Flash drives are simply joy.

I think I'm way past letting my inner geek out so no one should be overly surprised at my joy of 6 shiny new flash drives. (It's 7 if you count the 16 gig one husband gave me before Christmas -but we're not counting that one.)

I came up with a quite spectacular idea... each Conway novel requires it's own flash drive. (as well as being backed up to my external drive and living on the hard drive of both the desk top PC and my laptop.)
It just makes better sense to have EVERYTHING pertaining to each book on one easy to access and move around flash drive. Color coded of course.

That was the hard bit.
I wanted 6 drives (actually 7 but could only get 6 in the end) of different colors but preferably the same type of drive. I like things tidy - I wanted the same drives all hanging tidily from my key chain not messy odds and sods. It looked like a near impossible task two days ago.

Today husband stopped at Bond and Bond on our way to the mall. He told a lovely woman who worked there that we wanted 7, 4 gig drives, but only really wanted to pay $10 each for them (as we needed so many) and then sprung the, "We'd like them all different colors." thing on her.
She could do us 6 different colors for $13 each. Sold!
What's more when I got home and started the tidying process... I discovered that two of the drives were originally $20 but the other 4 were $35. No clue how that worked as they were the same brand and size. (Maybe silver and black are cheap colors??)
Bond and Bond in Lower Hutt - you rock!

So far: killerbyte, terrorbyte, exacerbyte and flashbyte have their own flash drives. YAY. Next I will gather all the Conway short stories and drop them on a flash drive... an older one that will now be freed up with the reshuffling of research, edits, covers, reviews etc!

So very cool.

Of course now I need to find a key chain. :)

I had a blog idea then it blew away

Really, it did.
I opened blogger intent on actually saying something but then the willow tree next door lost three big branches and the big red bin fell over outside.

It's windy.

Breezy is whiny.

Windows media player SUCKS. It's forever 'not responding'. I find that monumentally annoying... am tempted to go back to Real Player. I do miss my dancing sheep. BUT I can't be bothered with the whole wanting to update bullshit every time I try to play music. Such a dilemma. Maybe I'll just reinstall media player on my desktop and see if that fixes it's issues? It only has problems on my desktop PC. Media player on my laptop works just fine... could it be the difference between crappy Vista on the desktop and beautiful Windows 7 on the laptop??

I AM SICK TO DEATH OF CHILDREN. That's right I am.
Yesterday we swapped Breezy for Deaglan - was so peaceful. There was no one winding Squealer up or for Squealer to nag at.
Today is utter shite. Squealer is driving me up the wall - her constant turning up of the stereo is really getting up my nose - I now have the remote next to me. And Breezy is just plain annoying. I get that the weather is crapola and they can't go outside - but didn't they just have Christmas? Aren't there a MILLION new toys up in their room???
Then why oh why do they have to be down here annoying me???

I think it's time two girls went and CLEANED their room.

Yes I do.

Boxing Day craziness

Christmas day was wonderful. Full of joy, noise, food, chocolate and good company.

At some stage today I will clean the house and return order to chaos. At some stage!

It will probably be soon as the state of the floor is driving me nuts already. :)

We ventured forth to the mall today. Breezy was given a pair of denim shorts - they were gorgeous but two sizes to small. Those particular knee length shorts don't come in a size 7. So I got her skinny jeans and a tee shirt. Breezy HATES the jeans. She wanted shorts. Bugger. Here's hoping she comes around later on. She also got two cute long top/dresses to wear with leggings.

Ray just walked by me with a bowl piled high with leftover desserts! (yes that's plural, he had at least three types int he bowl.)

In another news:
Someone borrowed the Heretaunga College library copy of KILLERBYTE and didn't return it. This oddly thrills me. (It could mean my books are worth stealing! - I'd prefer to think that rather than that some lazy little bastard couldn't be bothered returning it.)
But seriously - you know who you are... give it back so others can enjoy it too.

There have been a lot of earthquakes in Christchurch today and some have caused more damage. So not cool, Mother Nature! Sort it out.

Well I'm off to clean this house!!!

Hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas.

Cat xx

Giving away a copy of TERRORBYTE!

It's four sleep until Santa.

That's right four sleeps until it's okay to allow some old fat man shouting 'ho, ho, ho' wearing red clothes and black boots... to enter your home and leave you gifts. So okay that children everywhere leave out cookies and milk for him, and worry how he'll fit down the chimney.

For Ellie's take on Santa's and chimneys see here... (not suitable for children.)

But anyway - this is all beside the point.
The point is it's four sleeps until Christmas.

So...
On December 24, yes, Christmas eve. I shall give away a Mobipocket version of TERRORBYTE.
How do you win it?
Pretty easy actually...

