Easily entertained, that's me...

Just give me a pen and paper or maybe an ice cream cone, and I'm happy... Also, I love learning new things, even if it's silly. It's just part of me, I guess...

I wanted a little progress bar ever since I saw one on a page somewhere (day before last), marking the progress of how many books someone had read... And I thought, well, why can't I have a progress bar that has how many pages I've written or read? And that's when I started obsessing with it, and after a few dead ends that involved having to download stuff, I finally found a place that explained how to get my very own progress bar!!

So that's part of what made me happy. That and the fact that I pulled it apart and changed it so it was what I wanted...The only bad thing is I have to keep calculating percentages every time I have to update it, but at least that's gonna distract me. That's maybe what I was missing about the goodreads counter - yep, still mourning the fact that it died. The numbers were always changing, so it was always a fluid thing...

See? I'm very easily entertained.  Might be the reason I get along so well with children between 4 and 6. Something of a similar mentality, haha.

I also found the quote I had to find about which part of the subarachnoid space was wider... But if there's a why behind it, it still eludes me... And it's really bugging me, probably more than it should.

I'm not sure if I'm mentioned this, but I'm gonna be staying another four years where I currently live... And that's a mixed feelings type of situation. ;)

Hm, did I just ramble? I'm not entirely sure, which probably means I did.

* * *

   Well, let me try and see if I can get Pegasus through his doctor's appointment without him and Bella strangling each other... I swear I didn't set out to make him annoy her so much, but I just can't seem to help it. Anyone have similar problems?

   And Robyn should probably get some sleep... which is advice I should also take for myself, hehe.

Good night and until next time, by which time I will have hopefully discovered how a small airplane crashes without killing everyone aboard. :) Pleasant dreams.

C'era una volta...

hehe, learned that this weekend... who says TV can't teach you anything?

* * *

So, once upon a time (aka 14 days ago - wow, 14 already?), five Graces set out to travel around the world... Hm, but not real people named Grace, though I'm sure there are a lot of people named Grace traveling around the world right now...

But anyway, I'm talking about the books given away with the goodreads giveaway (and I'll miss seeing that little counter there on the right on my blog page every day). The fact that the leftover would-be counter is still there is a testament of either my aversion to change or my laziness... or maybe just the fact that I think it looks pretty...

Thanks to tracking services, I can see that at least three of them went the right way... It was less confusing than following the tracking info for the ones that were supposed to be delivered to me. Those took a detour to the southeast of Brazil before coming back up... 

Have a nice travel little books - if you're still traveling, and I hope you all get welcomed by good readers. ;)
(Yes, that was my attempt at a pun with the name of the site where they were offered. I know, I should not try comedy...)

Oh, and I hadn't noticed until now that I was supposed to click on the "I have sent these books" button over at goodreads... sorry to whoever that would've been meant to be seen by... ???

 * * *

In other non-related, not-really-news type of news:
    Decided to skip Stargazer and started polishing up the first book in the In Dreams series... Why? Less things that need to occupy my mind simultaneously when compared to Stargazer... Let's face it, right now, with all my real life deadlines, I'm lucky if I know which day of the week it is...
    I am almost halfway through re-reading the proof for Cameras Tell No Lies. If halfway is page 60 of 211. ;) I'm hoping I can get it done before the end of the year just because I don't wanna change the year that I wrote down at the bottom of the copyright page... And we're back to the aversion to change vs. laziness bit... Don't ask my parents, they'll probably say it's the latter...

   So excuse me while I go get Sarah's interrogation started, and smack Jilly on the side of the head because she's being hysterical again... ;)

    And can someone please tell me why the ventral subarachnoid space is larger than the dorsal one? Is there even a reason for that? Geez... :P

Farewell, goodreads giveaway counter...

Results are in!

The giveaway ended this morning (well, five in the morning at GMT -3 from what I could gather, I'm not sure what clock they go by)...

The counter is still sitting there - though now it just says the giveaway is ended... It's not counting anymore, and I'm gonna miss checking in every day and looking at the little numbers, hehe...

At least until the next book comes out and the next giveaway.

I've just finished arranging for the books to be sent to the respective winners. They're supposed to be arriving between Nov 29 and Jan 2, depending on the country...

