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On Genetics, Unusual Properties Of

By Ilona on February 3, 2012 in Family // Leave a response

The images in the post are from Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.

Kid 1, tearing into the house: What’s for dinner?

Me: Broiled chicken breasts, marinated in Italian dressing, salad, and ravioli.

Kid 1:

Me: Grrrr.

Kid 1: Are you going to actually like make some spaghetti sauce for ravioli?

Me: I don’t know.

Kid 1:

Me: GRRRR. Here, I will make sauce.

***

Later, upstairs after I had gone upstairs and Kid 1 came to tell me that food was yummy, and she was sorry, and she was just having “low blood sugar.”

Gordon: You didn’t have to go upstairs.

Me: My feelings were hurt. It’s your fault.

Gordon: ?

Me: Your genes ruined all my babies.

Gordon: Really?

Me: Yes! My kids were all sweet and polite and considerate until your genes got involved.

Gordon: You must have some kids I don’t know about.

Me, hitting him with a pillow: Your DNA, your fault.

Gordon: Aha. Well, our daughter chocked somebody out at school today.

Me: What?

Gordon: Everybody in theater class wanted Kid 2 as an extra for their movies, so she had to wear scrubs. Apparently she liked it. So she was walking around in scrubs and for some reason she ended up putting this boy into a choke hold and when people became concerned, she told them, “It’s okay, I’m a doctor.”

Me:

***

Before bed

Me: So did the boy actually do anything to her?

Gordon: I don’t think so. She did it because she thought it was funny.

Me: That’s you. That’s pure you.

Gordon: It was pretty funny.

Me: Don’t come around me with your genes.

Gordon: Hehehe.

Me: I mean it.

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It’s cool, cat. You can lay by me.

By Ilona on February 1, 2012 in Cat, Dogs // 51 Responses

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Virus Writing Bastards Must Die

By Ilona on January 31, 2012 in Life // 67 Responses

virus-writing-bastards-must-die
The desktop is in the shop again.

Last Thursday I was surfing the net and got a Malicious Software warning from my Avast anti-virus. Avast Pro has successfully blocked threats to our PC safety forever. We have to search the net constantly, looking up odd things for books, and typically our PC’s are covered with armor and bristle with spikes. Bad stuff usually bounces off without a scratch. We haven’t had a virus infection in the last four years and we frequently scrub stuff out with Malwarebytes and Spybot. So I did what I always do: shut down the browser before the nasty bugger could do any damage.

And then my computer blew up. The desktop went twitchy, the shortcuts vanished, and two dozen false alerts popped up, telling me that the guts of my Alienware were collapsing.

I disconnected the Ethernet cable to keep it from spreading and got on my laptop. A quick search identified the culprit: the System Check Virus, a nasty critter engineered by a couple of guys in Europe. It holds your PC hostage until you pay them to activate their fake virus removal software. The procedure for removal was long and complicated and there were several versions of it.

I tried the standard operating procedure. Ran Avast. It found nothing. Ran Malwarebytes. Four infected files. I quarantined them and shut down as prompted.

The PC rebooted to a completely black desktop.

Tried Regedit to manually edit registry keys.

Denied.

Tried to run Malware again.

No infections found.

The false warnings continued to cascade at me in regular bursts. Clearly I needed someone who knew more about it than I did. We took the PC to the shop.

Gordon has been rather gracious about the whole thing, even though he had to carry the big super-heavy desktop back and forth.

Friday night I get my PC back. It is clean and beautiful. I fire it up and of course log into Star Wars. I have weird crap on auction and I want to know if my colored light saber crystals had sold. The connection is painfully slow. Something isn’t right. I back out and fire up the Firefox. I try a sample search and I am immediately redirected to four different windows. Google Redirect virus. Damn it all to hell.

I disable all of the Firefox extensions, install the script blocker add-on, and run Malware again. Malware comes clean. The problem is spreading: the virus keeps trying to open IE to send me to new windows and Avast keeps stomping on those attempts, sending frequent warning flares, screaming about malicious sites, and asking for air support.

Checked registry for Firefox trouble extensions such as Xulrunner. Nothing. Everything comes back roses.

Argh.

So yesterday we took it back to the shop. I don’t blame the repair guys – they clearly purged the System Check from the PC but it apparently came bundled with Google Redirect.

Here is hoping I will get my computer back today.

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Monday and Inspiration

By Ilona on January 30, 2012 in Writing Tricks // 50 Responses

monday-and-inspiration
J asks,

Why don’t you do writing posts anymore?

