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Showing posts from 2012

“Things Every Southern Woman Should Know How to Make”

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Alice clicked on the headline, mildly curious about what yet another stranger thought should be in her kitchen repertoire. Pictures of China plates mounded with crispy fried chicken, greens, cobbler, and a pile of biscuits a mile high flooded the screen, all set off with a pitcher of sweet tea beaded with condensation. The table was set; an apron draped off to the side next to a box labeled “Gramma’s Recipes” in fine calligraphy. She closed the browser and put away her tablet. She was born a Georgia peach, but she couldn’t make a cobbler to save her life. Did that mean she wasn’t southern? Or maybe just not “Southern.” For Alice, there was no recipe box full of family traditions. Her younger years were filled with rental homes in different states and her father’s voice coaxing her toward a text book rather than a cookbook. Metalworking and fabrication held more interest than learning to flambé or sauté. Did it make her less of a woman that her cooking skills consisted of fresh salads
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Into the Future We Go!

The end of the year is coming up, and things are kinda crazy. In some ways, crazy-good, in others, not so much. Blogging hasn't been my top priority, and I've been slacking on my bloggable topics: no video games to rant about, and the things I can rant about, I don't want to blog. So I'll just say to each and every one of you, I wish you Love, Peace, and Happiness. Have a good time and show some love.  I'll see you around the bend!
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The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

Sooo…I’m it. I was tagged by Alexander Pierce , aka @redantisocial , and since we share a love of the wonderful Nanaki, I’ll play along. The last time I was, um, carefully chosen to talk about my WIP, I gushed about INSATIABLE, but today, I have a shiny new WIP to talk about. What is the working title of your book? LEAD ME BACK HOME. Normally, the last thing I think of is a title, and they’re usually about as tormenting to come up with as writing *ahem* a query letter. This one though, I was listening to a lot of Halestorm while I wrote it, and there was a particular song that just really made me feel the whole thing. Where did the idea come from for your book? I had a ragey redhead running around in my head, and I decided to let him out. Also, I was playing Dragon Age II at the time, and I was fascinated with how magic, blood magic in particular, was viewed in the world of the game. Overlaying that was this dark, broody feeling, and it all sort of meshed together.
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Time and Place: Debating with (Self) Respect

The election is over. President Obama is still president. Some people are overjoyed while others are far from it. But that’s no reason to be uncivil. I’ve seen a lot of hate in comments on articles and social media, a lot of partisan nonsense that disintegrates into ill-informed gossip, racist/religious digs, and basically shameful, childish remarks. These comments are often posted on nonpolitical issues. Like a natural disaster. Or a child’s death. No, people. Just no. We live in a country where we have the right to voice our opinions. To make choices. To disagree with each other. This is a great thing. Until we abuse it. Yes, it can be abused, and we can make ourselves look like total asses. When you make the choice to enter an argument, please, PLEASE, for the love of all that’s holy, be reasonable, be respectful, and if you feel the need to say something ill-mannered, rude, and probably stupid, then step away from the keyboard. Sometimes we can’t stop our mouths fro
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Vacation Thoughts

I took a few days of vacation this week, and I discovered I needed the break more than I thought I did. I had ALL THE PLANS to do ALL THE THINGS. I managed to do about half of all the things, hehe. But that's okay because I did things I didn't know I needed to do. Such as listen to hours of music with the volume turned up. Or sit down and read with no distractions. And that is where a lot of my five free days went. I finished Lia Habel's Dearly, Beloved, which was absolutely amazing, and I also finished A Storm of Swords in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin. Good stuff. Then I listened to all of my My Chemical Romance albums, A Perfect Circle, Evanescence, We Are the Fallen, Within Temptation, and so much more music. I missed doing these things. I hadn't left myself time to just read or listen to music in such a long time, that I really, truly had come to miss them. I also hung some Halloween decorations up, and I worked on my costume. Of co
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Unsounded in Print is a GO!

