Borrowing Heaven, Subletting Hell

Closing Shop and Moving On

2012-04-09T12:42:00.001-04:00

Okay - This is the last post at this blog for now. Everything has been moved over to Heart of the Dreaming and that's where I'll be from here on out.

I'll still keep this site kicking around - there are a number of other sites out there that are linked to it and I still get lots of searches on it, so there's no reason to close it. (And you never know - might want to start it back up again at some point...)

But if you're a follower or an RSS reader, please come on over to the new site and make yourselves welcome! :)

Pulling the Trigger

2012-04-06T20:59:00.000-04:00

In a manner of speaking.

But yes, I'm going to go ahead and merge this site with my WordPress site and then solely blog from WordPress. I'll keep this site up for archiving purposes and because I've got a ton of things linked to it and feeds and all the rest of it (though I'm going to try to retire it as gracefully as I can.)

I will be importing the majority of this site into the new one - it's going to be a bit kludgy, I suspect and there will probably be some double posts (simply because I have done some cross-posting to both.) Just bear with me while I mess with it over the next while or so.

But basically, it's just getting too difficult to run both sites, and my official site tends to miss out on a lot of things simply because I'm not maintaining it nearly as much as I should be. Probably not particularly wise as far as career moves go, so this is the best option. (Though I do find Blogger easier to update in some ways, but that's okay.) I've got some site re-org to do, I think.

And yes, I'm going to continue posting the man-candy and the other assorted oddness I blog here...but over there. It's all me, so why hide it?

Anyway, as a side note, I did get my revisions for A Trace of Moonlight today. Biggest issue? They're due back on April 15. Or they are supposed to be. I might be able to swing a later date of April 30. What it means is that I'm probably going to be AWOL a bit because I need to focus on things. (The excellent news is that there's no major restructuring of the plot required. Just polishing and smoothing - a first for me, quite honestly, though there are definitely some places I've got a few changes in mind for.)

So there we go. :)

Word-Whore Thursday: What Makes Me Laugh

2012-04-05T13:14:00.002-04:00

I'm over at Word Whores today for my usual Thursday post. Today it's all about the websites I go to find my jollies - and the usual suspects are there, Tumblr among them.

Still thinking more seriously about shutting this site down and blogging from one place, but I'm trying to determine a graceful way of doing that - e.g., do I attempt to import this blog into that one or just keep this one around as an archive?

Eh. Pros and cons either way, I guess. Might create a test site this weekend and see how a blogger import into wordpress goes - if it gets too complicated, this might answer itself.

Womanthology: Space

2012-04-04T20:58:00.001-04:00

Say what you will about my comments on wanting to write a retelling of The Little Mermaid with pansexual robots - but that particular tagline just nabbed me a spot in IDW's upcoming Womanthology: Space #5 (5 issues with 3 stories each - I'm so freaking flattered and excited I was chosen.) And by nabbed, I meant the artist who picked me was intrigued by the concept. The artist in question is the super talented Chrissie Zullo, btw.

Does that mean we're writing it? I don't know yet. The overall theme is Space, and Issue #5 has a sub-theme of Comet, so somewhere along the way, the story has to have *something* to do with a comet. So we shall see.

But on a more serious note, I have been following along with the Womanthology concept for quite a while - I was a Kickstarter backer the moment I heard about it. (Aimo, my cohort for Fox & Willow, was an artist in the Heroic anthology, as well.)

As hard as it is to break into publishing as a writer, comics are a while 'nother animal. (And I've bitched here often enough about the gratuitous T&A shots that women superheroes are so often treated with - comics are often seen as a man's genre, and they shouldn't be.) Womanthology is a chance to give women writers and artists, pubbed and non-pubbed, a chance at showing off their stuff in an industry that isn't known for being overly kind or open in its treatment of them.

So there you go. More details to come when I know them. :)

And even though I've posted it elsewhere - April 30 is the day when Fox & Willow goes live, so yay!