I think most of us go through stages in our professional life. It’s a little cycle that goes likes this: I learn things -> I know things -> I need to explain things I learned, because they’re awesome ->Wait a minute, I don’t actually know anything ->I learn things.

I’m at the point where I’m back to the learning stage and I don’t feel pressure to share what I know, because my knowledge is subjective and my tricks of the trade work for me, but they may not necessarily work for anyone else. If you ask me a specific question, I will answer to the best of my ability, but again my answer may not work for you.

M writes,

What do you do when you’re feeling creatively empty? Not necessarily writer’s block, but just lacking inspiration completely?

And here comes a specific question.

Warning: read at your own risk. You may not like the answer.

The question to ask yourself is why do you feel the pressure to write?

For some people, it’s something they must do. Writing, like most creative pursuits, is addictive. When a writer is telling a story, he or she are almost like a locomotive on the rails. Sometimes it’s fast and furious, sometimes it’s slow and plodding, and sometimes the locomotive stops for a while. But the goal is always there, just beyond the horizon. It draws you in; it beckons. That’s why stopping is so annoying. When the train stops due to a writing block, the inability to produce eats at you. You become listless and irritable. You sit and stare at the page, and you’re annoyed because nothing is happening.

Occasionally the creative train derails. The locomotive flies off the tracks into the bushes. Sometimes it explodes and sometimes it just lays there in a crumpled heap. That’s when inability to write turns into hate for writing and books in general. It’s a painful thing to experience and to watch. Creative crashes aren’t fun for anyone, whether they happen to you, your spouse, or your friend.

But for some people, writing is just a hobby. They don’t feel the compulsion. They think it’s cool and the like the idea of being a writer. Or they simply have less of a pull and are able to walk away from it easily. I like to knit. I don’t feel the need to knit all the time. It strikes me once in a while and I can leave it alone for weeks.

Not that long after we started trying to get published, I was hanging out on one of writer boards and this woman posted a question. It went something like this, “What do you think a good genre would be for me to write in? Also what kind of story should I write? Like what kind of characters and what they should do? I want to be a writer.”

I, being a smartass, replied, “Why do you want to write, if you don’t have anything to say?”

Mean, but true.

So the problem here is, are you a locomotive or are you a casual knitter? Does the inability to write interfere with your quality of life? If it doesn’t, then no need to stress. It will return on its own. If it does, and you need a fix right now, I have one, but apply it at your own risk because it may make you miserable in the immediate future. It doesn’t work one hundred percent of the time either, so your mileage might vary.

I assume you’ve already tried the writing block fixes.

We, the human beings, are emotion junkies. We read for that emotion: we wants to experience a wide range of it, from suffering to triumph. Writing is a response to life and the writing locomotive runs on emotion of the writer. That’s our fuel. In a sense, we vent our emotion on the page, and the readers live it through our writing. When a writer becomes emotionally flat, the inspiration vanishes and the locomotive derails.

Yes, I’ve beaten the metaphor into the ground, leave me alone.

The key to getting unstuck is finding something you feel strongly about. You need two things: brain food and a trigger. Do not do this if you are severely depressed or have suicidal tendencies. This is a last resort fix and by clicking the Unstuck button below, you agree to absolve me of any responsibility for the consequences of your emotional distress.

I need to be unstuck

A writer must nourish his mind, because if nothing goes in, nothing will come out. That nourishment can come in form of books, but it doesn’t have to. One can also draw nourishment from movies and especially art. Here is a link to Wallpaper Abyss, one of the largest collection of SF/F wallpapers on the web.

So here is the trick. Go to this website, and think about the time in your life when you were wronged. Not just unhappy – unhappy doesn’t work for us, because humans love to wallow in our misery. No, I mean a time when someone did something to you that was nasty and unfair. Something that made you want to respond. It might have been a year ago, when your boss screamed at you over something that wasn’t you fault. It might have been in the seventh grade when Megan told the guy you like that you said he was stupid and then dated him when you broke up. Find that moment of righteous anger. Remember it in detail. Let yourself re-experience those emotions. Acute embarrassment. That terrible helpless feeling. Anger.

Now hold on to that feeling and start flipping through the papers on Abyss. If one of them pulls at you, look at it for as long as you need to. Keep holding on to that pissed off feeling. You want to get revenge, don’t you? You want justice, because what was done to you is wrong.

Keep looking at the wallpaper. Even if you’re not actually thinking of anything specific that is in that image, as long as it evokes some sort of response, you’re on the right track. Keep looking and keep seething in your emotion.

