Yesterday felt utterly unproductive because I couldn't seem to focus on anything. But then I realized that it felt like my subconscious was up to something, and that was why the day came across as a waste. Sure enough, I think I've come up with some good stuff, and I've realized that I've been totally wrong about a lot of things. It seems like no matter how much planning I try to do, it doesn't count for much until I actually start writing. Then once I meet the characters on the page and see how the situation starts shaping up, I find that a lot of my planning was flat-out wrong.

For instance, talking in only vague terms, one of the major plots in this story involves the search for someone who's missing. I had thought that it would function more like a mystery, where the missing person's whereabouts are unknown both to characters and readers, so the missing person and the bad guy keeping the missing person would remain off-stage. But then once I started writing I realized that the missing person had her own subplot and conflict and the story would have to go back and forth between the search and what the missing person is up to, with the suspense coming from information the readers have from one plot line that the characters in the other plot line don't have (the Hitchcock bomb under the table scenario). And that meant I actually had to develop the character of the missing person and create the setting for where she is.

One thing that tells me how wrong I was about what this book was going to be was the "soundtrack" I created for it. I put together an "inspirational" CD of music that seemed to fit the vague idea this story was at the time. Now that I've developed characters and plot, I'm realizing that I was totally off-base with a lot of it. I've been doing the iTunes shuffle the past few days, and the songs I'm picking for the soundtrack have been fairly different. Some are the same, some went by the wayside and some have been added. The result is that the mood has mostly changed. I never would have anticipated this, but there's a lot of Ella Fitzgerald going on. It's a more classic, timeless mood. I think the emotions coming up are also different, as a whole. This may be a more serious, angsty book than I usually write, though there are definitely still humorous touches. It will be more of a book that has some humor in it than an outright comedy, though I think it does have something of a screwball comedy structure to it.

It's shaping up to be a cool, rainy day, and I have books waiting for me at the library (some references I need to develop some other characters who suddenly demanded more attention), so I think I may walk over there, bring my notebook, and sit in the cafe for a while to do research and brainstorming. If it's not actually raining, I can sit on the patio on the waterside.

And because it's not a Friday without at least a touch of Virtual Vicarious Vacation, some more pictures from my recent trip to New York. Central Park and the general areas where I was are rather Victorian, and it struck me that New York would make a good Steampunk setting. I shall have to consider that.

So, for instance, here's the famous Bow Bridge in Central Park:



And then I think this is the Ansonia Hotel, based on something in a guidebook and the approximate place where I was when I took the picture, though I didn't get close enough to verify. I suspect a mad scientist is working at the top of one of those corner towers. Or else that area reminded me of Paris because it was on a part of Broadway where the street is two-way and has a park-like esplanade down the middle, and that building also has a bit of Parisian flair.

I'm still playing with the idea in development, and I've found that for this stage of work, it actually helps to have some kind of background noise going. When I write, I like absolute silence, but for brainstorming, having the TV on in the background seems to distract the conscious brain so the unconscious can play. However, some of the ideas I've played with will now require additional research, but it's more the kind that just requires a few Internet searches, not a library trip.

When I went out to get ingredients for my Southern Church Lady funeral food baking yesterday, I also ran by the nearest Half-Price Books, since it's extra 20 percent off weekend (which started yesterday), and I managed a huge find, an out-of-print book I've been dying to find for ages. It's so out-of-print that I don't think there's even a cover or information posted on Amazon, and I'm not even sure it was ever published in the US. I'd almost given up ever finding it, but I still automatically check whenever I'm in a bookstore. The weird thing was, I found it in a section where I wasn't expecting to find it -- in the mass-market paperback section instead of in trade paperback (so I think maybe it's a British edition, since I'm pretty sure that if it was published in the US, it wasn't published in mass market, and the store's scanner wouldn't read the bar code on it). Even better, I saw a lovely example of customer service at the store. Usually, they do the thing where they keep one line for two registers, and just take the next customer at the register that comes open, so I got in the line behind the first register. The lady at the other register waved over the person at the front of the line I was in, and then all the people in line behind me rushed over to that other register. I was mildly miffed because even if the store wasn't officially doing the one line to feed both registers thing, it was still a bit rude to essentially line jump and go from the end of the line to the front of a line, but it's not that big a deal, so I didn't say anything. Imagine my surprise when the bookseller cheerfully informed the next person in line that I was actually next and had been waiting longer, then signaled me to come over.

