Thank you for all the responses!

The types of actions I'm talking about are like curled paper or bow actions. Many of them seem to be glorified layer styles but when you start with a blank page and... voila, a satin bow appears, how does that happen when you can't record brush strokes or vector shapes with the pen tool. Can you "embed" patterns or shapes or something? For instance if you have the bow outline and shading completed, can you "define as pattern" and then during the action, set the pattern, apply color and that's all there is? (assuming the pattern gets packaged neatly in the .atn file) 

I'm just curious... I'm the kind of person that likes to know how it all works... especially the things I can't figure out on my own!

I'll check out that book, Steve.  If anyone knows about actions, it's sure to be the guy from actionfx.com!