Monthly Archives: July 2013

Barbie’s Dream Job Must Be Pink. Like Her Dream House. (blog challenge day 23)

Coming in to the home stretch now!

blog challenge

Day 23: Your dream job

Do I need to say it? I want to write. I want to write fiction, and I want to get paid (at least a little bit) for it. I don’t need a bestseller, I don’t need a million dollars. I just want it to be my job. It’s nothing I feel entitled to; I know that no matter how much I practice and how hard I work, it might be a dream forever. But that’s it, that’s my dream job. Working from home, with my own office space, writing.

Slight tangent: A friend and I went to see the movie Troy when it was in theatres, and she mentioned the fact that there was, in fact, at least one person who got paid to apply make-up to Brad Pitt’s ass. She said this was her dream job.

I don’t know if that still stands, but you have to admit, that’s a more interesting dream job than mine. 😉


I Just… Aww, You Guys! (blog challenge, day 22)

Dayyyyyyy… twenny-twooooooo… *goes cross-eyed and falls over*

blog challenge

“The best thing to happen this year”

You mean besides this?

Really, this blog has been one of the best things. Not any one day, but as something that’s evolved over the past nine months or so.  I really didn’t expect that anyone would read it. Why would you? This is my senseless rambling, my works in progress, my thoughts on writing and life that are no more insightful (and far less experienced) than what you could find elsewhere. But I’m part of a community here, of interconnected blogs and people commenting on each other’s posts and being all supportive and stuff. It’s forced me to write when I didn’t think I could, it’s given me a chance to share and explore in new ways, and it’s helped me build up the courage to actually let people see my fiction, which is in some ways more personal than anything else I write here.

So thank you all for this gift, for being here with me, for reading, for liking just to say you stopped by, for commenting, and for putting yourselves out there on your own blogs, where you inspire me every day.

Group hug! Aww.


Sunday ROW80 Update: Turkey Soup Edition

Good (whatever time of day it is), everyone! I hope you’re having a great weekend, whatever that means to you.

It’s time for my ROW80 update. I got a bit of work done this morning, but got sidetracked by this:

20130721-113024.jpg
I cooked a turkey a few days ago, and yesterday (for the first time ever), I made soup stock from the carcass. We’ll see how this goes…

Anyway, back to my goals! Since one project is off with readers (can you feel me trying to emotionally detach myself from it?), I’m working on finalizing the outline for the next book. So far, so good… I won’t be working while we’re away, but when we get back the goal will be 1500 words a day. I guess I won’t be posting updates while we’re gone, either. Weird.

As far as reading goals go, I’ve started alpha reading an interesting story, an another book made me burn something I was cooking. Silly book.

I’m off to try that soup, now. Stop by the link and see what all of the other people participating in this Round of Words are up to!


Mmm-mmm good (blog challenge day 21)

Let’s hope for something cheery today…

blog challenge

“Your 10 favourite foods”

In no particular order:

  • crab legs/lobster (cold with hot butter)
  • Lindor chocolates
  • toutons (NOT something you should eat frequently. Or ever, really. But SO good!)
  • black cherries
  • raspberries
  • whipped cream (on fruit, jell-o, meringues, sweet coffee beverages, in a cup… whatever)
  • mashed potatoes
  • hot wings (I make the best ones ever, no lie)
  • Cantonese Chow Mein (but only from this one, amazing place near my parents’ house. It’s perfect)
  • Chicken Shwarma (again, from a place near my parents’ house, but a different place. I swear they put crack in the white sauce. ADDICTIVE.)

I like food. A lot. I could gorge myself on fresh fruit every day, maybe a nice cheese tray. Throw some fresh bread in there and a cup of tea in there, I’d probably be good forever. But those things up there… they make life wonderful. 🙂


A Bad Time (Day 20)

SKIP THIS ONE. SERIOUSLY. I’m only posting so as not to leave the challenge incomplete. Go look at something entertaining. Now.