About a month ago, I posted with all sorts of fangirl glee that amazing artist and world-building extraordinaire, Ashley Cope, had succumbed to the desperate pleas of her readers and had at last set up a Kickstarter page to print the first volume of Unsounded. Shortly after that, I posted about the amazing turnout of the fans, and how, in their eagerness to get grabby hands on physical copies, they’d nearly doubled the drive goal. Well, time is up, Kickstarter is closed, and with an astounding $43,383 pitched in by 1275 ravenous fans, Unsounded volume 1 is funded! Funded times four, and then some! Wow! Ashley will have her hands full in the coming weeks fulfilling drive rewards and readying those lovely copies of Unsounded, but no doubt, they’ll be worth the wait.   Meanwhile, I’ll be watching for the progress updates, and waiting to get my grabby hands on my very own copy!
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TV Rambles: CW’s Beauty and the Beast

I’m a little late to the party on this, but I’ve been busy…and I can’t make the fiancé watch everything.   So, while he was out, I picked up my DVR’d episode of the CW’s Beauty and the Beast . Now, Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite fairytales. The prince is far from charming or handsome, and psychological arguments aside, it’s a lovely tale of falling in love with someone for who they are, faults and all. Okay, huge fan of the fairytale. Check. Absolutely loved the 80’s series with Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton. Yep. Thoroughly enjoyed the Disney version? You bet. This new reincarnation, not so much. I didn’t hate it. Honestly, if the next couple episodes pick up a little better, I’ll probably watch it. I’m not crazy about Katherine being a detective, mainly because I’m so very burnt out on cop shows, but I get it. A detective would be more likely to get in plot-inducing trouble than say, an assistant DA. I can live with it. The premise was okay. Mom gets kil
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Meet Pete, My Office Roomie

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From time to time on campus, a storm will come through and knock down trees or limbs. And sometimes, the high wind will blow down a squirrel nest. When that happens, sometimes there are baby squirrels.  That's how we ended up with Pete. I took a call early one morning after a storm. The person who called was looking for someone to pick up the baby squirrel she had found near her building, and she wondered if we had an animal control person or someone who would come take it off of her hands. I knew just the person to call. I called up my friend Jo, who was more than happy to get the little guy. She's raised several squirrels, one of which I was particularly attached to because she slept in our hoodie pockets and used our sleeves for a hammock. Pete when he was first found. His eyes weren't even open yet. Because she works outside and can't carry him around, I get to babysit, which thrills me to death. Baby squirrels are just so freaking cute!  Pete.
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Fan Love, Ain't it Grand? Unsounded Kickstarter Update

Last week, I posted about the Kickstarter page for Ashley Cope’s Unsounded web-comic. And in the last week, I’ve had the chance to witness fan love at work. (You can check out my post and links to the comic and the Kickstarter page here .) Ashley set her goal at $9,800. In a week’s time, that goal has been nearly tripled. There’s 24 days to go! I can’t help but read the comments on most things, and reading the ones on the Unsounded Kickstarter makes me hope I have fans like hers one day. They love her work, they realize and respect the time and effort she puts into making Unsounded such a great graphic novel, and they want to support her. From my comment lurking on the comic’s site, I’ve noticed it’s been the fans that have urged access to Donate buttons and pushed for the Kickstarter page. As far as I know, Ashley has never asked her fans for a thing, but to read the latest page. Even now, there are a few wishing the top tiers weren’t all sold out just so they could gi
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Unsounded in Print? Hell Yes!

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The artwork of Unsounded. The entire comic's like this! I’ve mentioned my love for the Unsounded web-comic once before. It’s a perfect blend of great art, excellent storytelling, and hard work that brings Ashley Cope’s characters to life. And like any great novel, I’m left thinking about the fates of her characters every time I leave the page. Unsounded has a loyal following of readers, and gathers new ones all the time. I always take the time to read the comments section at the end of the latest page where often amongst the witty and intelligent discussions of Unsounded’s world, I will see a new comment from someone who did the same thing I did. They started at the first page and couldn’t stop. Yeah, it’s that good. You can check it out here . Daughter of the Sharteshane thief-king Nary-A-Care Frummagem, fearless and loud-mouthed Sette sets out to make her pa proud. With Duane Adelier—according to Sette, the worst attack-zombie ever—she takes off to collect a
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TV Rambles: My Thoughts on the Premiere of Revolution

