert with his dad's family since Sunday and I missed the little booger. Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy my time alone (because I felt like I made some serious inroads on the writing and general mythology of my story) but I still missed him.

Speaking of the writing ...

The unfortunate side of this is that most of that was written last night. While I toiled away on my computer until 2. Oops. I did put in a few hundred words today and I'm still planning on doing some writing tonight while Cole is catching up on some of the shows that recorded while he was gone, but I thought I'd be farther along than this. Closer to 20K. It's cool. I'll cross that threshold tonight.

Things that happened in those few words: The scene I was able to set up for in my last bout of writing that will be the catalyst to bring our two mains in closer contact is halfway written. I've also come to realize that one of the secondary characters is turning into the fall guy for all the bad things that unwittingly happen to the heroine. I'm not thrilled with that, but I can't quite see how the things that need to happen would happen otherwise. On the other hand, I don't want this secondary character to be completely incompetent, which is kinda the feeling I'm starting to get from her. There might be some revising on her character in the near future. Or just the future.

I also went back and read the entire story from beginning to end today. For the most part, I'm very happy with it. There are some parts where the wording isn't quite there yet. It says what I want it to say, but in a very clunky, non-flowing manner. However, I'm not going to do any agonizing rewriting unless the words magically appear in my head and absolutely must be written down.

In news that involves neither Cole nor werewolves ... well, werewolves might be involved. Anyway. My Kindle has been shipped and according to the email that came along with the shipment confirmation, I can start downloading books immediately. Hmm. OKAY! I trolled the Kindle Store on Amazon and downloaded a bunch of freebies. I don't expect these books to be good necessarily, but I wanted something light and different to read. Cheesy ass romantic suspense stories fit the bill perfectly. Also, books about werewolves who have to fight their inner nature. Word!

Okay. I'm done.

Things that I've done today. And some things that I didn't do but which happened anyway. In no particular order ...

1. Hailey's Dance Recital - It was good. I need to start with that. It was a fun little rendition of The Little Mermaid for Act 1. Act 2 had a bunch of dances that the dance company does for competition and whatnot. For the love of Pete, it was too long. They could have ended it after the first act and it would have been satisfying. Seriously, it clocked in at almost 3 hours. And my mom and Heather had to stay for the second performance. Yikes!

However, the competition dancing is amazing. Absolutely amazing. So I guess I'm glad I got to see it. Even though it was too long.

2. Cole's away for a few days with his dad's side of the family. He went to his step mom's brother's wedding today and then they're meeting the rest of his family in Palm Desert tomorrow. I've been home alone the whole damn afternoon. It's kinda creepy.

3. I decided to watch some of those movies that I've borrowed and ignored. Let the Right One In. A Swedish film about vampires. I loved the ending. It was creepy and dark and just worked perfectly. The rest of the movie? A little too artsy for my tastes. Those long, lingering shots of an empty table don't do it for me. Although the falling snow was very pretty. Movie #2 for the evening was 2012 which was fucking amazing because it had CITIES BLOWING UP AND DOING OTHER VASTLY CATASTROPHIC STUFF! Seriously, I could totally suspend all my disbelief after that first citywide destruction shot. I do so love my broken cities.

4. I did not open Word at all today. I feel like I should. But I'm not going too unless something pops into my head that must be written down on the spot. That said, I'm expecting to break 18K words tomorrow since I'm taking a break today. Brain, don't fail me now!

5. I did not receive my replacement phone today. This is bad because the temporary fix the technician performed on my old phone has worn off and, once again, the touchscreen isn't working at all. So, for those of you considering calling and/or texting me: Don't. I won't be able to answer or even see that you called until then. Sad. Very sad.

6. I purchased a bunch of free music downloads off of Amazon this morning. I guess "purchased" isn't the right word. All I'm going to say is that if you want to try out new music/bands/labels and possibly find something you can really sink your teeth into, check the Amazon MP3 page. They are always offering free singles and sampler albums that aren't half bad. I mean, most of the ones I choose aren't bad. I'm sure some of them aren't my cup of tea, but I ignore those for the most part.


