So, I finally got a page up for my newest YA novel, The Mayfair Moon. I’ve written a so-called blurb (my blurbs tend to be longer than most I read. Kind of in-between a blurb and a synopsis – a blurpsis, perhaps? I suck at both!) Anyway, you can check it out here. By the end of the day tomorrow I’ll be adding a pdf. download of the first chapter.

Next comes another long and dreadful trip down Agent Rejection Junction.

It’s O.K.

I’ll get through it.

Hope you like it! :-)

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I haven’t been updating this blog much, but it’s been for good reason. I’ve been writing a lot the past couple months and I couldn’t be more pleased—I feel like I’m officially ‘back in business’. I did put my Dirty Eden agent search on hold for a while and went back to work on The Mayfair Moon.  Well, I’m happy to say I’m about a chapter away from the end and I’m excited. Of course, I’ve mentioned before that the title will probably change, but I couldn’t be more happy about how the story has unfolded.  I’ll be putting the first chapter of The Mayfair Moon up for download soon. Book two of the trilogy has already been swimming around in my head.

{Insert Neat Photo Here to Distract from all the text}

But then there’s also a YA/children’s story I began around the same time last year I started The Mayfair Moon, which I’m anxious to get back to work on.  I guess I’ll have to go with the flow and work on whichever calls to me the most.

Back to Dirty Eden – Okay, I just need to say that I really loved writing that story. It was a strange thing because in its conception, I was in the beginning of a two-year long emotional roller-coaster ride. It’s amazing what life-altering circumstances can do for a writer’s craft. Dirty Eden wasn’t just a story, it was an experience. Now, I just need to go in an edit it again so I can get back on the agent bandwagon.

Anyway, I have recently rewritten the Dirty Eden blurb on ‘The Work’ page. After several months of not reading it over and over again, I noticed something major wrong with it that I was shocked not to have noticed before. I’m mortified that I sent that synopsis to so many agents without realizing that error. The sentences were so damn long they were like a book in themselves. My writing, the actual story, isn’t like that at all. But the synopsis was because writing a synopsis is like walking a tightrope over a volcano. If you don’t do it right the first time….

So anyway, that’s my update.

You can’t imagine how grateful  I am to have a 14-year-old daughter who’s an avid reader of YA novels. She’s one of those who can read a 6-book series in a week or less.

Jerricah has been extremely curious about my newest YA novel, The Mayfair Moon (title subject to change) and finally after seventeen chapters, I decided to let her read it.

She did more than read it. For two days, she read it aloud to me and we edited it. I knew she was intelligent, but I never thought to put her intelligence and love for reading to work like that. It was a wise decision, I must say. She found a lot of errors, bad sentences, places were I was ‘telling’ rather  than ‘showing’ – she found a lot! And what was also great was her inability to be biased because I’m her mom. She wasn’t afraid to tell me what she didn’t like, what made no sense, what SUCKED.

Of course, what I say next will likely be interpreted as writer blindness to family opinions, but that’s OK. I’m not ‘one of those’ writer’s, I can assure you. So, with that said, I  can tell you Jerricah loves The Mayfair Moon, despite the errors (because ALL first drafts have errors!) and she kept trying to read ahead to find out what happened to this and that character. She truly loves the story and has easily connected with the characters.

I never thought to get a young adult to read and help edit a young adult novel, but I think it’s a vital advantage to have.

She’s anxious to read the rest and this has helped inspire me to finish it.

On a side note, I have dumped my cable! I have officially dragged out the crappy converter box and hooked it up so I can get used to limited TV entertainment in a few days when Comcast shuts me off. I did do it because I’m sick of trying to pay $65 a month for basic cable, but also because too much TV=less writing! I know that without the TV on to distract me for hours and hours every week, I’ll have much more time to write.

And that’s what matters.

I haven’t been much in a blogging mood lately, though I think a lot of that has to do with getting through the holidays and stuff. I mean seriously, I’m just now taking down my Christmas tree today. :-S

Brian came to visit me for 5 great days and we spent New Year’s together. On New Year’s Eve we went to  a nice place downtown called Bosco’s. I know, I look like a wannabe Vegas showgirl or something with the feathers on my head.

The whole time he was here it was cold as hell…wait, okay so that didn’t make much sense, but you get the idea. Really though, it was frigid! Though thankfully not until after our walk/climb up Pinnacle Mountain…

…which was awesome! (Looks like a giant squeezing the little girl’s head, hehe)

And our visit to The Old Mill, which Brian also really loved.

And so did I. :-)

We also went to the Old State House Museum, which was free admission and really should have charged something. Seriously, the place was enormous and had a maze of rooms with great exhibits that was set up nicer than some high dollar museums I’ve seen.