****Contains spoilers. If you DVR’d this show, don’t let me ruin it for you.****   Okay, warning is made.         The world goes dark. Now how do people survive? The premise sounded pretty awesome, and it got my fiancé’s attention. He loves the post-apocalyptic shows like Jericho , even the Luke Perry show Jeremiah , so Revolution was right up his alley. We settled down on the couch last night, and as the show started, I was holding out hope. It started off showing a little girl named Charlie who was too engrossed with the television to say hi to her grandma on the phone. Then her dad comes home, freaking out, downloads something to flash drive, and calls his brother. The conversation tells me he knows what’s going on. The power goes out. Now we’re getting to business. We jump 15 years into the future. The dad-who-knows-all has helped set up a nice self-sustaining village. And then for the rest of the show, I bit my tongue. Let’s go back to t
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Ghosts...and the Girls Who Love Them Bloghop and Giveaway

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Here's my entry into this party. If you like what you read, let me know in the comments, and if you really like it, leave the word VOTE in the comments! You can vote between now and Oct. 1st. Enjoy! Binary Socks dangled from the slowly rotating blades of the ceiling fan. On any other occasion, Carrie would have laughed. Not this time.She had witnessed the hurricane-like destruction Daniel had wreaked, and it was a testament to his self-control that she wasn’t hurt. He stood in the only clear spot on the floor, what had been the eye of the storm. All around him,the room was littered with debris. Glittering among the boxers and tees, change from his dresser top and splinters of mirror. His college diploma he’d gotten last week. Things he would never need. Carrie repeated the words that had brought out his rage. “Daniel, you have to move on.” “I promised I wouldn’t leave you. I keep my promises.” His form solidified as anger coursed through him. When it faded, he did t
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Rambling of a Casual Gamer: Skyrim and Why I Love the Bows

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I’m quite a ways into Skyrim now, and of all the weapons I can choose from, my favorite is the bow. I’m far enough along now that I have a Daedra bow (well, two). My enchanting is crap, but my knock-down power is excellent. The best part is I’m not even done with the Archery perks. I will get stronger! I like the bow versus the other weapons because it’s long range. I pop enemies before they ever get a glimpse of me. And unlike some games, the Skyrim bows are nicely effective. The targeting works well. For most things, lower level arrows are fine, and since iron and steel arrows are easily obtained in battle, ammo is usually free. Nothing makes me happier than taking down a dragon with my bow. Except maybe turning their bones and scales into my armor. Dragonscale armor, oh yeah!   On a practical note, I like the bows best in Skyrim simply because they don’t mess with my line of sight like the melee weapons. I have a staff and a war-axe I carry for close-up situations,
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We Will Never Forget

Today is a  day to say, "I love you." Share a smile. Shake a hand. We will never forget September 11, 2001, but we can show we're not afraid. That the terrorists didn't win. We will never forget. But we will overcome. So, while you're out in your busy lives today, remember we're all Americans, love your neighbor. I wish you peace and love.
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Be Inspired Blogship Meme

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So, I got tagged by Hali Baumstein for this bloggy thing where I’m supposed to talk about my current project. Luckily, since it’s a blog, you can’t see my horribly red face as I write this. (End moan.)   Here’s the dirt on my most recent completed project: 1.       What is the name of your book? INSATIABLE   2.       Where did the idea for your book come from? One day, my main character popped into my head and said, “Hey, I’m Charlie!” I could hear him so clearly that I had to write him down. 3.       In what genre would you classify your book? Definitely YA contemporary fantasy. Possibly UF. While it’s full of faeries, it’s also set in a city, with cell phones and movie theaters and homework. Not fun, magical homework where if you screw up your rainbow potion explodes and paints everything multi-colored.  Math. English. 4.       If you had to pick actors to play your characters in a movie rendition, who would you choose? I honestly have no clu
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Rewriting: A Pleasant Surprise

