by Charlene Teglia | May 23, 2008 | Uncategorized
I’ve been replotting my proposal for very fun and exciting and good reasons, and I’m so excited about this book I can hardly stand it. This will be St. Martin’s #5, title still in progress. The details on what’s changed are nailed down, so I just need to revise the synopsis now. And then decide if it’s easier to toss out my first two chapters and start over, or revise what’s written.
Then there’s the other proposal in progress. And the novella. So all in all, I expect a busy holiday weekend.
Speaking of which, I have an ARC of Wicked Hot (July, St. Martin’s) that needs a good home, so…tell me what you’re doing this holiday weekend and I’ll put you in the drawing! I’ll close the contest and draw a winner on Monday.
by Charlene Teglia | May 22, 2008 | Uncategorized
Just finished re-reading Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal. Because I haven’t read Making Money yet and I wanted to be up on the adventures of Moist Von Lipwig and the insanity of the post office before I did. Pratchett is sheer genius.
Working on proposals (still, some more) and the novella (still, some more) and hoping to be done with all of the above by the end of this month. Hey. It could happen. Especially if I had Hex.
by Charlene Teglia | May 20, 2008 | Uncategorized
The Gripping Beast has a new review from My Book Cravings. “This is a spectacular book. Ms. Teglia has given us a well researched story for our enjoyment…The sensuality is hot, hot, hot and well done.”
Nice to see that my OCD research into the Viking Age is still appreciated. 
I am planning to use that setting again, but sadly my Viking stuff keeps getting back-burnered while I write contracted projects.
Speaking of contracted projects, I left Art, Gwen and Lance in present-day Las Vegas…
by Charlene Teglia | May 19, 2008 | Uncategorized
Finished Dark Needs (Kresley Cole) and am dying for the next installment in Immortals After Dark. Then read a new JAK book (All Night Long) that assaulted me from the B&N discount section and demanded to be taken home. Followed by a couple of Evanovich reissues (Love Overboard, Wife for Hire). Also Jo Leigh’s Have Mercy. And I’m almost done with 1-2-3 Magic, a great book on discipline for young kids and a sanity saver for this parent.
Also writing away on another book proposal. And poking at my novella. Poke, poke, poke. I shoulda finished it when I started it and it was alive in my head. Now I have to get the fire burning all over again. See, you can make yourself change gears in writing, but when you change back to whatever you tore yourself away from, you come back cold. This is where listening to the soundtrack really helps.
Huh. Just realized I have no soundtrack for the novella, but I do have one for the proposal that’s flying. Connection? I think so. Today: must find at least a theme song for the novella.
Edited to add: we have playlist!
1. Build Me Up Buttercup – Nofx (punk remake)
2. I Can Wait Forever – Simple Plan
3. Take My Hand – Simple Plan
4. Save You – Simple Plan
“I wish I could save you” is kind of Lancelot’s theme for Guinevere, and also oddly Merlin’s theme for Morgan La Fay. Without putting together the music, I wouldn’t have seen that echo.
Theme song is Take My Hand, which you can experience the awesomeness of here. One of the cool parts of writing is discovering fun new music!
by Charlene Teglia | May 18, 2008 | Uncategorized
Jane at Dear Author is blogging about Net Neutrality. It’s a topic I’m passionate about. If you check my sidebar, you’ll see I’ve added a link to Save the Internet’s blog. I’ve also added it as a cause on Facebook.
So what is net neutrality and how does it affect me? Let’s look at day in my life.
I work a lot on the internet, and so does my husband, so we pay for high-speed internet. This speeds up all the little tasks I do every day; downloading email, updating my site or blog, looking up research items, blog hopping. Because I pay for high speed access, all of this is pretty easily accomplished; the current internet model IS neutral. (If you want to read about the history of net neutrality, go read about it here.)
Email downloads quickly. I delete spam, read and reply to real mail. I update my blog and hit save; it takes minutes. I visit facebook, maybe respond to requests, maybe update my “what I’m doing”. Again, minutes. I visit my Wicked Writers Yahoo group, scan some messages, post a response. Five minutes.
I have some website updates to make; my site loads fast, saves fast, and the task is done quickly.
I visit some bogs, comment one or two places. Fast loading, fast saving.
I’m working on a new book, so I have research to do. I use lots of online resources, like onelook.com, mobysaurus, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I count on being able to look up a word or a fact in minutes. I use Google and rely on the search engine to return useful results, not just links to sites that pay for the privilege.
Suppose the Internet Freedom Preservation Act 2008 (HR 5353) isn’t passed? Suppose large corporations control the flow of information, and small sites can’t ante up?
My email will download and upload slowly. Forget bloghopping; blogs won’t be on the restricted information superhighway. Yahoo groups, which many writer’s organizations and publishers use to communicate, will also be slow to load. Online resources like the ones I mentioned, plus The Viking Answer Lady, Wolf Howl, and countless others I use, will not be paying premium prices. These sites pay for webhosting and invest time and energy in sharing information and making it accessible; it’s a bit much to ask them to pay to be fast to access under the proposed tiered internet, too. How many of these freely available services will either disappear or become so difficult to use they might as well be gone?
My site won’t be much help to readers; I can’t pay the premium fee. I keep my site up to date with release dates, book covers, blurbs, excerpts, ISBNs, pre-order and purchase links, and other news. Will readers be able to access any of that? Will any of them sit there waiting long enough for my site to load, then wait again to read an excerpt?
I use the internet for business, for information, for shopping, for community. It’s an important part of my life and it’s one I don’t want to lose.
Think about all the ways you use the internet. Think about businesses that depend on it; Small Business Association stats showed a few years ago that companies with a web presence were 30% more profitable than those that weren’t online. Why should giant corporations be the only ones to profit while small businesses and startups can’t compete?
Support net neutrality. It affects all of us.
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