What a Start

This first week of 2020 has been a little hectic. There are wonderful things in the works but there’s a bit of a haze over my life at the moment, turmoil in the circle of friends and family that I can do literally nothing about and I hate not being able to help.

RedDog is currently a lampshade and appropriately annoyed and annoying with it. One of his tumors started bothering him enough to chew on which means it had to go, and it did. And then in a great domino falling sort of way, it went completely bonkers. Surgery went great and then the bandage was too tight so we changed it out and couldn’t find a way to keep it on loose enough to not cause issues and tight enough to stay on. On the upside I managed to get the cone of shame to work. It turned out the swelling was mostly from a cyst on his foot that decided now was the right time to complain a lot. He’s on the mend looking adorable in his long sleeved t and cone of shame that he absolutely rams into me on purpose any time I come anywhere near him. Pretty sure the backs of my legs are all bruised up.

Fred is all out of sorts because he hates the cone also and really wants to play with the RedDog.

I’m finally getting to this years work – first up on my list, a bit of a rewrite that is more about adding words and making Delilah’s story a bit more of a salable length and find a better title than demonborn. After that, I’m planning to zero draft a story about a very different kind of witch who seems to be in need of a few short stories to flesh him out a bit before I try and find him book. He is definitely wanting to be a lot different than my ladies. By the time I’m done fiddling with that short story, I hope my Warrior Witch is done steeping so I can get that book rewritten.

I do have two upcoming events already, the first on February 6th from 7 to 9 pm at Barnes and Noble at Settlers Ridge in Robinson for a Romance Spotlight Night and I’ll post more about that as we get closer. I’m also on the calendar at the Weirton Museum on May 14th at 6pm to do a reading of a few of my short stories. I’m very much looking forward to both of these things.

My oldest is about to head back to college – it’s been nice having him home but I know he’s looking forward to his second semester of his Freshman year.

I finally got all the Christmas decorations put away – it took longer than usual this year but it’s done. I put my desk display back together today – I may have a slight problem… but really, I love my wall and desk display – many of the things were bought by my husband, sons, and brother and that matters to me a lot. (Alex and Alphonso are my son’s – they are above his desk which is next to mine.) I am moving my signed pics with Doug Bradley and Tony Todd to another shelf because they are in frames that don’t hang well. I reorder and reorganize often but for right now, I’m pleased as punch to get my everyday stuff back where it belongs.

Back to Normal

With NaNoWriMo in the rear view, things are settling back out – last week, I had a terrible cold and mostly slept through a huge chunk of it. I’m still working with some lingering coughing and congestion, but it’s not too bad. I have been very busy though, working on my mama-made presents for this year. The last two years, they’ve been less than stellar (though last year, I made my littlest a companion cube that didn’t turn out too bad). I’ll post more about that after Christmas when the kids already have seen them.

Ma Barker the Tokay Gecko

In what passes for normal in my house, I’ve been quite amused by one of my husband’s geckos. I think she wants to eat me, my husband keeps telling me she wants me to hold her cause she loves me. I think my laugh sounds like one of their calls. Which is sort of an annoying thing to know about myself. We have Tokay geckos and they really do bark. They’re sort of like Pokemon in that one of their bark sounds really does sound like they are saying Tokay. It’s one of their mating sounds. They also make a sound that is a bit more like Predator. Mostly though, their “normal” back off bark just sounds like a bark.

I mostly leave our family of geckos alone – mom, dad, 4 babies, 2 eggs – except to check on them. Same with the rest of them actually. It’s just Ma Barker I really talk to. She’s got the biggest personality of all of them. The dad gecko comes close but he both hates me and is the most paternal animal I’ve ever seen – he charges at me every time I go to look at the babies. Ma however, her and I kibbutz.  And she barks at the dogs when they’re being too loud. Which I find ridiculously funny as she’s only about 8 inches long, give or take, and a chunk of that is tail.

I know, she looks real sweet. Don’t trust her. She might look like she wants a snuggle but I’m fairly certain she wants to eat my nose. They’re neat critters, so long as I don’t have to touch them. I like my fingers.

I’m taking a short break from the writing stuff until I get all the making and all the decorating done. Then I have to worry about the baking but I can probably get a few words in while I’m at that.

