web woes and happy endings

I spent a large portion of my weekend grumbling at my computer. Sure, there’s a beautiful placeholder up at www.rinaslayter.com, but for some reason, the website I’m building behind it is aggravating me.

See, I’m not a programmer. I really don’t know how to build websites. I use ingenuity, patience and determination to figure stuff out and have mostly learned enough to be dangerous. When my other two websites were handed to me [www.fictionados.com and www.ashleighraine.com], the hardest stuff had already been done. Yeah, I went in and tweaked some code, but the rest has all been duplicating and modifying pages, not building them from a blank screen.

I’m adventurous. I love a little [or a lot] of challenge, but I’m experiencing frustration at the current creation of my website. The sad part is that I’ve got a ton of text formatted and ready to go. All I gotta do is drop it into a site, but if that site won’t come together…well…you understand my frustration.

I did get the homepage together. It’s mostly empty, but all the links work. I did get one subpage together. It’s got my bio on it and all the links work. But as for the aforementioned stack of content ready to drop in…Absolutely nada.

Yeah, I probably bit off more than I could chew in thinking I’d have the thing together enough to input text, but that has NEVER stopped me before. I always think big.

And I usually make my goals.

One of my prior employers was called as a reference. He said, “Rina often bites off more than she can chew, takes on huge projects and when they get into crunch time, she works her ass off to make sure they’re done on time.”

And that is so true about me even though up until that point, I’d never realized it. I don’t think I’ve EVER missed a deadline. If I did, it wasn’t a big enough infraction that I remember it right now.

My background is in theatre. The show must go on. That’s where I learned to be early on a deadline. My lighting designs were always turned in a week early, hung as soon after that as possible and my cues were always written and loaded into the light board before technical rehearsals. It made for a better show because the hard part was done and I could focus on editing, tweaking, making the show truly shine. [sorry about the bad lighting pun]

I’m just glad the only deadline for my website was my own personal goal. If there’d been an outside force asking for the site, I doubt I would’ve gotten any sleep at all last night!

Oh well. I’m happy with my progress and look forward to my next head-banging, hair-ripping-out, grumping, tea-drinking-marathon installment of work on my website because I can’t wait to toot my horn about it being up and running!!!!!

I gotta get used to this whole horn tooting thing. So I’m starting small.

…But after I go on a week’s vacation to stay in haunted California hotels…

See ya when I get back! Maybe I’ll have rinaslayter.com up shortly afterward. Or at least that’s my personal deadline.

Thankfully, “shortly afterward” is a vague amount of time!!!!!!

sewn, rejected, submitted, requested and started

I’ve managed to add about ten things to my wardrobe in the last week.

No, I didn’t go shopping again…

I mended stuff I already have: Purple jeans, checkerboard 70s shirt, fluorescent pink 80s dress…and some other stuff that was necessary, but not flamboyant.

EARTHQUAKE! Just a tiny one, though. I thought I’d imagined it until I noticed the chains dangling on my ceiling fan.

Anyhow, rejection letters are streaming in–some for me, some for Jason–and I’m enjoying comparing notes with Jason. That’s what makes it fun. We’ve submitted to some of the same people. So far, he’s gotten better responses than I have.

But I did get a request to see more of one of my novels. I’m pretty darn stoked about that. That was my first written request and I’ve framed it. Ironically, I’d opened a rejection just before opening the request, so I’d assumed it was going to be another. Hell, even if I get a rejection from it later, I’ll cherish it and the euphoria that I’ve floated on for three days now. Life is very, very good.

And today…(I’ve saved the best for last) …today I started my next novel. I will easily have it done by the end of the year. (And no, that statement will not jinx me–this book is really that easy to write…’course I’m only in chapter one right now, things could change.)

I recall some of my acting classes back when I was in college (I was a lighting/sound/set technician, but required to take acting classes, too). Us budding actors and begrudging technicians were assigned a series of scenes that we had to re-enact for the class. I say re-enact because we had to take moments of our life and present them as slice of life exercises.

In essence, our characters were ourselves.

I found it remarkably easy to be myself…

I still don’t know why it was considered ‘acting’.

I got A’s on all those assignments.

And what am I getting at with this tangent?

My new book essentially stars myself as the main character, is based on a conglomeration of events in my life–although funny-ed up a whole lot–and is written in first person.

So far, I’ve felt like I’ve been walking down memory lane and writing an autobiography which is much more interesting than the way stuff really happened. (The truly bizarre stuff won’t start until at least chapter five or so–those events won’t even need funny-ing–they’re already bizarre.)

