The Game of Sevens

Teralyn Rose Pilgrim recently tagged me as part of the Game of Sevens meme.  For those of you in the dark, like I was up until a few minutes ago, the rules are as follows:
The Rules:

1. Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP.
2. Go to line 7.
3. Copy down the next 7 lines – sentences or paragraphs – and post them as they’re written. No cheating.
4. Tag 7 authors.
5. Let them know.

I'm sharing an except of Bullets Don't Blink, my NaNo 2011 crime novel.

"Did you learn anything from the stuff we took out of there?"

"Eileen's doctor was Kurt Jones. I'm going to try to catch him at the Anvil tomorrow evening after work. And I'm ninety percent sure Eileen was in that BMW when it was wrecked."
"You've been busy. I just went to bed early last night. I don't know why but I was exhausted."

"Did you hear from the insurance company?"

"My little car is totaled. Big surprise."

"When are you supposed to get a check?"

I'm breaking the fourth rule and thereby incurring the wrath of the karma gods.  My reasoning is that I've been a bad blog reader the last few months but I always make time for these four.  My four victims authors:

1. Sarah Ahiers
2. Krista McLaughlin
3. Trisha
4. The Great and Powerful Hildred Billings

Congratulations if you are a victim winner.

Daniel Goes to Camp!

Sorry, couldn't resist the Ernest Goes to Camp image.

Camp NaNoWriMo is being held in June and August this year and I'm planning on attempting both, as well as the grand daddy of them all, NaNoWriMo 2012 in November.  I had a good experience during the July camp last year but was beyond drained for the August Camp and didn't manage to finish.  Since I'll have a month off in between this year, I think this will be the year of three novels.

"Great," you say.  "We already know all that.  What are you going to write about?"

Well, I'll tell you, Blanche.  I don't really know quite yet.  Here are the ideas I'm kicking around:

1. as of yet untitled detective novel - this would be my first attempt at writing first person noir ala Raymond Chandler.  I do have the bare bones of a plot but nothing else
2. The Kickoff (or The Gravedigger's Gamble) - sequel to Bullets Don't Blink where Garvin agrees to one last heist in order to pay off a debt and deals with the repercussions of the previous book.  I've got a pretty good idea of how this one is going to go and even have a few pages of notes.
3. The Branchrunner - A fantasy story structured like one of Richard Stark's Parker novels.  A lot of the background comes from what I'd worked out for The Big Red Ragnarok, the project I was going to do last NaNoWriMo before I chucked it in favor of Bullets Don't Blink, as well as the abandoned 80k NaNo 2010 novel fragment, Wandering the Web of Worlds.  I have some character names and the recycled material from BRR but it's still pretty light on plot.

That's all I have so far.  While I think The Kickoff would be the easiest to do, I'm leaning toward 1 or 3.

You're paying me how much?

As longtime blog readers know, I'm known to indulge in photography from time to time, and by "from time to time," I actually mean "every damn day."  About two months ago, one of my co-workers asked about getting a print of one of my water droplet pictures.  I said sure and forgot about it.

Two weeks ago, I made some postcards on Snapfish to send to a lovely lady and I couldn't get it to let me check out no matter what.  I decided to try to trick it and added an 8x10 of the water droplet picture to my cart.  Sure enough, it worked.

This morning, I dropped the envelope containing the print on my co-worker's desk. 
She said "How much?"
I said "Five bucks to print."
"How much for your artistic effort?"
"I don't care."
"Ok," she said.
I got up to get coffee and I came back to find 45 bucks on my desk!  I guess this is my first sale as a photographer.

Worded Wednesday

Just some quick updates:

1. The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice is now my most voted review on Goodreads.  I hate that most most voted review is for a book I disliked.
2. My review of The Bookman over on my book blog was linked to by both the author and the publisher, Angry Robot.  However, Angry Robot referred to my book blog as Desperate Dan's Book Blog.
3. A bit more forward progress has been made on getting Bullet's Don't Blink published.
4. By changing my lifestyle very little, I've lost fifteen pounds since January and am just two pounds heavier than I was when I started my current job ten years ago.  And they said I was mad to hold on to my old 30 inch waist jeans!

Query Queasiness

Over the past few days, I've been pecking at a query letter in my spare time.  Actually, I've been spending 95% of my spare time on Query Shark and similar websites but the remaining spare spare time has been working on the query letter.  When I'm not reading.

So many query dos and don'ts, not to mention conflicting pieces of advice, are swirling around in my head that I'm having difficulty pressing forward.  I finally got the short synopsis where I'm relatively comfortable with it.  Now the brief biography is slowing me down.  The biography.

What do I include?  Do I bother including anything that isn't book-related?  Should I mention that I'm holding the #9 spot on Goodreads or have a long-running blog (that has been mostly pictures lately)?  Right now, all I've got is "I'm currently employed as a computer programmer," which is much less depressing than "I've been a computer programmer for almost ten years."

In other news, I found a new pair of sunglasses and a penny that's so corroded it looks like it might be the first one ever minted while walking my dog yesterday.

And the most interesting search term of the first quarter of 2012 is...

... cocoa puff nipples!

Since I don't want that to be the only thing in today's post, here's something hilarious I ran across earlier today, The Dollar Shave Club.

Nachos Picantes

Every have one of those days when you have a snippet of a song in your head and no idea what the name is or who the artist is?

Last week, I went through yet another bout of this, going to far as to imitate the trombone part on the phone to my friend Greg.  I had a feeling it was either a song by the Moon Invaders or the Caroloregians and he led me into kind of the right direction.  Parts of the song sounded a hell of a lot like Organic Coal Beat From The Groovy Mines but it just wasn't the tune that was lodged in my brain.

Just before bed, I remembered that the Mr. T-Bone and Friends record had songs featuring members of both the Moon Invaders and The Caroloregians.  Unfortunately, my copy of the cd was in Greg's possession and I had to wait.

Long story short, I arrived at Greg's for a show Friday and knew I'd guess right in the first few notes of the song.  It only took a damn week to figure it out.