(This is Gideon, btw - the smexy kitsune....)

Combine and Condense

2012-04-03T13:06:00.000-04:00

It occurs to me from time to time that I may be spreading myself a tad too thin.

Not even counting the usual writing stuff - the day job, the kids, whatever. But from a social networking standpoint, I'm beginning to suspect it's time for a reworking of sorts.

I blog here pretty much every day (except Sundays.) And I have my official author blog too, but I only blog there once in a while (and x-blog here at the same time - usually authorly type things. You know. As opposed to unicorns humping dolphins.) But I also blog once a week at Word Whores. And once a month at The League of Reluctant Adults. And I have my tumblr (which I update pretty much all the time because it's easy.)

And then I have my Sad Sausage Dogs tumblr. And website/blog - which definitely don't get updated all that much at the moment, but once we start uploading pages, I would like to post more there. (And incidentally, I think we're looking at April 30 for the first page to go up, so yay.)

And even with all this blogging and posting, I still run my gaming forum. I'm on Facebook with multiple pages and twitter with multiple accounts. (Sorry for the lack of Phin tweets lately - just hard to get into his mindset sometimes.) And things like FourSquare and Linked In and GetGlue and all the rest of it.

Frankly, I'm getting tired and burned out on it and I know the "quality" of my posts is going down. Quality being subjective, but honestly, I'm wondering if I shouldn't just move this blog into my official blog and post from one place.

I've kept them separate, mostly because I started this blog much earlier and at the time it made sense. Keep the silly and ranty posts here and the more serious ones over there. But am I doing a greater disservice to myself by doing so? I mean, it's all me, one way or the other and I don't really keep much back. Though I do worry that maybe not everyone knows or wants to check so many places to find out my stuff. On the other hand, maybe that's good? People who only want the official stuff know where to go and those who want the goofy can come here.

*shrugs*

I'll think on it a bit longer, but I am leaning more toward combining things, just so there's less to do. Could be I just need a break for a few weeks too.

Tell Me

2012-04-02T11:49:00.000-04:00

Just a little shout out today to my friend Marcus Wolf and congrats on the release of his latest album, Tell Me.

If you follow this blog at all, you'll remember that Marcus is David Garrett's guitar player, but he's also a fab solo artist, so definitely go check it out on his website. He's got a solo tour coming up in Germany too, so if you get the chance to see him, you really should.

(I'm going to plug myself here for a moment because I redesigned the site over the weekend.)

Throwing in the flash app here for a quick preview as well.

Midnight Man Candy: Early Edition

2012-03-31T21:56:00.001-04:00

I'm in the middle of updating a friend's website tonight (gonna be a couple of hours at least). Posting this early because I'll probably forget otherwise.

And the raging headache I've had all day has made it damn near impossible to do anything, so we'll see how far I get here. In the meantime, enjoy. :)

The Stupid. It Burns.

2012-03-30T15:47:00.001-04:00

I don't even know if this post is going to have much of point, so I think I'm just going to ramble on the things that have hit me up this week.

First off is the article over at the Times about how adults shouldn't read YA books. Because they don't challenge us enough. It embarrasses the author of the piece to think that "grown-ups" would dare to lower themselves to kiddie stuff.

Fair enough. Opinions are opinions and you know, everyone has one. Literary snobs pick on genre books. Sci-Fi writers pick on romance writers. Romance writers pick on erotica writers. Whatever.

I can't really find it in myself to get worked up about it anymore because the arguments are worthless. Are we really going to start slut-shaming ourselves into reading what is considered proper? Intelligent? Worth-while? Who decides this sort of thing, anyway? After all - today's literary boobies were yesterday's ankles. Let me figure out what sort of stories seduce my mind the best and let the rest of it take care of itself.

