Mind Control

When I was younger, you could find me nearly every week in the Occult section at the library. I loved reading about Astrology, palm readings, past life experiences, ghosts and hauntings, psychic phenomena, you name it. Now with a husband who's a skeptic and a father-in-law who's a very good amateur magician, I'm finding it harder and harder to take at face value what I read and what I see on TV when it comes to otherworldly events. Years ago when he first came on the scene, I wanted to believe John Edwards was real (not a douche as South Park claimed on their show). But when my father-in-law demonstrated to me a cold reading and the process behind it, well, I could actually say that South Park was right about something, yet again (it's actually a brilliant show if you get past the poop and fart jokes). So now I'm constantly looking at the different angles and trying to find the simplest explanation for the supposedly psychic or paranormal events first before believing everything I see or read.

But I want to. Oh, I so want ghosts to be real and for some humans to really have the power to tell the future, read minds, and find missing persons. Which is why I continue to write about the paranormal and explore and read about it.

However, recently, I've been watching Mind Control on SciFi with Derren Brown. He's a mentalist and seems as if he can actually read people's minds and control their actions. What's great about this show is that he demonstrates some tricks that magicians use in their acts and tricks that psychics claim are real. And what I find fascinating (and somewhat scary) is how the mind works. I've always loved psychology and Derren shows how he can use some principles of that science along with stage magic, suggestion, and misdirection to aid him in seemingly reading a person's mind, changing their perspective, and predicting their actions or even lifestyles. After some of the bits, he'll briefly demonstrate the techniques behind it, for example:

• Recently, there was a stream of robberies in Russia of people on the street losing their wallets and other personal items. Were they robbed at gunpoint and pick pocketed? No. They willingly gave these items over to the robbers, not even realizing it until it was over. Derren demonstrated this technique on the streets of London and New York (where you think most people are savvy to every trick in the book). He was able to use polite conversation to misdirect the victim and through the power of suggestion get them to hand over their bottled water, keys, and even watches and then they walked away before realizing what happened.
• He went into a jewelry story in New York city and by misdirection paid for his purchase using blank sheets of paper and the clerk didn't realize it until after Derren left the store.
• He chose a random person on the street and changed their watch to a time which Derren guessed they would say. Through subliminal signals, he was able to get them to say the time he had predicted.
• He had a school teacher read aloud a poem several times and picture an image in her head while reading it. He then gave her young students paint and a large canvas and asked them all to paint on it using their hands. At the end, he asked the teacher what image she had in her mind and she said, "teddy bear." What did image look like which the students had painted together? A teddy bear. If you studied the poem, you'd see words that resembled teddy bear and even different letters up and down the lines spelling out the word. Really cool how her mind and the children's minds picked up on that even though the word teddy bear was not said in the poem.
  

Of course, his tricks don't work on everyone. And he'll show those botched tricks as well just to prove that certain people are more susceptible to persuasion than others. For some of his bigger tricks, he'll have people fill out questionnaires so he can make sure his subjects will work the best for his ticks. Really cool! And kind of scary because some of these principles could totally be used to manipulate and hurt others. In fact, throughout history they have, which is what I find so fascinating and something that I'm tying into my latest story.

Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game

When Christina Dodd spoke at RWA last year she said that there will be times in your writing career when others just cruise by you on skates as you're walking along the publishing road. Or maybe even come from nowhere on a hairpin turn and leave you in the dust like Racer X would leave Speed Racer (okay, so that last one was from me but definitely fits more).

Yesterday I was speaking with mystep-mother-in-law who was raving about a new book she just read. She told me all about the 3-part YA paranormal series because she knows how much I love vampire stories. As we were talking, I looked up the author online and the stories looked really interesting and I thought it was cool that the author was my age. I hadn't heard of her books, but I enjoyed reading the excerpts.

Then I read a blurb about writing her first book. And I just about fell out of my chair. Well ... actually I did fall out of the chair and began to bang my head unceremoniously on the floor.

It took her SIX MONTHS.

I will repeat this for those not fully grasping this concept because it is so unbelievable.

Not six months to write her book. SIX FREAKING MONTHS from writing her book to being published. Her first book that she ever wrote! She wrote the book in a month and with the help of family edited and started sending it off to agents. She didn't know anything about the publishing biz so looked everything up online and read writers' blogs and figured out what to do. Sure, she got about 7 rejections from the 8 she sent out. But one agent took her within a few months. Then that agent worked with her for 2 weeks to tweak her story and then sent it out to an editor, who promptly offered a sweet deal on the story. In fact, her agent rejected the first deal (even though it was a lot) from the editor until she got a better offer. Now, 3 YEARS LATER she has a movie deal on her first book.

Of course, for every one of these quick success stories are many, many others who are now extremely successful but who took years to become published. I remember Meg Cabot's speech atRWA about all the rejections and the years it took her to get published. But still ...

6 FREAKING MONTHS

It's been almost 6 months since I sent out my manuscript to two editors.

As of now, I have a knot on my head the size of a grapefruit. I shall be doing tequila shots tonight because I heard that can make the swelling go down ... or is it the pain go away?

Chipping Away

Little by little, I'm getting there with my latest project dubbed Project Albuquerque (or Project A for short). I called it Albuquerque because Karm had used George for her new project in a reference to the Abominable Snowman from Looney Tunes who always would snatch up Daffy Duck or whatever cute critter and say "I'll hug him and squeeze him and call him George." Albuquerque is what Bugs would always say when someone asked for directions, "you go down here then make a left at Albuquerque." I'm not sure if it's because Albuquerque is a funny name or if Tex Avery or Mel Blanc was actually given that vague direction at one time and just put it in his cartoon. Not sure, but it always makes me laugh. And considering that I'm not sure where this story is heading right now; a left at Albuquerque is probably not too far off.

But I digress ...

I finally decided on the hero's codename. After struggling for some time and researching numerous names, I got it down to Raven. Yeah, I know. Kind of simple. But I think it works. For now. Next I'm working on the name for my heroine's organization. I came up with one acronym but it kept reminding me of the Nazis in the way the double "ss" came together. So my hubby has helped me come up with some alternatives. I'm researching a few phrases now and should have that before the end of the week. I've gotten the first three chapters written and now I'm just going through and doing clean up and figuring out direction before I continue. But I was so excited at how much I got written by just sitting down and letting it flow. Sure, it's not the best writing right off the bat but I was so surprised at how the characters just came into their own. Almost like I was channeling them onto the screen. Such a cool thing!

And speaking of cool things, one of my CPs Maya was interviewed on Romance Novel TV and you can watch her on this website. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble loading it on my Mac. Ugh! So I don't know how it looks, but I'm sure she's fabulous. She's working on the next book in her Negligent Chaperone series and I was fortunate enough to read it recently. So hot! And a really fun romantic story. It will be out next year. Diana Cosby is the Romance Novel TV as well, so be sure to check her out. She's a very sweet woman and her book His Captive is coming out in November. I can't wait!

I have lots more to blog about, especially regarding a new TV show I've been watching. I'll talk about that tomorrow. :)