Patti O'Shea's Blog

Happy Thanksgiving for my American friends!

 

Over the weekend, I reached a point where I only have about a dozen chapters left to write in the first draft of Wicked Temptation. It's not quite my favorite place in writing a book, but it's in the top 5.

Only twelve chapters left means it's time to backward plan.

I do this every book. I pull out my series notebook, number out the remaining chapters, and starting from the end of the book, I write down what I think will happen and in which chapter it will occur. If I'm not sure, I leave the line blank with the idea of adding to it later.

Why is this one of my favorite parts of writing? It means I'm close enough to the end that I not only know what needs to happen, I now need to make sure I have room for it. It's like a reverse engineered blueprint for the remainder of the book.

Along with this backwards momentum plotting also comes a moment of panic. I have so much story left to tell. How can I hope to fit it all in the chapters I have remaining?

This happens every book, and somehow it all always fits. That allows me to relax a little because been there, done that is reassuring.

Once I mapped out this loose map, and identified the chapters where I know certain things will happen, I can write forward more confidently.

I love it when a plan comes together. ;-) 

I saw a stamp set for "Currently" and missed out on it because it was for subscribers and the kit was sold out. I was disappointed because it seemed like such a fun way to do a daily snapshot.

As it turned out, I found another Currently stamp set and this one offered more than the four options of the stamp set I couldn't get my hands on.

I tested it out in my planner, which might not have been my best choice. The image is at the left. This was a couple of months ago, and I think I mentioned, I'm stamping challenged. I'm still stamping challenged. I thought I was improving. Then I did the stamping for this month in my notebook and it was like, um, yeah. Not so much.

Here is my November notebook.

As you can see, the stamping didn't go well this month. It's messy and I ended up changing ink part way through, but it was already too late.

I think this is a nice snapshot of my day.

Currently Reading. I don't always have a book on a day because if I'm doing a lot of writing, I don't feel like reading. Makes it tough with library books.

Currently Listening. I'm in my Moana soundtrack phase. Again. You're Welcome. It's almost time to switch to Christmas music.

Currently Writing. Still working on Wicked Temptation. I have a word count goal, and I'm past the halfway point on that. But the story isn't at the halfway point yet, so this story might be finishing a little long. I usually throw in what chapter I worked on that day.

Currently Loving. I like this category because it can literally be anything.

Currently Watching. This is usually some sort of YouTube video since I don't watch much television.

Today. This box is for a highlight of the day. Again, it can be anything and I like the optionality.

The other thing in this notebook is the Gratitude section. I didn't take a picture of this month's section, but here's a picture from earlier. I think this is October's notebook.

I don't only use stamps in these notebooks. I add stickers and cards and all kinds of decoration. Anything that makes it fun.

This notebook is far from perfect and this sort of bothers me because I am a perfectionist, but I've reached a point where I can tell myself: You'll do better next month. And then move on. Although the fall off from my good October stamping to November is discouraging, but I'm POSITIVE that I'll do great in December. I bought new ink, and since part of my problem was moving on before the stamp was dry, I'll move slower and be more patient.

Not easy for me. I have ADHD and am easily distractable, but maybe I can read while I wait for the ink to dry in December. :-)

Despite all this, it's a nice way to be creative that uses different brain cells than writing, so I get the creativity boost without the drain. The more creativity my brain is exposed to, the easier it is to write. That's my theory anyway.

If December doesn't stink, I'll post pictures of my notebook on Instagram. You can find me there as: @author_pattioshea 

I blogged about my Book Journal Blues back in September, but I never shared my decision or the outcome.
After days and days of consideration, I decided I would recreate my 2025 book journal. I cut out the pages that I thought I could reuse and trimmed them down to put them in an A5 notebook. (I had been using an 8 X 8.)
And of course, cutting out the pages and trimming them down didn't work well. There were issues. Some of it was related to the washi tape, some of it was related to all the Scotch tape I'd used to try and hold the journal pages together, but it was an utter fail.
Then I thought about all the book covers and readathon layouts I would have to reprint on sticker paper and run through my sticker cutting machine.
I had the new journal out on the table. I had washi tape with books on it at the ready. I had decorative papers at my elbow, ready to create a charming title page.
And I couldn't do it.
I couldn't spend the time it would take to redo the journal. I need to be writing, not redoing months of work in a journal that I probably wouldn't look at again. I cut out the used pages and threw the rest of the journal away.
My heart is broken, but the journal was already a loss. I wasn't using it because of the condition it was in. Not only how ugly it was, but that it was also half falling apart because I accidentally sliced the binding strings holding it together. It was a catastrophe.
I have a book tracker sticker (okay, two stickers) in the front of my regular planner and I transferred all the book titles, formats, authors, ratings over there. It nearly filled my two pages, but that's okay. At least it's recorded, and since I archive my planners every year, it will be preserved for posterity.
Now I have a new problem. Do I do a book journal for 2026? Or do I just use the notes pages at the back of my planner to keep track?
There are only 20 extra pages, so I wouldn't be able to do a full journal, only a list like in this year's planner. I'm not sure what to do. It takes time to find, print, and cut the book cover stickers for the journal. On the other hand, I really liked keeping track of my readathons in there and I'll lose that if I don't have a book journal.
The wrench in the gears? When I'm writing, I don't feel like reading. The only reason I did so well on the May readathon this year was because Wicked Ambition was in edits multiple times that month. The year-long readathons? I'm failing miserably at them because it's taking me two weeks to read a book.
Right now, I'm leaning toward just keeping a list of books at the back of my 2026 planner, but I'm still mulling. Stay tuned.

