Discussing KILLERBYTE

I know  a lot of you have read KILLERBYTE.

And I'm really delighted/grateful/stunned with the groovacious reviews its received so far from reviewers. It's faith affirming stuff. On those days when I think I suck as a writer I can read them and know I did something right! :-)

Last night I was afforded the opportunity to discuss KILLERBYTE in person with someone who is currently reading it. And who reads a lot of my genre. Gotta say hearing someone tell me how much they love my writing style and the story is almost indescribably thrilling. Especially when she said she loves the way she can see the story come to life and imagine it as a movie. (Dionne you ROCK!!)

I'm one of those people who in the back of my mind, is expecting "the other shoe to fall". So far I'm feeling like I've dodged thrown/falling shoes and possibly a few bullets.

If I can make someone look over their shoulder, stop reading to check or lock windows and doors, laugh, cry, jump, think about the characters whenever they put the book down... then I know I'm on the right track.

More and more my feedback is saying all of the above.

What would be amazing and really helpful to others... if you've read KILLERBYTE could you pop a short review on Amazon? Good, bad, indifferent - they all help people choose what to read.

I have one more request... it feels incredibly cheeky. But I'm just tossing it out there.
TERRORBYTE is the second Ellie Conway book. If you loved KILLERBYTE I'm pretty sure you'll really enjoy TERRORBYTE. (It's is my favorite of the two books. lol)

Right now I'm waiting on the edits for the third and writing the 4th Conway book and . It's exciting.

Amethysts

It's been a long time since I've worn amethyst - it's one of my favorite stones. I used to wear it all the time. Necklaces, rings, bracelets. You name I have it in amethyst and used to wear it. Then one day I stopped. The amethyst bracelet I was wearing exploded sending stones all over the room... seemed like a sign!
I started wearing citrine, peridot, diamonds, and iolite. Not usually all at once, but as the mood took me. The most worn stone in the last few years has been peridot. I love it. Peridot and iolite together are fabulous.

Yesterday I bought a new jacket, it's purple and white. It's a ski jacket. My red and white one leaks. Yep, pocket filled up with water, my phone was in it. Unimpressed! So anyway, this is a amethyst colored jacket, with a removable liner/jacket. It confused me to start with, as I unzipped the inner fleece jacket and re-zipped it like a separate top... so when I went to take the jacket off. I found myself trapped.
The outer jacket attaches to the inner one at three points. Guess that's so you don't end up with sleeves inside out and so forth. lol.
It's good to know these things.

So anyway. Before we went out last night I put a gold and amethyst ring on. Nice.

Got to Beck's to pick up Breezy. Wearing new jacket no one had seen. Beck met me at the door and handed me an inch and a half wide amethyst cuff, saying she never wears it any more. I should have it. It's beautiful. All tiny dark purple amethysts. 

Guess amethyst wants to be worn by me again.

I'm moving into a purple phase. But I see it being off set by peridot. Oh how I love that green.

Now to write.

:-)

Shitty weather but pretty good day

Saturday has been busy - but then I knew it would be. That's been how it is of late.
Crazy weekends.
It's nice. It's fun.

Just having a coffee now and listening to Squealer whine about having nothing to do.
Breezy is out for the day. We're going to pick her up on our way over to Eric's for dinner. Which reminds me I need to find wrapping paper!!

I also need to go get changed at some point. Bottoms of these jeans are wet - not that I can feel it. I still have my boots on. But still - we are going out. Dry jeans would be nicer.

Have not been writing today. Will probably do some later. Hopefully, before we go out, otherwise I'll be champing at the bit to get home and write.
Is it rude to take my laptop to dinner? No, really, is it?

Oh lovely -Squealer is muttering under her breath because I won't play with her. It's true I won't. We were out all day and the last thing I want to do now is play knuckle bones. Anyway I always win and she gets shitty... she could do with some solitary practice time.

Man, she's sulky - so not an endearing trait.

It's good to be me today.

Some days just need to sit…

I think today is one of those days.

For whatever reason my main email account keep signing me out... worked fine first thing this morning when I received the contract for EXACERBYTE. But since then every time I've gone to check my mail I've had to sign back in. Which is an utter pain in the ass, I can't remember that password cos it makes NO sense at all. Random letters and numbers.