Sometimes Opportunity Wears a Different Face

I wrote earlier this year about this year being my Brave Year and, amazingly enough, I’ve kept to that, as best I can anyway. One of the things I’ve learned this year is that opportunity doesn’t always look like what I thought it would. I haven’t snapped up every opportunity that’s come my way, but I’ve tried to and I’ve tried to follow up on all the potential door-knocks that have come my way this year. I’ve gotten back to doing crafty fair events and I’ve got a few more on the calendar this year and each one has brought an opportunity I didn’t expect, not just for myself but in some cases, opportunities for me to pass along information and potential opportunities to other people and places too. I’m in a very pay it forward kind of place right now.

Sometimes opportunity is a new friend, a lead on another event, a contact that might be interested in a custom order, or someone looking for something I don’t make or have but I know someone who does or can. Maybe these sorts of things were always there, right under my nose, and I wasn’t looking or seeing them or maybe it’s just this year, that I’m ready to reach out and grab them, I’m not sure which and I’m not sure it matters. I’m making the best of now.

Upcoming Events:

Halloween At the Museum event on October 26th from 2pm to 9:30 pm at the Weirton Area Museum and Cultural Center, at where I’ll have a book table and a few pieces on display – Voodoo Shop in a Box and Rags.  There will also be ticketed performances by the Ashley Marie Performing Arts Center and the Ohio Valley Cloak and Dagger Company, music, candy, historical exhibits, and children’s activities.

Holiday Craft fair for the Carlynton cheerleaders on November 3 at Celebrations near Robinson PA from 12-2 PM.

A Little Happy

http://www.thecrowanddragon.etsy.com

This year has started off pretty well. I’ve sent two books, a chapbook, a novelette, and two short stories out into the submission cycle. I’ve made some really neat things and had a really interesting thing happen and we’re only 13 days in!

In 2017, about at the same time that my body decided to betray me and bust out the rheumatoid arthritis, I started doing craft fairs and vendor events with my crafty, artsy, repurposed sorts of things. It was fun to get to make things and even more fun to see them go to homes that would appreciate them. The trouble is that I struggle to do the events on my own, set up and tear down is a LOT for me, especially at the end of the day when all I want to do is curl up in a nice ice pack. I didn’t manage to do any of them in 2018, though I did think about it more than a few times and this year, I want to plan to be there again maybe.

In any case, I did open my etsy shop up (see the pretty picture to the left!) and that’s awesome but now, in the most awesome turn of events, I got the opportunity to put some of my artsy things in a local shop – Moe’s on Main in Follansbee, WV.

I’m so excited about the whole thing – I’ll still have things in my Etsy shop but not the things that are available at Moe’s. I can’t wait to see how this all works out! Check the gallery of the things available at Moe’s!

 

The funny thing is that I decided on New Year’s day that this is my year for forward motion, for taking the opportunities that come my way and being brave. I made myself a necklace too. It’s a pretty blue and purple with Wayward stamped on it. Wayward meaning stubborn, willful, difficult, and disobedient. To me, those have always been my best qualities after all and it’s about time I figure out how to make that work for me. This year is my brave year. I can’t wait to see how all those irons in all those fires turn out.

 

Irons and Fires

This year has been off to an amazing start. There are some potential opportunities that cropped up and, since I’ve decided to be braver this year, I’ve opened the door to see where the paths go. I’m sure I’ll talk about it more as things become more clear and set in stone.

I’ve always done better when I’ve got too many things going on. I write more, I create more, and, bonus, I eat less. Busy is a good place for me to be, even if sometimes it’s SO easy to sit back and binge something on Netflix. I am slightly between major projects and sort of at odd ends figuring out what I’d like to work on now. This week is going to be ridiculously busy so I’ll likely stick to fiddling with a short story I’m writing for a contest coming up that I haven’t entered in well over 10 years. I think I’ve grown enough as a writer to give literary fiction another go about now. I’m interested to see what will happen as it isn’t a genre I have dabbled in much.

This week I have a doctor’s appointment, a writer’s group meeting (yay!), a sit down with a newer writer to talk shop (double yay!), and a meeting about some of my artsy craftsy stuff. I just need the weather to cooperate with me. We’ve gone this long without snow – it can wait until Friday to show up dang it.  I am really hoping for some medicine tweaking at the doctor’s appointment – I’m in a place that’s certainly livable and manageable but in the long term, where there is still pain and inflammation, there is the potential for joint damage that can make my future a lesson in agony and I don’t remember ever playing with any lament configuration.

This is shaping up to be a very exciting year for me and I can only hope it continues.

