Welcome to my home on the web. Aside from my blog posts, please check out the About Me page (to the left…yep, there <——). Thanks for stopping by!
Why I Write
I subscribe to Holly Lisle’s Writing Updates e-mail newsletter. Last week it posed the question, “What do you want to GET OUT of your writing?” To answer simply, I want to tell a good story.
Is that all? you ask. What a boring blog post. OK, here’s more about what I want to get out of my writing. I NEED to tell these stories. The first book in my series, Divided Heart, started as nothing more than the breath of an idea from a dream I had. “A young detective goes undercover to investigate a cult.” That’s it. I didn’t know what the cult was up to, I didn’t know anything about it’s members, or my detective. That’s it. That’s what i started with. The characters quickly (and I mean within the first hour of writing) took on a life of their own, took over my story. Characters I hadn’t even imagined magically showed up on the page demanding for me to love them and give them a starring role. I knew from the first hour of writing that this would be a series. The characters had stories to be told, the world had adventures waiting for them, and by the end of the novel I loved them too much to let them go after just one book.
That’s what I want to get out of writing my novels. What about other projects, for example, the poems and essays in my writing group’s anthology? Or even the ones that don’t make the cut? Again, because I have to. When I sit to write the short pieces, there is something in my heart and soul that is screaming to get out. Sometimes. Other times I sit to write and my mind is blank. Why do I write then? I love the act of writing. I love the feel of my favorite pen on a good piece of paper (Moleskine, I adore you!) When my mind is empty, I’ll write nonsense until something better flows, and it usually does. I write these short pieces because I have something to say, or because I want to entertain whoever might read it.
(A slight diversion…I said above I love the feel of pen on paper. Unfortunately I can’t write my novels longhand. I type much faster than I write, and my novels usually flow so quickly my hand can hardly keep up. When I go back to transcribe it later, I can barely read my own handwriting, so it makes the task far too time consuming.)
Finally, what do I want to get out of this blog? I want to share my love of writing, my love of animals, and other random thoughts (see Mix-It Mondays.) I want to get some structure to my writing life. I want something to force me to write several times a week (4 to be exact – or more.) I want to entertain. And I’ll be completely honest. I read about people who make enough money off their blogs to quit their day job and do it full time. That would be nice. But even if that never happens, that’s ok. Even if, 5 years down the road, I haven’t made a single cent from this blog, I’ll keep at it. Because I love writing. Making money would be a nice perk. It would allow me to write even more. But I will keep blogging, I will keep writing novels, until the day I die, because I have to. There are words in me that must come out. Stories to be told. Information to be shared.
I write because I must.
Welcome to Mix-It Monday!
Why Mix-It Mondays? While writing and animals are the main focus of this blog, I want to share more of who I am and what I like outside of those two things. And Mondays can suck. It’s the end of the weekend, the beginning of another work week (well, for those of us who work the stereotypical M-F 9-5 anyway.) Maybe you had a rough weekend and are particularly tired Monday morning. Well, come here for a smile, an interesting link, random thoughts, or maybe a movie or book review. Something to make your Monday a little more fun.
One thing that is always guaranteed to make me smile is a picture of a cute animal. Here’s a cute little Sugar Glider. Love these little furries!
Here’s a fun fact I learned last week. We all know what a cliche is. But why is it called a cliche? Does anyone know? I do! Back in the early days of the printing press, each and every letter of every word had to be hand set before stamping it out on the page. How would you like to have that job? Talk about repetitive and redundant! So for words that were used often, they made a single “stamp” for these words. This was also called a stereotype. (There’s a bonus word origin for you!) “Cliche” is the sound the mold made when it was dropped into molten metal to make the stereotype. How about that?
I’ll likely post a link to an astronomy picture most weeks as well. This one is PURPLE!!
And finally, Alice in Wonderland. This movie combined 3 of my favorite Hollywood figures: Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, and Helena Bonham-Carter. Usually this trio doesn’t let me down (I like to pretend that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory never happened.) I’ve been excited about this movie since I first heard about it, and knew I had to see it opening weekend. I saw it Saturday night in 3D. I will admit the 3D wasn’t anything special (but after Avatar, what is?) But the movie was FANTABULOUS!