Given the literacy rate in the US and how little so many people read anyway, maybe we should stop pointing fingers at each other and appreciate the fact that hey - you read! I read too! Let's talk about sparkly vampires and pretentious coffee shop stories about old white men trying to find themselves during the 1950's and the transcendentalist movement of post-modern feminist theory as told by pregnant giraffes.

Which is my way of saying, I don't care what you read.

I care what *I* read.

Which is how it should be.

Anyway. I seem to have gotten rather pissy this week about Assassin's Creed. The latest installment takes place during the Revolutionary War. And you know, they have plenty of female characters in the other games, but none as a "playable" character. Fair enough, I suppose.

But it does really burn me up when I read stuff like this:

When Kotaku asked Hutchinson about the possibility of a playable female lead in an Assassin’s Creed game, the developer revealed Ubisoft has given the matter some thought.

“It’s always up in the air. I think lots of people want it,” he said.

Unfortunately, Assassin’s Creed III won’t be the one to make it happen.

“In this period it’s been a bit of a pain. The history of the American Revolution is the history of men,” he said.

“There are a few people, like John Adams’ wife. They tried very hard in the TV series to not make it look like a bunch of dudes, but it really is a bunch of dudes.”

“It felt like, if you had all these men in every scene and [a female assassin is] secretly, stealthily in crowds of dudes, it starts to feel kind of wrong. People would stop believing it,” Hutchison said.

And while I can fully admit that there might be challenges involved with portraying a woman assassin in the RW, I don't remotely think it's impossible. The statement above just reads rather dismissively of women's lives during this time. Hell, if you ask me, a woman assassin would be brilliant. (No, don't mind me. I'm just the washer-woman, carrying these bloody uniforms through the camp. You know. To clean them. After I stick this knife in your gut.") I mean, honestly, if you're going to take the idea that women were sort of invisible by men of the time anyway (or considered too "simple" for such a task) it doesn't take a huge leap of faith to find that the ultimate sort of cover.

But you know, what it comes down to is the fact that game developers are also story-tellers. Games are stories the players embark on via a visual level. I find the attitude above a rather large fail on the part of the story-tellers. Lazy, anyway.

"But the dude-bro generals wouldn't listen to you if you were a woman! How can you plan a war?" Probably not directly, no. But given that limitation and the fact that you're probably hanging out with George Washington? If it were me, I'd cozy up to Martha. (Don't mind me. I'm just making a flag. Yeah. Oh, and also? I'm going to kill your wife if you don't listen to me. Right. now.) Tongue-in-cheek? Maybe. But I guess if you're going going to say that women weren't around during the RW, you might want to Google it first. (Deborah Samson, btw? Dressed as a boy. Fought in the war. Was wounded. When she was discovered, her male persona was sent to DELIVER A LETTER TO GEORGE WASHINGTON. OMFG. THERE YOU GO, BAD-ASS FIGHTER DUDE-BROS. It's called a disguise. *rubs chin*)

And please don't give me the line of games needing to stay completely accurate to history. I would agree - but let's take a look at this trailer, real quick, shall we?

Mmm. Because assassins who wear white and red cloak type outfits and parkour through the trees are just SO historically accurate. Also, in previous games, he could stealth his way out of being caught by merely sitting down on a bench.

Yeah.

So really, just admit the game is for dude-bros and leave it at that. Otherwise it comes off as pandering.

MishMash

2012-03-29T13:08:00.000-04:00

I've got my cranky pants on today, but I did want to share a few things.

First of all, I'm over at Word Whores today, talking about some my early literary influences - The Jungle Book and Chronicles of Narnia being the big two.

Otherwise, I wanted to share this video:

On Your Mark - Chage & Aska from bahimas on Vimeo.

I hadn't seen it before, but I really love Miyazaki, and I just adore the way this story plays out and relationships between the men and the angel. Just...perfect.

Alas.

2012-03-28T22:10:00.000-04:00

I had blogging plans today, but they got hijacked by life. Alas.

Who Needs Classes?

