Category: Anne Louise Bannon

Am I Crazy or What?

~ Anne Louise Bannon ~ 2 Comments

I’m doing my hiking plan for creativity and fitness this afternoon and I hit an intersection. I could on and catch a bus home, well, two buses, by just going straight. Or I could walk even further, catch only one bus and get some work done at the library. The problem? I’m getting tired, which given my health, can be a real issue. So, naturally, I went even further and am now at the library.

The book that needed the landing page

The other day, one of my laptops develops this big problem. One of the programs is getting triggered and asking for a password that I never set up. Kind of hard to get anything working when you don’t have the password. I get past it by cancelling the password demand multiple times until it stops popping up. But do I leave it at that? Noooo! I decide to re-install the operating system with a better version for that particular laptop. No, it didn’t go smoothly, but I kept at it until I had the new system up and running and the critical programs installed and working.

Then yesterday, after getting the above laptop going, I go to update a page on my sight that had gotten broken in a recent update, so did I just replace the elements on the page that I’d had there before? Of course not. I redesigned the page (it needed to be more mobile-friendly), and added yet another page because, well, I needed something to link to. I could have just added the link later when I’d gotten that second page up and running. Like I was going to do that.

In fact, several times this week and, oh, last month, when the website first broke, I have skipped the easy fix and gone for a better one, never mind how much this stuff was making me cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Like with the walking thing. I pushed too far, which means I’ll pretty much be a wet noodle tomorrow. And that’s not good because I have to clean house for a thing on Sunday, which will involve getting things cleared away and not just dumped someplace else, like my husband does. That would be the easier way to do it, but then all that stuff will lay dumped and never get to the right spots, which will, in turn create more problems.

Which is why I seem to prefer going the extra distance. Too often, going with the easy fix just creates more trouble. I’d rather just get it done the right way the first time. Or as close to the right way as I can get it.

Take the webpage thing. The page that had broken was the landing page for my latest book (which was released last spring). The buy links had been dropped – not something that works real well when you’re trying to sell books. The reason I didn’t just go back to the old design was that it was using some bits of software, called plug-ins, that were messing things up for those of my readers using their phones to reach the page. I re-aligned the different elements on the page to put the buy buttons closer to the book cover… Well, you can see what I did here.

I also had to make two new buttons for the new links, convert one of the chapters to .pdf and make the page for the whole Old Los Angeles series – a page I’ve been planning posting anyway. I could have just added the link to the series page when I got around to actually building the series page, but it would have messed up the look of the book page in the meantime.

I will be refining the series page at some point in the future – it’s in the queue of website fixes I’ve got to do. But it’s looking reasonably good. I’m very pleased with how the book landing page came out, too. It was the longer fix, but it was the better fix.

What about you? Are you okay with the quick fix when needed or do you go the long way around?

Holiday Greetings

~ Anne Louise Bannon ~ 3 Comments

This is going to be short. I love the holidays, don’t get me wrong. I hate writing about them. If I write something sweet, it inevitably comes off as goopy and insincere. If I try to be funny and mildly sardonic, it comes off as cranky.

So, I’m going to post greetings in the form of pictures, sort of like you’d find in your friends’ annual holiday letters. These are my pets, by the way. I don’t post pictures of my adult daughter or husband in the interests of protecting their privacy. The dog and cats don’t care.

This is TobyWan, as in TobyWan is nosy. He’s part basset, part beagle.

Toby lives for cookies, which is why he’s looking so intently at my camera in this shot. He also lives for naps.

We call him the Drama Queen because of his wails as soon as we come home.

Meet Benzi. Doesn’t she look cute? She’s a terrorist at heart. Her full name is Benzedrine, but she’s also known the Benzo-matic and Purrr-bot. She’s got this weird chirping purr than makes her sound like a tribble.

This is Sadie Cat. We were going to call her Medusa, because she has the stare that can turn you to stone. But then we found out she had a name, and since she was 8 years old when we adopted her, it wasn’t fair to change it.

This is Xanax, demonstrating how she got her name. That isn’t just a lucky shot. She really does sleep like that. We’ll call her Xannikins, but she is also in the guise of the mild-mannered Puff. She is also a terrorist

Anyway, the best of holiday wishes to you and yours from all of us at The Old Homestead.

Keeping a Character in Stitches

~ Anne Louise Bannon ~ 6 Comments

I make a lot of my own clothes and some of my husband’s. Why? Oh, lots of reasons. There’s the social justice thing – not supporting the sweat shop culture perpetrated by cheaply made clothes. Also, I like doing it. It’s creative and can be very interesting.