Here’s Brian standing next to…well, his body-double? :-| I still wonder if this is coincidentally cool, or if someone needs to catch up with this century maybe? :-P

We took tons more photos, but I’ve never been interested in seeing other people’s museum photos for some reason, so I won’t bore you with ours. I guess it’s one of those things that you’d rather just see in person. Same with zoo photos – they are boring to look at usually, unless you’re the one taking them. Interested in the museum, follow the link above. :-)

And what would any trip to visit me be without going to FLEA MARKETS! At least he actually wanted to go to a few, otherwise I would’ve felt wrong dragging him along, hehe.

And as I have demonstrated in the past, you can find some weird stuff in flea markets, like this ginormous bag clearly made for ginormous giants. Here you can see shopping carts made for hobbit people and here, perverted mannequins.

We also saw Sherlock Holmes, which I thought was good, but not as humorous as I expected it to be. Though, you can’t go wrong with Robert Downey Jr., so it was worth it!

Looks like my next trip to Chicago will hopefully be in April and then again in July (he wants to DRAG me to the Bristol Ren Faire! I’m terrified!) and he definitely wants to come back to Arkansas so we can go hiking up Mount Magazine or some other cool place like Devil’s Den.

Can’t wait!

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I got back from my 5-day trip in Chicago a little after 5:00a.m. this morning. I want to start from the beginning, but about all of the horrible Greyhound experiences, I will be brief as I don’t want to sour such a wonderful experience with negativity.

The Brief Bitch: Everything about Greyhound is torturous and I would never, under any circumstances, recommend anyone ride one, ever.

Now that that’s been said, let me start with the city itself. I’ve never been in a big city like Chicago. I’ve never been on a subway, or ‘train’ what have you, and have only seen them on TV and in movies. Brian (who I went to Chicago to see and I will get to that soon) showed me so many things and took me to so many places that I can’t remember everything right off (this might be a long post, but I’m due for a good one anyway!). Well, I absolutely loved riding on the train! Call me silly, but I would give up the use of my car everyday in exchange for hopping on trains that stop and go at stops so fast you have to stay on your toes lest you miss them. I loved watching all different kinds of people go to and from, this way and that, going about their daily lives, iPod buds dangling from their ears, backpacks tossed over their shoulders. Few people ever say much to anyone next to them, yet somehow that quiet mystery in passing between them fascinates me.

I stood beneath so many towering skyscrapers and I welcomed the vertigo with open arms. The Sears Tower (I refuse to call it the Willis Tower – sounds funny even for someone not from Chicago) was like standing under a Titan. Amazing.

(Photo by Brian Salata)

I’m having a difficult time choosing which photos to put up! I only took about 200, give or take, and then there are the ones Brian took, which turned out better than mine did. My camera sucks!

We also went to “The Lake”, which I like to call The Ocean because I’ve never seen a lake so enormous that you can’t see land on the other side. but it was frigid and we could only stay long enough to get a few shots.

(Photo by Brian Salata)

Brian took me to one of his inspirational places and I really loved it there. We both agree that it could do without the graffiti, but the area in general is peaceful.

(Photo by Brian Salata)

Brian took me to the Adler Planetarium where we saw a show called Night Sky Live. It was really nice, as we both are heavily obsessed with The Universe.

I  love this photo of Brian. :-)  It’s so fitting!

But this one, even more fitting! :-D

I look like shit in my newspaper ad, but oh well.

We had a great time.

I also got to meet a longtime friend of mine, Kris aka Sex, Death & Money, who I’ve known online since the role-playing days of MSN. We’ve known each other for about six years.  Me, Brian, Kris and her comical boyfriend (I forgot his name! What is it, Kris?) met up at Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria so I could eat my first pizza. OK, my first Chicago pizza, so technically my first pizza. We hung out for about 2 hours and laughed a lot about how Southern I really am (y’all hush! It ain’t that bad!) and made fun of Twilight and talked about just about everything. It was fun.

Love ya, Kris!

But Chicago was more than a vacation. I went for one reason and that was to meet Brian. And Brian was the best part of my trip. It was a long-awaited meeting, or rather, long overdue and I couldn’t be happier about how it all turned out.  :-)

I’m ready to go back to Chicago!  :-) … :-(

I know I’m leaving a lot out because I’m still zombified from the trip, so I’ll be adding stuff to this blog….

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I am a huge Alice In Wonderland fan and have been anticipating the new Tim Burton version of the film, for quite some time.  And so I logged onto Yahoo! today and saw this:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/need-to-know-alice-in-wonderland.html

I’m so excited, I can’t wait! Johnny Depp, Helena Bonhan Carter, Michael Sheen, Alan Rickman, Christopher Lee….hell, what more could I ever ask for?!

