My Other Family

Like Indiana Jones braving a pit of snakes, my courageous critique partner Liz has traveled to the lair of Data Retrieval Inc. and reclaimed my damaged flash drive for me. The saga will continue tomorrow, when the flash drive makes its way to the cleanrooms of Space Exploration Technologies, where it will undergo a perilous dissection... 

In the meantime, here's something totally off-topic:

You guys know I love you, right? I have you all tucked away in a special folder in Google Reader, and I read your posts whenever I can, even if a busy week means I'm playing catch-up on a Sunday night. I have never been so motivated to write in my life as I have been since I started blogging.

But you should know, there are these...other blogs. These seductive blogs that beckon, siphoning away some of my free time.

The food blogs.

I am a huge sucker for a good food blog with tantalizing pictures and reliable recipes. Here is a secret: If I am going to try cooking a new dish, I usually go to food blogs to find a recipe for it. I trust the bloggers' advice more than I trust Allrecipes or Epicurious. Plus, they have better photos.

But it takes more than just nice photography for a food blog to end up in my reader--it's the writing that accompanies it, and the personality of the blogger. Today, I share with you some of my favorites:

Smitten Kitchen: If I could choose only one food blog to visit for the rest of my life, this would be it. Deb's photos are amazing, her writing is hilarious, and sometimes, when we're very very lucky, she throws in a picture of her adorable baby boy.

The Wednesday Chef: I love Luisa. I wish she lived next door, so I could go over to borrow a cup of sugar and sit in her kitchen while she makes braised cabbage and talk about the world in general. Only her apartment is in Berlin. And before that it was New York. I appreciate the openness with which she shares her life, and her almost sentimental approach to cooking. In another dimension, I'd like to think Luisa and I would be best friends. Is that creepy?

Steamy Kitchen: Alright, I'm going to link right to the recipes page because in the aftermath of her recent successes, Jaden's blog has become pretty commercial. Lots of giveaways and product posts. But her Asian-fusion recipe posts are still funny. And her photos have always been some of the best.

Almost Turkish: This blog might be more particular to me, since I am always trying to recreate my husband's favorite Turkish meals. Burcu's recipes are all solid, and she's hit most of the main traditional dishes by now. My favorite place on the web to look for Turkish recipes.

If you're into cooking, you should check these out! (Actually, if you're into cooking, you probably know most of these.)

Do you frequent any other kind of blog besides writing blogs? If so, what sort?

The Continuing Saga

Friends, I had a look at my last saved copy of my manuscript, which was from about March 4th, before the Big Sur workshop. And then I realized the scope of what I had lost, and I was like, Whoa. Entire chapters, little nitpicky word changes: lots and lots of stuff. I began to lose my nerve for redoing it all from memory.

So yesterday morning I got up bright and early, hopped in my Prius and joined the commuting herds on the 110 to downtown Los Angeles, to find a company called Data Retrieval. An adventure!

Downtown looms ahead like the, um, Emerald City

Driving on the freeway in Los Angeles is a pain. We wish for a subway all the time. But Rachel, doesn't L.A. already have a Metro? No. The Metro is a cruel, stupid joke.

The L.A. experience

Thanks for the public transportation to nowhere

(I've got an awesome story about losing my house keys, sleeping on someone's floor in a party dress and taking the Metro through the scary part of town, but I'll save that for another time.)

When I finally got downtown, I had to park, but the building I needed to go to was valet-only, $4 for every 10 minutes. Wow. So I drove around. Why is all the parking in downtown L.A. all-day flat rate? I missed a couple of turns, and ended up in a tunnel that shot me out way over by the L.A. Times. Good grief.

Daylight!

Finally I caved and took the ritzy valet parking. I convinced the valet to let me park along the wall, ran upstairs and made an ass out of myself by racing past security and setting off alarms, took an elevator to the 36th floor with a man in a suit and scornful expression (apparently flipflops and frizzy ponytails are not the proper attire for the business district), and turned in my flash drive to an awkward but friendly young man named Roman.

I had high hopes.

This morning I received the diagnostic email from Data Retrieval. The data may be there, it may not. They're willing to give it a whirl to the tune of $762.77. OUCH. You know how many writer's conferences that would pay for? I just can't pay that much for something that currently has a market value of $0, so I sent a short reply, NothankyouverymuchmayIhavemymediaback?

My sweet husband, who runs an entire avionics department full of brilliant people, has promised to take my corrupt drive in to work when I get it back and see if anything can be done. I'm not counting on any miracles, so it looks like I'll be redoing the work after all. Thank you so much for all your supportive comments on my last post; it really made me feel much better.

I will redo this. And it will be awesome.


p.s. Don't worry Mom, I only took these pictures when the driving got slow and kept my eyes on the road the entire time, I promise.

The Idiot

This morning, I suffered an avoidable tragedy. When I tell you this story, you are not going to feel bad for me. When I tell you this story, you are going to want to slap me.

It starts like this: I had the sole revised copy of my manuscript stored on a USB flash drive.