Just leave a comment here on my blog and tell me if you still believe in Santa and make sure you leave your email address. Husband and I will choose the winner at midday on Dec 24. (and that means whoever wins will have a book for Christmas!)

This contest is open to everyone anywhere. (That's the joy of giving a way an eBook version of TERRORBYTE.)

The hardest thing for you all to remember is this... I'm sticking to NZ time for this - as I live in the future.

Midday Friday  Dec 24 NZ time equals Thursday Dec 23: 3 p.m in LA, 4 p.m. Denver, 5 p.m. Chicago, 6 p.m NYC and 11 p.m. London.

Does that help?

So - comment away.
Do you believe?

So much fun!!

My good friend Sara J Henry introduced me to this joyfulness. She looked like she had so much fun making a search story for her debut novel Learning to Swim that I just had to have a go!!

So here is my attempt at a search story for TERRORBYTE. (There is a KILLERBYTE one up on my YouTube Channel if you'd like to see it.)

A very cool pen!

So this week, husband purchased a really cool pen.

<<< This is it.

Doesn't look any different from any other pen really. except if you look very closely just above the clip you can see a tiny lens.

The pen takes very clear video with audio and still pictures.

Cool huh?

Of course it's necessary - how rude of you to assume this is just some super cool gadget!! In book 4 (FLASHBYTE) Ellie uses a similar pen to 'over hear' a conversation. See? Necessary. I suppose I could say I needed it for the fourth book trailer... but really I just wanted to know how good they are, and how much the camera sees. :)

Currently my pen is charging - it cut out last night while I was sneakily videoing Tim - by sneakily I mean standing by the table holding the pen in my hand - pointed directly at him. After reviewing the video this morning - I have come to the following conclusions:
1. Tim is hilarious when drunk.
2. Low light is not so good for videoing with spy pen.
3. It would've been better to lie pen down (or put it in pen cup) rather than hold onto it. (I may have had a few glasses of wine myself...which didn't do wonders for the stability.)
4. I really love the spy pen.
5. Big brother is everywhere even in my handbag disguised as an innocent pen.
6. Yes, you can write with it, and it writes smoothly.

In completely unrelated news:
I have EXACERBYTE back - changes all good, and a couple of things to mull over or was it just one....? But in all seriousness my editor and I both know I'm not changing 'impeccable gayness'. It's such an Ellie term, it must stay. :)

That is all.

:)

EXACERBYTE - the first trailer

And for your visual enjoyment: 

From Bluewolf Productions...

EXACERBYTE's cover

How beautiful is this?

We finally have a cover that everyone loves.
And a cover that works with the story - which is so important!!

AND I have permission to shout it from the roof tops. :)

The edits are done - just going to hang onto the ms a fews days, for a final read and to give Lorenza time to form an opinion on the new guy.

I'm a happy little camper this morning so I shall toddle off and drink my coffee while staring lovingly at my pretty new cover.

Cat xx

A new week!

Well I survived my birthday. Mostly enjoyed it too. :)

And now it's on with the crazy week ahead. Christmas looms - but first there are things that need doing.

I have my last round of edits back from the lovely Jayne. She needs the ms back by Dec 20th. No problem really. I've already read it through. I did that last night. I have read, laughed, groaned and generally enjoyed each comment planted by Jayne. There isn't much to do. And I found myself feeling a tad smart-assed and adding to one scene already... one that funnily enough required some extra smartass. Let me pause and apologize to Sam, because the smartass was at his expense and quite frankly he's a fabulous character and puts up with a lot from Ellie... and now even more. :)

I suspect I can get the edits done by the end of the day - or I could if I had nothing else to do. But it's crazy week!

My birthday is over and that heralds full on Christmas/end of year prep! Yesterday husband put the tree up and decorated it. every year the kids do the tree, but this year I put him in charge. It's done, and looks quite fab!

Breezy's kindy celebration is on Thursday. Her last day ever at kindy is Friday. Also, Friday is the morning I am doing a radio interview.

Between now and Thursday I have to finish the shopping, get the turkey etc. Get the chippies or whatever Breezy wants to give out at kindy on Thursday. Find out when Squealer finishes school - if it's Thursday, awesome! Because Breezy wants us all at kindy to see her jump off the chair. (It's the jump to school.) If it's not Thursday I will get the Boy Wonder to break her out of class! :)

Also - printer needs ink, so must remember to order that and anything else I need (like batteries for toys etc) from work before Chris finishes for the year!

And someone needs to wrap gifts!!!

Can't leave anything until Christmas week as the 22 and 23rd are hospital days with Squealer. Massive amounts of testing is being undertaken to find out how the child really thinks and exactly where she is in regards to the ASD spectrum. We will have the results on Dec 31st.

Also - she's due for a medical review. I can't get into her pediatrician until our next visit in March, the review is due by Feb 22. After a few phone calls it was decided that our GP can do it. So I shall make an appt with him for next Monday or Tuesday - as long as I get the paper work by then!!

