Into the depths of my mind...

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Finished reading Patricia McKillip's Solstice Wood. While it was a slight McKillip novel, it gave me some structure ideas about the longer piece I'm current working on. Plus, one of the characters is named Iris.

Saw the movie The Road. The spareness McCarthy's prose doesn't translate well to the screen. The imagery is stunning, the performances are moving. The score, by Nick Cave, is surprisingly sentimental and undercuts the darkness of the source material.

I am looking forward to seeing/hearing Imogen Heap live tomorrow. Heap is an electronic artist that smashes together Jane Siberry like lyrics with music the references bubblegum pop, avant garde Laurie Anderson sounds and glitch pop.

Howdy All, I'm goint ot make this short and sweet. I have a friend named Jennifer Bertrand. She was the winner of the 2008 HGTV Design Star and she has a little boy named Winston who was born with lymphatic malformation (formerly known as "cystic hygroma".










What that means is he has cysts that wrap his airway internally, cysts in his cheeks, throat and chest. He spent 7 weeks in the NICU and then has had a couple of stays since then with ongoing surgeries and he needs a feeding tube.

Jennifer is asking for our help in this email that I'd like to share with you all:

( Please read more... )

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I have come to the conclusion that my muse is a demented bitch. This is a fair assessment I think of the kind of insanity that has me contemplating an vampire take on the human trafficking story involving a genocidal plot twist with the humans as the bad guys. Someone needs to figure out muse therapy. In other news I still haven't washed my hair. Anyone have a good motivational speech?

Dear fictionwriters,

My problem is this, I've started writing a short story about a politician who gets mauled by werewolves (posted below the cut), and there's a point in it where I segue from discussing the Politicians emotional facade into him getting chased through a field by Werewolves.

Basically? I need fresh eyes, because to me it feels sloppy, but I don't know if that's because it IS sloppy, or if it's because I've just re-written it one too many times. In my writing I like introducing strange things and strange events matter of factly and I don't like patronizing my readers by spelling everything out, so I don't want to give a lot of build up to him being chased through the field by werewolves, but at the same time I started off by trying to introduce it after the attack; going from discussing his emotional facade to him lying on his back in a field while werewolves nommed his chest a bit, and it just felt like I was leaving too much out. So please, read, comment, give me your expert insight.

( As should be obvious, there's a little bit of violence here, nothing too graphic though. )

Why Breaking Dawn Must Be Made Into A Movie. I laughed so hard I hurt myself, and then I read it to p_dilla who joined me in cackling. I haven't watched the other movies, but I would totally watch this one.

Reading up on human trafficking for the romance novel, and another cracked out plot bunny reared its fuzzy head. I'm ignoring it. Because my muse is clearly trying to overwhelm me with ideas and I'm going to finish some things before I start anything else. Today should involve writing and hair washing, but we'll see how it all works out. It might just be writing, eating, and napping. Possibly some email answering, but I think I'm mostly caught up on that front. You?

Whenever I'm creating new characters for any form of fiction, I always use the form below. I think I came across it in a fiction writing course a while back. Over time, I've added a few things to it. I hope everyone finds it as useful as I have.



Character Sketch

Name:
DOB:
Age:
Physical description:

Education:

Religion:

Parents:

Family life:

Employment:

Love Interest:

Most influential person in character’s past and why:

Favorite color:
Favorite relaxing pastime:
Greatest fear:
Favorite food:
Food character won’t eat:
Most important person in character’s life now:

Current situation:

Personal motivation(s):


Journal Passage from Characters POV:

This dress is not flesh colored. Unless of course by flesh you mean in need of a liver function test. This is before we get into the shocking! concept that flesh comes in more than one color.

It was on 3:00 pm, a gorgeous Wednesday afternoon, when the world came to its end. The first thought I remember having when it happened was, why 3:00? The bloody middle of the day? Why a Wednesday, the oddest day of the week? And why for the love of Heaven did I have to be in the shower?

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I was so bored :D I create terrible prompts :D
Respond to THAT ;D

• 09:48 Pie for breakfast--an annual tradition. #

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Back from the doctor. There's a whole riff on medical testing and pain that I could go into, but I'm too tired to be funny. So, instead I'll ask if buying kid #2 the latest Elmo doll for Xmas is bad parenting or good masochism.