I have to look it up EVERY time.

So - leave the email alone, seems to be the way to go. :D

The house is mostly-clean and tidyish.

My laptop is still upstairs from last night’s late writing effort. Was pretty good actually.

Interesting development with a character. Didn't see it coming. I like that. I need my characters to surprise me occasionally, and they do.

Just lately I've been way more proactive on Twitter... or maybe I've just been letting myself behave as I usually do. Either way, I'm really enjoying it. It's fun chatting with all manner of people. 

Today I feel noisy. 

Listening to Bon Jovi, kinda loud. 

Loving the contract on my desk and loving the new book I'm writing. 

It's a good day to be me.

I've come a long way since Jan 09. 

It's freaking awesome. And YES I AM HAVING FUN. 

It's so much fun, it should be illegal.

Oh and Bon Jovi are coming to Wellington in Dec. So guess what my birthday present is this year?? That's right, tickets. They won't be front row, or even ground... most likely way up in the nose bleed section... but it matters not, it's not about the seat, is about being there. It’s about having fun.

Now go smile at someone, and have some fun. xx

Chapter Six: not what I thought it would be

I had other plans. Often that's the way. I start writing and find my story hijacked by Ellie. 'Cept this time she was broadsided by Noel Gerrard. (You may remember him from TERRORBYTE. He's the NCIS agent trained by Ellie's father.) - you can also meet him over there, cast your eyes right ----> the story called Every Rose Has It's Thorn.
Been quite an eye opening turn of events this morning. I didn't expect this chapter to roll like it has, at all. Interesting. And no, I'm not telling you what happened. You'll have to wait until after Exacabyte for Exhibyte - which is the current WIP.
Cruel?
Hell yes.

Looks like Breezy will be back at Kindy tomorrow. She's pleased. Now that she feels perfectly fine she's quite bored with me.

Not much else has happened here this week. With Breezy being sick, we've been kinda quiet. Haven't left the house in three days... but sadly that doesn't equate to getting heaps of writing done.

I did however open a future Ellie Conway book (Satellite) and found song lyrics I'd forgotten about, reminded me just how hard sad songs can sting. (It'll all make sense eventually.) The tricky thing about writing is knowing I can't talk about future stuff because it contains spoilers to what's coming up next.
I can talk around it... just not tell y'all exactly what's going on with Ellie in the upcoming novels.

Oh I did get to see a fabulously exciting new press release - you'll all be seeing it soon - from my publishers. Special Agent Ellie Conway is going to rock the world. She truly is.

Now to clean the rabbit cage... such a nasty job! :-)

We need to make movies. (No, nothing to do with rabbits) Really... Killerbyte the movie would freaking rock.

Weird lights, new jeans, a night of fun

Happy Saturday night!

Yes it's the weekend, AGAIN.

So today I bought new jeans (yes I know you want to know about the weird lights... patience!) - not skinny jeans but straight legged jeans - so close but no cigar. They're nice, grayish and they fit great. I love em. Seems I have dropped a size in jeans. Truly marvelous.

Admins One and Bubbles plus Dionne and Tim and kids came for dinner tonight. We all cooked part of the meal. Was great fun - much port was consumed and it was chased by a bottle of Chardonnay. We'll know how wise that was come morning. I doubt I will have a voice tomorrow. We laughed. We laughed until we almost cried.

The really cool thing - signing books.

Yep. Admins books arrived, so the text yesterday asking if we were home this weekend was driven by an ulterior motive. Not that I minded. It's pretty freaking cool signing books. Hard part is thinking what to say... can get tricky!

Okay so the search light in the sky ABOVE the clouds is really freaky. Thoughts of aliens and Independence Day weren't far from our minds as we watched this light move back and forth across the sky - quickly I might add. No clue what it is. Except the beam is not coming from here. It's above the clouds. It moves quite fast. And there is zero noise.

Disconcerting.

Very Disconcerting.

NCIS night

Thursday already!
Awesome.

Gosh the week has flown by.