So there you have it. the week for me - so far. It's 6:30 Monday morning so there is plenty of time for more stuff to creep in.

Oh and - should have a cover to share shortly.
Everything's been moved along - EXACERBYTE is slated for release on Feb 10!

You've gotta know when to fold 'em...

Ya do.
You also have to know when to stand your ground and know when to come out shooting. (And always have spare magazines.)

I think y'all remember my recent disappointment at having the cover I loved changed without consultation to something that made no sense to me or the story?
I made a decision when I saw the new cover (not detracting from how beautiful it was at all, it's stunning, it just doesn't work for MY book.) to fight it. The cover of a book is too important for me to let it go.

So fight it I did.

And a wise man (Mike) reinforced that I was doing the right thing. I knew it already, because the cover felt so wrong I couldn't move past it.

I got an email this morning from my fabulous editor saying they'd asked Jacques (the long suffering completely brilliant artist whom I adore) to re-design the cover. Jayne also shared the brief with me. The important things to me are the music, the butterflies, the Glock and the badge. It sounds like it'll work this time.
No stupid cell phone, no cool photos, no numbers for anyone to bitch about.

So, now I wait.

I know it's done. I just have to wait for Jayne to show it to me.

The waiting is killing me!!

Tomorrow would be good - would be nice to be able to announce my new cover on my birthday. :)

Living on a Prayer?

I thought last week was busy - but I hadn't met this week yet!

It's Thursday already - in fact it's heading into Thursday evening. I still need to make two deserts for tomorrow night. My energy level is at an all time low!
I suspect listening to Living on a Prayer is not helping, might have to switch it out for Bounce! Or maybe I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.


Breezy had a school visit this morning. It wasn't a long one. She hit her head on a peg in the cloak room right before morning tea and that pretty much ended the visit. (She has a small mark on her head, but was more upset than hurt.)
We came home to discover there was no water! Oh joy. The Boy Wonder came with us to town. Seemed more sensible than hanging around without water! (no water = no coffee) We went up and visited Beck and the boys. Shopped for shoes for Conman - who hated every shoe that went near him. He eventually was persuaded by blue sneakers.

I did something out of character (and I'm not proud of it)... I bought a Girlfriend magazine. It came with a bunch of goodies which was cool, most of it I gave to Beck - but the magazines are for me and Dionne.
Oh the decoupaging joy that's held between those glossy covers!!
We're still not over the whole decoupage bangle making thing. You can expect to see some of our unique bangles on Trademe in the New Year.

Lorenza Ponce's new website is now up and running! It's fabulous! (We particularly like the Merch page - click Unisex tee shirt pic and you'll see why! How cute is my Breezy?? ;))  AND - it's now super easy to buy Lorenza's CD's etc. I just bought Mystic Fiddler for Breezy to go with her Soul Shifter CD. It's part of her Christmas present but as she's just turned 5 and can't yet read my blog, it'll still be a surprise!! lol

Meanwhile - I really need to go make trifle and choc chip log. :)

How's your day been?

Made it to Wednesday - feels like freedom

Yesterday afternoon I was lucky enough to spend some time with an old friend. There aren't many people from college that I'd ever want to catch up with, in fact the number is very low.
But seeing Mike was awesome. He was always one of the nice guys. Still is. Next time he comes over we'll have to do dinner and extend the visit!

Moving right along.

There is a new interview out today. No, not one of my interrogations... this time I was interviewed. You can find it here. Lorna Suzuki: All kinds of writing.
If you'd ever wondered if I get writer's block - the answer is there. (Plus what to do if you are crap!)

Other news... watch this space. (No really - just sit there really still and watch, cos sometime after the weekend there just might be something to share.)

Have y'all read the new Conway Christmas short yet? (When I say all, I am referring to those people who have read terrorbyte, otherwise y'all will whine about the spoilers... yes, I know you that well.)

At the moment I am waiting for the beautiful and extremely talented Lorenza Ponce to finish reading EXACERBYTE. She had the dubious honor of being my goto person for a new character and stuff way out of my comfort zone. Hopefully I got it right! :)

It occurs to me that some acknowledgments need to be written. I shall finish those today.

Just quickly: I just had a phone call from Radio Hamilton - I will be interviewed next Friday (17th) by them. How much fun will that be?? - yes, it's rhetorical. I think we all know it will be enormous fun!

Right - kindy and school await. Only 8 days of school left before the summer holidays. :)

What a weekend!

In all honesty I can say - Thank God the weekend is well over.

The joy of Bon Jovi in concert on Saturday night was overshadowed by the next two days being filled with traumatic events and sheer stupidity.
 Even Breezy's wonderful 5th birthday was overshadowed and has slipped into the abyss. But because she's adorable: here is a birthday pic for you.