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I have bruises on the soles of my feet. I have no idea why that is or if I should be concerned. So I'll ask the doctor tomorrow (it's ultrasound time!) and see what they say about it. This whole shoddy leg thing is a PITA. On the upside since I'm supposed to hold off eating for 6 hours before my blood work I can absolutely justify a plate of leftovers before I go to sleep. Oh locals, my SIL's fridge just crapped out. Anyone know of a used one going for cheap? She can't swing a brand new one, but she's afraid to hit up Craigslist.

Taft Beach Thanksgiving Day Haul
Originally uploaded by saoba.

We had a very us kind of Thanksgiving.

Miss Molly went off to doggie camp so she could romp and stomp with other dogs.

Then, bundled up against the rain we drove to the coast. It ended up being a great day- but raining hard enough I opted not to take the camera out of the bag.

We stopped at Fogarty beach, where the low tide made it possible for us to go along the bluff base and find a little cave and admire the surf with not a living soul in sight. Then we went up to Depoe Bay and ate 'food in a bowl', which is always a great goodness.

It was getting on toward low tide so we decided to chance Taft Beach- which is feast or famine for agate hunting and often covered up in huge roller logs. As you can see- it was a feast day. We spent about an hour combing the high tide line before walking back to the car.

Both of us had worn good, long, waterproof coats and neither of us had stepped one foot in the surf (nor been caught by a wave). But the rain meant both of us were soaked from the knees down. I was very glad I had worn my water shoes and even gladder I had thought to take along nice dry wool socks and my sneakers.

Then we drove home through the fog and rain and got out of our wet clothes and into dry clothes and went to the movie theater and saw Ninja Assassin because grillghod loves that kind of thing.

After which, mutually indulged and aware of how lucky we are, we came home. I hope all of you had a day that suited you as well.

Molly in a sunbeam
Originally uploaded by saoba.

Every now and then the little doggie is holding still when I have the camera to hand.

Mostly not, though.

Check it out! In honor of Black Friday (I guess?) Amazon has discounted norilana's Mansfield Park and Mummies! It's now $12.20 USD!

Go get it :).

ETA: Oh, yes. And if you'd like to get a copy of Sleeping Beauty, Indeed, the reprint anthology of lesbian fairy tales I edited in 2005, or my memoir The Memory Palace, there are some pretty sweet deals to be had there as well. And best of all? The latter is also a Norilana title, so buying it pays me AND Vera :).

Since it's Thanksgiving evening and I can...

1) Post a list of up to 20 books/movies/anime/TV shows/video games/bands that you've had an obsessive fannish love or interest in at some time in your life.
2) Have your f-list guess your favorite character/member from each item.
3) When someone guesses correctly, strike through the item and put the name of your favorite character next to it.


Here we go, then. Note I've not included things like fairy tales, Shakespeare, etc. in which I do a lot of writing. Those don't really feel like fandoms to me since they're public domain (and, really, since nobody "owns" fairy tales per se).

1) Trigun
2) Revolutionary Girl Utena (three answers are possible)
3) Harry Potter (this one is probably obvious) Dolores Jane Umbridge, guessed correctly by melisus herself. Brava!
4) The Rankin/Bass Holiday Canon (guess the BLATANTLY WRONG CHOICE and I will slap you OMG :p)
5) Avatar: The Last Airbender
6) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Captain Nemo, guessed by sensaes. Good show!
7) Watchmen (two possible answers)
8) Final Fantasy VII (this one might take you awhile... and I just mean the first game; I haven't been able to play the rest :() Elena from the Turks, as guessed by weyrdchic
9) Final Fantasy IX (three possibilities)
10) Dune
11) South Park
12) DuckTales (haha yes, my first fandom when I was, like, 8. Can you tell that listing 20 is HARD?)
13) Mai Otome
14) Aeon Flux (since Aeon and Trevor are both givens, I'm gonna make this hard for you; name my favorite character who wasn't either. Oh, and I mean the series, not the godawful 2005 movie. Seriously, what the helling hell was that?!)
15) Final Fantasy VII (I didn't like the game, but a few characters interested me ...)
16) Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (It's a fandom, yes. Guess my favorite perfume here. Two possibilities) Bluebeard, again by weyrdchic Though Sailing Stones of Death Valley would have also worked.
17) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
18) Violinist of Hamln (the anime, not the manga, alas)
19) The Storyteller (Jim Henson project)
20) Hetalia

Wow. That was hard work :O

Thinking of 20 was hard. Let's go shopping!

Kid #1 has just inhaled half a pie. I caught myself yelling "Chew" and channeling my grandmother's admonitions about choking. I think I am a real parent now.

ETA: He's eating again. This takes us up to 3 plates of food and a whole pie.