Now I'm trying to decide whether to indulge myself in reading the new book this weekend or to save it for my fall vacation so I have something to look forward to. I just got a ton of books from the library, so I may save it for vacation, since I love having something to anticipate.

But now, for some pictures from the New York trip. I'm still getting used to the digital camera, and while it's handy for instantly having something to post online, I think for any serious vacation photography I may also use film and my old 35mm. The LCD screen is difficult to see in sunlight, and strangely, I find it more awkward to work the smaller camera than I do the larger one (which is contoured with a hand grip). It was raining for most of the trip, and it got very hard to juggle the camera and an umbrella, so a lot of the shots are at wonky angles or very dark (because it was rather cloudy). Here are a few that don't require clean-up and that don't have anything to do with the content of the book I was researching (that I know of, since you never know).

First, after that week's Warehouse 13 episode (and that show has really grown on me), I found the Alice statue in Central Park rather amusing. I wanted to warn all those parents having their kids climb on the statue for pictures to keep their children away from the dangerous psychopath.



You can see here what a gorgeous day it was -- crystal blue sky as the backdrop to the Bethesda Terrace fountain in Central Park.



And then things were very different the next day. I ventured down to the bottom tip of Manhattan and found yet another reason why this was a good setting for a hidden magical corporation. You never know what you'll find tucked away in some corner. There were all these corporate headquarters type buildings, and then this block of little old buildings that looked like something you'd see in Amsterdam. I don't know for sure what these buildings were, but I suppose they could be a holdover from the New Amsterdam days.

I'm back from New York, and am in my usual exhausted state after a trip like that. However, I'm mentally all revved up to work. The blister I got the day before the trip was a bad omen because I ended up with even worse blisters by the end of the first day, thanks to the fact that one pair of shoes hurt my heels, but then the other hurt my toes, so I just couldn't win. I think I may try what I've heard is a Boy Scout trick and wrap the most blister-prone parts of my feet with duct tape BEFORE I get blisters. That's supposed to prevent blisters because it means there's no rubbing on the skin. The worst of the blisters have shrunk today, but shoes still aren't my favorite thing.

But other than that, I had a great trip. The first day was absolutely lovely, with warm temperatures and sunny skies. The rest of the time it was a different kind of lovely (to me) -- nice, rainy days that give the city a certain feel that's almost otherworldly. It also makes stepping into cozy basement restaurants even nicer.

I can't talk in much detail about what I did, since it was research for a book and I don't like to talk in specifics about unwritten (or unpublished) books, but I did do a lot of wandering in Central Park, I returned to my favorite tea shop for breakfast (and hot tea and scones on a rainy morning is a treat) and I found a perfect Italian restaurant that was romantic enough that I actually found myself wishing I could go there on a date.

After seeing a sign in a real estate office window, I got the bright idea of checking on open houses to get into an apartment building, but they didn't have any open houses while I was there. However, they did have a lot of photos with listings posted in the windows, and my hotel room window looked down on the roofs and backs of the buildings in the next block, which gave me a better sense of the building layouts. It looks like in those older buildings that just about any layout goes, since some of them were originally built as single-family homes or maybe two-family homes or apartments that took up entire floors, and they've since been cut up into smaller apartments in various ways. So I think I can make up what works for the story, and it won't be utterly unrealistic. Based on an overheard conversation, I think I can also make just about anything financially feasible, since there are apparently people who inherited apartments from family members who bought them decades ago when prices weren't so high, so the larger old apartments are totally paid for and all the current residents have to pay is maintenance and taxes.