We don’t like to be under stress. If you trap your mind in the state of emotional distress, it will do its best to get out of it. It will either present you with a scenario for revenge or it will try to escape into the fantasy la-la land by presenting a fun storyline to distract you from your misery. Either way, you will become unstuck.

When you recognize that first inkling of the story, it is very important that you do not write it. Keep thinking about it for a week or two. Roll it around in your mind. Do not write. Writing too soon will relieve the pressure. You need enough emotional involvement to finish the story. Start writing when the story has eaten your brain. If you start defaulting to thinking about it every moment you don’t have to think of something else, you’re at the right spot. Good luck.

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Thunder and Lightning, Oh Noes.

By Ilona on January 25, 2012 in Life // 39 Responses

It is spectacularly crappy out there. I woke up several times and saw bluish-white lightning flash. Thunder rattled the glass, rain drummed on the windows, and Oliver, upset with this situation, decided to caterwaul about five in the morning and had to be kicked out of the bedroom.

It is nasty out there. Cold and nasty. Brrr. It was kind of comforting to be in a nice warm house.

Miss Salem, however, insisted on going out this morning and is now sitting under a wet bush. I tried to get her to come in, but no dice.

I am not sure if I am even allowed to complain, since Texas has awesome weather about 90% of the time. What’s the etiquette on that?

Of course, compared to some other parts of the country – cough, snow-storm Portland, cough – we got off easy. The PSA announcement said hail was spotted here and there, so I am really glad the car is in the garage. It’s kind of shocking to me. For the first time in our lives, the garage is clean and empty enough to park the car in, heh.

The kids have half-days today and our editor gently queried about character descriptions and synopsis. We keep meaning to work on it but things keep not working out. I got the character half done, though.

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Misadventures in Parent Land

By Ilona on January 24, 2012 in Family // 88 Responses

The tempest of hilarity, drama, and emergency that is Kid 2 is difficult to describe. It really has to be experienced. In the same way one experiences a tornado, for example. Or a typhoon.

This is a kid who works exceptionally hard, but only on something she loves to do or on something that has dire consequences. She combines the utterly female fashion sense with her father’s crude humor. I blame Gordon for this, as he is laboring under assumption that he is a raising a teenage boy.

She also inherited his love of messing with people.

She has also granted permission for this post. She says it’s funny. It wasn’t very funny at the time.

The weekend before last, we had some friends stay over at out house: Ericka, whom we first met in Georgia, and Ying, whom you probably know as one of the Moderators of Doom on the forum. This is kind of unusual for us, because Gordon and I are both very mindful of our real life privacy, and when we have guests over, we’re never sure if we’re entertaining enough.

So it was a big deal and preparations were made. House had been scrubbed from top to bottom, guest bedroom has been cleaned, sheets were freshly laundered, and children had been warned that we wanted the visit to go smoothly. Kid 2 took it to heart and said, “What if I go and sleep over at Lissa’s house?”

(This is not the friend’s real name, but I am not sure her mother would approve of me putting it into the post.)

Since Lissa is Kid 2′s best friend, and they migrate from our house to hers and back every weekend, permission was granted.

We picked up our friends from the airport and took them to County Line, because it’s Texas barbeque and when people come to Austin, you have to take them to County Line or the Salt Lick. We’re new to the area, but we aren’t heathens. The barbeque was a big success. We drove home and settled on the upstairs couch.

Cell phone rings. Kid 1 picks it up.

“What? What?!”

Oh no.

Kid 1 appears, thrusts the phone at me, and says, “Mom, Kid 2 needs to talk to you.”

I can tell by her face that it’s not good.

Me: Yes?

Kid 2 in a very loud but super-calm-and-reasonable voice, which could probably be heard by our neighbors across the street: Mom, could you please come to Lissa’s house. The policeman won’t let me leave until he speaks to you, because I’ve been detained.

Me: Why are you detained?

Kid 2: People were smoking drugs on the playground, but I’ve been searched and I don’t have anything. Please come and get me so I don’t get arrested.

Me: Do not say anything to the cop, we’ll be there in 5 minutes.

Ying has opened her eyes really wide and Ericka, who is used to us, is trying hard not to crack up.

Me to Gordon: We need to leave now.

We excuse ourselves, jump into the car, and race across the mile and three quarters that separates us from Lissa’s house. Lissa lives in a town-home development, and there are speed bumps every twenty five feet. Small children are darting into the path of the vehicle. We’re not sure where the playground is. We’re maneuvering between the house at a breathtaking three miles per hour, because of the speed bumps and I’m grinding my teeth.