2012-03-27T14:28:00.000-04:00

Lucy insists she wants to be an author and an illustrator.

Which is fine by me. She's constantly bringing home little books that she's written. (And since she's five, no, the writing doesn't always make sense, but her explanations do - so she's got a natural story-telling ability.) She's just learning to really read for herself too, and she takes such delight now in reading TO me, instead of the other way around.

And maybe that's a girl thing, because I don't really remember Connor taking to it like that at all. He was bored in general with trying to learn to read, although now that he's discovered real storybooks (i.e. Percy Jackson, etc - he's all over them. They're a bit above his age level, but there's nothing wrong with that - I was reading Piers Anthony at that age, so fine by me. Anything that keeps him motivated is perfect.)

But it's nice to see Lucy *really* want to break through that reading code. She's so freaking proud of herself.

So yesterday, she handed me a book she'd written in school and declared she would be both author and illustrator. (It's apparently about a bluebird daddy and a peacock mommy and their nest. Peacock laid 3 eggs, it would seem.)

And I said that was wonderful and if she'd like, I'd be happy to sign her up for some art classes at some point, because I'm all for fostering that if she wants to do it.

And then that childish arrogance comes out and she assures me she doesn't need classes, because she already knows how to draw and better than most people, so why would she waste time with that? I told her that people almost always need to learn more and to practice more. I might be published, but I still need an editor. I still take workshops. It's a never-ending process, really.

At which point, she gestures to her pictures and says she's already been an illustrator and now she can move on and do something else.

I'm sure that's partly because no one really *wants* to be told they have to work at something, but there's a part of me that wonders at her confidence.

She clearly considers her stories top-notch. I think most children are natural story-tellers, with a natural inclination to think they have stories that are worth telling.

So at what point along the way do we lose that? I can't decide if it's something a lot of people jut outgrow or if it's something that's stripped from us under the guise of "practicality."

Seems a shame, though.

Bear-O-Dactyl? Yes

2012-03-26T13:14:00.000-04:00

After the weekend I've had and the Monday I'm having, I'm very grateful to The Oatmeal this morning for making me lose my shit in a bucket of glorious laughter.

Midnight Man Candy

2012-03-24T23:00:00.000-04:00

Because it's been one of *THOSE* days. And vaguely apropos.

Biting the Fitness

2012-03-23T11:33:00.000-04:00

Okay, the irony of using the FitBit doesn't escape me at all.

I want to lose a few pounds, but I don't want to think too hard while I do it. Lazy mindset, active body.

Maybe.

It's be a tough year overall for me physically - every time I'd attempt to get back into some sort of physical regimen, I'd gork something up in my back and be out of commission for weeks.

It's hard to get motivated when you know whatever you do is probably going to hurt you far past the "Feel the burn" concept.

And speaking of burning, I've had 7 nerves burned out on the left side of my spine - I think we got the two causing the most amount of trouble with this last pass, but it does seem to help - though I need to wait a few more weeks before we know for sure. (The nerves have to heal a bit more.) Overall, though, I can't feel as much back there, so that's good. (I have a couple of numb patches of skin as a result as well, but I can live with that.) The only thing I really have to watch out for is additional injury - if I can't feel what's going on back there...eh. There's always a chance I'll gork something up more and not realize it.

Anyway - back to the FitBit. It's basically a device you wear - on your pocket (or in my case, I snap it right in the middle of my bra - it's fairly unobtrusive there.) It's part pedometer, but it also measures how many flights of stairs I go up, and how much sleep I get, how many calories I've burned, etc.

Even more awesome is that I don't have to write it down anywhere. It wirelessly syncs to its charger base when I'm at home and pushes it up to the FitBit servers and keeps track of all that for me. And of course there's an app for that too - I can enter what I'm eating or my weight or my fluid intake and all that without too much trouble. (If you want to get really crazy, you can upload your blood pressure or your glucose levels, which is nifty if you need to keep track of that too.)

