TA DA! Sparkles!

...SOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

Notice anything different? 

Huh? Huh? Huh?

If you didn't, you might consider getting glasses.

Yep, I changed my blog. I'm still trying to decide how I like the colours. I was getting over the dark green, so I decided pale green. Yeah, pale green was good. Then I thought, grey. Or maybe pale blue. So I'm not totally sure what colour I've ended up with here, but it's definitely not what I had before.

I like my new header. Sparklies!

 

Okay, so what's been going on with you for the past... 53 days? (*Stage whisper* - Has it been 53 days? *Not so stage whisper* - YEP! *Stage whisper* - I iz ASHAMED! I 'pologize. Oh well.)

I haven't done much. Writing, reading, writing, reading, writing, reading. Rinse, repeat.

I do confess to a sudden huge adoration to James Blunt. Most of his songs speak to my soul. I don't recommend watching his music videos - they can be a little we'rd - but my goodness, his songs are GOOD! Here, see for yourself.

 
You should also listen to "Carry You Home" and "She Will Always Hate Me." Oh, and "Bonfire Heart." And "Postcards." And, "No Tears." Okay, I won't post anymore. I like him. :-)

Also, I have a sister who does videos. She's rather good, you know. I requested a music video to Eleven, since his catchphrase is "Geronimo" and this song is called "Geronimo." QED, this is Eleven's song. I quite loved it. But then again, Eleven (and the Ponds) are my favorite:

Oh, and I did go to this thing called WordWave. I heard tell about it by Bona Fide Books (our independent small press in Tahoe, which is cool) and it was quite a lovely event. It was three days - Friday and Sunday were both more of "events" that you had to pay for, but Saturday was a free day, so my mother, three sisters, a friend and I went on Saturday. There were some workshopping conferences (more conference than workshop, unfortunately) and booths where you could make your own simple journals, a printing press, a booksale, and agents.

Yep, agents.

Not in the booths, of course. Just, there. Offering 10-minute pitch sessions. So I did what any self-respecting writer with two books written would do. I signed up for a 10-minute session, a one-on-one pitch, if you will, with an agent from Fuse Literary (formerly Foreword Literary). It ended up being more than 10 minutes - the agents were really chill on time, which was cool - so I had more like 20-30 minutes where I pitched my story to Laurie McLean and got awesome feedback on a query and synopsis. I tell you, I haven't felt this good about a query and a synopsis since... like, ever.

So now I've changed my blog. Because, it was time to change my blog. FACELIFT, PEOPLE!!! I'm also trying to figure out what I want to do with this blog. Like, it's sort of drifting in La-la land, poor thing. It's just sitting here patiently, going, "Oh, don't mind me. I will come when you caaaaaaalll!!" Sort of like a chorus line from Les Miserables. So I guess 2016 resolutions would be:

1.)  Submit to more magazines.
2.)  Blog more.

A hesitant extra would be: 3.)  Get the keyboard in working shape and start playing music again.

'Cause I miss that.

And draw. That would be #4.

That's starting to feel like a lot of resolutions, and it's not even 2016 yet.

That's all for now, peeps. Until then, ciao!

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs." - Stephen King

God bless! ~The Cat

Movies and Writing and Front Sight, Oh My!

Since I last posted (pretty much a month ago exactly) I have seen two movies in theaters, written about three quarters of the first half of a novel, remembered how much I enjoy baseball, started watching Avatar, and signed up for hand-to-hand combat classes at Front Sight.

What's... Front Sight, precious, eh? What's Front Sight?

For all y'all who don't know what Front Sight is, basically it's a gun school. You go there, they teach you how to safely use/carry firearms, so you don't go out literally half-cocked and accidentally cause mayhem rather than assistance.

That could be awkward.

It teaches you how to be a responsible gun owner. MmmHmmm.  Anyhoozle, so I'm signed up for the hand-to-hand combat part of it (because it is my first time and I'm a little intimidated at the idea of doing guns first) and I shall be heading down to Pahrump tomorrow - along with my sister Amanda, and our "sister/friend" Sammi. I am trying to figure out how to wear pants. As I am strictly a shirt and skirt kind of girl, pants are a whole 'nother kind of ballgame. But one simply cannot wear skirts to a martial arts type of setting. Awkward.