I also figured out from this real estate research that no matter how much I enjoy visiting, I probably won't ever decide to live there (unless I reach JK Rowling levels), considering I'd have to pay more than double my current mortgage payment to live in an apartment smaller than my current living room. I can travel there instead, especially now that I've found the perfect hotel. It's so perfect that part of me wants to spread the word about it, but part of me wants to keep it a secret so it won't become too popular (not that I have that much influence). It's very cheap by New York standards, but absolutely lovely, a well-preserved old building right behind the Museum of Natural History and a block from Central Park. The rooms are really small, and the bathroom was pretty much microscopic, but it was still nice and comfortable, with a good bed, LCD TV and CD player in the room. I think I have my new New York headquarters.

Because of the foot problems and general weariness, I didn't do anything nightlife-related. I ate early dinners and was back in my room, collapsed with my feet up, by 7, so my evening tourism amounted to watching syndicated reruns of CSI: New York. I got to play the "hey, I was there today!" game, only I didn't find any dead bodies or severed heads in those places. The early nights meant I discovered the time when the City that Doesn't Sleep sleeps: Saturday mornings when it's rainy. I had the city almost to myself when I headed out for breakfast.

I have photos, and I think I'll post the ones not related to the book as Friday's Virtual Vicarious Vacation. But now I have to get to work and catch up on a lot of stuff.

Tomorrow: My airplane books for the trip.

I'm on the final wave of that book I was working on earlier in the summer (final until my agent gets ahold of it). In this phase, I read it out loud. That helps me spot awkward constructions, missing words, redundant words, etc. It also helps me make sure my dialogue works. It's a pretty time-consuming process to read an entire novel out loud, but what I'm finding with this book is that I want to keep going. I didn't even take that nap I promised myself yesterday because I got caught up in the story. I consider that to be a good sign.

I think I may have to make a bookstore run today because Borders sent me another coupon (curse them!) and I've discovered another book I really want to read. Plus, there are a couple of grocery items I need, and I want to avoid leaving the house tomorrow. This is the first entirely free Saturday I've had in ages, and my next couple of weekends will be busy, as next weekend I've got a meeting and the weekend after that I'll be in New York. I hope I'll be done with the book re-read today, so I can just relax this weekend. Well, there will likely be some research-related reading, and I may need to start the viewing of some of my mood-setting movies, as the start date for working on the book of the misty idea is growing closer.

And now, it's Friday, so it's Virtual Vicarious Vacation day, and we're off to London. This is that same trip from October 2000 (I took something like nine rolls of film, so there were a lot of pictures, considering I was only there for about 4 days). I have better London pictures from my subsequent trip, when I spent a lot of time in London, as I was staying with friends who lived on the outskirts, but we'll start with these major landmarks.

First, Westminster Abbey. I do have some shots from later in the day when the sun came out, but I like the foggy look, too (and they're on a different CD, and I'm not particularly compelled to dig it up). This was right after I got off the bus from Oxford in the morning, then after wandering around, I came back for the Evensong service, so I was inside when the sun came out, and that brought all the stained glass to life. Very pretty. My Tourist Tip: The Abbey is closed on Sundays for tours because it does function as a church, but you can attend services there, so you can still go in. You don't get the full tour, but you do have to go through much of the church to get to the seating area, so you still see a lot, and the sound of the choir is breathtaking, so I thought it was the best way to see it -- in use for its purpose, not as just another tourist site.



Then there's Big Ben. You can't go to London without taking a picture of that.



And then St. Paul's. It was hard getting a good shot because it's so big you need some distance, but the buildings surrounding it are all crammed in pretty close. It just about required standing in the middle of a street to get a good picture, but it was mid-day on a Sunday, so that part of town was pretty deserted. I think I have some pictures on another CD (this was the end of a roll) of all the pigeons around the cathedral, and I will confess that I went around singing "Feed the Birds" for a while.



I may play photo CD roulette next week and just grab one out of the box to see where we'll go next time.