But based on all that, it figures out my required calorie intake - how much I've eaten, how much more I can eat (you can put down if you want to lose weight and how quickly you want to do it.) But it's also dynamic - my allowed number of calories recalculates the more I move around during the day. And it grows this little electronic flower, whee.

It may not always be 100% accurate with my steps, but as long as its consistently inaccurate, that's fine. It's really more for me to track patterns - and the sleep one is pretty nice. (You do have to tell it what time you went to bed and what time you get up on the app, but otherwise it knows how restless you are and how much actual sleep you get.

You can pay extra $$ and get additional reporting features on the website, but the basic ones are fine for me. Assuming I can keep up with it. :)

Word Whore Thursday

2012-03-22T14:13:00.000-04:00

This week's theme over at Word Whores is about how similar our characters are to us (the writers). If you've followed this blog for any length of time you'll know Abby is very much like me for a number of reasons.

It's a fair cop and not one I'm going to deny, though I hesitate to call her a full-on insert.

Otherwise, hooray - I'm all done with my guest posts for my blog tour! I've been pretty bad about linking to the more recent ones in the blogs lately, though I do tweet/facebook about them, so maybe tomorrow I'll try to get an updated list up here. Still plenty of chances to win a copy of SoS, though. Last time I checked there were over 1100 entries!)

Got a few more contest entries to wrap up today and then I'll actually be somewhat caught up. Still working on some website work for a client, but otherwise I'm feeling a bit less stressed. (Ask me again next week though - I'm sure my answer will change.)

And OMG, I fired up DA2 for the first time since Jan to finish my last playthrough. So sad.)

Frame This

2012-03-21T14:04:00.001-04:00

Okay - sorry about the lousy photos - I just have no skillz and there was a crazy reflection coming off the glass, but what I really wanted to do here was plug the place I bought the frames from.

If you have sketchcard/trading cards and are looking to frame them - definitely check out http://www.framemytradingcard.com You can get the matting in a bunch of different colors and there’s all sorts of different sizes to choose from. (And if you don’t see what you want, contact them - they’re really good about custom orders.) But what really sealed it for me was that the backs of the mats actually have little pocket/edges you can slide the cards into so they stay in place. :)

The cards themselves are actually commissioned sketches by Aimo of my BoD characters, plus one Hawke/Fenris shot. Just because.

And actually, since I was on a framing kick I went ahead and framed some other stuff by Aimo - she's released a series of seasonal Dragon Age postcards (of which I've bought a few sets) and she was nice enough to send me an original Sad Sausage Dogs piece as well.

(It's been on of my biggest complaints about the decorating of my house, honestly. We have so much stuff that people have given us over the years and I'm massively appreciative of it...but a lot of it isn't me. Probably part of the reason the place doesn't always feel like my home.

Guess I'm just trying to reclaim that a bit with stuff that IS me.

Real

2012-03-20T15:26:00.001-04:00

I bought Lucy new bedsheets this weekend. Actually - both kids got new sets. Connor is still all about Transformers and he's clearly outgrown the Nemo set. (And don't even get me started on his Thomas the Tank Engine sheets. He wore holes in them when he was younger.)

I bought Lucy another set of Hello Kitty sheets. Different design than what she currently has, but we've washed the old set so many times they're starting to tear, so makes sense, right?

The thing is, she has a favorite blanket from that original set. It's not a security blanket, exactly...but it's hers. She's had it since she was about 15 months. She guards it fiercely.

So the other night she started crying when I put her to bed.

Because she was starting to like the new blanket on the new set and she was afraid of hurting the old blanket's feelings. She was seriously stressed out about - though I had to point out she still had the old blanket on her bed and there was no reason she couldn't continue to use it.

But I find it rather fascinating that she anthropomorphizes like that - because I used to do it too. (Only with my stuffed animals, something else Lucy also does.) I'd have to pat each toy on my bed before I left the room. You know. Just in case.