I've talked about how my characters love to overshare--and how it’s my job to be the gatekeeper between their trivia and the reader’s experience. But let’s back up a step.

Writing, for me, has always been about the characters. I can count on one hand the number of story ideas I’ve had that weren’t centered on the hero and heroine--and I’ve had a lot of ideas over the years.

Only a slight exaggeration.

My first published book? One of my critique partners read the draft and said I had all the character actions and reactions nailed, but they were playing off shadows. Draft two involved beefing up the plot that drove those responses. I’ve come a long way since then. I’m better at layering plot and character reactions now. But even with all that growth, I’m still a character-driven author.

Because my hero and heroine leave me no other choice.

I’ll notebook out the perfect plot idea for a scene--something that would work perfectly--and if either of them doesn’t like what I’ve written? They go on strike. Refuse to move forward. No words. No momentum. Just silence.

On my third book, I spun my wheels for six weeks. Six. Weeks. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t write forward. And then it hit me--I had the hero taking an action he would never do. One paragraph. That was it. I changed it, and the story unlocked. I finished the book.

You’d think he could’ve spoken up earlier, right? Before I wasted six weeks? And I was on deadline. I didn’t have six weeks to spare. I ended up burning some serious midnight oil to turn that book in on time.

These days, I catch it faster. If I feel stuck, I usually figure it out within a week. Sometimes the problem is buried several chapters back, which makes it trickier. Like, why didn’t you go on strike then so I could fix it sooner? (And find it easier!!!)

There are times I really wish I was the boss of my books. It would make my life so much easier. But I don’t even get to pick my characters’ names. No joke. They pick their names and let me know. I used to fight it. I tried to assert my dominance.

They responded by leaving me spinning my wheels. No words. No progress.

I surrendered. My hero and heroine are the boss.

My weekly planning trial and error continues.

The desk pad idea? Solid in theory. In practice, it hogged too much real estate on my table. The A5 planner insert worked better, but it wasn’t the answer either.

I’m starting to wonder if my brain just isn’t wired for anything between monthly and daily planning. (For those who don’t know, I was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD in 2024.) Or maybe I can manage it--if I ever find the right system.

Right now, I’m back in my original B6 weekly planner. It was supposed to be my weekly solution at the beginning of the year, before I decided I wanted everything in one book. That plan worked for maybe two months. Then I was struggling again.

The horizontal weekly layout with blank space seems to be what works best for me. I use the B6 as my journal, so I already have the 2026 version. This is my fallback position.

But wait! New idea incoming!

I just bought a planner that is nearly perfect. It’s hardcover (not ideal) and has a vertical weekly layout (also not ideal), but it has blank pages scattered among the weeks. And on those blank pages? I can draw my horizontal weekly layout.

Is it a pain? Yes. But it’s better than things slipping through the cracks.

If this setup actually works, it'll be worth every minute spent drawing lines and making it fit. I don’t need perfect--I just need something that helps me keep track. And if this turns out to be the one, I’ll happily keep my pen at the ready. 

Not all of the shower head nozzles have water coming out of them. Usually, I give them a flick with my nail and that fixes it, but when I did that this time, the water shot out at a weird angle.

I've had this happen before, too, and usually another flick or two solves it. Not this time.

The stream from that one jet seemed determined to stay weird. I also have a bunch of jets that aren't working at all, too many to flick them all, so it was time to implement the deep clean.

I found instructions on the HGTV website. Half a cup of baking soda mixed with 4 cups of white vinegar and one cup of water in a one gallon plastic bag. Put the bag into a pitcher and combine.

Instead of the one gallon bag, I had a bigger one that I got in an order. I'll use that. I mixed everything up like the instructions said, but it didn't look like enough. Because of the big bag, I had room to do a double recipe. Why not?

