Lucky Caller 7

What could be more fitting for Friday the 13th than a story that scares the heck out of you and is free, too?

Today is your lucky day!

Seriously, it gave me nightmares and I watched it being written.

Lucky Caller 7

Kelly won a radio contest for the first time in her life, and it’s a dream vacation — a fishing trip on a charter off the coast. Lots of fishing, fun, and sun.

But the crew of the little charter boat is borderline incompetent. The other passengers range from an icy blond bombshell to bald and overweight businessmen. Kelly’s not catching many fish, she’s not having much fun, and she just wants to go home.

When a mysterious storm appears on the horizon taking away even the sun, Kelly gets the feeling she’s headed for more than she bargained for. Maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t pay to be Lucky Caller 7.

Originally included in the collection "A Fine Cast of Characters."

Hurry!  Go run and grab your copy!  Click the link above and get it while it’s free, today only!

The Write Stuff

So, how many pens nibs are too many, exactly? 

We’re coming up on the end of the proofs for this most recent tech book my husband wrote.  You might remember the deadline he had to finish the thing a couple of months ago.  Recently the proofs have come back to us so we’ve been going over those and making sure everything is like it should be.  Thank goodness this editing team has done a much better job than the team on the last book!  I’ve hardly flagged any corrections to be made, and that’s a beautiful thing.    It’s almost completely done and then Darc can focus full time on his fiction and that is also a beautiful thing.   

In other news, tomorrow should be the end of an era, of sorts, and I’m hoping to bid a not-so-fond farewell to my old adversary, Back Pain.  Wouldn’t that be awesome if it went away? 

I might end up with a newer (to me anyway) stove.  We keep smelling gas – never a good sign.  They came today and tightened a connection, but I could still smell gas after the maintenance guys left.  I’ll see how it is tomorrow, but I think something’s wrong with the thermostat inside the oven itself, and not the connection to the gas supply between the oven and the wall.  We’ve had it for 5 years and I don’t know how long it was used before we moved in.  It’s probably time for a replacement anyway. 

So that’s my news.  How’s by you?

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So far

So good!  We haven’t come across anything that really needs addressing so far in the proofs we’ve gone through.  Looks like this team has done a great job.  The book looks almost identical to the text Darc submitted.  Last time, the team that first got a hold of his manuscript practically re-wrote the entire thing.  What a nightmare that was!

This time around, different team, different results!  It’s been painless so far, just a little time consuming reading the text over again but otherwise, I’m really pleased at this point. 

I think that’s doing great at nearly half-way through!

Elsewhere in the DarcHouse, my son starts his next year’s curriculum on Monday so we’re gearing up for that. 

How’s by you?

Proofs

They may be all the same 26 letters, but I have to make sure they’re all arranged in the right order, Mr. Smart-alec Kitteh.

Anyway, yep, the proofs for my husband’s most recent non-fiction project are in.  This time, they’re in digital format.  The nice thing about that is I can adjust the size if I need to.  Damn aging eyes! 

Hopefully, this editing team did better than the last one. 

I’ll keep you posted.

But then, you knew that, didn’t you? 

In other news, I pulled something in my back.  Damn aging back!  *sigh*

That’s what’s going on with me.  Anything new going on with you?

 

Get your copy of my husband’s books!

Buy J Dane Tyler’s Fiction now!

Miscellaneous

Some people just wake up chipper.

Not me.

Never have, and at this point in my career, I don’t think I ever will.

And today Monday will probably kick my butt.  I put off a lot of my housework to focus on the proofs, so now I have what I’ve come to call “A Monday House.”  That means I have to catch up on a lot of things, get myself back on track.  Boy, you know, those tracks sure do seem to shift a lot!  Eh, I just don’t like to do housework when the husband is around. 

On the upside though, the proofs are done, the proofs are done!  *doing the Snoopy happy dance!* 

I found the Bible I want too, for my birthday.  I’ve had the same Bible since 1987, and I think after 24 years, it’s okay to ask for a new one.    Wanna see?    Isn’t is pretty?  If I start saving now, I should be able to get it by the time my birthday rolls around.    You can click the pic if you want to check out more about it. 

Did you see that gorgeous full moon over the weekend?  The one they said was the “biggest” since like 1993 or something like that?  We had a lot of clouds here on Sat night, but I did see it Friday.  It was beautiful!

Did you get to enjoy the 1st day of Spring yesterday?  Yay, Winter is officially over!  And we didn’t have a snowstorm this year either, but we did have massive thunderstorms and tons of rain.  It was awesome. 

So, how was your weekend?

©DarcsFalcon All rights reserved

Whacked

Ever have one of those days?  You know the one – the one where little things just seem to accumulate?  Like shredded toilet paper? 