Unless, of course, you're Golden Sparrow.

I saw MINIONS and ANT-MAN.

I gotta say, I was a little disappointed with the Minion movie. I enjoyed the bits with the actual minions, but there was some stuff in there that I thought was totally unnecessary and inappropriate for kids - such as that disgustingly overweight sumo wrestler wearing next to nothing and leaving NOTHING to the imagination. The Cat did not approve. Also, I kind of would have preferred that the Minions met Gru earlier, and worked together to bring down the baddie Scarlet, even though Sandra Bullock voiced Scarlet and I could just "see" her getting into the role. I felt they could have done MORE with the movie, but instead relied on people being such fans of the minions they would overlook some loose plotting.

There really was some funny stuff, like Stuart and his fire hydrant:

But overall, I thought it could have been fabulous rather than just good.

ANT-MAN, however... yeah, I liked Ant-Man. Instead of being like the Avengers (WHICH I ADORE, BY THE WAY! IN CASE YOU THOUGHT I DIDN'T), Ant-Man sort of goes back to the "simple" Marvel movies, focusing on small but important bad guys, and instead of saving the world focusing more on just bringing down the single villain. Plus, Scott Lang (Ant-Man himself) was freakin' hilarious, and his stupid criminal friends were adorable idiots. The script was spot on, and I surprised myself by actually liking Michael Douglas. Normally, I don't like anything about him, but he was a really good character in the movie and I quite liked him. So, I would recommend you watch Ant-Man, but I would advise you to wait on Minions until it comes out on DVD. :-)

It was brilliant, you guys! I love Marvel.

As for my writing, I'm knocking out the first half of my novel quite rapidly. It's going to be told from two points-of-view, but since the timeline is a little "weird" for one character, I'm having a hard time switching back and forth, so I'm doing one character at a time, and I'll fit them together later. (All hail the revision process!) Besides, the second half will need a bit more research into the landscape, and mapping out the world being travelled. So, I'm procrastinating on the part. But the completed project will be great, I promise!

That's all for now. Hope y'all have a great day!

God bless!

The Cat

Byebyebyebyebyebyebyebye!!!!!!!!!!

Hello, From Your Favorite Nonexistant Blogger

How have you all been?

Here's a random squirrel gif

Aside from catching a miserable cold and a 'flu pretty nearly at the same time, I've been good.

Pretty much just like this

Not too much has been happening.  I have an agent list going for a manuscript.  Once I get an acceptance on that....

source

...I'll let you know.

We watched the Lord of the Rings this week.

Screaming, crying, perfect storm...

I always forget what an emotional rollercoaster that is.  I cry every single time over every shattering event that occurs, and over the characters:  Frodo and Sam, Merry and Pippin, Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, FARAMIR!!! Eowyn, Eomer, Arwen, Theoden.... If there is someone I can weep for, I weep, and prodigiously.

Source

Fun fact:  One of our bestest friends has never read the books nor seen the movies.  She has only seen the last Hobbit movie (and let's be honest, friends.  Peter Jackson could have done those so, so much better.  What was wrong with keeping it just a bit more to the book?!), but anyway, we have told her frequently that LotR was WAY better than the Hobbit.  So FINALLY we got her to watch the trilogy with us... the extended edition, of course.  REAL fans watch only the extended LotR.

TRUTH!!!

Not only did she cry as prodigiously as the rest of us (and this is a girl who rarely, if ever, cries over shows), but she now wants a cape and has been obsessively pinning Lord of the Rings on Pinterest and is reading the books now.

SCORE!

So I feel like we accomplished something this weekend.

In the meantime, I'm going to going the way I'm going and hope I figure out how to make more time in a single day.  I need a TARDIS and some timey-wimey magic, I think.

You always suspected. :-)

Until my next emergence...

le moi

BYE!!!