I found out why not when I got to my bathroom. The plastic bag was leaking. Yeah, I guess the company who bought the bag didn't buy high quality bags. I poured the liquid into the pitcher, went to get the gallon bag, and threw the leaky bag away. There was too much liquid to fill the gallon bag, so I didn't add it all. I also knew the shower head would displace the liquid so I tried to estimate.

With rubber bands in my pockets, I climbed the step ladder--two rungs--and went to submerse my shower head. My estimate on how much displacement there would be was very wrong. Baking soda and vinegar went every which way, including on the front of me, the step ladder, and my shoes.

But I got the bag over the shower head. I got it fastened with the rubber bands, although I didn't account for trying to get them over a full bag of liquid. More splooshed out and onto me.

The instructions said to make sure the blocked nozzles were submerged and they were. Mission accomplished even if I did have to switch shoes because the ones I were wearing got so wet. I eyed the rubber bands and decided I better add a couple of twist ties, too.

It was a pain in the butt, but if this unclogged my shower head, it would be worth it.

The instructions said to let it soak four hours or overnight. I gave it about twenty-two hours. That should unclog all the jets.

Somehow, through sheer dumb luck no doubt, I got the bag off without dumping it down the front of me. Even my shoes stayed dry. Now for test. How did it work? Are all my nozzles clear?

I turn on the water.

The jet shooting a weird direction is fixed! Yea!

Are the other jets unclogged? No. No, they are not.

Brutal disappointment. For this amount of effort and mess and getting soaked, the damn instructions should work. I checked multiple times to ensure all the nozzles remained submerged in the banking soda/vinegar solution and they had. Why isn't my shower head unclogged?

I'm about ready to just buy another shower head rather than mess around with this one again. Am I the only one dealing with this? Does this method work for other people? I bought brand new baking soda to make sure it would work and everything.

 Counting this method as a 99% fail. It gets 1% for fixing the weird jet angle I was dealing with.

I’ve said it before: my characters run the show. They tell me their names. They decide what happens. And if I write the wrong thing? They go silent. I spin my wheels until I figure out what they actually want. I’m used to it by now.

Sometimes they withhold information entirely--until they drop a bombshell. When that happens (looking at you, Damon from Ravyn’s Flight), I stop everything and revise from the beginning to layer in the foreshadowing. It’s disruptive, but necessary.

Other times, they show me scenes that are…boring. Not for me--I need the info--but for readers? Nope. What they spin out in 2,000 words can usually be distilled into two sentences in the next scene. The one where something actually happens.

I’m deep in this kind of detail right now with Wicked Temptation. Cal and Io have history. They have backstory. And they’re giving me everything. I need it to write their story. But readers? They’ll get thimblefuls. Just enough to understand the emotional stakes. My job is to screen what Cal and Io are passing along so the book doesn’t become a series of vignettes--it becomes a cohesive, compelling story.

Every scene I write has to accomplish three things. Backstory and transition aren’t on that list. They might be present, but they’re not the point. If a scene doesn’t hit three? It gets cut.

Have I written scenes that never make the book? Absolutely. Sometimes the characters are insistent. I write the chapter, stare at the pages of boredom they’ve spewed, and drop it into my unused scenes folder. Occasionally I try to salvage it--add enough to make it work--but it rarely does. It just delays the inevitable.

Take Cal and Io again. I know how they met. I know how they got married. I know what broke them. Readers will get the tip of the iceberg. I know 90% more than what’s on the page--including the scenes I’ve cut.

In some ways, I’m a gatekeeper between reader and story. I have to tell my characters, “That’s boring. No one cares.” And then write something readers do care about. Something that advances the story. Something that earns its place by accomplishing three things.

My unused scene folder grows based on two factors:

How much trivia the characters are sharing

How long it takes me to realize it’s not advancing the story--it’s just putting everyone to sleep

I’ve gotten better at this over the years. You do not want to see the amount of cut scenes from Ravyn’s Flight. It’s staggering.

Now? Not as much. I recognize a snoozefest much earlier. I’ve learned to be ruthless.

I seriously didn’t think I’d still be struggling with a weekly planning system this deep into the year, and yet… here we are. Struggling.

My daily planning? Solved years ago. Monthly planning? Nailed it at the start of 2025. Weekly planning? Still a battlefield. I thought it wouldn’t take long to find a system that worked with the way my ADHD brain functions, but I was wrong.

This is an update post—I blogged about this not that long ago, and since then, I’ve tried a few more options. Spoiler: none of them are perfect.

📎 Attempt #1: A5 Ring Binder with Two-Page Insert

As I mentioned, my A5 ring binder with the two page insert worked pretty well. Not perfectly, but good enough. Except that A5 ring binder when open took up too much space, space I couldn't afford to lose. And closed? Out of sight, out of mind.

