Category Archives: Just Stuff

Just my babbling, website related stuff — or whatever doesn’t fit in the other categories ;)

Just Stuff

Breathers

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While I was at World Fantasy I was very intrigued by a certain set of postcards on the Freebie table. They were red and black and had a picture of two zombies kissing on them. How can you not be drawn to a book cover with a picture of two zombies kissing on it? I snagged one with the intention of looking up the book later, when I was at home.

The next day a friend of mine had a friend who was doing a reading from her book (lol ah, the ole friend-of-a-friend thing, but it’s true!), so we went to listen to her. We went a bit early though, figuring we’d listen to “S.G. Browne whoever that was” who was reading before her. I’m SO glad we did. The friend-of-a-friend read well and her story seemed like one my daughter might like. S.G. Browne read from his soon-to-be-released book “Breathers” and I was blown away.

The section he read was funny, it was poignant and it really pulled me in. When I saw him later at the autograph session, even though I am really quite shy in real life and not prone to approaching people I don’t know, I went over and talked to him. I found that not only is he a very talented writer, he’s a really nice guy too! When I came home I pre-ordered my copy of Breathers and then looked him up on livejournal and Facebook.

I’ve got an interview with him coming out on Niteblade about the same time his novel does (in March) and I intended to blog about all this then, but, he’s having a contest and the prize is a signed ARC of Breathers. I’m a sucker for ARCs and I would LOVE to not have to wait until March to read this novel, so I’m blogging now 🙂

If you like zombies, dark humor and good storytelling I really recommend you pop over to Undead Anonymous and find out more about this book and its author. There is loads of great content there including an absolutely hilarious commercial for Necrobufrin (the key to a better death) on the zombie community page.

Check it out, then pre-order your copy so you can be cool, like me :-p

Just Stuff

I’ve Been Tagged

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I’ve been tagged by Tabitha Shay to participate in a blog meme. Now, usually I ignore these sorts of things, but to be honest, I really needed a virtual kick in the pants to make myself update this blog, and I figured what the heck, this could be a fun way to do that.

My instructions were to write six interesting things about myself or my work and then recommend six other blogs for visiting. I got the impression, though the rules never said outright, that choosing writers’ or writing-related blogs would be better than not.

Okay, so six interesting things about myself or my work. That’s quite tricky really…*thinks*

1. I met my husband online on a silly photo-rating website. He traveled to come meet me in order to model for some pictures I wanted taken, and despite my best intentions I fell in love with him almost immediately. We were engaged within four months of meeting and married on October 31st a few years ago. We wore costumes — he and our daughter dressed up as pirates and I was a wench. 🙂

2. I am ridiculously addicted to World of Warcraft. Thankfully, for family peace, my husband and daughter both play as well. Danica is far less addicted than Jo or I, which I think is definitely a good thing, but it’s nice to have the game as something we can all do together. It’s not a traditional family activity, I grant you, but we make sure to do lots of things with actual face-time as well, so I think it’s all good 🙂

3. My Aphanasian novels, Swamp Story* and Shadows are about to be joined by another. I plan to write a third story set in Aphanasia this November for NaNoWriMo. “See The Sky Again” will tell the tragic story of the mountain elf A’nuntu. What makes this extra cool to me is that A’nuntu makes a small but pivotal appearance in Shadows, continuing my trend of having all the Aphanasian novels connected in some way.

4. I’m currently in the second year of a four year degree; a B.A. with a double major — Psychology and English. I am incredibly busy so I tend to take one or two courses at a time with long stretches in between. My goal is to finish it before I’m 40, and sadly it may take that long. That’s okay though, because I really enjoy the courses…mostly. Statistics sucked, but in the end I got an A 🙂

5. The only television I watch are re-runs of Law and Order while I’m working out every afternoon, and Doctor Who which we tape on our VCR (no TiVo here) and watch later as a family.

6. I enjoy cooking and baking (though I’m not very fond of cleaning up afterward) when I’m making something special, but day-to-day standard meals bore the crap out of me.

Bonus: I’m attending the World Fantasy convention in Calgary this year. It will be my first convention and I’m equally nervous and excited. Okay, perhaps a bit more excited than nervous…a bit 🙂

Now for the fun part…picking six of my favorite writing-related blogs. For the record these are in no particular order.

1. BD Wilson: BD is one of my best friends and a phenomenal writer. Best of all, she’s promised that when she becomes a world famous author she won’t forget me. Yay!

2. Carrie Jones: Carrie rocks. She’s hilarious, has an awesome dog, is running for office and is an amazing writer. Her novel, Tips on Having a Gay (ex)Boyfriend is incredible. I’ve not read Love (and Other Uses for Duct Tape) yet, but it’s totally on my list, and I intend to buy Need as soon as it hits the shelves.

3. Jim C. Hines: Have you read Jim’s Goblin series? If you haven’t you totally should. You should also be anxiously awaiting his Princess series as I am. Jim’s a great writer and his blog is not to be missed — where else can you find gay fire-spiders and LoL book covers?

4. Amber Stults: Amber is a friend, writer, book reviewer and book blogger. Her website always has loads of interesting links and information and I drop by at least once a week just to look around. You should too.