My dad came to visit this weekend and brought up a huge bag of old toys from my room. Mostly stuffed animals - many of which apparently had seen the rough side of the dog's mouth at some point in their lives. Many are ripped and stained (even the ones that had been up in the closet. Just the normal degradation of cloth toys, I suppose.) Most are beyond saving, so they'll most likely end up in the trash, but I have to admit I had a moment or two of looking at them and *remembering* and yeah - there's still an element of wondering if they're going to be bawling in the trash bag out back, a la Toy Story.

Or am I going to find that one-eared bunny on my pillow three days from now with a hook in a paw and whispering about "Where is my TailyPo?"

Suppose only time will tell on that account, though if I'm quiet here for a bit, maybe that's why.

Still, I'm curious as to if other kids did it/do it, or if it's maybe a writer/artist thing. I kind of feel like it might be - the idea of essentially creating characters out of toys and projecting feelings and emotions seems like it's just a step below storytelling. After all, if a character is real to the author, he or she is far more likely to be real to the reader.

Game Over

2012-03-19T22:30:00.001-04:00

Didn't blog today, obviously.

Suppose that's what I'm doing now, though mostly only because I wanted to share this book cover.

Which is full of delicious awesomesauce.

Busy day notwithstanding.

Though the gamer in me did get hit with a bit of a blow when Bioware announced there wouldn't be any more DLC for Dragon Age 2. Not that most of us didn't see the writing on the wall.

I'm just a little bit disappointed because I'd been holding off on my last playthrough simply because I thought there might be something more coming.

And I know the game had its flaws and issues. They all do. But most of the time, the average Bioware game does have a tendency to suck me in so I don't want to do anything except play - and that's relatively rare these days. In my early 20's, I could and would play damn near anything - but with my time so limited, if a game doesn't grab me within the first 10 minutes or so? I don't go back. It may be moderately interesting, but moderately isn't enough anymore.

I want to escape and get involved in another person's story. (I guess it's an awful lot like reading a book. I used to read anything I picked up - all the way to the bitter end, even if I didn't like it. I thought I had to. Like I owed it to the book or the author or something. And again, I find myself putting books down more and more and never picking them back up again. Sort of sad, really.)

It's rare for me to find a game where I actually want to know more about the characters' lives, and I think what bothers me most is the lost potential here. The storyteller wants satisfaction and there were so many questions unanswered. Things I wanted to know.

And now I won't. (And this is where fanfic and I don't get along. I've read some and written some and enjoyed the process, but in the end - it's not canon. It's not my story to tell and unless the creators tell it, it doesn't count. If that makes any sense. Just a mental switch in my head or something.)

I've turned to Mass Effect in the meantime - starting with the first one right now - though I am playing ME3 multi-player, when I can fit it in. (And there's a massive brouhaha going on about the ME3 ending - not getting into it, because I have no horse in the race yet. And at the rate I'm going, it will probably be at least 6 months before I get to it, so hopefully answers or DLC will have been forthcoming and I won't have to worry about it.)

Surprisingly, I'm really enjoying the MP aspect - far more than I thought I would, so that's nice. The ME universe doesn't grab me like the DA one does, though. I don't know if it's a space thing or shooters vs hack-n-slash. Thus far ME is a pleasant diversion, but I don't immerse myself in it. Just isn't completely my thing, I guess.

So, I suppose I'll finish up my DA2 playthrough one of these days and wait for DA3 - or whatever the next big thing is.

Midnight Man Candy

2012-03-17T22:47:00.002-04:00

Doing a little late night web development, but that's okay right?

Right.

All Your iPad Are Belong To Us

2012-03-16T19:59:00.000-04:00

I was in a bad place last week, which led to a moment of spending...which led to me pre-ordering the new iPad.