I spent the first part of my day working on the edits for Darc’s latest book.  I was going over the previous edits to see if they’d been implemented.  In some cases they had, but in others they hadn’t.  There were instances where they completely ignored his corrections and did something else.  And still got it wrong.  Commoner?  “It is commoner to … .” 

What the …? 

So he told them to change it to “It is most common to … .”  As I was going through them today I saw they’d changed it to, “It is common most to …” 

*sigh*

But I prevailed!  I finished my half and tried to send Darc a text message to let him know.  Fail.  No text messaging on my phone.  Still?  I went through this last week and thought it was just a temporary glitch and forgot about it, until my phone didn’t update during the time change last weekend.  I re-booted it and the right time came up and I didn’t even think to check texts.  Until today. 

For the record, I don’t really like alarm-y type things.  Notices with red triangles or circles, things like that.  Just … not my style.  Some folks like that kind of excitement – not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not for me.  And I don’t like seeing little error alarm notices on my phone that I just got only 3 mos ago. 

I ran the gamut on things to try before I broke down and called tech support.  The guy was so sweet, he said I’d already done nearly all the things he could tell me to do, when I told him what I’d tried to that point.  We did spend quite a bit of time on the phone though, so now I’m thinking of asking him to Thanksgiving dinner.    Apparently there were some things he needed to check with me while I wasn’t on the phone; but seeing as how I don’t have a landline, he had to call me back after Darc got home so I could use his phone to stay in contact with tech support while mine was being re-set. 

Yep, I had to go that far.  “You won’t lose your contacts but you will lose any personalization like setting special ringtones for your friends, any pictures or video you’ve stored on the phone, all your apps … “ 

All my apps?

“ALL your apps.”  He warned me well in advance, and when he called back and reminded me if I remembered that I’d lose all my apps and their icons on the many screens on my phone, I confessed that I’d taken pictures of my phone screens, seeing as how I knew I’d never remember how I had them or what they were.* 

He busted out laughing! 

“I know, it’s silly.”

“Oh no ma’am, not at all!  It’s actually one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard!  So many customers get upset about losing their apps and how they’d personalized their phones when something like this happens, I’ll have to suggest this to my customers next time I come across it!” 

So he made me feel better, even if he was lying through is teeth.   

After I got off the phone with him, I spent the next few hours re-downloading all my apps, putting back all the personalization I’d had before, re-signing in to my accounts, stuff like that.  I’ve lost my bookmarks though, thankfully I didn’t have that many on my phone.  Didn’t lose any pictures because I upload them to Picasa as soon as I take them, whew!  Didn’t lose any contacts thanks to the back-up manager Verizon has.  All in all, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, just annoying.

And if that’s as bad as my day goes, that’s pretty freaking good, in my book. 

Heh, and I still got dinner on, and Darc’s shirts ironed!    Booyah!

So … how was your day?

©DarcsFalcon All rights reserved

*Because Google has no syncing between your app account and your Android phone.  Contacts, yes.  Apps, no.  Your app account will remember apps you’ve paid for, but not any free ones.  Like miser-me would pay for an app!

See, I wasn’t kidding about taking pics of my phone!

More

Editing, that is.  Yep, we got the 2nd round of proofs back from the publisher, and from just a quick glance, it looks like they applied the corrections we made after the 1st round, and that they went ahead and made some more of their own without consulting Darc or anything.  We found a few things – so far – that were not wrong before, but now have typos and are incorrect. 

I just don’t get it. 

The last time we went through this process, it was a cake-walk.  The team and manager which Darc worked with consulted with him throughout the process and before the book went to the proof stage, so when it got to proof stage, there wouldn’t be much which needed to be done.

This team, on the other hand, didn’t consult with him at all, told him there was very little editing which needed to be done, and then when we get the 1st proofs back, we found multiple re-writes and typos which were not in the original manuscript. 

Just so you know, there aren’t supposed to be 2nd proofs.  And – as you probably know if you know my husband – he is about typos like the Princess was with the Pea.  It would be one thing if the corrections were improvements.  But when they are wrong, contain typos, and factual errors which weren’t in the text he submitted, well, perhaps you can understand his frustration. 

We have this week to re-correct the corrections which shouldn’t have been “corrected” in the 1st or 2nd place. 

I can’t wait for this one to be done!  Poor Darc.  He’s the one with his name on this.

So if you don’t see me much this week, that’s why.  Deadlines and all that. 

In the meantime, how was your weekend?  We found out our neighbor did indeed have a baby a week and a half ago – she never even looked pregnant at all!  Never even a waddle walk!  I stepped over to drop off a little gift and talked to the new daddy and mentioned how surprised we were.  He proudly commented that his wife was almost back to her pre-baby weight.  I did not tell him this made other women want to sit on her and make her eat ice cream until she gained at least 40 lbs.  Skinny little thing!  Hopefully the box of candy we gave them in addition to the baby toy will help toward that end.    Congratulations to the 2 of them!

©DarcsFalcon All rights reserved