I really wasn’t looking forward to writing this, but stupid Past Me didn’t write this one in advance, so Present Me has to take care of it now. Up yours, Past Me!

I’m supposed to tell you about a difficult time in my life. I can think of a few. Four BIG rounds with depression (and many other times when it just sneaked up behind me and punched me in the back of the head for fun. Asshole).

The single “difficult time” that comes to mind is when I was pregnant for the second time. Now, you all know I love my children. I think they’re amazing, and they were worth every bit of pain I went through to get them this far. But they were both surprises, and our situation was less than ideal for having children both times (yes, we were using birth control. Apparently only performing demolition on my insides could stop this from happening again). At the time, all I knew was that I didn’t think I could go on. Looking back, I can see this highly-imperfect storm of factors:

  • Simon (#1) still wasn’t sleeping through the night, and I was exhausted
  • AJ was working full-time and I was working part-time when he could be home. We hardly ever saw each other, and it was putting a lot of strain on our marriage
  • I was on antidepressants that turned me into an emotional zombie before I got pregnant, and that did other horrible things to our marriage. I actually don’t know how Ike happened…
  • We were both working, but in retail. We lived in a crappy basement apartment. We had less than no money. We were in debt recovery over credit cards we’d used to buy groceries, trying to pay off that and student loans and still buy those groceries.
  • AJ was miserable, but he’s never agreed to be checked out for depression. He was definitely depressed at that time, but not getting any kind of help for it. He worked, he hated his job, he came home to a messy apartment because I had no energy or motivation or will to live. Not good, and I felt guilty about that. I still do.
  • Pregnancy hormones do horrible things to me. 40 weeks of morning sickness was actually the highlight. I was in so much emotional pain (the hormones got past the antidepressants and pushed me into the sub-basement of depression) that I couldn’t function. I was having panic attacks. I was exhausted. I wanted to sleep all the time, but I had a kid who needed me.
  • I wanted to not be alive anymore. I couldn’t kill myself (not with a kid who needed me and another one that literally couldn’t survive without me). I just wanted to be dead.

When you have depression (major depression, clinical depression, not emo-ism), pain and darkness consume you. You want to look on the bright side, see that life is worth living, but there’s just nothing there.  Most of the time when I was dealing with it, I felt so much like this comic that it’s frightening for me to read this:

Depression part Two (really worth a read if you haven’t yet, whether you have Depression or just want to understand why we can’t just pull ourselves out of it and BE HAPPY, DAMMIT)

When I was pregnant, I had that emotional nothingness AND tears,  anxiety, soul-crushing sadness and hopelessness. Don’t ask me how you can have both, but you can.

How did that turn out? Well, the sun kept on rising, so I had no choice but to keep plodding through my life. I went back to the psychiatrist who had treated me during my first pregnancy, and she put me on a second antidepressant, because obviously Effexor (the drug from hell) wasn’t doing what it should. I got through it. AJ got through it. Simon got through it without being neglected or damaged. The cats got through it, but probably could have used more-frequent litter box scoopings. We survived. There were some better days, especially with Simon (have I told you how he used to do all of the dances from Hairspray?), but mostly it was survival. Existence. Trying not to let the bad parts consume me.

GOOD EFFING TIMES.

And then AJ got into the RCMP. When Ike was two months old, he had to leave for six months. Things got better once he was back with us, but I think I’ve put you through enough for today.

Well, I feel better. Or not. Thanks a lot, blog challenge.


Holy Crap, Did I Finish Something Before the Deadline?!

*deep breaths*

Friends, it’s as done as it’s going to get for now. I’m in the process of contacting people who have so generously offered to beta read for me (let me know if I miss you, my notes are gone), and then I can get to work formatting for them, sending it off, and then cowering in my basement while I wait for them to beat the crap out of me my book.