I might end up shelving this before it’s done. I might end up writing it faster than SR. I might even get bored with myself or finally identify with those budding actors in my classes who thought it incredibly difficult to ‘act’ like themselves.

Maybe they just didn’t know who they were and what they wanted. That’s what my scenes were all about. I was X and I needed Y, but Z got in my way as I dealt with A, B and C. If you don’t know who you are or what you want, Z is going to devour you and A, B and C will only kick you while you’re down.

Hmmm…I just unintentionally inspired myself to go write another chapter…

My bio! My bio! Yaaaay!

Let me just say that I suck at writing bios. I really do. I’m not one to toot my own horn about anything. I’ll toot someone else’s horn, but my own? Nah… Or at least not entirely willingly if the horn-tooting is necessary or truly a big deal.

Well, today, I’m tooting my own horn about tooting my own horn…

I wrote my official bio last night and I just gotta post it here or I’m gonna go insane:

Rina Slayter lives in the Los Angeles area with her writer husband Jason Stoddard and absolutely loves life. When she isn’t writing romantic women’s fiction, she’s working as a background actor in television shows and feature films. Visit her blog for more details and screen captures from her blink-of-an-eye performances. As half of the award-winning Ashleigh Raine writing team, Rina writes mostly paranormal, erotic romance and is published through Ellora’s Cave. She is webmistress of www.ashleighraine.com (check out all the bonus features), www.rinaslayter.com (read her Tales From Hollywood), and www.fictionados.com (she’s one of the founding members of her local genre fiction writers group). Outside of writing and Hollywood, Rina has a passion for early English history (especially Celtic Wales), cars (with Jason, she owns 8 and works on them), sewing (see some of her creations on her website), and antique dolls (she buys them in pieces and restores them herself)…and snooty green tea (no day is complete without a cup or two…or three or four.

This also means I better get my website up and running. As you can tell by my bio, I’ve got a lot planned. I’m pretty excited and hope to have things up and running within a month–even if it’s small.

Hey, I gotta start somewhere.

Excitement and such

The final few scenes of DTD are upon Jen and I. And it’s about friggin’ time!

This was our most-interrupted book–2 years in the making–and it’s finally going to be finished. I’m pretty damn excited about it, too. I got to use my movie-making knowledge as well as fantasize a much better ending to a little incident I had years ago involving a hot guy with a broken car whom I’d stopped to help.

In real life, he waved me away, saying he’d be fine. In DTD, well, guess you’ll have to read and find out!

In other news, I got my first rejection letter the other day. I finally feel like I’m a real member of the writing community. I look at the letter as my initiation. I have landed and I’m here to stay.

If I can take one rejection, I can take them all!!!!!!

Changing my mind

So, I’m still not done editing SR. It’s getting tighter, happier, yummier and I’m still loving it despite that it seems like I’ve been working on it for an eternity.

I’d assumed that OR would be up for editing next while I do all my crazy backstory research for O2, but then I got a better idea. A much more fun idea. One I can’t ignore.

I really can’t get it out of my head. It keeps getting better and more fun every time I think about it, too.

Unfortunately, I don’t know how to write it yet. The research is already done. I just need to cull and hone and come up with a decent plot. I think I’ve got an idea about at least the hero and heroine, but they aren’t cemented yet.

I love how stuff hits me when I least expect–nor truly want–it. Oh well. I suppose that’s the price I pay for being a writer.

Hell, SR came out of a poignant moment in time and sustained me for over 100K words. This next one came out of several long moments so therefore it should sustain me for far longer…

It’s a series. Definitely a series.

Now if I could just come up with a way to make it work.

In the mean time, OR and O2 get to languish in a proverbial drawer for a later time. Big deal. They’re timeless and I can always go back to them.

First time jitters gone haywire

I survived RWA National.

Let me say that again ‘cuz it feels so good to say it…

I survived RWA National.

It was my first one and I had a lot to accomplish notwithstanding. I could have been slightly more successful, but I’m overall quite pleased with everything.

Now, I’m submitting and thanking and unpacking and trying to get my head back above water writingwise.

…And I’m absolutely loving it!!!!!

I can’t wait until next year!

My wardrobe was quite a hit and for that I’m thankful. I was memorable, professional and most of all fun. I was there to learn and grow my career.

And from this vantage point, I believe I succeeded! I suppose there’ll be plenty more on this topic in another month or two and I can’t wait to share!

What a week!