There are a couple of reasons for this. One - I had borrowed one over the summer from work - it was just the basic iPad, but it was useful enough while traveling, particularly for conventions and even as a temporary child-soother here and there.

Two - I was in a bad place.

So there we go. It's a tax write-off, at the very least, since I'll definitely be doing writing work on it, but yeah - otherwise it's a toy.

I fully admit it.

However, since I figure I'll be keeping it a while, I did get it engraved.

Seemed like this was the right thing to do.

Word Whore Thursday

2012-03-15T20:53:00.001-04:00

Guess I forgot to blog here today - though I was over at Word Whores, talking about the movie Alien and why I dig it so much. (Though based on the lack of comments, perhaps no one agrees. Eh. S'okay.) Truthfully though, my fascination with the entire lore of those movies could probably earn me a doctorate. )

I also had a post over at Reading Between the Wines, with an additional excerpt that I haven't released online before, so be sure to check that out too.

And speaking of forgetting to blog, there's probably a good chance I'm going to go on some sort of blog hiatus in the next few weeks. Maybe not completely, but I might not be blogging everyday, either. My revisions should be here tomorrow. Which is good, because this book has to be to the copy-editor by May 1, which means I'm only going to have about 4 weeks or so to try and get everything done.

And I'm slow. So, better to take off some of the blogging pressure for a little bit. On the other hand, you might just see a bunch of silly stuff posted, and that's okay too. (I tend to procrastinate blog when I'm supposed to be working. It's my thing, I guess.)

Guest Posts

2012-03-14T12:13:00.000-04:00

Trying to keep my sanity today, but I'm out and about on the blog-o-sphere in several places:

1) The League of Reluctant Adults - Got a little post about Sad Sausage Dogs and how fanfic brought Aimo and I together. (Also, there's a picture of Gideon from Fox & Willow that we haven't released before, so check that out, if you like.)

2) I'm also over at Lisa's World of Books talking a bit about fairy tales and what my biggest influences are as far as my writing research goes in the Abby Sinclair books.

3) Review/Giveaway/Character Profile post over at MotherGamerWriter - want to know a little more about Talivar? Sure you do. Go check it out. :)

Judge This

2012-03-13T14:25:00.000-04:00

Somehow in the hub-bub of the release madness and upcoming revisions and blog-tour-o-rama...I signed up to be a judge for an upcoming writing contest.

It's actually been a while for me, but the standard stuff still applies. Most RWA sorts of contests give you a sheet of points you're supposed to look for. And these entries are the first 5 pages only, so for a time constraint that shouldn't be too bad, though somehow I ended up with 8 of them...in the Contemporary Romance category. Not that I tend to read contemporary anything for fun, but for contests it's fine - good writing is good writing, no matter what genre it's in.

Each contest is different of course - usually judges are looking for the basic things like grammar and sentence structure, but then there's often a series of specific items - Hooks, Voice, Plot. (Sometimes it's *really* specific - i.e is the Goal/Motivation/Conflict of the Hero/Heroine/Dashing Sidekick evident and easy to spot/believable/etc.)

That's a lot to ask for in five pages...but if you're serious about getting published, it is something to consider. Often an agent or an editor only requests that much to start with - maybe a few chapters if you're lucky - so you have a limited amount of time to make an impression. Contests aren't a bad way to get your feet wet, plus they can give you some good feedback from people who have no direct bias toward or against you. (Although so much of contest judging is subjective - analyze your scores and take from it what you can, but don't let it pull you into a depression if you don't win.)

On the other hand, I'm not a fan of pigeonholing stories into neat little categories. And for me, it really sucks if I have to mark someone down on a point that I don't care about, simply because of the way the contest is set up.

Also consider that winning or finaling contests is great, but it's not always indicative of being publishable. I know plenty of serial contest winners...that have yet to publish anything. That may be just due to lousy luck or timing, but when you write to win contests, sometimes people have a tendency to fall into the trap of writing *to* the contest. There's a fine line between writing to formula and spoon-feeding your writing to fit a certain mold for the sake of getting points. Be careful that it doesn't come back to bite you in the ass.