Happy birthday to me! I have a bad tendency to get moody, introspective and a little depressed on my birthday, so I usually try to make plans to avoid that. Last year, I was at WorldCon and got serenaded in public twice (once by Larry Niven) and then had dinner with my agent after moderating two panels. I can't top that this year, but I am going to brunch with friends and then to see the latest Terminator movie at the dollar theater, probably followed by ice cream. The dance store is near the movie theater, so I may get wild and crazy and get a second leotard and maybe even one of those gauzy dance skirts, since I'm going into my second year of ballet. I think I'll also hit Borders while I'm there. There was already a 40 percent off coupon for the week, but then they sent me a 15 percent off birthday coupon. I wonder if I can use them both at once on two separate items. I'm suddenly craving a good chick lit book. I haven't read one in ages, and they're awfully rare. The few that are still being published are by the big names who survived the glut and bust, so they're in hardback. But I have heard of one that sounds like my thing, so I'll have to see if they have it.

I got a bit of an early birthday present yesterday when I got yet another peaceful swimming session. The storms the night before had strewn delicate pink and white crepe myrtle blossoms in the water, and the effect was rather spa-like. Or maybe like the forest pond where the fairy princess is swimming when the knight who's been lost in the woods appears. Or maybe it's the lagoon where the mermaid swims. The one annoying thing is that the mailboxes are by the pool, and one of my neighbors stopped to say hi and chat as he went by to get his mail, and he totally broke the fairy princess mermaid magic (since he definitely wasn't a knight lost in the woods).

Not that I have a vivid imagination, or anything. (And can one become too old to daydream about being a fairy princess swimming in a flower-strewn forest pond?)

So, on to the virtual vicarious vacation. We're still in England in October 2000, but these shots aren't from any particular day and aren't in any order. They're just some random pictures I thought were interesting.

First, Doctor Who fans might recognize this building in Warwick, as it played an Elizabethian London street in the episode "The Shakespeare Code." When I saw the video diary for the shooting of that episode on the DVD and they showed that they were in Warwick and how they were dressing the medieval buildings to create the street scene, I realized I'd been there.



Then, I've got a couple of nice, scenic shots that aren't of any tourist attraction but that just show the country. On my first day in England, while I was walking off jet lag, I captured an utterly idyllic moment on the Thames, somewhere between Iffley and Oxford.



And then there's the Cotswolds countryside. The walking paths cut across farms, which took me aback at first (I kept thinking, "If I tried this in Texas, I'd get shot."), but I am a former farm girl, so once I realized I wouldn't get in trouble, I rather enjoyed getting entirely away from the roads and really being out in the country. This whole area was just breathtakingly lovely.

I'm visiting the parents today, so just a quick Virtual Vicarious Vacation post. We're still in England, from October 2000, the day after my day in Warwick (from last week). It was a day in the Cotswolds. I took a train from Oxford to a town with a train station, where I caught a bus to another town, where I bought a book of walks and then walked across-country to another town, where I caught the bus back to the train station. I don't have my guidebooks or photo albums with me, so I'm guessing on some of the spellings.

The town where I had lunch and bought a book of walking directions was called Stow (maybe Stowe) on the Wold, and there was this one fun moment on the street where an old car went by, and it was almost like something out of an old movie in that setting.



One benefit of seeing the country by walking is that you see things that wouldn't be visible from the road, like this manor house that appeared ahead as I emerged from the woods.



Then in the village of Lower Slaughter, there was an old mill with the water wheel.



That really was one of the best days of my life. I like walking, and walking like that and really seeing interesting stuff out in the country was just amazing. I capped off the day with a nice tea, and the whole day was sheer perfection.

Juggling three writing projects may not be good for my sanity. There's the previous project, that I'm wrapping up. There's the current one I'm rewriting. And there's the future one I'm researching and brainstorming and that is really taking over my brain. Yesterday, I read straight through the previous project. I think it's important to try to read a book the way a reader would because you catch a lot more things than you do when it's weeks or even months between the time you wrote the first chapter and the time you wrote the last one. For instance, you're more conscious of words or phrases you use repeatedly. Or you might find that you used the exact same paragraph twice after you cut it from earlier in the book and then moved it to another scene, then used it again in a later scene. Not that I might have done something like that. It's also good to get a look at the book as a whole rather than as units from a day's work. Aside from a few wording and repeated paragraph issues, I think I still like this one. I have a page of notes of little things to check or tinker with, then it rests again for a couple of weeks, and then I give it one last read out loud to catch any subconscious errors that might have slipped between the cracks. And then I'll be down to two projects, until my agent gives me revision notes on this one.