Now, don’t get too excited. I did not say I’m that good at it. I know too many people whose skills outstrip my own several times over. It’s just something I do. Okay?

It’s not that I’m disparaging myself, mind you. I’m happy to accept praise for my cooking, and my writing. It’s just kind of embarrassing when people gush about something that I’m not that good at. Trust me. I have never sewn a straight seam in my life. My topstitching is chronically crooked, and you do not want to know how many outfits I’ve had to give away because they didn’t fit, or because, like the last shirt I made for my husband, I put the sleeves on backwards.

What is interesting, in regards to the purpose of this forum, is how my interest in fabrics and needle crafts creeps into most of my writing. For example, in the 1920s, Freddie and Kathy series, when I had to figure out what industry had made Freddie Little’s family so extremely wealthy, I chose the textile industry. Aside from the fact that it is one of the oldest industries in the U.S., and Freddie is from Old Money, it’s something I like.

For the Old Los Angeles series, yes, Maddie Wilcox is a winemaker because my husband makes wine and I wanted a character that did, too. But Maddie is also a clothes horse – she will describe everyone’s outfits before she’ll describe anything else. I love historical clothing.

Then there’s the character who actually sews: Lisa Wycherly. Lisa and Sid Hackbirn have been a part of my life since 1982, when I first started writing That Old Cloak and Dagger Routine. It’s kind of a cozy spy novel, extended romance, occasional murder mystery series. I’m working on re-writing it now. The first four books are available now, and I’m getting book five, Sad Lisa, ready to appear on my personal blog for my Friday fiction serial. In fact, it will debut on December 6.

The thing is, as Lisa came to life, I wanted her to have a family and interests of her own. Sid doesn’t have any family and his hobby is sleeping around. Lisa, who is still a virgin and likely to stay that way for her own reasons, needed a life apart from being a member of a top-secret organization within the FBI. So, Lisa is religious, like me, and she sews and knits, although at the time I wrote her, I was not nearly as advanced a knitter as she is. Nor was I that advanced at sewing, either.

Which is kind of creating a problem now that I’m re-writing the series. You see, I’ve left it set in the original time that I wrote it. Why not? I’ve got all the dialogue and slang. A lot of the daily life details are all in the text, so I don’t have to hunt them down as much. Only there are some details that aren’t in the original text that I want to add. I’m trying to remember when I got my overlock machine, for example. Also known as a serger, they were around during the early to mid-80s, but mostly in industrial settings. My only problem is that if I didn’t get mine until the early 90s, having Lisa use one when it’s only 1984 would be bad.

Will I do another character who sews? I don’t know. I might. It would work well in the cozy world, in general. On the other hand, I do have one additional character in the queue who makes wine. I want to get that series started first. And, in the meantime, I am continuing to develop my sewing skills. Like remembering to put the sleeves on the shirt in the right direction. Sigh.

Anne Louise Bannon Would Like to Introduce Herself, But…

~ Anne Louise Bannon ~ 6 Comments

Photo of Anne Louise Bannon's desktop to illustrate why she's writing such a quick introduction.Is it the Third Thursday already? Shavings! (Note to self, check to see why reminders didn’t pop up). (Note to self, stop ignoring your reminders).

Hi, I’m Anne Louise Bannon. I’m supposed to be introducing myself, and my intent was to offer you a breezy little look at who I am, introduce you to the household critters, that sort of thing.

Only I’d really rather be working on my novel right now. It’s at that place where things are falling together, even though I’m really annoyed about having to off an otherwise inoffensive, nice guy of a character because it’s better for the plot.

And it’s not like I don’t have other distractions. We all do. I have a house that I need to help keep liveable, and while the dust generally waits around here, my feet sticking to the floor must be dealt with. And my husband needs clean shirts – only fair since he does the dishes. Plus the dog wants out again. The cats, as usual, can’t make up their minds, and the more I want them to, the longer they take to do it. Plus there’s the money gig which needs attention – I’ve gotten rather fond of eating, you know.

So, this is going to be quick. I’m Anne. I write the Freddie and Kathy series, set in the 1920s, the Old Los Angeles series, set in 1870 (the novel I want to get back to is the third in this one). I have a lovely husband, one adult daughter, and the critters, who I name because they don’t have the same privacy issues the kid and the spouse do. TobyWan is our basset/beagle mix. There’s the older cat Sadie, who should be Medusa, and the two young cats, Xanax and Benzedrine. There is a story behind the names, but that will have to wait until next month or some other time.

I need to get back to Death of the Chinese Field Hands. Maddie is in full interrogation mode and I need to write that.