Rewriting. I thought it would be a nightmare. Something akin to ripping my skin off. How would I possibly tear apart something I had created, something that had made my heart swell with joy once I reached the final word? No way. I can’t destroy my precious story. Rewrite? Never. I’m doing it now. Driving home from work one day, a brilliant stroke of inspiration smacked me in the brain. It was undeniable, insistent. Though I hated the idea of majorly changing anything, the urge persisted. And since computers make it so easy to create a new file, I pushed my fear aside and surrendered. (Save As is my friend.) It started as a simplification of the beginning where I finally had to admit that there was too much going on. Then, I had another thought. Wouldn’t my villain be much more interesting if…? And then another idea that made a scene work much more emotionally than it had originally. Slowly, I’ve realized that rewriting isn’t tearing my story apart. It’s metamorpho
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Rambling of a Casual Gamer: Glitches Make Me Twitch

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My Bosmer, Fayruz. Wood Elf, FTW! I am 115 hours or so into Skyrim. The awesome part about that is, I’ve barely touched the main quest, and I’m not bored. My character has a dresser full of dragon bones and scales, just waiting for the moment I hit level 100 on my smithing. (I’m at 92. Soon, precious dragon armor, soon.) I am Arch Mage and Harbinger. And I’ve only been eaten by a dragon once. While I love all the fantastic dragon-slaying, bandit-smiting, ore-mining goodness of Skyrim, I have just one problem. Glitches. Most of them aren’t a big deal. The lag when I’ve played for a while is annoying, but by then it’s usually time to quit anyway. The inability to start a mission because I already have a mission at the same destination was a bit eye-twitch inducing, but I got around it, and it was fine. After I picked up a staff that was quest-oriented and it wouldn’t let me hand it over until I placed it on a weapon display…okay. But the one that sits like a white el
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Of Notebooks and Past Lives

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Once upon a time, I worked in the land of dirt and flowers and litter pickup. And while this world of physical labor was good, satisfying work—I loved planting flowers and didn’t mind so much the litter—it was difficult to write down those OMG moments of inspiration. For example: In the early morning of a spring-break abandoned campus, roaming the grounds in a drizzle, the hood of my yellow raincoat muffling the infrequent sound of traffic on the nearby street. Boom. A sudden impression, brought on by memories of late-night battles with padded PVC swords (showing my nerd here), of an old battlefield. Walking along the sidewalk underneath the great oaks, my litter-stick in hand, I saw the entire first scene unfold before me. I had a first line. I NEEDED to write it down. I learned early on that I have aha! moments at any given, random time, so I started carrying a notebook with me. Spiral notebooks were best, could be rolled or folded to fit in the space between the first ai
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Brain Confetti: 60K

I had this brilliant moment of profoundness that I was going to lay on the world this morning. But that was 5am, I was still half-asleep, and all that awesomeness evaporated from my brain while I brushed my teeth. So, today, I’m talking word count. Not what range a book should be in per audience/genre/attention span. There are lots o’ great places to find that information, particularly some agenty type people who will dish out all the publishing intel you could ever want to know. No, I’m talking personal word count. Yesterday, I made 60k on my WIP. Sixty-thousand words woven together in a language tapestry, bonded together by syntax and context to verbally paint the story playing out movie-style in my head. I cheered, did a little chair dance on my kitchen stool, and threw invisible confetti. Because 60k is a mile-marker, and now I’m closer to my destination than I was before. It’s taken me longer than I thought it would to get here. Life likes to throw wrenches in the
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Poetry: Therapy

The pen wicks the venom from my soul through veins and skin to the tiny ridges of my fingertips down the gleaming black shaft poison drips into the ink chamber to bleed into paper, forever sealed.
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Poetry: All's Lost

His form, silhouetted against the red sky Held a sense of defeat. Slump shoulder posture, His outstretched hands, pleading. Glints of fire far from his reach reminded him of his solitude On a hilltop won by no one; the child’s body lay at his feet. Why? His voice echoed across the land and in his mind. Blind eyes returned the question, burning through his soul with accusation. Purple sky sparkling with white ice, the vapor of his breath the only sign of the living here. Still he sought an answer A lone figure against the night Blotting out stars, Stained blade in his hands.
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