I use the word 'had' because, you may have already guessed, this copy no longer exists. My month-old flash drive has neatly taken its final bow, transforming my latest revisions into 364 pages of 'fffff' before becoming altogether unreadable.

You want to throttle me, I know. Trust me, I want to throttle me too. Why didn't you make backups??? That's a great question. I know all about data loss. I know about the fallibility of flash drives. I know and I am aware and I am all about the tech-savvy, I work at the center of the information technology universe, for heaven's sake. Here is what happened:

I got lazy.

Until someone invents the time machine, there's no way for me to go back to Monday evening and email myself a copy of the file before it converted into a twisted monster. I could pay between $99 and $599 for a data recovery service to try to fish the file out of the depths, but I am more tempted to force myself to redo what I've lost. It's about a month's worth of revisions, and I wasn't exactly steaming along at full speed. Also, I have a ridiculous, ridiculous memory. I know what I changed, so I can redo this. It's just going to suck.

Please feel free to ridicule me in the comments below. I am a good sport and can take what I deserve. Or, if you'd like to tell me something that can't be said in public, feel free to use my new email address, rachelsdatabackup (at) gmail.com.

I've learned my lesson.

Winner Winner

Happy Monday everyone! First thing first, let me announce the randomly selected winner of my Hapless Reader Giveaway:

ninie2310 

who will be receiving

The Marbury Lens

Congrats to the winner! I hope you will all read these books at some point--I give them my highest recommendation.

Some people hate Mondays, but I love the prospect of a fresh new week. I don't have any big plans for the week yet, other than not traveling. My father-in-law is coming for a visit next week and we're taking him to Vegas, so this pre-visit interlude is for relaxing and getting caught up on my commitments. I tried setting the clock for 5:50 this morning to go to an early spin class, but I'm still sitting on the sofa in my p.j.'s at 8:30, so I think we know how that went...

What are your plans for this first week of April? Any great ambitious goals? Please share them so I can be motivated by your productiveness!

On the Road Again

I'm traveling for work this week, which means a couple of things: 1) A sweet rental Corolla that feels like driving a bumper car, 2) Dinner out of plastic boxes, 3) Evenings alone in my hotel room with my WIP.

I feel like I'm thisclose to figuring out the rest of my revisions, and last night I was scribbling out ideas as they came to me, no matter how ridiculous. It's like I've got a dozen raw blocks of wood, and I'm trying to carve them up so that they fit together in a neat little puzzle. The elements are there--how do I make them work? Maybe I need to change a different aspect of the story that I thought was settled, but which one? It's kinda fun, but also frustrating.

That's all I've got for today. Don't forget to sign up for my giveaway to win a copy of The Marbury Lens or The Knife of Never Letting Go! This must be giveaway week, because there are a lot of them going on--head over to Carrie's blog to sign up for her awesome Kiwi Care Package (pineapple lumps!!), and to Jill's blog for a copy of Possession!

Sitting at my coworker's desk. He is a member of the Ninja of the Month Club.
No, I didn't realize this was a thing either.

OMG A GIVEAWAY

I swore to myself up and down that I wasn't going to do a giveaway when I reached 100 followers. Buck the trend! I thought. Hold a giveaway when you reach 137 followers! Hold it when you actually have something worth giving away!

But now I've reached this point, and I realized two things: First, I am pretty pleased with myself for making it to 100. This day seemed eons away when I first started writing here back in November. Second, so what if I don't have a coveted ARC or a signed copy of something? I can give away whatever I want. And then I looked like this:

I can give away whatever I want? This allows me to do two awesome things at once: 1) Support a book that I love, and 2) Impose my literary tastes on an avid reader. Win, and a win.

So folks, here it is:

The First Annual 

Rachel-Imposes-Her-Taste-On-Hapless-Readers 

Giveaway!!!

I'm offering a choice of one of two books that I loved recently:

The Marbury Lens

by Andrew Smith

or 

The Knife Of Never Letting Go

by Patrick Ness

Both of these books are unique and spectacular. To enter, please fill out the form below. I'll spot you extra points if you Tweet or blog this, but there's no need to go bananas with the publicity.

Contest runs until Friday, April 1st at 11:59 p.m. PST and is open to everyone, everywhere. Don't be shy, sign up!

Putting Out Fires

I missed posting yesterday, because I'm trying to be a superhero and fit in everything I want to do this week. Work, check, gym, check, dinner on the table every night, check, catching up with friends, check, critiquing and critique meetings, check. Writing, unfortunately, has fallen by the wayside. It seems I have too many plot elements in my life right now.

I always feel like I've just got a couple of fires to put out, and when that's done, I'll be able to devote more time to writing. But there are always more fires. I may have to give up on my dream of both making it to the gym and writing for now, because there is only so much free time in one's day.

As for my WIP, I'm not really working on it much right now--I'm circling it from a distance, poking at it with a stick. I'm refining an outline to makes the rewrites easier. I'd like to jump back into it and attack the revisions, but I've got Jessie Spano in my head screaming "No time! There's never any time! I don't have time to study! I'll never get into Stanford!" Or something like that.

What do you do when it feels like there's never any time?