News

Unchanged is now available on Smashwords! It's still $0.99, too! There are more formats to choose from (I haven't previewed them all yet, but the .mobi looks good).

I am also preparing A Dark-Adapted Eye for publication. Here is a brief description of it:

Nineteen-year-old Asha lives in Las Secas, a fictional southwestern city put under quarantine after hundreds of vampires inexplicably infiltrated it one year ago. Now they rule the city at night and it isn't safe for humans to be out after dark. But one night at a club Asha's life is changed forever when she meets the mysterious vampire Rade, who bit her when she was a child. Suddenly she finds herself drawn into a darker world than she ever knew existed.

Then Asha's brother is kidnapped and there is no one to help her find him except the vampire Rade. Both compelled and disgusted by him, Asha soon learns of the chilling prophecy that brought vampires to Las Secas. She must figure out how to stay alive and how to save her brother before the night of the lunar eclipse, when the prophecy will reach fulfillment. Only Asha's quest for her brother and her love for Les, her brother's best friend, keep her from surrendering to darkness.

Exciting, right? Thanks for reading!

subconscious brilliance

I love those half-asleep breakthroughs that miraculously solve all the problems I'm dealing with in whatever book I'm currently writing. Assuming I can remember them in the morning, that is. (Sometimes those glorious ideas have been lost, sadly.)

Experimenting with covers.

I've been making potential covers for A Dark-Adapted Eye in case I self-publish it (which is a possibility, of course). Here are my two favorites so far. I'm really leaning toward the second one because to me it better captures the vibe of the story. It's sort of space-y, which is good since the main character is interested in astronomy.

I did it.

I just finished the first complete draft of my new book, title as yet undecided. I'm sure there will be revisions in store, but I feel really accomplished right now! I even beat my target word count. With help from my great friend Stacey, I'll be working to get it ready for queries. Good things are happening!

Nostalgia . . . ruined!

Okay, this is going to be a random post. Feel free to ignore it.

This morning, I finally, FINALLY got tired of watching crappy cartoons on the Disney channel that are just disgustingly saccharine and destined to leave a child incapable of coping with the real world. I decided we were going to watch a REAL cartoon (i.e. something I watched as a child, which means it's better by default, heh). Anyway, I chose the new-ish DVD version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, better known to me as Warriors of the Wind.

Little did I know what I was getting myself into. Right away, I sensed something was amiss. The voice actors were different, which I already knew, but the dialogue was different and there was some extra footage. Apparently this "new" 2005 version is the original (although the Japanese would be the real original) and the old version from 1984 was a so-called hack job and people hated it once they saw this movie as it was actually intended.

But not me. I found the Nausicaä dialogue atrocious and clichéd. Although the new voice actors aren't bad actors, they were pretty terrible in this version. There's something about having widely famous actors voice certain movies that just doesn't work for me. (I don't like them either in, say, Princess Mononoke, but in that case I don't have an older version to compare to.) Princess Nausicaä seemed so pallid and weak in comparison to Xandra, her 1984 counterpart, who was a force of nature. She had so much more emotion and the voice actor added little growls and other sounds to make her seem more passionate. Another thing I like about the 1984 version is the names of things, like Gorgons instead of Ohmus, cloud climber instead of glider, and Seven Fire Demons instead of God Warriors (I mean, come on. God Warriors?).

Eep!

I guess the story is supposed to be better and make more sense or something, I don't know. I'm too upset to pay attention to that just now. I still prefer the 1984 version. I'm glad the music was the same, at least (like that haunting "la, la, lalalala" tune).

Anyway. Probably no one cares about this except me. But we'll probably be watching my old recorded VHS version in this house.

Triviality

When you're stuck at a difficult part in your writing and you're just so discouraged. When you can see where you need to go but you can't figure out how to get there. When you wonder why anyone would want to read this silly thing when there are many more important items on the roster: meaningful works to be read, beautiful works, time to be spent with family, walls that need painting, a sky that needs viewing, wind that needs feeling—anything but what you're doing.

When you keep writing anyway, perhaps badly, probably slowly, because even if no one else loves it, you do. When you remember you care too much to leave it alone. And then it becomes that much closer to whole and the experience from beginning to end is so worth it.

Blake & Me

My friend Stacey at The Endpapers is having a challenge to memorize a poem. At first I thought, I have 3 month old twins and a 2 1/2 year old. No way am I memorizing anything except the last time the kids ate. Then I thought, Well, I do have that book of Keats poems. Or maybe it's Yeats. Anyway, I'll just do a short one. And then, I already know the first stanza to "The Tyger." I'll just do that one.

So there you go. That's six stanzas to memorize! I've got the first two down, working on the third.

and what shoulder and what art
could twist the sinews of thy heart?

One a day. That's my goal.