Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Lane Robins' LiveJournal:

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Sunday, January 29th, 2012
3:06 pm	Miscellaneous My computers are dying.  I am off to get a new one next week if all goes well.  ALL HAD BETTER GO WELL, WORLD!  No sneaky car breakdowns requiring the computer money to be spent there instead!  No sudden animal disaster!  In preparation for this event, I am tidying up the morass of files that proliferate in my life.  While working, I have a terrible habit of taking random notes on random other stories, then saving them under such useful file names as "Things" or "One" or "NWSDSCRD".  I promise to do better.  But in the interim, there's been a lot of poking through mysterious files.  It's a little like peek backs into my brain.  Some things make me groan.  Some things make me laugh.  Some things make me do both.  The Things file turned out to be very brief in content, some tongue-in-cheek comment to myself to watch out for a writing habit and reads in its entirety:   "Things I’ve learned while writing: There’s no problem that can’t be solved with defenestration.        Maledicte        Sylvie Shadows and Tooth & Nail        Fanjadi escaping from her husband.        Jax escaping his victim in To Cheat the Lords of Death.                Elizabeth Deal:  Strings, Sonata, and Suicide." Basically, it's a list to remind myself to stop killing people by throwing them out of windows.  The One file made me groan.  Apparently I had the start of a story and then... never bothered to go beyond the opening paragraph, so I have zero idea of what the plot might have been.  I do know that the character here shares a name, an occupation, and potentially a setting (? Artificial wind?)  with the main character in my short story Scorpion's Wake.  So maybe it was a prequel?   "Epiphanies lurk in every life, waiting to be noticed.  For Cyn, that moment came in a night-dark alley, with the artificial wind yanking at her hair, while she tugged and cursed at her knife, seemingly inextricable from William's ribcage.  Blinking her eyes against another updraft of swirling grit, she found herself thinking, "Damnit.  If I'm going to kill people, I'm going to get paid for it."" Argh.  Someday, I'll figure out a way to organize my scattered thoughts.  Maybe even in 2012.  A person can dream, right? (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 21st, 2012
4:46 pm	Writer brain Sitting down to write.  Assessing the house.  The cats are asleep.  They are not breaking things or fighting or breaking things while fighting or walking on my keyboard or yelling at me for food or attention.  The dog is asleep.  She is not pawing me in the spleen, demanding food, walkies, a game of kill-the-devil, or investigating the possibility of food on my desk.  The neighbors are not yelling at their dogs, not doing woodwork in their garages, not having a party or argument outside my windows. The construction on the street has stopped.  My electricity has, therefore, stabilized.  I have a soda; I have had a tasty lunch.  I have energy.  I do not have a headache.  I have new scenes to write, new worlds to explore, new everything to wallow in. There is no excuse in the world not to be writing!  ...it's too damn quiet. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
3:37 pm	Food and the new year So one of my ...resolutions, I suppose, this year was a two-fold one.  To stop eating out so damned often, and to eat healthier.  This has proven more problematic than it sounds for a whole bunch of reasons (excuses).  For one thing, I've sort of forgotten how to cook.  Which I partly blame Thomas Seay for--a great roommate who cooked awesome food, thereby removing any need I had to even enter the kitchen.  Multiple years later and I still wander into the kitchen around meal times and feel surprised that there is not a boy making homemade croissants or pretzels or searing steaks or dredging chicken.  And partly because all the things I know how to reliably cook are either fat-heavy or portioned to feed an army or both.  Chili for 20?  I can do that.  Biscuits and chicken gravy for ten?  I'm your girl.  Make a meal for myself without wanting a week's worth of leftovers, and might incorporate a vegetable or three?  Um.... Next question, please? For another thing, I spend a lot of writing time trying to get out of the house and write someplace less personally distracting, which usually translates to a restaurant/coffee shop of some sort.  And then there's the whole absent-minded writer thing.  If I do stay at home, I'm likely to wander out of the study, down the stairs, into the kitchen and grab whatever doesn't fight back.  Usually cheese and crackers, or a PB sandwich--which isn't terrible for one meal, but when it's your fourth meal running?  I guess my rambling point comes to this.  Today, I took leftover roast beef from the fridge, sauteed some onion and green pepper, toasted a baguette, found some gouda, and made myself a homemade cheesesteak.  I am ridiculously proud of myself.  Is it healthy?  No, but it is healthIER.  I controlled the ingredients, left off sauces and excess fats and salts.   Is it great cooking?  No, but it's a start.   I have successfully applied heat to my food.  And best of all, it's tasty.  (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
