I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t carry out my plans to go down to San Diego during the worst of the heat wave. Most of the area lost power for most of yesterday, and I would’ve been sitting there stewing about not being able to work.

I keep starting on entries and not finishing them. Ugh. Distracted freelancer is distracted.

I am in the process of reading two books — Rosamunde Pilcher’s Flowers in the Rain (a collection of short stories) and usually something on the Nook. I’ve gotten more used to reading on it, and I can see myself eventually using an e-reader for most fiction. With that said…I think the Kindle is a bit better. It’s lighter, the screen is much more eye-friendly. That’s not to say I’m not fond of my little wannabe tablet, but Nook Color still has a ways to go.

I would like to remark on the crappiness of formatting, though. What really irks me is that the crappy formatting I am seeing is largely coming from the Big Publishers. Yeah, some of the free stuff is shoddily formatted, but most of the indie authors I’ve purchased from have taken the time to format their offerings properly. Big Publishing clearly can’t be bothered. I saw it in the newest Martin book and I’m seeing it with additional titles. My mother said her Kindle version of The Help had some “weird stuff” in it, and after describing it to me over the phone, it also sounds like formatting issues.

There’s really no excuse to do this with bestsellers, Big Pub. You sit and slam indie authors for poor editing and appearance while perpetuating the same bad habits. At least practice what you preach.

After weeks of empty threats, my landlord is finally replacing the doors in our little complex…the contractor was out bright and early, and I awoke to the sounds of buzzing, hammering, and metal screeching. So much for sleeping in. Juno has responded to all this noise by BEING AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE, which would be charming if I wasn’t trying to actually get work done at a reasonable hour today.

Hit about 13k words on That Zombie Story last night. It’s fun to write, but it’s a slightly different kind of heroine for me. I tend to write the kickass alpha female in my longer works, but in the short stuff, my heroines seem more…sedate. Kate in Once is an effective hybrid–competent without flaunting her skills, I guess–but Vibeke, the narrator in That Zombie Story, has no survival/fighting skills whatsoever, so for the first section of the story she’s sort of floundering. She learns as she goes, but she’s one of the quietest of my female leads.

It can be a little bit of a pain when working out action scenes, but this was a decision I made when I first crafted the story. Much as I love a badass taking on the undead, nothing irks me more than someone with absolutely no training and/or survival skills shifting overnight into a badass to take on the zombie horde.

I have no logical endpoint to this particular entry, so I will just say…goodnight.