Christie is also part of the fun, slightly wicked ladies of Romance Bandits. I love these women because they’re wonderful writers and bring laughter and fun where ever they are.
Raised as the youngest daughter of the Duke of Kendal, Elizabeth learns a devastating truth on his deathbed: he wasn’t her father at all. And because the Duke had no sons, his title and fortune must go to his only male heir: a distant cousin who left England for America long ago. Anticipating the man’s imminent occupation of her home, Elizabeth anxiously searches for her mother’s diary, and the secret of her paternity…
Arriving in London with his seven siblings, William Atherton intends to sell everything and return to his beloved Virginia farm, and his fiancée, as quickly as possible. But as Elizabeth shows William an England he never knew, and graciously introduces his siblings to London society, it becomes clear the two are meant for each other. Soon, Elizabeth finds herself determined to seduce the man who can save not only her family name, but her heart…
- Christie’s topic today is the dreaded computer curse. An absolute anathema to a working writer.
I’m writing this blog in my twelve-year-old’s bedroom as I sip my afternoon tea. I’m not here because I think his room is really cool with the ladder up to his fort over the closet. And it’s not because I don’t have an office. I have an office. Actually, I love my office with its cantaloupe-colored walls, six windows and a door! I think an office is one of the most important items for a writer.
So why am I not in my beautiful office?
It’s because at the beginning of the month, I seem to have become a toxic curse to laptops.
The motherboard on my old Dell decided it was done. Luckily, I was able to get everything off it and onto my flash drives before it stopped working. I really shouldn’t complain, I bought the laptop almost four years ago. Then I put it through the worst thing imaginable for any PC: remodeling. In between the constant dust and having it turned for twelve hours a day, seven days a week, I think almost four years is a pretty good run.
I then turned to my husband’s really old Toshiba laptop. This thing is still running Word 2000. But it worked. At least for a few days. It was so darned slow that it drove me nuts. I knew I had to order a new laptop, so I finally placed my order and decided not to go with a quick delivery option from Dell. I really wanted a laptop that wasn’t black. Tell me, how can a romance writer resist a laptop color called Passion Purple?? I know I couldn’t.
So, I placed my order, and I swear the very next day, the old Toshiba started to make a very strange sound. I should say, a stranger sound because it had the noisiest fan I’d ever heard. At least it did until the fan started to go. Not wanting to completely kill my husband’s spare laptop and the one that has his iTunes music on it, I decided to move on to the next mostly unused PC in the house.
What’s the worst part of being on my son’s PC? It’s not the somewhat funky smell that I can’t identify in his room. It’s not the fact that I have to pop in a flash drive to write something and save it. It’s not the fact that being in my son’s room is not conducive to writing love scenes. (Well, that might be one reason)
But I can’t update my iPod!
Seriously, I need a few new songs. I’m stuck waiting for Dell to deliver my new Passion Purple laptop.
A computer is a writer’s necessity. I couldn’t imagine trying to write a 400 page novel on a typewriter. It would take me years just to write one book with all the typos I make. But it can also be a writer’s nightmare. Just the other night I met with my critique partners and one of the ladies had her laptop with her. Right in the middle of critique, her screen went dead. Did she have her stuff backed up? No.
I bought a flashdrive and was given one from speaking at my local writers’ group. They are the best thing I have ever had. Pop one in and save everything you’ve been working on. So for all the writers reading this, if you don’t have a flashdrive or some other method of backing up your work, they’re cheap and easy to use.
Remember! Back up your files because you never know when the computer curse will strike!
- What would you miss the most if you couldn’t access your PC?
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Christie Kelley was born and raised in upstate New York. After seventeen years working for financial institutions in software development, she started writing her first book. She currently writes regency historicals for Zebra. Christie now lives in Maryland with her husband and two sons.
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