10:29 pm	reason #gazillion I love the internet I would never have known about the Kidneythieves without it.  Much less gotten my hands on any of the songs.  Nor be able to spam you with them.  :)  Actually, I'm doing double duty here.  I'm also testing my ability/inability to embed things.  I WILL be dragged (not kicking and screaming) but weakly stumbling and complaining into the future.  (Comment on this)
Monday, January 2nd, 2012
11:21 pm	December books Argh.  The end of the year always takes me a little by surprise.  It's the bobble of the old and the new and the whole accounting for the year.  But, I don't really have anything to say about 2012 yet—so far the entire year is rolling out before me, looking an awful lot like numbers.  The number of words I want to write.  The number of books I want to write.  The number of places I want to go.  The number of pounds I want to lose.  It's all arithmetic and no actual thought yet, so… we'll leave it all unsaid and talk about December.  Or at least the books I read in December. I'll have a separate post for my faves read in 2011.  Or this post will be too long for even me to bear.  December books! ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Monday, December 19th, 2011
10:07 pm	Things that amuse me Ordered some BPAL perfumes (a limited edition Winter scent and a bunch of imps), received a whole bunch of freebies. (Yay!) Got annoyed with the cat for consistently stealing the same imp, over and over.  (she is IN LOVE with the Vicomte de Valmont), and told her she didn't need to take it with her throughout the house.  Then I looked down and realized I was still holding onto my favorite new imp myself.   (Incantation.  YUM!  If I don't develop an allergy to it, I'm buying a bottle.)  Scent is such a powerful thing.  (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, December 16th, 2011
1:18 pm	Can't this day have 36 hours in it? I'm not being greedy, not asking for 48... Just some extra hours, PLEASE. All I can see are the tasks I've got to accomplish today, and, due to the EVIL AND CHAOTIC forces of the cats, I have to redo at least an hour's worth.  (The elderly cat, in an attempt to get warm, leaped onto the stove top, found it warmer than she expected, and raced off of it, taking the entire hour's worth of baked and cooling cookies on the counter-top with her.  In the chaos ensuing, the kittens knocked over and denuded the tree of all its ornaments.  Oddly, I am no longer in a holiday mood.) I know it's ridiculous, I know I set myself up for failure, but this time of year always does it to me.  Writing eats up so much of my day, and I love it, I do, but it's really ridiculously hard to fit in 6-8 hours of writing plus retail work hours where the christmas music is unceasing and appalling, plus the house chores plus holiday obligations and there are NO groceries in my house except for cookie ingredients...(not even CHEESE!) and I don't want to go out into the cold and shop when I'm supposed to be revising chapters 4-9 today before work this evening and for god's sake, at some point, I'd like to get a chance to say hey to my friends who I haven't seen/spoken to in over a week! Yes, I'm aware I'm whining.  Yes, there are a gazillion worse troubles to have than an overscheduled day and a ruined batch of cookies.  I am trying to be mindful of that.  But my inner twelve-year-old is not having any of that at the moment.  Maybe later she will calm the hell down and stop throwing a tantrum.  Really, I just want a warm beach, some sunlight, some fresh-caught, deep fried shrimp, a lemonade, and maybe a valium or two.  I did read Tanith Lee's Louisa the Poisoner at breakfast this morning.  Short and not at all sweet; it's been the best part of my day so far.  (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011
1:56 am	Woohoo! Draft Zero of Gatecrashers is complete!!!  It's ugly!  It's got major continuity errors!  It's not even in proper manuscript format!  But it's done at 123K.  And I'm ecstatic!   For a book that's going to be a fun romp of a fantasy adventure, it's been kicking my butt for months.  Onward to the revisions, then on to my poor, long-suffering agent who probably thinks I'm off writing another unmarketable romance novel.  :) If it weren't two AM, I'd be dancing all over the house to bad pop songs and scaring the cats and making the dog bark.  As it is, I'm going to fall face first into bed and print out a revision copy in the morning.   Oh, the triumphant smell of toner and warm paper! There is nothing that feels like this.  Nothing else at all.  (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
6:18 pm	the expression you DON'T want to see When you're reading your latest chapter aloud, looking for typos and bad sentences. Oh, Sammy.  Always ready to help.  (4 Comments |Comment on this)