Yeah, so that’s my blog for a few days, or so. I just had to share my excitement. :-)

So, I’ve been wanting to get a puppy for a while now. I can’t get an English Bulldog until I get out of these apartments because they are just too big. I’ve been thinking a lot about a Toy Poodle I had when I was younger. I had her for 13 or 14 years until she got so old that she was deaf in both ears and blind in both eyes. One day, she was sitting underneath my mom’s car and you can probably guess the rest. I always loved that dog and recently decided that I was going to get another one, a Toy Poodle. I searched the Sunday paper and realized how expensive they are and thought I should forget it for now, until I was coming back from shopping today and saw a ‘For Sale’ sign in a shaded area of a bank parking lot and four cages with what looked like several puppies that I knew were small dogs. I pulled in immediately and fell in love before I got out of the car.

And so I brought Ares homes today after writing a check (much less than $400!) and he’s adorable! Though he’s not a Toy Poodle, but rather a Maltese, he still looks much like Tiny did. He’s so playful and loveable and perfect. I’m pretty excited. :-)

I named him after Ares on the show Xena: Warrior Princess. :-D He’s only 4 months old. So far he likes to chew on my pant legs. He’s not afraid of car rides and wasn’t afraid of a bath, either.

Wow. I mean, really…wow. I have to confess, I’ve been shopping at Wal-Mart supercenters for groceries for years. For some reason I’ve always been under the impression that Wal-Mart was cheaper than everywhere else, and to some degree that is true (where places like Harvest Foods is concerned – ridiculous prices at that place), but I’ve always thought it was cheaper than Kroger as well. That’s not so. In fact, with a Kroger card (which is free) you can get things for the same price, if not cheaper! But let me go back to the reason for my ‘wow’. I decided tonight to go to Kroger to shop instead of my usual, and I’m glad I did. I’ve been out of the loop! Kroger had all kinds of things that I had no idea existed. Their produce section was huge and looked nice, as opposed to the very limited produce at Wal-Mart, and the last time I bought sliced watermelon from there, it was spoiled. No, Kroger isn’t playing around. Everything was fresh and stocked (I couldn’t even find a zucchini at Wal-Mart a few days ago!).

Also, I am someone that likes to buy and eat healthy. I don’t like putting ‘hormones’ into my body, and I’m all about vitamin-rich foods and disease-fighting supplements, etc. Kroger had Flax cookies! I never knew there was such a thing on a shelf in a store. I thought that was something you had to make from scratch. They also had an entire section in the produce aisle devoted to organic foods. Try finding something like that in Wal-Mart. You can’t.

I guess I’m just really surprised (and a bit disgusted) at how long I’ve let myself be left in the dark when it comes to grocery shopping. I guess that goes to show that a ‘supercenter’ isn’t all they want you to believe it is. There is this illusion that you can go to one store and get everything from bread and apples to panties and shoes and fishing poles, and while that is true, it’s also true that by doing it that way you’re trading convenience for quality. Not to mention, I noticed tonight that I can spend $117 on groceries alone (which is always my intention when I go grocery shopping) as opposed to $117 on stuff at Wal-Mart and maybe only half of that be food. I always end up buying crap I don’t need, or that I didn’t set out to buy. Why? Because it’s all staring me in the face when I’m trying to pay attention to what I went there for.

So anyway, I thought I’d share this eye-opening experience. No more Wal-Mart groceries for me, that’s for sure.

~steps off her soapbox~

Well, complete as in I typed the last sentence today. Now it’s all up to Boss with a Crowbar to break out his mad editing skills and edit the hell out of me before I take it to the next level.

Anyway, this is just a quick post to mark the day I finished. Pretty soon I’ll be adding the  book blurb on ‘The Work’ page and when I do, I’ll post a blog to let you know.

Ok, the truth is (as disturbing as the truth might be) that I think a zombie invasion would be frickin’ awesome. Yes. I admit it. I am a nutcase.

Now, I’ve always been into zombies. I was a hardcore Resident Evil player when it first came out. Even today, it scares the crap out of me, and my kids laugh when I’m about to ‘die’ and I start shouting, “Oh shit! Oh shit! I’m out of ammo! Imma die!” But I love the games. They keep me on edge and when I hear that distinctive shuffling sound around the corner (yeah, you know that sound!) my body tenses up and the Playstation controller turns into a Wii wand. I’ve always loved zombie movies, and of course I have all of the Resident Evil movies, and I love the classic Night of the Living Dead. Who doesn’t?!

Anyway, I was going to make a point here somewhere.

A zombie invasion would be awesome. I guess I already made that point. Sure, I know I’d likely die and turn into one myself, but I can’t think of a cooler way to go other than by an asteroid impact, or being sucked into a black hole. I’ve had these discussions in length with my dear friend, who I mention a lot and will start calling ‘Boss with a Crowbar’, and because of Boss with a Crowbar, I’m more into zombies than I was before. That’s dangerous.

Ok, so I think I’m going to zombify myself in zombie movies tonight. Maybe I’ll even have zombie nightmares. Ooooh, I can’t wait to go to bed. :-D

…well, nothing beats my werewolf dreams though….