Debbie Viguié's Blog, page 22

Welcome to the commentary for chapter eleven! Remember to post a comment in order to be entered in the drawing. Once all commentaries are up one winner will be selected and they will receive signed copies of the first 3 books in the series.

Okay, chapter eleven!

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children does have a searchable online database. Many entries also have drawings estimating what the person would look like in present day. It’s all very sad.

I used the word changeling in this chapter to describe Paul. The Changeling is a horror movie that scares me silly and has ever since I saw it at a slumber party in junior high.

Both my husband and I have scuba dived. We’re hoping to go for certification next year. Honestly, it freaks me out. However, he’s an archaeologist and there’s some amazing underwater dig sites in Greece we could go work on for a week or two if we were certified.

Kama’aina is a term for locals. Many establishments including tour companies and hotels give Kama’aina discounts. All you have to do is flash your Hawaiian driver’s license (which is beautiful with a rainbow on it). Most people who live in the islands work 2-3 jobs just to survive. The discounts help people enjoy things they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

In most of my stories I like to make it so there are multiple suspects. This time I worked it out so that there are mutliple crimes that Cindy witnessed and the question isn’t “Who’s guilty?” so much as “Who kidapped her?”

The year has been a disastrous one as far as achieving any of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. I did, however, say I’d let people know how I was progressing on these goals, so here you go. Who knows, maybe I can turn it all around by the end of the year.

1. Write 1,000,000 words in 2012. Well, so far I have written about 250,000 words.

2. Update my website with new blog posts at least three times a week. Yeah, we all know that hasn’t happened! These commentaries I’ve been doing for Beside Still Waters have been helping, though.

3. Write a series of essays about the writing process. Also, hasn’t happened. Sigh.

4. Create a short film and take it to a film festival. This, unfortunately, has to be postponed until 2013. I do have some actors lined up, though, and I’m pushing forward.

5. Try something new and/or fun once a week. This one just makes me sad! Hopefully I can turn this one around and start accomplishing it.

6. Host a Book of the Month Club. Yeah, all I managed was January. I do want to get this off the ground, though. Maybe next month? What book would people like to discuss?

7. Spend more time on social networking sites. LOL See #2.

8. Send out a newsletter each month. September there will be a newsletter.

9. Host a party at a convention I attend. When I go to Necronomicon in October I’m not planning on hosting a party, but I am hoping to host some sort of Trick-or-Treating. Find me, say Trick-or-Treat and get some sort of prize. We’ll see if it happens!

10. And finally, the practically obligatory “lose 20 pounds“. You would think that with all the running aruond I’ve had to do this would be taken care of. But no!

Welcome to the commentary for chapter ten! Remember to post a comment in order to be entered in the drawing. Once all commentaries are up one winner will be selected and they will receive signed copies of the first 3 books in the series.

Okay, chapter ten!

So, we’re halfway through the book! Although this did not represent the halfway mark in the writing process. When I write by myself I jump around a lot. I’ll write some of the beginning, some of the end, the bits in the middle I’m the most excited about, etc. In fact the first 2 complete chapters in this book were 1 and 19.

This is a difficult chapter to do commentary on without giving away too many spoilers!

It was important for me to show the thought process as Jeremiah tried to piece together clues.

Cindy is experiencing a numb backside and spasming eyelids. Strangely enough, these are the same things I experience when I sit for too long writing without taking a break. Although I am very good at stopping every hour and really stretching out and resting my hands and wrists. This is why, even though I sometimes spend up to 16 hours a day at the computer, I don’t have carpel tunnel. Now I just need to remember to take better care of my eyes at the same time to avoid eye strain!

I do have a terrible tendancy to let my characters experience my own misery upon occasion. If I have a cold, I often give it to one of my characters. That’s why Jeremiah had a cold in I Shall Not Want. What can I say? Misery loves company.

Each Hawaiian island is very distinct, with its own character. Different personality types are attracted to different islands. My family and I particularly loved Maui and Kauai, but as time went on and we had more exposure to them both, we all realized we were more Kauai people.

Welcome to the commentary for chapter nine! Remember to post a comment in order to be entered in the drawing. Once all commentaries are up one winner will be selected and they will receive signed copies of the first 3 books in the series.

Okay, chapter nine!

The three things people require fairly regularly in order to keep living are water, food, and sleep. Depriving a person of any one of these can begin to cause serious trouble and can kill them in just a matter of days. If you go without sleep for long enough noises start to become incredibly loud. If you go without food long enough you can get dizzy. If you go without water long enough the muscles in your body begin to cramp.

When I was a kid I did a summer camp that revolved around horseback riding. It was loads of fun, but it was about seven hours a day in about 95 degree heat. On day two I didn’t drink nearly enough and that evening at dinner with my parents all of a sudden my hand completely cramped to the point where my fingers curled into the palm and I could not straighten them out. Then my leg muscles started seizing. Fortunately even though I was in pain and frightened my dad knew exactly what was happening and they pumped me full of liquids. When they sent me back to horse camp it was with a schedule of how often I had to drink and how much. Dehydration is a scary thing.

I cracked myself up when writing the part where Jeremiah decides that Cindy has to stop going to dinner with other guys.