1:47 pm	ARGH Oh Swamplandia!, how I wanted to like you.  You were set in the Everglades!  Among the alligator wrestler tourist traps!  With an eccentric family in crisis!  You employed beautiful language, and flirted with magical realism!  You made me so damn mad. SPOILERS Why Swamplandia! irritated me so much. ( cut for spoilers ) In short: while the world-building and language are both beautiful, the novel as a whole feels horrifically predictable.  Next up: THE GIANT, O'BRIEN (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 4th, 2011
12:22 pm	November books read So this month I concentrated on working my way through my TBR pile, since I have to justify the great glut of books I picked up recently.  Nothing really blew me away this month, but a lot of decent entertainment.    Have You Seen Her? - Karen Rose.  Rose writes a reliable thriller, heavy on the body count and violence, reasonable on the romance.    The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins.  Probably my favorite of the month even with the bizarre shenanigans of the female lead.  But this is a great book for looking at characters and since I love characterization stories… I enjoyed it.  It's told in a series of different POVs, each one a distinctive voice.  I loved the butler, and really liked the crazy, slightly bitter Drusilla.  She's both amusing and horrifying at the same time.   Mindhunter - Journey into Darkness - John Douglas & Mark Olshaker.  Somewhere along the line, I picked up a whole slew of true crime books.  I thought these might be dull, but they were a really engaging read, if a bit repetitive read back to back.  Terrible of me, but I find accounts of serial killers and their captures vaguely soothing.  Plus, as I read these, it became very apparent that so had the Criminal Minds writing team.    Love Kills - Dianne Emley.  Some months ago I read Emley's First Cut and found it okay.  This one fell into my lap and pretty much reinforced the "okay" of the first one.  It's not that these are bad books; they're just not to my taste.    14 - Judas Kiss - The Cold Room - The Immortals - So Close the Hand of Death - JT Ellison.  My workplace has a pile of thrillers, so therefore I have a pile of thrillers.  These were most of a series, and they went up and down the scale in terms of enjoyability/plausibility.  The writing is solid enough that even when I was getting aggravated at plot contrivances, I kept on reading.  And picking up the next book.    Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook.  I loved, loved, loved The Iron Duke, the first in this series, and this one was almost as good.  Steampunk-infused paranormal romance with some interesting world-building.   The Haunted Hotel - Wilkie Collins.  After reading The Moonstone, I went online to see what else was available and discovered kindle classics which are mostly post-copyright books for zero money.  So I downloaded and read The Haunted Hotel, which, like The Moonstone, I enjoyed…with the exception of the villainness.  I'm not sure Wilkie Collins was the best writer of female characters.  Despite that, the book was creepy and enjoyable and sent me back to download some more.   Explosive Eighteen - Janet Evanovich.  Two Stephanie Plum books in one year!  I could pick on these books a lot--nagging at repetitive word choices, one-note characterization, super-thin plots--yet I keep buying and reading because they're just fun.  It's like sitting down to a much beloved sitcom.  Nothing ever really changes but that's okay with you.   I only managed to read one new-ish short story this month.  I am trying to do better than that as a rule, and in Dec, I've already read three so... "Sweet Sixteen" Kat Howard on Lightspeed (Jul 2011) and I tentatively recommend it.  The writing is good, the characterization is lovely, and as a story in a microcosm, it works wonderfully.  I have doubts about the viability of the world as a whole, and that sort of undercut all the good stuff.  On the other hand, there's lots of chewy gender stuff here that I really liked. Currently reading: Swamplandia!   ETA: Fixed a horrible typo!  (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011
10:27 am	lyric meme answers  'Cause I know you were dying to know.  :)  Lyrics are hard, man!  This game makes me think of those old (yes, I'm dating myself terribly) radio shows with Casey Kasem where someone would recite song lyrics in a deliberately arrhythmic fashion and I NEVER EVER GOT THEM.  Even when they were songs I knew well.  Stripping lyrics loose of music... it changes things drastically. That, and I listen to a lot of random music.  So the key. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
12:59 am	lyrics meme 'Cause I'm sure you all wanted to play guessing games with the music I've been listening to.  :)  But stillsostrange suggested it, and well, I'm chronically short on posts so: The lyrics meme: I give you a few lines from the top players on my iPod; you guess them and win... glory, I guess?  Or I can tell you why I like that song or if it belongs to a character.  I played fair--pulled out all the really weird stuff (ie., filk), and foreign language music (because I don't want to figure out accents and special characters with my sooper-speshul lj lack o'skills) so y'all play fair, and don't lyrics search? 1) Teacher says that I've been naughty I must learn to concentrate 2) We don't cry for the gods that die by our hands. We throw stones if our gods take a stand 3) Once when I was all alone I could not find the telephone So instead I burned your pretty home to the ground Johnny Hollow - Worse Things (teacup_carousel) ( Read more... ) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