I know I have a ton of reader e-mail to deal with, but that gets kind of draining since they all seem to be asking the same questions, and repeating that particular answer over and over again makes me want to crawl into a hole. No, there is no book five on the horizon because my publisher doesn't want it. No, book four is not being translated into Dutch because the publisher doesn't want it. I have no idea about book four in German because they haven't committed one way or another. I guess it starts to feel like the book version of, "Why aren't you married yet?" I have to remind myself that it's because they care, not because they're trying to make me feel bad. I will say that, in case anyone's reading this, it might be more effective to be addressing these questions to the respective publishers. That way they'll be forced to realize that there is a demand.

But enough about that. Let's take another virtual vicarious vacation! We're still in England, on that same trip from October 2000, and in fact these photos are from the day after last week's photos. I took a day trip from Oxford up to Warwick to see the castle. Yeah, this is a pretty touristy castle that's now owned by the people who run Madame Toussad's, which means that parts of the castle are set up as a wax museum so you can see how people lived there at various points in history, complete with music and sound effects. But the castle itself is truly magnificent, and it's on gorgeous grounds. Apparently I got really lucky because normally it's swarming with tourists, and it was practically deserted the day I was there. I only ran into other people a couple of times (and once it was a couple from Texas I'd met before, which was kind of freaky). I spent the whole day there, just wandering, and it was one of those nearly perfect days.

So here are a few views of the castle, and these are some of the photos I've had enlarged and framed and that hang on the staircase wall. First, the side view of the castle, taken from a bridge over the River Avon.



Then there's the approach to the castle.



And then the view from the top of the highest tower (I'm not great with heights, so that one was a bit scary until I got used to being up there).

Harry Potter in the morning, then burgers and frozen custard for lunch (separate courses, not together) -- the makings of a lovely day. Now, though, I'm utterly exhausted for some reason.

I liked the movie. I tend to be a bit of a purist when it comes to film adaptations, but I've decided for the purposes of this series that the movies and the books exist in separate universes, and I appreciate them separately. With that in mind, I think the adaptation worked, for the most part. I was wondering how they'd adapt this book for film, not so much because the book was so huge, but because there really isn't much in the way of action. I often jokingly call this one "Harry Potter and the Off-Stage Antagonist" because there's no real struggle to this story. It's mostly the coming-of-age story for the series, the transition from childhood to adulthood, rather than being about the fight against the Big Bad. So I can see why the scene that was added was added, so there would be actual action at the midpoint of the movie and a reminder that there was a threat. There was one thing left out that I thought could have been kept in without making the movie longer and that would have deepened that part of the story. Otherwise, I think it flowed well enough, and it was both funny and intense. Jim Broadbent was absolutely wonderful as Slughorn. That was such a good performance. I did have one inappropriate giggle fit at the very beginning, in the scene where Harry is preparing to flirt with the coffee shop waitress. I had a massive Extras flashback and halfway expected to see Diana Rigg at the next table.

Since I'm in an English state of mind, let's go to England for Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday. To Oxford, to be exact. This one was actually a vacation, a rather spontaneous trip I took in October 2000 after a rather harrowing customer conference for a client. I wanted to go somewhere where my clients couldn't reach me, so I spent a few days wandering the Oxford area.

First, a lovely view of the city skyline:



Then Balliol College (I like the way the sky looks in this shot -- that was the only really sunny day of the whole trip, and it was gorgeous):



And finally, the River Thames, just downstream from Oxford. They've turned the old towpath into a walking trail, and it was a great way to walk off jet lag.



I may end up doing some travel this summer, after all. I think I will do the New York trip. It turns out that it's actually less expensive to go in August (which is odd because usually travel prices drop after Labor Day instead of going up), so I can go at a time when it fits better with the book. I won't get to enjoy a northern autumn, but it still should be cooler there than it is here, so I can maybe get a tiny preview. Now I need to book everything (and hope it's the same as it was when I was researching yesterday).