So you have to determine what your goals are for entering. Do you want peer feedback? A chance at getting an editor or an agent to see it and maybe ask for more? Acclaim?

For me personally - I did final in a number of contests several years ago and won some, and yes - some of those wins get me offers of representation - but I also did terribly in others. (Usually the five page sorts. Contests that gave me a full chapter or two tended to be scored much higher, but again, it depended on the contest.)

YMMV, as they say.

Unrelated note - I'm also blogging over at Urban Fantasy Investigations today, talking a little bit about mixing in some Asian mythology into my world building. :)

Gaming Genetics

2012-03-12T12:37:00.000-04:00

You know that scene in Jurassic Park where they find the dinosaur eggs in the middle of the jungle and Ian is all like "Life finds a way?" That's about how I feel like, right now - only more with my kids and the computer.

And it's not that I've ever tried to lock my kids away from technology - I haven't. They've got access to the TV and an XBOX, computers, smart phones, whatever. However, note that I said "access." They don't actually own any of them. (My son does have a D/S, though we try to limit his playing to weekends only.) And the kids never expressed any real interest in messing with our PCs (they'll watch me play Dragon Age or World of Warcraft forever, but until SW: TOR came out, my son was more interested in trying to find games dealing with Transformers than anything else. Lucy just likes to watch me ride around on my flaming horse and kill spiders.)

To be frank, for a long time I didn't have to worry about it. I mean, the TV alone has three remotes to work it, not counting the changes you have to make if you want to play XBOX, or log into the Live account. Games themselves are far more complex than they used to be. I mean, Mass Effect compared to PacMan? You barely had to have a pulse to understand how to play PacMan. These other games require actual reading and a multitude of button combinations to make them work. I used to have to sit with him and explain what was being said in the game or the combo he needed to hit.

And this isn't me complaining about the complexity - it's me saying why I didn't have to worry too much about it when the kids were younger. They weren't going to figure it out.

Except now...Connor can read. He can read just fine. He's figured out how to make that XBoX work. Figured out how to get on the TV. Figured out how to log into my XBoX Live account (which is why it looks like I'm playing Transformers or Star Wars stuff a lot. Swear it's not me. Really.) Figured out how to get to YouTube. Figured out a LOT of things.

Though he's not always street smart when it comes to the computers. "Oh look, if I just click here I'll see all these Transformers movies. Oh, look, I installed all this stuff on your computer, but where are the games?"

*me silently screaming as the potential viruses stack up*

Still, part of this is fab in some ways, particularly on early Saturday mornings when he can find some Phineas & Ferb to entertain Lucy for another hour.

Not so cool when I come downstairs from taking a shower and find him playing Gears of War 2. Which he discovered in the cabinet. It's definitely an M title - lots of shooting and guts and swearing and all kinds of fun manly stuff.

And he was enjoying the hell out of it.

The gamer in me crowed in triumph.

The mom in me? Not so much. (Not to mention Lucy was next to him rooting him on with a sort of childlike bloodthirsty glee that only another gamer could appreciate.)

So I wavered. And let him play for 10 more minutes before shutting it off and forbidding him from playing that particular game again. At least, not without an okay from the DH.

One of those balance things, I guess. While I value his independence and the growth of his gaming self, that doesn't mean I can give him full access to everything he feels like clicking on. I can take the cop-out and say my parents had it easier...though in some ways, they did. Back in the day (Get off my lawn, hooligans), video games had all the realistic impact of some pixelated space invaders...and about as much emotional punch.

Now, though? There's a lot more going on, particularly in the war-type games.

Guess I'll figure it out as I go.

In the meantime, there's always Plants vs Zombies, I guess.

Midnight Man Candy

2012-03-10T23:00:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry if I've posted this one before.

Not really.