Stranger than Fiction

Title: Dangerous to Myself

Chieti Nickerson, a gorgeous, slim professional public relations specialist for a top cosmetics company starts to doubt her sanity after quitting her fantastic job to pursue a crazy dream.

Main plot: Chieti wants to write a book and make a living as a published author. Motivation: she wants to do something that makes her feel unique and irreplaceable.

Subplot: a fun-loving muscular, mountain climbing, scuba-diving, kayaking, cycling, running, surfing adventurous love interest promises to fulfill Chieti's hopes of finding true love. Oh, and he's a great cook and he fixes her car and computer, too. (Maybe that last bit is too much.... this guy needs a flaw: he HATES cats, and Chieti loves cats)

Secondary plot: Chieti has moved far away from her friends and family, and not speaking the language in her new home does not help her make friends with the majority of people she meets.

Secondary plot 2: Chieti has decided to not have children, and as more and more of her friends do have children, the friendships become strained as Chieti has less in common with her former friends.

Will Chieti ever manage to finish her freaking book? Will she find friends who have something in common with her? Will her seriously-flawed boyfriend ever let her have two striped tiger kittens? This action-packed drama is a non-stop emotional roller-coaster with plenty of comic relief.

I'm going to murder E in his sleep

I've been agonizing over my book (again) so E decided to show me how easy it is by whipping off 8 pages during some down time last night.

His pages are good. Really good.

Apart from a slight point of view problem and a not-very-well-disguised influence from James Bond, his story is fast-paced, with believable dialogue and interesting characters.
The bastard! Do I sit around designing cool robots in my down time? I could kill him.

He claims that he was trying to make a point: I need to relax and just write. Stop trying to follow the rules. Write from ++here++ (pointing to my guts) not ++here++ (pointing to my head). The bastard.

I just read a book about writing from your white hot core (where original fresh ideas will come from) rather than from your brain (where cliched, overusued copies of other people's stuff will come from). Damn. I hate it when he's right and proves it. I am going to design a damn robot to smash the crap out of his robot.

Note: My title comes from the HBO show "John from Cincinnati" - Rebecca DeMornay used the line (without the E part) "I'll murder you in your sleep!" and the way she delivered the line was 100% believable.

I Want a Kindle 2!

I went to a workshop yesterday to learn about e-publishing, and I feel like I've been living under a rock while a revolution has been going on. Yes, I've heard of the Kindle and Sony wireless reading devices, but I didn't really 'get it.' I thought they were like mini computers.

Wireless reading devices are incredible, and the screen looks much better than a small paperback (which I don't even bother with any more - they kill my eyes) you can bump up the font size and there's no glare.
benefits of wireless reading vs traditional:

- carry multiple books, newspapers and magazines with you anywhere (limited selection of magazines and newspapers - no Canadian content)

- look up any words you don't know in an online dictionary

- mark passages, make annotations, and then download them

- buy books online and download them immediately! (with the Kindle in the US you can do this wirelessly)

+ no more stumbling around the bookstore trying to find something on the shelf
+ no more trying to remember where I put one of the 5 books I'm reading
+ no more piles of newspapers that I haven't had a chance to look at yet (at least once they get Canadian papers up and running)

wireless reading devices make a lot of sense from a paper-saving, space-saving and time-saving point of view.

e-publishers have online stores that make it easy to shop - you can go to a bookstore that's designed for your taste.

I think they're doing a terrible job marketing wireless reading devices and e-books. My friends and family are avid readers and NONE of us have wireless reading devices, or do you? speak up!

I want one! I'm leaning toward the Kindle 2 because it looks sleeker, claims to have a long battery life, and I think I'd rather support Amazon than Sony. Must... resist... urge... to ...click.. buy now... Must.. do... more...research...

thoughts?