Personal

Summer Holidays / Summer Reading

Leave a comment

What are you doing for summer this year?

I’m planning a couple day trips, largely influenced by where I want to go take pictures LOL We’ll be doing that as a family (Calgary Zoo, Drumheller, etc.). In addition to that though, my daughter is taking her first solo flight and going to visit her grandparents for a couple weeks. She will have a wonderful time; they live near the beach, which she loves, and will take great care of her. Jo and I have been trying to decide what we will be doing while she’s away. So far I’m coming up with nothing.

We have pets that would make it complicated to do something that involved leaving the house overnight or what not, but as much as we love Danica and will miss her, we’d like to do something special when she’s gone. No idea what that might be though.

One thing I plan to do a lot of is reading. Do you use a summer reading list? I never have, but I’m thinking about changing that this year…or maybe doing a book bingo thing. Our local library had it last year, if they aren’t continuing it this year I can make up my own card LOL Basically you got a bingo card with squares on it like ‘Read a book by a Canadian author’, ‘Read a book with a color in the title’ or ‘Read an autobiography’. That sort of thing. It could be fun.

So, summer reading. Do you do it? Wanna play bingo? I’m seriously thinking about it…in addition to trying to figure out what to do with two weeks while Danica is away.

Pictures

Weekend Post? WTH?

Leave a comment

It’s a weekend and I’m posting. Odd, eh? I know.

It’s about pictures. I am sort of looking for a new place to share them. I post some here, of course, but I also like to be able to share with my Twitter/Facebook/un-bloggy friends. I used to use Facebook for that but their privacy options, or lack of them, make me less inclined to do that than I once was. Does anyone have any great ideas? Is Flickr still sort of the standard place?

In the meantime, I posted a couple via TwitPic today, allow me to share them here for you.

I took this shot of the white lilac in my front yard on Friday morning.

Two more pics under the cut–

Continue reading Weekend Post? WTH? →

Pictures

1k Words For the Day: Frost Spears

Leave a comment

I took this one in the late winter/early spring of this year. Jo and I are working on a project together and this is going to be one of the images for it. I love how the frost has just formed into this long spikey things that look quite scary but are really incredibly fragile.

p.s. Feeling much better today than I was yesterday 🙂 Thank you to everyone who commented or dropped me a line to empathize 🙂

Personal, Poetry, Published

Low

Leave a comment

So far today has been a tough day energy-wise.

Firstly, it’s overcast and rather blah out there. My mood is strongly connected to the weather, more so in recent years than in the past. It’s really making me dreary and ass-draggy. For obvious reasons, that’s not my favorite.

It’s also my volunteer day in a grade two classroom. Usually I find that time energizing, positive and fun, but sometimes when you see the issues, huge issues, that these kids are having to deal with it’s depressing. They are seven years old for goodness sake, they shouldn’t need to worry about these sorts of things. I, obviously, can’t go into details, but I’m sure you can all use your imaginations. Teachers — I commend you. Truly. For some kids school is the only safe or stable place they have. It’s -so- important!

Sadly, many of the kids who struggle the most with reading are the ones who would benefit most from being able to do it — to use it as a sort of escape. That really shows me that the little bit of time I spend every week with them is important, seeing them progress is usually very rewarding… Today was hard though.

Plus, some people (of the grown-up variety) I care about are going through some tough times and having to make difficult decisions today. I’m keeping them in my thoughts too. They’ve got it harder than I, no question at all, but they are borrowing a little bit of my energy too (even if they don’t know it).

It might sound as though I’m feeling sorry for myself, and I’m not. I’m just pretty low energy/motivation. As much as I adore zombies on somedays I feel like I belong more amung their number than that of the living. Today is one of those days.

Speaking of zombies, I’m not all gloom and doom today despite how it may seem. One of my zombie poems, White Noise, was published at Everyday Weirdness today. Yay! I love this poem, it’s one of my favorites in my slowly-increasing zombie collection. I hope you’ll read it and like it too.

Just Stuff

*That* Writer

Leave a comment

I had a blog post almost completely written, then I stopped to think and realised despite my best intentions I was coming across as petty and bitter. I don’t want to be *that* writer so I stopped. It’s made me think a bit about writer brand/personality, oddly enough. I’m not sure what mine is. I’ll never be as nice as Carrie Jones, as funny as Jim Hines, or have Neil Gaiman’s hair. I’m just me, I guess. Usually nice, often snarky, hopefully occasionally amusing…me.

Who are your favorite authors? Do their personalities have anything to do with how much you like them or is it all about words on the page?

I know I’ve been known to read books I really didn’t enjoy because I liked their author as a person, and one writer I saw at a convention was so dry and arrogant I swore I’d never read anything they’d written, so I’m definitely influenced by people’s personalities. Strongly, in fact. I’d be willing to bet I’m in the majority there.

The internet has been a blessing to writers who are charismatic and no doubt a curse to those who aren’t. My intention for this blog is to just be myself, but maybe on the days my entries start to sound like they were written by *that* writer I’ll just take a step away from the keyboard before I hit the publish button.

…mostly.

appearances, Niteblade

Coyote Con

Leave a comment

Just a super quick note to remind anyone who is interested that I’ll be be on the ‘Zine Evolution panel with JA Howe, Karen Newman, Megan Arkenberg and John Klima at Coyote Con tomorrow at 5pm EST.

It should be a very busy day for me as Danica has a dance and choir performance in the morning and afternoon (MST) which will mean a lot of rushing before I make it back home to go on the panel. Check it out though, it’s free and should be informative 🙂

Goals, Shadows

Strawberry Creek Retreat

Leave a comment

First of all, I sold another zombie poem the other day. It will be on Everyday Weirdness June 3rd Yay!

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you likely know I’ve been going through a bit of Con withdrawal. It’s sad but true. I missed the last World Fantasy convention and also World Horror in Brighton (and Neil Freaking Gaiman! Gah!) to apply to attend Clarion West (they said no). There is something incredibily rejuvenating about writers conventions to me, it’s something in the air (and seeing my friends doesn’t hurt either). I’ve been looking for cons closer to home and thus less costly in order to get a ‘fix’ but so far I’ve found nada. So I turned my gaze back to World Fantasy in Columbus.

I want to go. I want to go SO bad. It’s a World Fantasy convention, that puts it very high on my ‘want’ list all by itself, but when you add in the fact it’s in Columbus where my friend Amber lives (who I’ve not met in three dimensions yet) I really, really wanted to go.

I won’t be though. *sigh*

It’s disappointing, but I think it’s also the grown-up decision.

You see, instead of going to World Fantasy I’ll be spending a fraction of that money and going to the Strawberry Creek Writers Retreat instead. While I’m there I will be re-writing a first draft of Shadows (you read that right). I could go to World Fantasy, but let’s face it, it would be more of a party weekend than a professional one. If I go to Strawberry Creek I will make good progress on a novel I really love and maybe, just maybe, give me something to sell (whether to agents, editors or readers) at a future World Fantasy.

It’s the right thing to do, but it’s still disappointing.

Sometimes being a grown up sucks, eh?

I write, I edit and I take a lot of naps.

Malcare WordPress Security