5. Greg Schwartz: Greg is a wonderful poet who I had the pleasure of meeting through Niteblade. I love his work and I find his informative posts about what markets are looking for what and such very helpful. If you like dark poetry or market information, this is a blog worth visiting.

6. NaNoLJers: It’s probably against the rules for me to link to this blog because I know damn well they aren’t going to do this meme no matter how many times I tag them. I know that, because I run it LOL NaNoLJers is a friendly NaNo-centric writing group that was formed to cheer its members toward victory during NaNoWriMo. It has since grown and now has writing exercises posted twice a week, a word of the week every Wednesday and we host our own NaNo-like writing challenge in May called Writo de Mayo.

Voila! I’m done. I hope you enjoyed getting to know a bit more about me, and that you visit these very awesome links.

*formerly known as Blood and Stone

Just Stuff, Niteblade

Muse Online Writers Conference

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Last year I “attended” The Muse Online Writers Conference and I had a lot of fun, and this year I’m attending again, as a participant and presenter both! Eeek!

My “workshop” is actually going to mostly be a Q&A session in a forum regarding Niteblade, but still I’m nervous. What if no one comes? That would suck LoL I noticed last year there were a couple forums that had no one posting in them and I don’t want to be one of those places.

So please, if you’re attending, and you totally should if you’re a writer, pop by the ‘Meet Rhonda Parrish of Niteblade Magazine’ forum a couple times during the week to keep me company, okay?

Based on my expiriences last year, I also highly reccomend anything run/taught by TC McMullen and Karina Fabian’s world building workshop was also very good.

Go here now to sign up if you haven’t already. All you do is join the mailing list and then in September Lea will send you all the information you need to official register and pick what workshops and such you’re going to attend.

Just Stuff

Introducing Gunter

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I don’t know if there is any interest in this, but I do want to start sharing more than ‘I got published’ entries. What follows below the cut is the result of my combining two writing exercises from NaNoLJers (‘Character Creation‘ and the ‘It’s Hot!‘).

Meet Gunter, he’s going to be the main character of a novel I’m working on in my brain at the moment (tentatively planned to follow ‘Deadmonton’ in my “writing schedule” lol). I hope you’re intrigued by him, because I plan to do quite a few exercises with him as I get to know him before I begin writing the novel with him in it 🙂

Continue reading Introducing Gunter →

Just Stuff, Niteblade

Time For Change

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I figured it was time for a change on this blog because, after all, when you have deadlines looming and scads of work that needs to be done, the thing all responsible writers and editors do is decide to change the look of their blogs…right? Right?

Well anyway, that’s what I did 🙂

The image is one I licensed from i-stockphoto. It’s a vector image by -M-I-S-H-A-, an artist whose work I often drool over. In this case I only had to make a few minor changes to make it work, which is good, because as I’ve said before, I am not a graphic designer LOL The layout is courtesy of Area  381.

I like the new layout, but it’s going to take some getting used to, I think. I’d be interested in hearing what you think, too 🙂 In the meantime, I’m going to iron out the bumps and then get back to work on Niteblade — the new issue comes out very soon. 🙂

Just Stuff

Jim C. Hines

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Jim C. Hines for Niteblade. We talked a bit about goblins and a lot about princesses. Why? Well, because his brand new novel The Stepsister Scheme just got released today 🙂 My copy was pre-ordered so I’m expecting it to arrive today with the mail 🙂

Please pop over to Niteblade News and take a look at the interview. Leave a comment in your wake, Jim and I would love to know you’ve been there and what you think.

Just Stuff

A Little Housekeeping

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The breeze I can feel brushing across my knuckles as I try to write tells me two things. First, that I need to seal my windows and move my desk away from them and second that the year is drawing to a close. With the latter in mind I’ve done a little bit of housekeeping. My Publications page now lists upcoming publications only and it will contain my publishing credits for 2008 as they occur. I’ve created a sub-page to list all my publications for 2006 and 2007 that’s also easily accessible. I think this may be a much neater way of handling things than having everything on one page.

I’ve also decided to stop posting notices about my acceptances as well as the subsequent publications, I will, however, post occasional updates on my WIPs, especially my novels. I’ll try not to make them simple word count updates 🙂

Just Stuff

Layout Changes

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I apologize for the site being down briefly this afternoon, I was upgrading the blog script and then playing around with new layouts.  Unfortunately, none of the layouts I liked would accommodate my ‘Pages’ links, and, frankly, I’m too lazy to try and figure out how to incorporate them — for today anyway.

Okay, back to writing.

Just Stuff

Thoughts

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My daughter, who is nine, has recently started writing quite a bit of poetry — and some of it shows promise, especially when she stops trying to force rhymes LOL. Right now I’m just supporting her…if she keeps it up maybe someday I’ll help her revise and edit her work, but for now I don’t want to point out the weaknesses of it, I just want to foster her talent.

This morning she came to me with a new poem called ‘Dragon’s Breath’ and asked me to help her submit it to publishers.  I told her I would, though I intend to shield her from rejections as much as I can — or at least share some of my own to help dull the pain for her.  Maybe, though, those revision lessons aren’t too far in the future.

On another note it occurred to me that my writing website doesn’t actually feature any of my writing LOL I think maybe after pieces have been published if I still retain the rights to do so, I may post some of them up here.  It seems like a reasonable thing to do, doesn’t it?  I thought so too 🙂  Look for it in the future.