Tonight is girls night. That's right. Breezy gets to stay up until eight-thirty. She goes to bed at six-thirty normally, so this is a big deal. We have popcorn. It's fun watching NCIS with Breezy. The entire hour is spent explaining things and reminding her that they're actors, therefore it's not real. She really likes Abbey and of course Gibbs.

Meanwhile I'm getting used to typing on my laptop. It's actually a helluva lot easier to get used to than my desk top was last year. New keyboard meant I was forever hitting caps lock and opening things I didn't mean too. Haven't done that at all on this, so it's pretty good really!

Enjoying the mobility.

Not that I'm doing much on it at the moment. More sewing and crafty stuff than work this week.

Although this morning I read this groovy interview with Lorenza Ponce (I shall find the link - one sec)
that was interesting. Who knew I couldn't remember how to right click without a mouse and highlight and stuff? Yes I worked it out!
So anyway - I read the interview and immediately thought about one of my new characters. Rowan Grange - rock star. He is quite the puzzle for me. It's such a different world. So then I thought about Lorenza and was incredibly cheeky... I asked if I could pick her brain. She said I could. Cos she's awesome. :-) Of course she may be sorry once she reads the marathon email! lol

Must remember to use the pg up etc keys and arrows.. so much easier than the mouse pad thingy whatsit.

Almost NCIS time... y'all have fun now ya hear?

Late Sunday afternoon

It's late Sunday afternoon (In case you hadn't guessed),  the curtain by my desk is twitching. The Great Grey Hunter is sitting on the windowsill glaring at the few birds who have braved the rain and the bitterly cold wind to pull worms out of the lawn.

I can see why she's watching - there really isn't a lot else to do on a day like today. Well, if you don't have opposable thumbs that is.

Today started with an early morning read of yesterdays writing, and tweaking it a little. I'm quite pleased with it so far. Very much enjoying writing an entirely new story - this one is fun. It's twisted from the get go and then the real case shows up. :D

I stopped working on the story when Dionne dropped her kids off. It didn't seem right to have something so creepy and bloody on my screen with impressionable children about. Ours are used to it. :-)

The ensuing break became sewing time... I came up with a bag design I kinda like - managed to screw it up right away and have to unpick the bottom of the prototype - which wasn't as successful as it could have been... so the prototype ended up two inches smaller than it was supposed to be.
That's okay.
I made another one. Then discovered thermal backed fabric doesn't so much enjoy being ironed. We'll remember that. No fabric paint on this one then... have to come up with something else. Made a different type of bag... not sure what the fabric is. (This is why I should wear my glasses in fabric stores) BUT it's not keen on the iron either... think I'll embroider on this one.
After today's experiments I'm so pleased Dionne and I brought some Duck.. .that is 100% cotton, loves being ironed and really revels in fabric ink. :D Whew!
Cos ya see, we came up with some clever ideas on Friday night...
You'll just have to wait and see.

Time for a quick fondle of KILLERBYTE and TERRORBYTE cos they're so shiny and pretty.
have you bought them yet? No?
Oh you are silly... off you go...

re-posting death in the morning

Pretty sure it's Thursday today. I know this because the rubbish truck came this morning. That also means I got up extra early and cleaned the rabbit hutch... cos no one wants rabbit pee soaked kitty litter sitting in a garbage bin for longer than five minutes. It's the most disgusting thing ever.

Now that you all know how my day started - on with the death.

I asked this on FaceBook

New book titled Exhibyte. Oh so fitting. Now to hack someone to pieces. Kiwi or american? You choose. I have no preference.

And crikey I got some interesting responses - this will be the first death in Exhibyte. 

Turns out I'm about to hack up a Canadian with some kind of kiwi connection. The Canadian in question lives in NYC. So suspecting the death happened while on vacation. And she ended up being posted home. Of course, I think, we all know she's currently employed as a postal worker. (Her name incidentally will be Quinn.)

So that's how my late afternoon will go - before the hacking and the posting, I get to have coffee with Dionne and Miss Molly get's to play with Miss Breezy. 

The men folk have Black Roll tonight - yes that's when they get geared up and go practice breaching rooms/buildings and so forth - then run about trying and find terrorists in the dark. I know it sounds like much fun. The weapons alone are what wet dreams are made of.