Actually, this is good timing. I’m going on vacation next week. I’m going to be reading (finishing one book, alpha reading another), resting, hanging out with the best family in the world*, and trying to give my brain a break.

My brain might not want a break, which could be awkward, but we’ll try that.

And above all, NOT thinking about my book.

HAHAHA! Just kidding. I’ll be worse than a new mother who’s sent her baby to live at the circus for a while.

*Sorry, other families.


Let Me Show You Them (blog challenge Day 19)

Any guesses what it’s time for? Anyone? Is… is anyone still here? *checks microphone*

blog challenge

That’s right, it’s our daily dose of blogspiration, and it’s day 19 today.

“What do you collect?”

Too easy.

My Little Pony.

The obsession started when I was three or four years old. MLP were still fairly new; I missed what are now called the Collector Pose ponies (Minty, Bluebelle, Cotton Candy, Snuzzle, Butterscotch and Blossom), but my first ponies were Applejack, Moonstone and Posey (hey MA! Correct me if I’m wrong, will ya?)

Long story short, I had a ton of ponies, and my brother and I had some amazing adventures with them. Barbie was always the bad guy in those games, a rich, nasty woman named Vanessa Van Vandervan who rode the ponies even though she was far too big for them. Jem may have been in on this in later years. GI Joe was a frequent target for V-Van-V’s affections, but he was always Team Pony (and he was allowed to ride them, because dude was tiny).

I played with ponies for longer than most kids my age, but they eventually got put away in storage, where I visited them occasionally for longer than I care to admit.

So I grew up. I had kids. I saw a couple of ponies at Value Village and grabbed them, but never did anything with them. I started collecting them again about three years ago, around the time when I got into customizing the ones that were in terrible condition. I bought every one I found at thrift stores (first generation and third), cleaned them up and made them smell like my shampoo, displayed them when and where I had space, bought crappy lots on eBay to restore, often rehairing them with nylon doll hair when theirs was too smoky or otherwise ruined.

A few of my yellow friends (the one in the centre has been re-haired)

I still have them, still adore them, but I don’t have the time or money to actively add to the collection now. I display as many of my favourites as I can, and the others wait clean and safe in the closet until they can take their turn on display or find a home with someone who loves them.

My favourite? I have a few, mostly my earliest and best friends. But my absolute favourite is this guy, right here:

Yes, he helps me write.

Daddy Sweet Celebrations was my only boy pony when I was a kid. I have six of him now. STOP JUDGING ME. I don’t hoard cats, I don’t spend my mad money on drugs. I just like ponies…


Didn’t I Say I Was Bad With Names? (Blog Challenge Day 18)

I did. I did say that, and not just once. I do have a lot of trouble naming things. But today’s question is surprisingly easy to answer.

blog challenge

“What is the meaning behind your blog name?”

I’ve had blogs before. They had names. But they were (shh, don’t tell) mom blogs. When I started this blog, I knew I wanted something different. Yeah, my kids were bound to show up sometimes, but this was MY space, my room to grow and explore and talk about other things that were important to me.

Things like writing. Didn’t see that coming, did you? 😉

I’d just sent a draft of a novel out to the few friends and family members who offered to read it (including the far fewer who actually did, of course). I was still hemming and hawing over whether to keep the prologue (a different monster from the one in the tabs up there) in the story. I decided “no,” and sent out a message… to disregard the prologue.

It works, right? This blog is a new space for me, and everything that came before… well, I still like a lot of my old posts, but they have nothing to do with this. Post one here, last October, was the beginning of the story, and what happened before that was all prologue.

I’ve been quite happy with my blog’s name, even if it now makes me cringe when I see the word spelled “prolog” (“dialog” also makes me wince).

Now, if only naming books was so simple…


“You Must Be Very Proud” (Blog Challenge Day 17)

Day… Seventeen! We are past the halfway mark!

blog challenge

Today’s question: “What is your most proud moment?”