This schedule adjustment thing is getting ridiculous. Today I was up at 6:30. That may have had something to do with the fact that I went swimming yesterday, which meant I slept really well last night. The annoying thing is, there isn't much I can do with the extra time when I get up that early. The library doesn't open until 10, and although I'm awake, I'm not really in the frame of mind to write. Today I did some yoga and read the newspaper thoroughly.

It's another Virtual Vicarious Vacation Friday! For those who missed the announcement last week, I've decided that since a lot of us aren't getting to travel this year, I'll share some of my old travel photos (sadly, mostly from business trips). While I'm on the subject of vacation alternatives, like the "staycation," I've got an entry for the "people unclear on the concept" files. A local Realtor had a full-page ad in the newspaper this week, advertising the fact that with these homes you could have a real staycation. The homes had such features as a Napa Valley-style wine cellar, an in-home movie theater, a water park-style swimming pool, etc. If you can afford a home like that, I don't think a staycation is really an issue for you. You can just take your private jet wherever you want to go.

This week, we're in Washington, D.C., giving a little preview for those going to the RWA conference, and a couple of these were taken during the last DC conference.

First, to give you a little glimpse of the neighborhood where the conference is held, this shot looks up Connecticut Avenue toward the convention hotel area. I think that bridge is called the Francis Scott Key bridge, but I'm not absolutely certain and I don't have a guide handy to double check. I went to Georgetown for lunch with some friends, and they had an event they needed to get back earlier for, so I wandered and explored Georgetown on my own (even though it was raining), then checked the map and realized it wasn't actually all that far from where I was to the hotel, if I took the right route, so I walked all the way back.



The convention hotel is in walking distance of the Washington National Cathedral (though, mind you, my definition of "walking distance" isn't exactly based on normal human beings and I am mildly insane when it comes to walking). You'll need a map, though, as the way isn't marked and you'll have to weave through some residential neighborhoods (some very nice ones) up a steep hill to get there. But there's a big payoff, as it's a spectacular sight (I took this the day before the 2000 RWA conference).



I think my favorite memorial on the Mall (so far -- I haven't been there since they built the WWII Memorial) is the Korean War Memorial. It's very haunting. I must really like it because I found very similar photos from a couple of different trips.

I'm still struggling with the ending from hell (and the talk about happy endings was actually kind of a help there), but after a lot of pacing around the living room yesterday, I think I've got it all figured out and have even managed to visualize the next scene. It turns out that I made a rookie mistake: I had things happening because the plot needed them to happen, not because that's what the characters would have done. It took getting into each character's head and imagining what he/she would really do in that situation to see it all come together. So, guess what I'll be spending my holiday weekend doing? Aside from fireworks time, of course. The biggest show around here is tonight, so I'm looking forward to watching things blow up.

I imagine that with the economy in its current state, I'm not the only one without the money or time to take a summer vacation. Therefore, I'm instituting Virtual Vicarious Vacation Fridays, in which I'll share some of my travel photographs from past trips. I realized in digging up these photos that going freelance really cut into my travel, not so much because of the money and lack of paid vacation time, but because most of my travel was on business. All of these photos today were taken on business trips (I generally managed to extend my trips by volunteering to travel on the weekend, which cut the airfare). Today's virtual trip is an East Coast tour of patriotic sites, in honor of the holiday.

First, it wouldn't be Independence Day without fireworks, so here are fireworks over Boston, from July 4, 2000 (you get really cheap airfare if you travel on a holiday, and it goes up a lot if you travel around the holiday, so I got to spend July 4 in Boston).



Also in Boston, the old State House, complete with patriotic bunting.



Then there's Lady Liberty herself, the Statue of Liberty (taken from the Staten Island Ferry, October 1999 -- on trip for Internet World trade show).



And the National Mall, with the Washington Monument covered in renovation scaffolding (from summer 1999 -- I don't remember if this was the June trip or the early September trip).



I'll have to think about where we'll go next week. There's a lot to choose from. I've got a trip to Germany, which also included Luxembourg and Amsterdam, two trips to England, lots more Boston, New York and DC; Philadelphia, New Orleans, Chicago, Charleston and Colorado.