11:20 am	oh my brain... Still cleaning the garage, found a small box labeled KITCHEN shoved in under the workbench, pulled it out.  Whee!  That's where my nice napkins went!  Do a happy dance of no more paper towels at the dinner table.  (Don't ask me why I didn't simply replace the fabric napkins.  Isn't it obvious?  I could buy books with that money instead!  I knew the napkins would turn up eventually.  And here, they have!) Also in the box: a whole bunch of spoons.  I don't even know why I felt the need to pack them separately all those years ago, but what the heck.  There's always a point in packing where you just start throwing things at boxes.  And finally in the box: A three inch stack of paper plates!  Cue another happy dance!  Whee!  Don't have to use dishes for a month!  So... I'm eating my lunch with my happy fabric napkin and a paper plate.  Brain, is this really an improvement? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
4:57 pm	cleaning house Ever since I moved in to my little house, the garage has been a receptacle for EVERYTHING.  This fall, I have determined to clear it out.  It's oddly difficult.  Some things are hard to deal with simply because of size: I can't move them myself.  Some things are hard to deal with because they're hazardous trash (ie, paint cans.) and I have to make an appointment to be rid of them.  Some things are hard to deal with because they're hazardous trash and ARE NOT MINE--thank you people who left them behind, really, no I mean it; I would LOVE to dispose of your collection of car batteries and oh wait, there's a fee???  Some things can be donated (clothing, furniture that I can move by myself, etc.) and some things are just trash.  But the hardest stuff to be rid of is the stuff that has perceived value to me.  This is what makes hoarders.  I look at these things and think "Someone, somewhere, will appreciate this!  I can't just throw it away!!!"  This is just not true.  80s cheesy rock cassettes, I'm looking at you.  Not only are they cassette tapes, which... who takes them?  Who wants them?  Who can play them?  Will they even still play?  Most of them were listened to WAY TOO OFTEN and were wobbly then and now they've spent three years in a garage.   Plus, they're my 80s rock cassettes, and I, um, had no musical taste.  For every good band I managed to pick up, I had seventeen cheesy hair-band compilations who knew three power chords and covered everything else up with glitter and spandex.  Even I don't want to listen to them any longer.  So where's the value there?  I've never been much for nostalgia and I have a short attention span.  So.... I cleaned out one large box of cassette tapes.  Pulled out nine that didn't make me want to cringe.  Even then, there's just a song or two on each cassette that I liked and I remember winding and rewinding and rewinding the tape to get to those songs.  Sounds like a case for an mp3.  This is the logic.  This is the rational part of my brain.  And yet, there's still some part shrieking--you CAN'T throw cassettes away, even though they're probably damaged, no longer to my taste, and oh yeah, I don't have a cassette player.  Brains.  What can you do? ETA:  Dear god.  I have found FOUR copies of Corey Hart's Field of Fire.  FOUR CASSETTES.  Three of them are marked in Sharpie: BROKEN.  Why I didn't throw them away then...  Why I listened to that album enough to kill it three times over.... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 7th, 2011
7:32 pm	At least it's not snowing The best thing about running around in a cold downpour?  Coming home.  Putting on the ugliest PJ Pants Ever (seriously.  They are a charcoal base with stripes of teal, blue--so far, not awful--neon yellow, and oh yeah, rotten grape purple.) and the ancient Cult t-shirt that I liberated ages ago from its rightful owner.  Then making cocoa and peanut butter toast for dinner and eating it all while reading a book and feeding the crusts to the dog.  Do I know how to party, or what?  Currently reading Val McDermid's Killing the Shadows. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011
2:33 am	October books So the plus to insomnia is that it gives me time to read?  Since this month was full of not-sleeping mixed with inability-to-think-clearly due to not-sleeping, I read a surprising quantity of books.   Mostly Romantic Suspense.  They've become my popcorn books now that I'm writing SF & F.  I just can't get the same mindless joy out of fantasy novels now, because I'm always analyzing them.    But that's okay.  Romantic suspense is an awesome genre and since it's an offshoot of romance, it's full of crazily prolific writers.    So what I read:  ( the list )   (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 21st, 2011