May Wrap Up, June Goals

How on Earth did it get to be June already? This year is going by much too fast. The kids are nearly finished with school which will make getting any real work done a little more difficult but not impossible. I’m planning on getting Bear Ridge completely finished by July. I did manage to get the Zero Draft finished and now it’s a matter of taking the bones and making them flesh and teach them to dance. Hopefully, it’ll be as good as it I think it will.

It’s been a relatively great month overall. I don’t really have any good news to share yet but I’m hopeful for some of that in the next few months. I didn’t quite make my goals for this month but there was definitely an improvement. I made 5 separate artsy things (2 of which went up on NestingDragon), I sent out 5 submissions (a very long way from my old totals but I’m wading in instead of jumping), I only missed 8 days, I went to 1 convention, attended 1 performance of my oldest child in Footloose, voted in local and primary stuff, and I wrote 25,196 words, up about 5000 from last month which makes me happy and I’m over 120,000 words for this year so far. I’m still not meeting my daily word count goals but it’s getting better every month and I’m more than ok with that.

On the health front, I think I’m getting closer to having it either under control or adjusting to the pain enough to work through it. I went hiking and my problems were more about my utter lack of fitness than my RA which is both awesome and awful. I know this last year has been really hard as far as getting moving so I’m trying not to be too hard on myself but it’s also really hard to get that fat-fairy in my head to shut her mouth – you know the one that reminds me I’m still fat because that’s a thing that can change overnight /s. I figure, once the kids are out of school, we can go to the park a few times a week and walk around for a while because I much prefer walking through the woods to walking on the sidewalk – it’s so much nicer on my feet, ankles, knees, and hips. Plus, there’s shade. I’ll get where I need to be eventually.

It’s harder to keep goals in the summer on the writing front and right now, it’s not about the word count so much as it is about getting the book done well and right. Edits don’t add a lot of words usually. They will a bit this time around while I’m adding flesh but my only goal for next month is to finish Christmas in Bear Ridge and get it right, clean and pretty, and readable so I can get it turned in. I’m not worried about the art, the crafting, or learning to use GIMP (though I’ll take any links or tips and tricks on that for after the book is done). In the end, June won’t be a letter grade sort of month but a pass/fail. I either get it done or I don’t.

Accountability has always helped me stay on track, that’s why I keep making these posts. By writing up my goals and my successes and failures, it gives me the motivation to do better, to keep striving a little harder to get it done. Hope you all have a happy and productive June!

Shoes!

I took a little writing break this week, I needed a bit of a recharge and to make something tangible. I’m really proud of the final outcome, even if they aren’t perfect.

Handpainted Fullmetal Alchemist Shoes

A few years ago I painted a pair of shoes for my eldest child all relating to Fullmetal Alchemist, his favorite anime. I thought it might be fun to paint myself a pair, not for FMA though, I never want to paint Al again! I wish I had the artistic skill to match my desire to make things!

 

 

 

 

All the things I think are cute!

Spot (Cthulhu) from Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom

Gurgi from The Black Cauldron

I started with a pair of canvas shoes in my size (boat feet ahead!). I started with some carbon paper and some reference material only to remember that it doesn’t really do more than give you a muddy outline on the best of surfaces. But it was enough that I was able to put in and tweak the smaller details.

Then it was all the painting for a very long time. I forget how much time it takes to paint when you really have no skill with it! I am not the worst at mixing color though! I had to tweak some of the color for Spot – he’s so dark it’s hard to distinguish patterns and shapes so I went with grays and greens instead of black and brown and I really love how he turned out. I am NOT a fan of my Kuro (Blue Exorcist) though – I should have made him bigger and used a different reference picture – there’s no spark to this one. I had wanted to do some more complicated characters like Falcor or a Loth Wolf but I really don’t have the skill for that when the tracing doesn’t work very well on these shoes so I scrapped some of my favorites for other really neat things that I can actually draw like the worm from Beetlejuice or a pipe piranha. I do still need something in my life with a Loth Wolf on it – they’re my favorite animal in all the Star Wars universe and the Loth Cat I managed to do an ok job with just isn’t the same!

Beetlejuice Worm, the little Cow from FMA, Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web, Kuro from Blue Exorcist, the panda from Fullmetal, and Iz, and a Pipe Piranha

Vulpix, K9, the Cheshire cat, Jiji from Kiki’s delivery service, Nee from Blue Exorcist, Twink from Rainbow Brite, and the Loth cat that you can’t really see.

Finished Shoes

February Wrap Up & March Goals

Well, February was my best month since the last time I won a NaNoWriMo. I am a bit of a spreadsheet geek – facts and figures make me so happy.

The figures!