On Saturday night (while I was at the concert) husband discovered approximately 5 sleeping pills missing from his prescription. The ridiculous thing is - 1. Our kids didn't know daddy had sleeping pills. 2. They don't go in our room without us being there. 3. They were out with us for most of the day on Saturday. 4. No one opens daddy's draws, and Breezy cannot see into the top draw that the pills were in. The Scotch dresser is way too high for her. 5. Squealer has to take medication every day and HATES PILLS. It's a struggle to get her to take them. 6. They're bright fucn blue, one of us would have seen them somewhere. 7. The Boy Wonder (who had no clue dad had any kind of pills) was in a hotel from Friday afternoon, he didn't get home until Sunday midday.

But wait there is more:

Monday morning: Dionne went to set out the bangles she's made as gifts for people (Christmas gifts, each bangle unique and irreplaceable) one was missing. We searched the house. Stripped the couches down, pulled bookcases out, went through the kids rooms in case someone had played with it. Highly unlikely as knew they were getting their own.
Gone.

Then husband rang and told me of the sleeping pill incident (he searched all Sunday thinking they'd somehow fallen from the bottle?) I too went and looked through his drawer. We'd had other traumatic thinks to deal with on Sunday night. I had a stinking headache which threatened to spin into a migraine....so I grabbed my satchel and took the first aid kit out of it. (Clear plastic Elmo bag, that is always closed - it was open.) On Thursday before the school trip I added two Mersyndol tablets and two nurophen to the first aid kit, still in the bubbles that came in. They were gone. I didn't take 'em. Breezy cannot open the clasp on my satchel. No one ever goes into my bag.

You can imagine the cold dread that was crawling through me by now.

I tipped everything out of my bag and searched. I searched my small hand bag - just in case I took the pills to the concert. (when you get migraines it's good to be prepared) They were gone.

So we now had 7 dangerous tablets missing and 2 nurophen. Plus an irreplaceable bangle.

I'm at a loss to explain how things like this could possible have walked out of our house unaided.

I know for a fact that the pills did not walk away during the birthday party, they were already gone. They disappeared while we were out on Saturday or possibly Friday. I don't know what's more disgusting, that someone stole pills and a bangle - or the violation of having someone go through our drawers or the violation of our trust.
Either way - you can bet, Dionne, Mum and I all felt pretty damn sick yesterday.

Birthdays and the non-relevance of age

and possibly the consumption of tequila shots followed by margaritas has made me slightly philosophical?

Wouldn't it be great to blame the snake bites? But really Dionne and I were discussing this way before the drinking... in fact while we were walking in stinking hot sun, near the end of a 5 km walk. I guess it could've been the sun?

So anyway I might just put it all down to the stress of a non-relevant cover which has pissed me off. Ya see (excuse me while I digress) I had TWO cover ideas, both of which I communicated to my publisher (twice) and the artist responsible for creating the cover.
Let's delve into those two covers shall we:
1. Polaroid photo's of hotel door number, musical notation swirling or becoming in some way butterflies. - the not negotiable aspects are the font, title, badge and gun.
2. A microphone stand with mic (was thinking a white stand because it would stand out in a glaring way on the black) with musical notation swirling around it and flying off while becoming butterflies.

BOTH relevant to the story. A cell phone is not. A cell phone with 911 is most certainly not. The emergency number in NZ is 111, and even if the numbers were 111 it would not be relevant.
The hotel numbers ARE relevant, the photos are RELEVANT - the killer in the book leaves all sorts of photos and does so from the FIRST chapter.
The whole story deals with music, not just in Ellie's head but all around her.

Okay so I digressed due to being freaking annoyed about the new cover, didn't say it's not awesome - I am saying it's not relevant to the story.

And to get back to what Dionne and I discussed.
We have decided that age is irrelevant. From now on we will be "over 21" in all situations. Any more than that is irrelevant (and just at the moment I can't tolerate irrelevance). As long as you're old enough to drink in every country in the world what does it matter how much over 21 anyone is?
Well it doesn't does it?
Why do people want to keep count anyway...?

Oh and this is cool... Best eBooks of 2010

EXACERBYTE

Here you have it. The promised cover of the third Conway book.

The original Polaroids with hotel door numbers and the musical notation that became ghostly butterflies has gone.

Anyone want a bunch of postcards with the original cover? Cos I have a few that I apparently can't use now. (not to mention the poster, magnets and tee shirt.)
This is what happens when the lines of communication break down - now I have a bunch of stuff I can't use. And I'm pissed.

No doubt I will get over it.

No doubt I will come to love this cover too, like I do the other two.
But it's NOT my vision any more, and I've lost my music. I WANTED THE MUSIC dammit.