📝 Attempt #2: One-Page Weekly Insert (with Lines)

I tried another weekly insert, a one page this time, with the idea that I wouldn't need the binder. The first insert I tried had lines. I whited them out, but now I had whiteout lines and that was as good as actually having lines. It made it seem as if a task was assigned to a particular day which wasn't the goal.

It's totally my brain and how I see things, but put this one in the fail column anyway.

📒 Attempt #3: Weekly Desk Pad 

Next up a desk pad. It had a smaller width than the binder when it was opened, so maybe this would work without taking up the amount of space the rings did.

I managed to find this at half off, which is a good thing because this didn't work for me either. The layout was sort of okay, but items got lost even using a dot marker to put a bullet point in front of them. And this one still took up a lot of space, although it was better than the A5 rings binder.

📄 Attempt #4: One-Page Insert with Left-Side To-Do List 

This week is desk pad week, but next week I’m trying this one. It’s one page, but the to-do list is on the left side, which already feels off. And yes, the dreaded lines between days are back. My brain doesn’t like this, and I don’t know how to overcome it short of designing my own inserts.

I’m going to try it anyway. Maybe I’ll be surprised and my brain won’t stutter over it. But if this layout doesn’t work, I’ll be back to exploring planner options again. I was really hoping to avoid that.

This post contains affiliate links. There's no cost to you, but I will receive a small commission should you use my links to purchase something.

My reading journal is woefully out of date. While I like the 8 x 8 size square journal I'm using, it's also too much space for me. If I had time to hunt down decor that matched each book I read, that would fill all the open space, but I don't.

It already takes enough time to print the book covers for each book I'm reading. Decor is a bridge too far for my schedule.

And while I can't read as many books as I'd like, I thought I would share some of my favorite reads so far in 2025.

💖 Books That I Fell In Love With

Under Your Spell - Laura Wood 

The heroine is the daughter of a famous rock star, and things are not going well. She loses her job, her boyfriend dumps her, and—just to add insult to injury—he takes her cat. What’s a girl to do except call her sisters, break out the wine, and perform the childhood ritual known as the Breakup Spell?

What follows is a whirlwind of misadventures, including a one-night stand with the most famous musician on the planet and a job she definitely didn’t ask for: spending six weeks alone with that rock star. There's chemistry, banter, and an awesome romance.

From the moment the first sister showed up to console her, I was laughing. I also really liked how the heroine came to terms with her issues about her famous father enough to reach out and accept the love she and the hero had.

Let's Make a Scene - Laura Wood

Two five-star reads in a row made Laura Wood a new must-buy author for me.

I loved this book so much that I reread it immediately after finishing reading it for the first time. I wasn't ready to leave Cynthie and Jack's world that quickly.

Cynthie Taylor gets her acting break thirteen years earlier on a small British film starring alongside Jack Turner-Jones, the son of acting royalty. Yes, both his parents are famous actors. It's hate at first sight. Or nearly so. The chemistry between them is palpable, and while promoting the film, they pretend to be in love.

Fast forward to present day. Cynthie is now Hollywood royalty, and because of a lying jerk, is now public enemy number one. She's dropped from her next movie, but she has a chance to film the sequel to her first movie, alongside Jack. Oh, and throw in a let's-pretend-to-be-a-couple, something they both have reasons to agree to.

When I tell you I couldn't get enough of this couple, it's not an exaggeration. I could have kept reading them for pages and pages more. Just totally love this book from start to finish. 

The Blonde Identity - Ally Carter 

This book made me snort-laugh as I read. Humor is subjective, but I generally don't laugh out loud when I'm reading. I tend to simply smile at the funny parts. But Blonde Identity? It was a good thing I was reading at home and not out in public.

The heroine wakes up with amnesia, and when she sees footage of herself fighting off multiple men, assumes she must be a spy. It's the hero who tells her she's the identical twin sister of the super spy she thought she was. But the people chasing her sister don't believe she's not her twin. Good thing she has the hero (who really is a spy) to keep her safe.

Once this story got rolling, I couldn't read fast enough. So much fun and lots of little romance book references that I enjoyed.

Final Thoughts 

I’m pretty sure my 2025 book journal is going to remain half finished, and that’s okay. I’ve already got plans to switch to an A5 journal for 2026—less space to fill, but hopefully just enough room to jot down my thoughts. I’m not going to complain about this year’s journal, though. The important thing is that I discovered new books and authors I hadn’t read before, and they gave me hours of entertainment.

So if you’re on the hunt for a new author or book to fall in love with, these three titles come highly recommended by me.