What was I talking about again?
You know, maybe that second iced coffee I downed about half an hour ago wasn't the best idea.
I don't know. I'm done with the babblefest.
Later.

Amb came over for dinner (Phil's up in the Santa Cruz mountains with his school for science camp and wouldn't be home until around 7 or so) and I think she was having the beginning pangs of labor. Poor thing. She was having back pain and I remember what that feels like. It's awful and horrible and you feel like you're going to crack in half. But YOU DON'T and it hurts so much you just want to cry. Anyway. It's possible I might have a new nephew to spoil rotten tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next day. I'm sure it'll be soon.

It rained today. Something fierce. I really, really didn't expect as much rain as we got. In fact, I didn't know it was going to rain at all. Weird.

Book #69 - The Dream-Hunter (Dark-Hunter #11 and/or Dream-Hunters #1) by Sherrilyn Kenyon - I remember reading this book a couple of years ago and not being terribly impressed by it. Huh. It just goes to show you that people can change because I ended up liking it quite a bit this time around. Set in the world of the Immortals who control and monitor dreams the story still draws liberally from the mythology Sherrilyn Kenyon has created in her other books. Arik is a Skoti, drifting through mortal dreams to siphon off emotion (which has been stripped from all of their kind) and pleasure. Drawn to Geary and her amazingly vivid dreams, Arik bargains to become human and experience the pleasure he feels with her in the flesh. The problem is that Geary is close to uncovering the final resting place of Atlantis and Apollymi, the Goddess of Destruction who once nearly destroyed the Earth. With the Gods meddling in her affairs, she and Arik will be lucky to make it out alive at all.

-and-

Book #69.5 - Fear the Darkness (Dark-Hunter #12) by Sherrilyn Kenyon - This is definitely a short story. It's not bad, but it's nowhere near the story I want told for Nick. The good news is that Sherriyn Kenyon has said that Nick will eventually get his own book. Yay. This story is little more than a snippet, looking into Nick's life as he returns to New Orleans for the first time since his mother's death. He's devastated by what Hurricane Katrina has done to his city and he's still so angry at Ash that he's working with the Spathi Daimons to try to bring Ash down. You can find this story on Sherrilyn Kenyon's website here.

-and-

Book #70 - Upon the Midnight Clear (Dark-Hunter #14 and/or Dream Hunters #2) by Sherrilyn Kenyon - I guess I skipped right over book 13. Which is weird because I have it sitting next to me! Whatever. This was more a novelette than an actual novel. Being shorter than normal, the action moved very quickly. Girl meets guy, girl and guy fight, girl melts guy's frozen heart, girl and guy make sweet love, girl and guy fight the bad guys. Done! No, really. It wasn't a bad book, by any means, it was just not as well developed as previous installments. Delving back into the world of the Dream-Hunters, Leta is an Oneroi who been asleep for the past two thousand years. When a dark god is summoned to earth, Leta is awakened to follow him down and stop him from killing the man he's been summoned to kill, Aidan O'Connor, former Academy Award winning actor and present-day recluse. Good, but not the best in the series by far.

You might not have been able to tell, but the books I ordered through Amazon came today. I almost lost my cool with Amazon, though. I had to talk to their help center because the tracking page said my order was delivered last night and NO IT WASN'T, YOU JERKS. All I'm going to say about this is that if the tracking says it was delivered to the front door on Tuesday at 7 pm, it damn well better be. Not Wednesday at 4 pm. Tuesday. 7 pm. That's not difficult. And if it is, they need to either get better tracking software or train their people better as to how to input the freaking tracking data.

For the record, I know it wasn't Amazon that had the issue. It was the delivery people. The delivery people who were not UPS. UPS doesn't have this problem with my Amazon packages. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE THIS PROBLEM WITH MY AMAZON PACKAGES! THEY ARE SACRED AND SHOULD BE TREATED ACCORDINGLY! In conclusion, OnTrac can suck it.

I think I'm done now. Maybe.
Later.