I know arrival dates don't matter to a lot of people, but in my house, since we're never home, we always have stuff shipped to another address and then we kinda have to know when the package is coming in so we remember to go check if it arrived... And that explains why the proof for Cameras Tell No Lies sat on a desk somewhere for a couple of weeks before I even knew it was in the country. :)

(pseduo-P.S.: If you are one of the people waiting to receive the book and would like to know where it is, you can message me and I can give you the tracking number for the order if it exists - sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, depending on the shipping company).

* * *

 
So, when I first signed up Grace for the giveaway at goodreads, I wasn't really thinking along the lines of: I hope a lot of people see it. Sure, that's part of it, but what I thought was the coolest aspect of the giveaway was getting to send your book to all these different places... I clicked all the countries they let me click, and kept my fingers crossed that the little brick-wannabies (my books - vulgo/aka: tijolinho) would get to go to places I'd never been to.

So, can I do a happy dance, now?

I'm not sure if there's some rule about not telling anyone where the books are going, country-wise, but I checked the terms and conditions and saw nothing against it.
Two are going to the US (southeast and northwest). One of them is actually gonna land pretty close to where a friend of mine lives. :)
 One is going to Bulgaria... One to Lithuania... And one all the way to Indonesia... and that's farther than I've ever been. Also, I went to look up the regions in a map and actually learned a thing or two today
See? How cool is that?

I'm probably more excited about having the books shipped than the people who are getting them... But that's okay... And that's totally awesome. Now I'm just being silly, I know, quoting stuff that people my age shouldn't be quoting, but I really am very happy...

As for what happens when the books arrive at their destination, I hope whoever gets them enjoys reading them at least half as much as I enjoyed writing the story.
 
Bon voyage, tijolinhos! Boldly going where no tijolinho has gone before... 

Wait a minute! Where did October go?

So, it's really November? Really?

Well, I'm still chasing my November 1st deadline, so his is my own private Grace period, lol, and thankfully, it lasted more than 24 hours. :)
Anyways, since it's November, I'll soon be finding out where the copies of Grace are gonna be shipped to (see Goodreads.com giveaway in case you have no idea what I'm talking about). I'm really excited about that, and I hope whoever gets a book likes it. I also hope I get to send it to faraway places... It would be fun having it go places I've never been in a weird sort of way.

My new semi-official proof-reader finished reading Cameras Tell No Lies last week, which is the first book in the Smoke and Mirrors trilogy. Unfortunately, he said he got carried away with the story and forgot to mark the things he thought warranted a second look... I'll take that as a compliment. ;)
Unfortunately, real life is having an issue with letting go back to my secondary worlds right now, so everybody's still pretty much where I left them, except I managed to get everyone to the hospital, hahah. It was just two pages away, anyways...

Okay, so I basically wanted to say that I miss October, I still want a Halloween party (hehe - I've been promised one when I get back from the congress I'm at), and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna suffer on the plane tomorrow because I have a cold... Oh, well, there goes what's left of my timpanic membranes, I guess...


So, see you all in a few days when the deadline ends! (obviously you can't see me, but I have my extremely happy face on).

Hugs,
            Marília

One month left to enter the giveaway!!

Dean was standing on a bridge, watching the river and wondering about the tides and how far they could drag a car...

And Elise was lying her way through yet another jam with little more than guts and a smile...

And then I realized we're halfway through October... And real life got in the way.

So those worlds and a few others are in a state of suspended animation for the moment, until I can get my dissertation done, and the couple of presentations, and the article rewrite... or just until the next time I need a break - or spend two hours at an airport.

Let's see if I have some news...
      Last break I had I tried starting a quotes page, but I still have to work on that.

Check it out 

and tell me how you think it's going, suggestions are appreciated! 

      Also, it finally seems like I have a proof-reader of sorts, though I think it's a book too late. Hopefully he's up for the task for a few more hundred pages or so... Wouldn't mind finding a beta-reader, though. Applicants please e-mail me. lol
       Almost finished the first draft for Vanishing Act, the second Smoke and Mirrors book, and the proof for Cameras Tell No Lies finally got in last week, but it's back home. I'll get to it, eventually. 

Oh, and there's still some time to enter the giveaway over at goodreads for the chance to win a copy of Grace!

And I'll see you all some time next week, maybe, when hopefully I'll have the real world stuff sorted out. (haha) Yeah, I know, I don't believe me either. ;)

Until then, Joss will still be playing with wooden swords in the meadows; and Louisa will be about to take that one step further into the dark forest... while Lise, Helena and Jadia all bicker in the corner about whether they're alive or not.