Comic Con was a blast. I dragged my esteemed writer husband into the front row of a panel of sci-fi authors, including Vernor Vinge and Orson Scott Card. Afterward, we both approached Kevin J. Anderson to say hello and he recognized us from last year’s L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future workshops. [Jason won 1st place for 1st quarter of 2003] We were shocked and delighted.

The panel was fun and informative, too. My kind of crowd.

Ashleigh Raine’s Talisman Bay series is changing by the minute. Jen and I are still sort of in a daze, but we’ll get over it. Besides, we’re nose-to-the-grindstone on a different project right now anyway.

And then there’s me and my writing…

All I can say is, “Wow!”

Polishing CR is going very well. For a while there, it was hell, but I took a lot of notes, paid attention to critique and now I can’t wait until I do another read or two. I haven’t felt this good about much in a very long time.

RWA National is next week and I’m mentally psyching myself up for it. I’ve never been there before. I don’t know exactly what to expect–or what not to expect!

For now, I must get back to my wonderful work… I love being a writer! The thrill never fades!

I hope I survive!

There is no real crisis. I’m feeling mildly stressed at the moment. It’ll pass…

Ah yes.

Comic-Con this weekend, RWA National next weekend. I’m cramming an awful lot in these days. 2005 is insane and not looking like it’ll let up any time soon.

Of course, I feel like my life ends right after RWA National. It’s like the rest of the year is greyed out just so I can survive until the end of the month.

I finished the ugly shirt.

It’s still ugly and there’s officially nothing I can do about it anymore. I haven’t trashed it, but I bet it’ll sit in my collection for years before it gets worn… It’s really that bad. I’m not ashamed of it, but I don’t recall the last time I was unable to salvage a project before finishing it. I have several unfinished ones where I stopped right when things got ugly, but beyond those, I’ve never finished something that remained ugly through the entire process.

Oh well. If I build another shirt before RWA, I build another shirt. Otherwise, I just won’t wear those pants.

The ugly–but in a fun way–pants were why I was making the ugly shirt. But the shirt is ugly in the un-fun sense of the word.

And now it’s time to shove along. I’ve got packing to do, tea to drink, a scene to write.

a moment’s rest

But only a moment… I’ve still got plenty of sewing to do on what I’ve nicknamed ‘the ugly shirt’. It gets better looking the more I work on it, but that’s not saying much. I’m hoping that as I continue to manipulate its ugliness, it’ll get prettier somehow. It’s worked so far…

I had to re-chapterize CR today. Too many chapters were on the longer side of tolerable so I hacked them up. I haven’t gone through the whole manuscript yet or I’d give an official count of how many chapters there were versus how many there are now.

All I can really say is that the editing process is coming along nicely. I’m at a part that needs heavy editing which will graduate to heavy rewriting, but I’m only at the ramp up process right now. I’m still at the stage where I’m thinking about it while sewing buttons onto the ugly shirt.

Tomorrow, the fireworks will begin.

Tomorrow, I’ll know for sure what the heck this chapter and the three or four following it really need.

Tomorrow, I’ll start mercilessly hacking, slashing and tweaking until my eyeballs pop out of my head.

Why tomorrow? Because if I do it now, I’ll be interrupted by dinner and yoga class…and interruptions are bad…very, very bad.

blink of an eye

It’s been a few weeks since last I wrote and all my plans got derailed…

By me.

I’m going on gut here, but I think I’m doing the right thing because it feels so gol darn good…

I’ve shelved draft edits of OR in favor of working on CR.

Believe me, that was a very tough decision. I’d thought OR would be a fast read/edit, but when I started re-working, it became painfully clear that it was a long way from being anything that resembled polished.

That was when I realized that that book–hell, that whole series–is really my passion. It’s got everything I ever looked for in a book when I was a teenager just starting to put pen to paper.

Therefore, it deserves more from me now that I have the time and wherewithal to do it. I think I need to wallow in it. Yeah. Because back in the day, that’s what I would have done.

So, in the mean time, I’m plowing through CR and absolutely loving it to pieces. Just like when I edited BR.

Every time I read a book, there’s always something I would’ve done differently and now that I get to write the book, it’s nice to see that whenever there’s something I’d’ve done differently, I can hack it out and do it the way I’d do it. Gee, that reads weird…

Anyhow, I think it’s funny when I read my own stuff and wonder why the hell I wrote it the way I wrote it instead of the way I should have written it. What planet was I on? Is the chocolate smoother, richer, sweeter there? Hello? Anybody home?

But change is good in any case. It’s an experience I can learn from.

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