7:56 pm	walking the dog at dusk I usually try to get her walk in earlier in the day, just because it's more peaceful.  After dusk, people are home, their dogs are out, and any walking dog is easily trackable by the non-stop barking. But I've been ill, and her walk was delayed until I felt better, so off we go.  A short jaunt down the street to the green area behind all the houses where the water overflows go.  There are tons of trees, more squirrels than Daisy can even understand, and lots of space.  There's a deep ravine with standing water that divides two neighborhoods.  So tonight we're walking through the park, listening to the squirrels crashing through the leaves, when the dog suddenly stops, all the fur rising up on her spine.  Ears up, watching.  Sniffing.  I can't see anything, but I listen.  Trit-trit-trit, something moving through the brush.  Too regular.  Finally I find it.  A dog running the other side of the ravine, hard to see in the dusk.  Daisy starts snarling.  She loves other dogs, so at this point, I'm concerned.  The dog on the other side turns to look at us, drops its head.  Oh.  Not a dog. Coyote.  Not very big.  Maybe only a half-size bigger than my little dog.  Doesn't prevent my own nerves jangling.  It's amazing how different a wild animal reads to our instincts.  We very carefully leave the area, Daisy snarling the entire way, stalking stiff-legged, reminded that just because we're in a city doesn't mean the wild won't make its way in.  I love it.  But I won't be walking my small dog in the park at dusk.  Let the coyotes have it.  (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
6:32 pm	pic spam There's a local used furniture store that had a chest I lusted after for a very long year.  My super-kind mother saw it going going gone and snatched it up for me.  It's been a total office geek-out ever since.  So many little drawers!  So many office supplies!  Color-coded post it note drawers!  (Yes, I am aware I have a sickness.)   But seriously.  Drawers for post-it notes!  Drawers for alligator clips!  Drawers for paperclips and pens and staplers and staples and rubber bands....  It had a slightly cracked top, so I got a local business to cut me a glass top to sit on it and protect it.  Protect it from what?  Well, here it is with the temporary cardboard protector.  And Dean and Merlin.  But now I've put the glass on, and removed one of the two front sliding doors since the drawer pulls were damaging the wood which limited its usefulness.    (I tucked the removed door neatly behind the cabinet for safe-keeping.)  I love it.  It makes me smile every time I enter the study, which as any writer knows, can only be a good thing.  (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 10th, 2011
2:11 am	So, I'm not much for reviewing books But sometimes you just have to talk about them.  I had an interesting experience reading The Hum & the Shiver, and it was an experience brought to me specifically because I read this book on the kindle.  This is the story.  My friend was exuberant in her praise of Alex Bledsoe's Burn Me Deadly, which made me remember how much I had enjoyed The Sword-Edged Blonde.  I contemplated buying BMD, but it was book 3 and I was two books behind and to be honest, the plot of Dark Jenny just sounded too Arthurian for me.  So I let it go.    Then a few days later, skimming Tor.com, I saw he had another book recently released called The Hum & the Shiver and there was an excerpt. The title stuck with me, though I didn't take the time to read the excerpt.  Later, browsing books online, I stuck a sample on the ereader, again without really looking at it.    Push on yet another few days, and I'm flicking through the ereader and hit that sample.  Sit down, read it.  Huh.  A young military hero(ine) returning, badly wounded, from Iraq to a strange, small town full of stranger people.  Her family is… oddly unsympathetic with a strong flavor of "well, what did you expect to happen if you left home?" though their affection is evident.    I reached the end of the sample and bought the book without hesitating.  Keep in mind, I still had no idea what the plot was.  All I knew is that here was this very young woman who had a past of bad decisions, who'd tried to cover the worst of them by making another bad decision, and had come home to find her mother ready to die.  Time to grow up and fast.    It was a really interesting read, watching everything unfold with completely unspoiled eyes.  I hadn't even read the blurb!  I can't remember the last time I did that.  It's a totally different experience.    ( Spoilers ahead... )   If you like contemporary fantasy in the vein of Nina Kiriki Hoffman's early novels, read this book.  If you like stories about magical, mysterious peoples, read this book.  If you like musical fantasies, read this book.  If you like coming of age stories where characters face their magical destinies, read this book.    Basically?  READ THIS BOOK.  Its leisurely pace is deceptive.  It's a quick read.    It's been the better part of a week since I finished it, and I can't stop thinking about it.  It's definitely going to go on my best of the year list.  I bought it as an ebook, but I'm going to have to pick up a paper copy for forcing on my friends.        (7 Comments |Comment on this)