35,221 total words written for February (47,806 for the year)

How does that break down you ask? 9201 words on Gods of the Fallen, 19552 on Hunter’s Hell, 4011 on this blog, 1694 for the Geek Girl Project, and 44 words worth of poetry (or one rough poem). I don’t do a count of any of my handwritten stuff – notes, snippets, my personal diary and such because that would be a pain in the butt to do.

I missed three days out of the month and that’s it. That’s so freaking awesome. I’m really quite proud of myself today, at least on the writing front.

The health front faired less well … stupid yummy food, stupid boring exercise … I actually gained two pounds. However, given how much junk I probably really ate, that’s not so bad. I bought some new resistance bands to help with some of that and I’m trying really hard to stick with the calorie counter app. For me, it’s really more about the calories – if I can keep that under control, I’m good. Doing actual exercise is just a thing I do so I can eat what I want.

I am tolerating the increase in methotrexate pretty well – changing the time of day has made a world of difference. Now I get to sleep through pretty much all of the tired and icky feelings. I’m not pain-free but I’m certainly at mostly tolerable levels and actually able to type. I’m not up to normal speeds but I am thinking that I have to consider this a new normal. I think my days of 80-90 wpm are probably over.

On to March Goals!

On the writing front, I’d like the total count to be higher than February’s and not just because of the missing days. I don’t mind having to not write for a day or three – I might have things that need doing, might be too tired or drained or whatever. I do want to aim for that 50k word count. Realistically, that should be my average at a minimum. That’s only 1650 words per day on average. I might have some days that are only 300 words and days that are close to 4000 words. I really should be able to do 1650 words per day on average. And I really should add a per day average number to my spreadsheet!

On the health front – my biggest goal right now is to be able to get up off the floor without help. Which means I’ll be able to do more proper yoga again I suppose if I can get the dog to leave me be for a minute. Yes, I would like to lose weight. Really, I need to lose a lot of it – 75-80 is my goal (the doctor would be super thrilled with 50 though). So monthly, maybe 5 pounds lost would be really wonderful but the ability to stand up without help is what I’m after.

I got nothing made last month and I would really like to get something neat made this month. So, I want to make at least 5 things in March. I don’t care what they are but 5 somethings. (And find at least one festival I can manage to do for this summer).

I had a lot of progress in February and I just want to keep moving forward as best I can so March is even better.

 

Working

At least for the time being, this attempt at tracking my words is actually working. Not only that but I’ve gotten at least 300 words every day this month and every day since January 20th. That doesn’t seem like much but the way things have been the last six months, the last year, that’s just flat amazing. I’m a bit of a sucker for a well put together spreadsheet and that’s what I’ve put together for tracking my words. It’s not as fancy as it could be but it’s functional – tracking by day, by month, by project, and yearly total. I’m probably enjoying that a little too much but it really is fun to do. I did learn that, even if I only wrote 300 words a day, I could still write a book every year. 300 words is nothing! Anyone can write 300 words.

Husband and I went out today, I hit Joanne Fabrics for some stuff that I can make other stuff out of, discovered much better prices on really nice makeup at Marshall’s, and bought myself a pair of light-up kitten ear headphones that are my new favorite thing ever. I have some crafty plans for this year – some of which might take a little practice – and I’ve got to get moving on that so I can make stuff worthy of actually selling at this year’s group of craft fairs and at my little Etsy shop. I have lots of plans, I just have to make my body cooperate.

An actual productive day

I feel like I should have had more of them so far but, I’ll take whatever I can get at this point. I did everything on my to-do list today (not that it was a long list). I even put words in on Hunter’s Hell – a grand total of about 800 of them and that’s a whole lot better than yesterday’s 0. I put my face on and, while I need a lot of practice with the pretties, I can do my eyes. It’s not as pretty as what Heidi did yesterday but yeah. Pretty. I’m a very happy lady.

My list of things to do this year is pretty long and I’m doing my best to get on track to get them done. I added a few things to that list today, a few things I’d like to learn how to do or get better at doing. In theory, I know how to make paper. In practice, it’s been 25 years since the last time I did that and I don’t have my mom to help me now so I imagine there will be some trial and error there but I know I love artisan paper and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that. I’d like to learn nuno-felting only not with lamb’s wool because I would like to not make my skin hate me but it’s just such a neat idea and I’d love to see if I can make something like what popped in my head when I read about that the first time.

Now I’ve got to set up my to do list for tomorrow that hopefully includes getting the kids ready for school again… fingers crossed it stays just a two hour delay.