Psssshhhhh… I don’t know. Is that sad? I was proud of myself a lot in high school, when I was always making the honour roll and cleaning up at the End of the Year awards assembly.  I was proud of myself when I finished 1st year of university with a 11.20 GPA (on a 12 point scale). I know, it’s crazy, I used to be, like, rilly smart-like.

But a single moment? I don’t know. Most of my accomplishments are things that came naturally to me (I claim no responsibility for my body popping out those kids), or they’re things that I didn’t do on my own.  I know when I was proudest of someone else who I’d helped along: my husband, when he graduated into the RCMP after six months away from his family, going through hell to follow his dream and make a better life for us.

Damn right I was proud. I guess I was proud of myself, too, for getting through that six months, but I was with my parents during that time, so I don’t take full credit. That moment was really all AJ’s.

Oh, but here’s one. Maybe not the top of the heap, but it’s something: the first time I wrote a story, when I started getting better after round 1 with Depression. Not only that I wrote it (though that was a huge accomplishment), but that I read it over and thought it was good. Yep, pretty proud of myself then.

Finishing a first draft of a novel after years of false starts and abandoned attempts? Also priceless.


WIPpet Wednesday- Giving Up & #ROW80 update

No, not me. I’m not giving up. Not yet. But there comes a time in every story (or at least, there should) where a character reaches a point when he or she is ready to give up, when things can’t get any worse, when they’d do anything to get out of a situation.

I was just revising this last week, and it’s still wandering forlornly around in my brain during quiet moments. This is Aren again, a guy who never expected to care this much about anything. He’s done something stupid, and he and Rowan are both paying for it.

Thirteen sentences from chapter 26 (curse you, chapter 26! And you too, 27, I’m still watching you). Today is 17/7/2013… 1+7+7-2-0=13.

Isn’t WIPpet math the best?

This is all I’m going to give away from this part of the story, because we’re (obviously) getting into spoiler territory. I like to think the book would be enjoyable even if you knew the ending, but why ruin the fun, right? Sorry I left something out here…

I’d exhausted my supply of magic in finishing *wee spoiler*, but that didn’t leave me completely helpless. I curled my body around hers, wrapped my cloak around both of us, and channelled what magic I could take from the land into producing heat in my own skin. Still the cold night air pressed in around us, greedy, stealing everything I created.

My people know a number of deities, the great unnamed Goddess and a seemingly limitless pantheon of lesser gods. It had always seemed to me that they’d shown little concern for me over the course of my life, and for the most part I’d shown them the same courtesy. Now, though, I closed my eyes, and I begged. Get us through this night. Let me help her to safety. Keep Severn away, and I’ll do anything. I’ll change. If you demand it, I’ll go back and face whatever I now owe to my family. Just let her come back, let her live. I didn’t even know who I was praying to, only that I needed to hold onto those thoughts to keep me from going mad.

Man, I need to post something less depressing soon. Where did that mer-people party get to?

And should that be “whom” in the last sentence? I suck at whom.

So anyway, if you’ve been around for a while, you know the rules, and you know you can join right in any time. We don’t bite. We might cookie-dough-and-glitter you (this is the new tar-and-feather, it’s much more fun), but that’s about the worst you’ll get from the WIPpeteers. Post an excerpt from a work in progress that relates to today’s date, add your blog link through the linkie you’ll find at My Random Muse, and be sure to drop by and comment on other people’s stuff. Seriously, join us. Best part of my week.

seanbeanwippet

#ROW80 Update

OK, we need a Round of Words update today, don’t we? Man, Wednesdays are busy around here!

Writing: Trying to get 4 chapters a day ready for beta readers. Actually, I should be doing that right now… Other goals are good, see you later!

(Oh, and I’m adding the goal of visiting three or more ROW80 blogs every Sunday and Wednesday… since I’m doing that anyway. Looking for more updates? Here’s the link!)


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