Friday, May 30, 2008

I should be doing something productive right now . . .

Ever had one of those weeks? You're busy, the time is flying, and yet - you get absolutely nothing done.

Big. Fat. Zero.

Well, okay - that's not exactly through. I've got 18.5K words on a 15K limit novella that's only 90% done. But, I think that qualifies as counter productive. Since now, I have more editing work. I've gone through it twice, and I think . . .

I think I've got too much story for 15K words. But how the heck do I pick a thread of my story to cut out. I love them all! And they make such a pretty pattern. *sigh*

Other than the novella - like I said - nothing doing. Just counting down to the weekend.


Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Back in the Blog Saddle

The past two weeks have just been nuts, and it wasn't until I got back from a recent business trip that the 'I'm away from my Blog' post I thought I had left was apparently eaten by Scribefire, along with one for the WRB.

Anyhoo - a quick rundown:

I finished the Sweat with Sven challenge. It was the third round, though the first time for me. I think I could have gotten more out of it if I hadn't had so much on my plate otherwise. I went into it with big plans to be the ultimate cheerleader and fell woefully short of that goal. BUT I did at least complete the challenge - rather early too. From that aspect, it was a good motivator.

My first draft of Cloak of Deceit, is finished and being edited and slowly re-worked and re-written with the assistance of The ABC. I've sent off a submission package to a contest and am planning to possibly enter a few others this summer.

I'm still chugging along (albeit slowly) on my mentorship with the fabulously inspiring Debbie Mumford, whom I'm sure will be a very successful YA author soon, and on my Fiction Writing Workshop with A. Catherine Noon on the Writer's Retreat Forum. I'm not giving either of these as much attention as I would like, but c'est la vie - for now.

My next goal is to tackle a Nocturne Bite submission. I have plans to write and submit at least three possibilities for this. I'm 3K words into the first one and finding it challenging, but am very excited about the premise for the story. It's set in my Zyne Legacy universe - the one from my second novel project, Witch Hunt.

Two more weeks left of school and I can safely say I am completely crazy for thinking I could do all of this at once. I should manage to pull okay grades, but just by the skin of my teeth. I'm looking forward to having the summer off in order to focus on writing and maybe enjoy a bit of leisure time.

I have a stack of book reviews to do, and some already written. I'll be posting them over the next month rather frequently. Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark series is one of my new favorites. I breezed through three of them on my trip and liked each one better than the last.

We've hosted a shrunken down version of the Flash Fiction Carnival on the Writer's Retreat Blog. I'm not sure if it is my fault because I didn't actively recruit enough, or if it is a mix-up because of the admin change - but in any event - major kudos to those who submitted - Catherine, Susan and Unhinged. I will have the posts up with a link hopefully tonight.

That is May in a nutshell so far. What have you been up to?

Thursday, May 15, 2008

May Flash Fiction Carnival

If you are looking for the Flash Fiction Carnival theme/instructions for May, you can find them here. Happy Flashing!

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Thursday Fly-By

I tried, I really did - but I'm getting over the mutant flu from hell (yes, again), had a midterm on Monday (which I nailed, btw) and missed 3 days of work a week before THE big trade show, so things are a leetle ... um . . . hectic. Yeah, hectic. That's it.

No Thursday Thirteen for me, unless you want 13 cellular pathways that cancer can affect.

Ah. I didn't think so.

What's everyone else up to?

Sunday, May 4, 2008

A Secret in the Cellar




A good friend of mine has a short story published in the Membra Disjecta e-Zine by Drollerie Press.

It's a touching story with a bittersweet ending, and I'm a sucker for those. I can't say too much because I don't want to spoil the secret. Just trust me - it's good!


I may be slightly biased, but I think I could take up house inside Eden's imagination and live quite happily there. And she's just getting started.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

I Didn't Say It . . .

But I still think it's true.

I don't know about you guys/gals, but I *LOVE* Google. So much that I've decided to do an 'Ode to Google'. But don't worry - that's not what this is. That will get tossed on my ever-growing WIP pile.

Instead, I'll share something that Google helps me with. I'm a student of philosophy. So, I'm always on the lookout for quotes. You never know when you can use something someone else said to back you up. And, truth be told, there are many billions of people more eloquent than I that have come before - so why not stand on the shoulders of genius, right? Heh.

That's why I love Google. I have 28 Google Notebooks - various collections of things, but one of them is a list of quotes I encounter that strike me. I've dug up thirteen of them for you this week. =)


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1. "Chance favors the prepared mind."
~ Louis Pasteur

2. "A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others."
~ Charles Darwin

3. "Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
~ Martin Fraquhar Tupper

4. "A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."
~ Charles Dickens

5. "The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well."
~ Horace Walpole

6.
"There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures."
~ James Thurber

7.
"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."
~ Bertrand Russell

8.
"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

9. Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
~ Kahlil Gibran

10. "
The longest journey of any person is the journey inward."
~ Dag Hammerskjvld

11. "Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives."
~ C.S. Lewis

12. "An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man."
~ Thomas More

13. "Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere."
~ Carl Sagan


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