Tell the Truth Tuesday: Zombie Flu Edition

Holy Undead, Batman! It's amazing how completely ruined I was last week. I'm thankful for all the well-wishes, but mostly, I'm thankful for:

1. Codeine.
2. Antibiotics.
3. My bed and pillow.
4. Water.
5. Chap-stick.
6. Fast food.
7. Sick days.
8. Substitutes.
9. My family.
10. Ally Condie and Carrie Ryan. (For making Wednesday fun.)

Photo by Heather Gardner (@fireicephotos)

ZOMBIES! I am actually scared of myself in this picture...
(And those are some fabulous Utah book bloggers, and Utah authors Brodi Ashton and Bree Despain!)

Things I Know I Missed:
1. The WriteOnCon chat of awesome.
2. Anything pop culture related.
3. Commenting on your blogs.

As a result of #3, tell me! What's going on with you right now? What are you most thankful for this uh, tax season?

A Blog Holiday - Can You Do It?

Okay, so I'm a self-proclaimed addict to the Internet. Facebook. Rallystorm. Querytracker Forum. Blogger. I love it all.

Especially blogger. So I made myself a deal. Go one day without opening blogger, without reading a single blog post, no commentary. Nada. Cold turkey. Step away from the computer and no one gets hurt.

I didn't think I could do it. You see, I have to read what all of you are doing. I follow, I don't know, like a billion people. What if something happened and I needed to comment?

You see my dilemma.

But I did it. Chose a date. Vowed not to open blogger or read any blogs. No. Matter. What.

I chose a bad date, and I'm just now seeing that any date is a bad date. But I chose Wednesday, March 18. The day after ABNA results came out. Yeah, well, so what, right? Right.

I went dark. No blogger. I made sure my Wednesday post was ready to go up and I moderated the comments. You may have noticed (because I know you all take notes on what I do, *snarf*) that I didn't respond to any commenters on Wednesday. I really wanted to. Couldn't.

Didn't read any blogs.

I did it. I didn't die or anything. There was only that one time I felt shaky and then I realized I hadn't eaten yet and I'd been on QTF for like an hour. So yeah.

It can be done. But you know what I did the next day? Spent like, f-o-r-e-v-e-r trying to get caught up on my blog reading! *snarf, snarf, snarf*

But you tell me. What would be hard for you to give up for one day? (Family is a given, peeps.) For me, chocolate, blogging and music top the list. What would you struggle with?

Main Character Names, Take Two

As promised, here are the results of last week's male main character survey. At the time, I really didn't think it would turn into a survey, but it so did. And I added my male MC names, and that totally skewed the results. Yeah, the J's just skyrocketed. Ahem. Obviously, that post should have been entitled, "What's With the Letter J?" instead of "What's With the Letter K?" (Click on that title if you have no idea what I'm talking about. Cuz it was great fun.)

So this first chart is the names with my MC names. (Jon, Jared, Jess, Jesse, Jarvis, Jake, Jag and Josh included. Holy crap. Just looking at that makes my eyes cross. Why do I write so many J names? Because my last name is Johnson? J's are made of kewl? They're funner to write by hand? Which of these are working for you??) Some of you left female names, which was great and all, but I only included the boys.


And the second chart is without my main characters. Hey, I had a Hunter, an Adam and Ames, a Gordon (the only G in the above chart. Ha), a Zenn, a Miller, a Cal, a Ty and many others I'm sure I'm forgetting. But here's the one without the barrage of J-names from yours truly.

Either way, the results are interesting. Quite a large clumping in the J-N range, just as I predicted. Hey, maybe I missed my calling in life as a statistician. I did complete a brief secretarial stint in the Stats Department in college. Anyway, after the middle letters, it seems a lot of us go for names that begin with letters at the beginning of the alphabet. Z had a nice showing, as did the popular Wheel of Fortune letters R, S and T.

So that leaves me wondering why. Kat asked this question on her blog last week. But it's a good one, so here goes. How do you choose the names for your characters?

I left her a comment, but I'll repeat it here. Most of the time I choose a name because it just fits, or I want to use a nickname. In my NaNo novel I chose Gabby (I know, I know, it's a girl's name, chillax) because I wanted to use the male name Gabe. And Gabby has to pretend to be a guy...so yeah. Her real name is Gabriella. She goes by Gabby when she's a girl (well, she's always a girl) and Gabe when she's pretending to be a boy. Are you confused yet? Yeah, me too, maybe that's why I haven't finished this novel yet.

In Control Issues, a futuristic science fiction novel, I wanted a funky male name. Heck, I wanted funky names for everyone. I named a girl Tyson, my male MC Jag, his brother Pace and the "other boyfriend" Zenn. In the sequel to that novel, which I tinkered with last summer, I watched American Gladiators to find kewl names. I had to look since it's been so long, but I found Gill, Nash, Fret, Van, Viggo and Xan.

And Jet.

Holey Swiss cheese.

Another J-name.

Smack me. Smack me hard.

You Tell Me

So I need a ranting session. I know, I know, I usually subject my friends to this kind of stuff, not the blogosphere. But I needed something to post for today, so this is it.

I think it's a well-known fact that I *heart* Miss Snark's First Victim. I entered the Drop the Needle thingy going on over there. Here's mine. Feel free to tell me what you think (here or over there). Suckage? Dude, you'd read this? Worth sitting down and pontificating on what the freaking ending should be? (Yeah, it's one of those WiP's.)

If you haven't joined the festivities over there yet, you should. It's a fun time for all.

Also on my mind as of late is the trend in young adult fiction. As a lover of YA stuff, I find myself constantly throwing books in the trash. That's right. Books. In the TRASH. When did young adult novels become R, or even X-rated? I mean, teenagers can't get into the movies, but they can read all about it. I'm not a fan of that, which has me reconsidering my love of YA stuff. What say you?

Let's see...what else? What's a blog post without a mention of American Idol? My severe addiction to reality TV has not been addressed on the blog. (I do try to hide some of my indiscretions. ) But it's bad. Maybe even worse than my insane addiction to the Internet. Survivor, The Amazing Race, The Bachelor, Dancing With The Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and of course, American Idol.

I'm shouting out for Adam Lambert. Love the guy, even though he does wear eyeliner and that's not usually the way I roll. I'm also pulling for Danny Gokey and Alexis Grace. Who do you like?

[rapid topic switch]

I've also noticed that a lot of people post pictures with their blog entries. Hmm...I do not do this so much. I wonder why that is. (Laziness? Undoubtedly.) So I'm wondering, do I need to put pictures with my posts? I mean, I like pictures and all that, and I almost always comment on them. Maybe I'm just picture-challenged. I can never find one that fits perfectly, certainly not like some other people I've seen. Maybe that's it. Fear of being picture-inferior. Thoughts on the whole picture thing? Or just my insecurities? (Man, who knew this ranting stuff would be like therapy?)

Whatev. You tell me.