Know Your Roll!!

“Know your roll and shut your mouth.”  I used to love watching wrestling just so I could hear The Rock says that.  And to hear him call people ‘candy-assed jabronies’.  It was fun.  I still say it to my husband every now and then when we play.  He smiles and then I give him an attack hug.  Our daughter laughs and then tries to pull us apart.  I would never say anything like that to him if we weren’t joking around.  I may want to, but I know the boundaries.

I just finished reading the first book in a romance trilogy.  The name of the book and its author are not important, but I gotta tell you I will not be reading the next two books.  The sex scenes were steamy and it almost had a good storyline going.  But then it stops.  It went a little too far for my taste.  It’s one thing to have a dominant Alpha-male, but it’s another thing to have a man telling you what to wear, how to speak and what to do at any given time of the day.  That’s where the book wound up. 


The male lead in the book went from sexy man who desires a woman to an obsessive, stalker, borderline emotionally abusive rapist.  And it happened pretty quickly.  I kept reading and reading and hoping it would get better.  It didn’t.  I can honestly say that this book really bothered me. 

I can’t understand how the book has four stars with over a thousand reviews.  I went back and read the reviews and found that I am not the only person who was severely bothered.  Too many authors are trying to take Fifty Shades of Grey and run with it.  Some are successful.  Others fail poorly.  And others take Anna’s nickname for Christian, Fifty Shades of F**ked-up, and turn it into the literal translation. 

I have never read a book like the one I just finished and I hope to the stars above I never do it again.

Why am I sharing this with you?  ‘Cause this is my blog and I’m a writer.  You go to writer’s blogs to find out what they’re reading or what they’re releasing.  Well, there you go.  I just read something that made me cringe and wonder where the heck these romance books are headed.  Give me a strong Alpha-male any day and I’ll love it.  Give me an abusive prick and I want nothing more to do with you. 

Terrible, terrible, sucky

This past weekend a very, very bad thing happened.  But first let me give you a little back story.  You’ll know the big bad when you read it.  It’s not going to pop out of nowhere.  Your eyeballs will cringe when I type it.  Here goes.

My husband bought me a laptop for my birthday earlier this year.  Before a few weeks ago I only used it once a month.  I would take it to our monthly critique meeting (Shout-out to my CCW!)  The laptop had Windows 7 which ran a little slow.  I’m convinced Windows 7 was designed for touch-screen computers and I do not have a touch-screen.  I finally downloaded Windows 8.1 and now it runs smoothly and I use it every day.  Happy Birthday to Me! 

On Saturday,  I say to myself, “Self, download all of your files onto this awesome computer so they will be readily available to edit.”  I never did that on my old laptop.  I’m a little paranoid about someone hacking and taking my work and blah, blah, whatever.  Here I go, just copying and pasting and a little error message pops up.  It pretty much says the file is wonky so I need to review it.  I review it.  I delete said stupid file.  And then I see it.  I see the horrible thing that just happened.  Everything on my USB drive has been deleted.  All 80+ files are gone.  Save one entitled ‘Weres’. 

My mouth is open and a little screeching noise is pouring out of my mouth.  Thank the Lord my daughter was napping, or she would have seen mommy have a nervous break-down.  I begin clicking and crying and looking and searching.  They are gone.  My files are f-ing gone.  Years of hard work and awesome ideas are gone!
This pic right here is exactly what I looked like.  With brown skin and glasses, but you get my drift.  Horrified. I just needed you to know exactly how this went down.  Pics included.










I go to Facebook and do an all call for help.  Everyone tells me to ask Bran, someone I went to high school with.  He is a computer wiz.   He deserves a cookie.  First, he asks me if I have an external hard drive.  I do not.  I use three USB drives which apparently makes me a dummy-head. 

Lesson.  Learned.

He tells me that we’ll talk Sunday or Monday so that he can get every single detail.  In the mean time, Mrs. Nee-Nee sends me a link that her wife gave her.  It’s a recovery link.  Praise the Lord, it worked-- a little.  I was able to recover most of the lost files and the ones that I couldn’t were on the other USB drive.  Bad thing is, I updated the 'other' USB earlier this year so some of the stories that I’ve worked on are out of date. 

But do you want to know a good thing?  A great thing?  The one file that I’ve been working my arse off on was the only file saved.  The Only File Saved.  I’m convinced that the finger of God was on that file and I praise Him for it.  My attention has been on that file and everything else is saved with the US Copyright Office.  Older versions.  Something is better than nothing.

I haven’t written anything since Saturday.  I’m a little afraid to work on it, afraid that another monkey-wrench will do something horrendous and delete my files before my external heard drive arrives.  But that doesn’t work.  It’s actually pretty bad.  So tonight, I’m going to work on my work.  Fearlessly. 
Just thought I’d share this stuff with you.  ‘Cause you just needed to know. 

Boom.