Breezy took this picture yesterday - she said it wasn't fair that I was hiding behind my books. Considering the lack of makeup and the tiredness I think it was more than fair! :-)

Yes I re-posted this - because some fucktard left a comment about hacking into peoples accounts and I could not figure out how to kill it without killing the entire post.
So for you regular people who like to comment, I'm really sorry but I am now moderating comments.

Get a clue, I'm over re-hashed movies people!

It's Monday.
But it's a holiday Monday, so life is not as it should be.

While I was drying my hair I had a blog idea. Usually I have partial story ideas for whatever I'm currently working on - but today a blog idea.

Quick show of hands: How many of you are tired of the current trend in movies - re-making old one, some that were great and really should've been left alone - some that were crap, and really re-making it? - and the ever popular let's-make-a-move-from-an-old-TV-show.

OVER IT.

For Gods sake - get a new idea.

In fact let me help!

You- movie studios - read these two books, killerbyte and terrorbyte - and make a decent action/suspense movie for a change! No need to re-hash stuff we've already seen, no need to resort to B grade TV shows (I know I was somewhat generous with my grading then). Step out of your sealed chambers and make a NEW movie.
Hell even my short stories would make awesome movies... cos quite frankly... they rock.

I don't want to see re-hashed shite.

I want something new and exciting and above all ENTERTAINING.

No more crappy handy-cam shite movies either.  Not interested in paying to get motion sickness. Don't care how clever you all think you are. It's not fun, it's not clever, it's down right vomit inducing. That is all.


@UniversalPics @SonyPictures @wbpictures @wetaworkshop

Wanna end up dead in a novel?

No?
Then don't screw with a thriller author.
Quite simple really.

Earlier this year a major cell service provider here in New Zealand failed over and over again. Their new system was so full of glitches and bugs that it simply failed to work a lot of the time.
When it's hitting home like that... two members of the household unable to call or text, it makes a person wonder about the consequences.
I know damn well neither of them could make emergency calls during the outages. Sometimes the phones were useless for days.
So - during the height of the failure a twist developed in my mind and it ended up in book 3. I don't mention the company name. There is no need. It's not the first time a telephone company has had major faults - worldwide. It just happened to coincide with something I was working on.

Now - lately the issue has been with parcels, not arriving on time, or not arriving at all. It's not a new issue. I'm still waiting for very expensive lingerie that was my birthday present three years ago. Never arrived. I'm guessing someone's girlfriend/wife had an awesome Christmas that year.
It is however an annoyance.
So much so... that I feel a new spin on book 4 approaching.
I'd long believed book 4 was in fact 5 and recently had that confirmed and started what will be book 4. (it's not confusing really)
What I've been looking for emerged on Twitter today. My twisted mind combined with slack-assed postal service.
(Yeah - still waiting on the author copies of KILLERBYTE. After discovering that TERRORBYTE was in the country 6 days before I received it, I believe they made the box walk down from Auckland. It's the only plausible explanation. I'm expecting the same or similar torture for KILLERBYTE. Just so long as it doesn't involve waterboarding, cos I don't want soggy books!!)
Looks like book 4 will involve parcels - parts of postal workers, or parts of others... not sure yet. But it'll be fun.

One never can tell

Wednesday is upon us.
Mid-week already.

So far this week hasn't been terribly productive.

I feel like I should've done more writing wise - something, anything really. But I've successfully ignored the pull toward the current WIP - haven't even really ignored it. Haven't felt it.

Have friend coming over this afternoon - seriously considering cancelling - the last thing I want to do is talk writing/story ideas/current WIP.

There is obviously something peculating in my mind at the moment - it's a delicate balance. When whatever it is cements into whatever it's going to become I know I'll be writing flat out. Until then... I don't want the process clouded by other people thoughts, ideas, excitement over stories, I don't want to talk writing.

Okay, re-scheduled to next week. That was easy.

Book 3 is with my lovely editor, am hoping it now satisfies her blood lust. :)

I think I have a headache.

An email confused me this morning. It's thrown my day into a weird spin. I don't understand what the person meant because it really made no sense. Despite knowing it makes no sense it still irks me. lol

Righto then I shall go watch this police operation that seems to be taking place in my street. Three cars so far. The road blocked at our end. This could be fun!!