The wrong fork in the road...

How much of a mistake is in a wrong decision and how much of a wrong decision is in a mistake?
Today something bad happened, and it was my fault, and it was other people's fault as well, and maybe, in the end, it was nobody's fault...
  Please, bear with me for a while...

I guess when I think of decision making and bad consequences, I often think of the simpler ones, the less harmful ones.
Every morning, I get up and as I'm leaving the apartment, I see my bus drive past, and then I think: "Well, if I hadn't gone back to check whether or not I forgot to turn off the lights, I would've caught that bus."
 But then another bus comes along in about 30 minutes, and it's not the end of the world. At most, I'm a few minutes late getting where I need to be.
But what if the consequences aren't as simple? What if they're not as harmless? In this very simple example, is going back to check the lights a mistake or a bad decision, and is the fact that I hadn't left anything on irrelevant? If the lights had been on, going back would've been a good decision, wouldn't it?
So the outcome does influence how we see our decisions. Think about it, all our "should've, could've, would've"s are based on what we know came later... At least mine are. In retrospect, everything is so much clearer, isn't it?

And after thinking about the daily morning doubts, I always wind up going back to the first time I got mugged. I was at a bus stop and two identical buses came by. One was standing room only, so to speak, and the other still had some vacant seats. Of course I took the second bus. Along the way the two buses got separated because the first one had to keep stopping so people could get off. When it got to my stop, I was the only one to get out, and the streets were pretty empty even though it wasn't late in the day. By bad luck, I ran into the guys who wound up shoving a gun in my face as soon as I turned onto my street. The thing is, if I'd taken the other bus, I would have gotten there after they'd ridden past, and we wouldn't have run into each other... So I always think about that moment when I chose that second bus instead of the first (don't get me wrong, I'll still choose an empty bus instead of a sardine truck any day). If it hadn't been for what happened later, would I ever even think of getting on that bus as a bad decision? Was it even a mistake?


  And what is a mistake?

 Let's go with another overly simplified everyday example that mirrors what happened today in a very unrealistic, twisted way:
Say that I helped a friend move her car away from a wall they were painting so it wouldn't get sprayed with paint. (doesn't every bad thing start with good intentions?)
And say I forgot to roll up the window. (enter the mistake)
Other people came along and saw that the window hadn't been rolled up, looked at the sky and thought "It's okay, it doesn't look like it's gonna rain."
They didn't even bother to tell me. And that was that, and then it rained.
Was it my job to roll the window up? Yes. But when other people overlooked the mistake, does that transform the mistake into a bad decision? And is it only a bad decision because it did rain? Or is the rain irrelevant to what should have been done?
And now I feel guilty and upset because of my mistake, and angry that no one called me on it.

So are mistakes and bad decisions the same thing? Or is the lack of conscious reasoning that which defines a mistake? And does that same lack of reasoning absolve us of our errors or does it just make it harder for us to accept them?

Sorry, it was a long, horrible day...

E "amanhã há de ser outro dia..." :)

Grace has entered the giveaway at goodreads!

Okay, I'm been on Goodreads for a while, despite having a shiny new profile and having to start from scratch. I had another profile, and like most things virtual, I kinda lost it... I think I know where it is, but now I think it is going to be easier to just go with the new one. Especially since I started filling things in on my author profile (I still have trouble with that term, though. Author, not profile, though profile does confuse me somewhat). j/k

So, important facts not made relevant by my ramblings...

1. I added Grace to the Goodreads library a while back. Yesterday I managed to add a picture of it. Today I added the kindle version (hope that worked out okay, I did that at the airport as they were calling my flight).
 Check it out!

2. I started a giveaway at Goodreads. Until Nov 12, 2012, any goodreads members can sign up for the chance to win one of five copies of Grace. Why november 12, you ask? Well, because I have until the first of that month to finish my dissertation (or the first draft thereof), and then I figure a few days to recover from the horror of it all before I can focus on the happy things again.

3. Did I mention the November 1st deadline? Alright, I'll shut up about that and actually go get some rest so I can actually write something useful tomorrow... And no, I don't mean useful as in how Trey figures out who sold the captain on the idea of calling the Dysons... I mean useful as in figuring out if the reason the doppler didn't see all the vessels was because our angles were off with the transducer. Oh well...

Good night, then...
 And like I once wondered at four o'clock in the morning: is it still tonight if you haven't gone to sleep yet?

:)