Zippy’s is a real chain and they are famous for their chili.

When sizing people up it’s natural to make assumptions. These assumptions come from a variety of factors including the way someone acts, the way they talk, their body language, the place in which we meet them, and even what they do for a living. Kapono assumes that only someone like an immediate family member or a boyfriend would jump on a plane to come look for Cindy. To him that kind of action goes beyond “friend” behavior.

People spend a lot of time wearing masks so that they fit in and those masks only slip and reveal the real person when they choose to let someone in or when circumstances shock it out of them. Some people are better at this art of disguise than others. Jeremiah is clearly one of the better ones.

In that vein, I once heard a story about Marilyn Monroe that was fascinating. She was out walking on the streets with someone and she was wearing a scarf and sunglasses so that no one would recognize her. At one point in the conversation she asked her companion if they wanted to “see” Marilyn. When they said yes, she changed the way she walked, held her posture a bit differently, and suddenly people were flocking around them. I’ve always found that story fascinating.

Book 2 in the Witch Hunt trilogy!

Read the short story that started the entire Crusade! See Jenn graduate from the Academia and be paired with her new fighting partners.

Welcome to the commentary for chapter eight! Remember to post a comment in order to be entered in the drawing. Once all commentaries are up one winner will be selected and they will receive signed copies of the first 3 books in the series.

Okay, chapter eight!

The island Cindy is now on is Kauai which is the one I’ve lived on.

The mad dash through the airport! I had to do that once with my parents. Our ride to the airport arrived over an hour late. Dad sent mom and I through security while he checked the bags. We had just reached our gate when we heard him shouting. We turned and he was yelling, “They told you the wrong gate!” Then all three of us were running again and we made it. They had closed the door and given away our seats, though, and we were in separate seats on the plane. That was a heart-pounding experience!

The house that Cindy is held prisoner in is the one which we lived in our last two years on the island. In fact, the room she’s in was my office. I left out a couple of details, like the second door on to the verandah along the back of the house. I liked to open all three windows at once and create a wind tunnel in that room. Papers would fly everywhere.

Hawaii does not participate in daylight savings time. So, most of the year it is 3 hours behind California, but in the winter it is only 2 hours behind.

Welcome to the commentary for chapter seven! Remember to post a comment in order to be entered in the drawing. Once all commentaries are up one winner will be selected and they will receive signed copies of the first 3 books in the series.

Okay, chapter seven!

Mark is talking about how the baseball game he and Paul would go to was one of the most special events of the year for him. There are lots of annual rituals people can have that have nothing to do with holidays. For me it has always been when the Fall Preview TV Guide comes out. That’s a wonderful thing. It’s just me, the couch, the magazine, and a soda for a couple of hours. Even though all the information about upcoming shows is now available online way ahead of time, I don’t look. I wait for that issue because the ritual has become special to me.

When talking people through painful subjects they’d rather avoid it’s often easiest to ease into it by talking about something seemingly unrelated or minor in comparison to the core of the problem. That’s how Jeremiah uses the baseball conversation when talking with Mark.

We lived in southern California for five years and I am not a fan of LAX. Whenever people would fly in to see us, we’d always steer them toward John Wayne airport instead. It was closer and not nearly the nightmare that LAX can be.

My grandparents had to circle the airport once for over an hour after our plane had landed waiting to pick us up. What had happened was that one of our suitcases had been shredded and another was missing and I was prowling around looking for the missing one while my parents were trying to deal with the shredded one and the paperwork for the missing one. It took over 3 hours to get out of there. My grandparents finally took me someplace to eat and we went back for my parents. I have half a dozen crazy airport stories but this is the one that deals with people waiting to pick other people up.

At the end of the chapter Jeremiah realizes he’s shaking and that it’s because he’s gone into shock. I’ve had the great displeasure of this happening to me on three different occasions. Blech.

Welcome to the commentary for chapter six! Remember to post a comment in order to be entered in the drawing. Once all commentaries are up one winner will be selected and they will receive signed copies of the first 3 books in the series.

Okay, chapter six!

Here Mark says he feels like a bit of a leper. In Hawaii, on the island of Molokai, there used to be a leper colony. You can visit the site, but it’s an incredibly difficult trek.

I myself get motion sick very easily. However, I must sing the praises of Marezine motion sickness pills which have always worked wonders for me. On a dinner cruise in Hawaii when I was about 6 my mother and I were the only ones who had taken motion sickness pills. The sea got really rough and all the other passengers were hanging out the windows of the cabin being ill. Mom and I were in the middle of the boat enjoying the band. When they realized that no one but us really cared what they were playing they asked me if I wanted to sing. I gave a very rousing rendition of Jesus Loves Me.

Wahine means woman in Hawaiian. Kane is man. If you use public restrooms in the islands these are the words you will see on the doors.

And in this chapter we see Cindy doing something she didn’t think she could. She can, indeed, go into the ocean.

The yacht is called Pearl of the Deep. I wrote a retold fairy tale about the Little Mermaid and it was called Midnight Pearls. Because of this, every time I have to name a ship it tends to have Pearl somewhere in the title.

And, in typical Cindy fashion, she’s out of the frying pan and into the fire.