Linda Woolverton wrote the screenplay. Don’t know who she is? She wrote Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. That’s one of my favorite Disney movies, so discovering she wrote Alice in Wonderland made me even more excited. She did a wonderful job, giving it more substance than the animated Disney version of the film. Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is now twenty years old, and subjected to an arranged engagement to a man she doesn’t love. The first fifteen minutes or so of the movie is devoted to Alice in Victorian times, before she follows the White Rabbit and falls down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. The opening shows more of her personality, and that she is a free-thinker prone to easy distraction and fantastical daydreams; not your typical proper Victorian young woman.
In Wonderland, we meet the usual characters. Alan Rickman is superb as the voice of Abosolom the Caterpillar. I only wish he had a larger role. Anne Hathaway was beautiful as the White Queen. Crispin Glover is sinister at The Knave And as always, Helena Bonham-Carter plays a fantastically crazy character in the role of the Red Queen (though Verna Felton had a better bellowing of “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!” in the animated version.) There is more to the plot than simply Alice trying to find her way home. She learns that she is destined to slay the Jabberwocky on Frabbulous Day, though she protests through most of the movie that she can’t be “that Alice.” She spends the movie learning to believe in herself, and that, with a little faith, you can do anything you set your mind to.
On Alice’s journey she meets the Hatter (Johnny Depp), who has a larger role than in the animated version (much to my pleasure.) Johnny Depp is magical in the role, giving the Hatter emotional depth. He is more than just a madman; he is devoted to the White Queen and was devastated by her banishment when the Red Queen took over Wonderland. He is also quite fond of Alice, and believes in her even when she won’t believe in herself.
A friend asked me if the movie would be too much for her 4 and 6 year old daughters. I told her I didn’t think so. There are a few battle scenes, and the Red Queen’s head-filled mote is a little gruesome (though not graphic), but the movie is rated PG. I think any child, young and old, will be enchanted by this new interpretation of the classic book by Lewis Carroll. And if you’re worried that it will be too dark, as Tim Burton movies often are, you will be pleasantly surprised. It still has the unmistakable feel of this director’s touch, but it has many bright moments to offset any bit of darkness.
And if anyone knows where I can get a replica of this dress from the movie, please let me know. I have no idea where I’d wear it, but I want it!
music: Enya – Watermark (Storms in Africa II was the song playing as I finished typing this)
My New (virtual) Home
Welcome to my new home on the interwebz! If you’ve been to my site in the past, thanks for coming back, and I hope you like the new design. I do. Much better than the old one. It fit me when I set it up several years ago, but as people are wont to do, I’ve changed since then, and this is a little more me now. Maybe one day I’ll have a true custom designed site. But for now, this works.
Take a look at all the pages here, linked over to the left. I have a new scheme for posting to my blog regularly (it’s on the About Me page). I’ll start with the regular posts on Monday, but since this site will (hopefully) be live before then, I wanted to say hi.
(For you techies who care about this sort of thing, I had to redirect the name servers from my old host to WordPress, and that takes time – up to 72 hours to be exact – so while I’m typing this on Thursday night, you might not see it for a few days.)
Back to non-tech. So I’ll start posting regularly on Monday. Mon, Wed, Fri, and Sunday will be my post days. Every week. Once in a while you may get a random “extra” post if I really have something to say. For example, today I would have jumped on and said something like this:
OMG!!!! IRON MAIDEN IS TOURING THIS SUMMER AND THEIR OPENER IS DREAM THEATER!!!!! HOW FREAKING AWESOME IS THAT?
Not quite your regularly scheduled post, but when I saw the news, I almost squealed like a 12 year old girl. would have, really, except I was at work, and that might have been frowned upon. I do have some dignity. Maybe not a lot, but some. So since this blog is partially about me, I would share something like that.
And don’t worry, I won’t post in all caps unless it’s something totally exciting like that bit of news. (In case you’re wondering, Dream Theater is tied for my Number One Favorite Musical Act. Emilie Autumn co-holds Number One. David Bowie is a very close Number Two. I’m also quite a fan of Iron Maiden, and they don’t come to the States often.)
So here we are. Thanks for stopping by. Please send me comments. I like comments. Tell me what you like, what you hate (but please don’t be too mean about it…we’re all civilized human beings, right?) what you want to see more of. Or just random comments like “It was me! I was the turkey all along!” or questions like “Why is there bacon in the soap?”
Until next time,
asta la pasta
music: Emilie Autumn – Unlaced (Cold was the song playing as I finished typing this)