Phone rings.

Me: Yes?

Kid 2: You just passed us.

Me: Stay on the phone with me.

We turn around, make a left, and finally see a group of children surrounding a tall cop. Everyone is waving at us. We park.

I look at Kid 2: big eyes, pale, mouth pressed closed – my kid is seriously freaked out. Lissa is next to her, and she’s on the verge of crying.

Gordon: Go to the car.

Kid 2: Dad…

Gordon: Car. Now.

Kid 2 scrambles to the car.

The cop introduces himself and he couldn’t be nicer. Apparently there is a new street drug out there called spice. It’s a very potent synthetic cannabis. A boy at the playground decided that he wanted to smoke some. Except the name of the drug is a bit confusing and he raided his parent’s spice cabinet for it. Because that’s where spices are.

Me: What was he smoking?

Cop, making a valiant effort to keep a straight face: Oregano.

Apparently the boy made such a huge deal out of his spice smoking, that someone called in the cavalry. The police descended upon playground, children were made to turn out their pockets, the Ziploc baggie with offending oregano was confiscated. Everybody’s parents were called.

Cop: We just wanted to make sure that you know the intent to get high was there.

We thank him, get into the car, and drive the heck out of there at three miles per hour.

Kid 2, in a tiny freaked out voice: He knew Kevin’s name. The cops get called here all the time. They keep a car here.

Me: Are you okay?

Kid 2: Yes. Am I in trouble?

Gordon: Why didn’t you and Lissa split when he started smoking that shit?

Kid 2: Because we’re dumb.

A short lecture on dangers of drugs and bad friend followed and Kid 2 was taken home. She was shell-shocked for the rest of the day and ended it wrapped in a blanket next to us on the couch.

I need to redye my hair. I think all the dye has evaporated from it under the stress and half of my head is grey now.

And that’s how you do weekends with guests at our house.

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Fussy-fussy-fussy

By Ilona on January 23, 2012 in Blog and Forum, Writing // 118 Responses

fussy-fussy-fussy
So here we were, having written Andrea’s book, which was kind of difficult to write. I think we may have actually done what we set out to do, so I don’t know. Anne really liked it.

I thought we could take a week off. I said, please talk amongst yourself.

Haha! Not so fast.

Ok we are ready for you to come back and talk to us…lol

Where are you? You stopped posting…

I just want you to know that if something happened, we’re here for you.

Shiloh became concerned.

recovering?
hiding?
okay?

And the coup de grace

Are you dead?

We are not dead! We took a week off. It’s called vacation.

So then we come back and load a new theme. The old one was creaking a bit under the strain of WordPress updates and those super long thumbnails kind of drove me nuts. They look nice, but getting a new thumbnail image of at least 600px in width for every post proved to be too much work.

We load the new theme. Oh noes! We don’t like it. Your paper stack isn’t perfectly stacked – it’s not meant to be, btw – and the sidebar is in the wrong spot and there is too much and not enough space in the comments, and fuss-fuss-fuss. Cry-cry-cry.

If you don’t like change, just wait until you read the Edge 4. We’re killing everybody. You guys said there wasn’t enough angst in FATE’S EDGE. :

:rolls up sleeves::

I’ll give you angst. Just you wait.

On a more serious note, I’ve reloaded a different theme with the exact same images. This one has a little more power under the hood. The comment page link is now more clearly marked: it’s right where the comment number is.

Today will be the prep day – tomorrow we officially start on Edge 4, so today we need to get the synopsis down and the character descriptions.

And how was your week?

PS. For people who asked: this theme is very slightly modified News Theme, which can be found here: http://themehybrid.com/themes

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Test

By Ilona on January 22, 2012 in Blog and Forum // 86 Responses

test
Test, test, blah-blah-blah.

Test text:

“Andrea…”

“The next words out of your mouth better be work-related or I’ll drive to your office and shoot you in the gut. Repeatedly.”

“Why in the gut?”

“Because it’s painful and not life threatening.” He was a shapeshifter, he’d heal the bullet wounds.

He laughed. He actually laughed at me on the phone. My head was about to explode.

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Talk Amongst Yourselves

By Ilona on January 16, 2012 in Being a Writer // 66 Responses

Today is the last day we have with GUNMETAL MAGIC and the edits on MAGIC GIFTS just came in and must be turned around by tomorrow. We’re still here, but we’re swamped. This is an open topic thread, if you would like to chat. We’ll be back with regular updates tomorrow. I hope.

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