11 Questions & Write-A-Thon Conclusion

My CP and friend Tobi tagged me in this snazzy bloghopping phenom: 11 Questions. I was compelled to answer them.

The 11 Questions I Had to Answer:

1. Favorite TV show?
So hard to choose! Though I'd probably say One Piece. Hmm…
Can I pick more than one? How about I just split it into three categories - 30 min, 1hr, and animated. In order, Parks and Rec, Castle, and One Piece!

2. Beach or ski resort?
Hmm… well… I'm scared of the thought of skiing, and I hate deep waters (where mysterious creatures lurk, like sharks and jellyfish and Cthulhu). I guess the beach for the ice cream. Yum.

Cthulhu waits for you.
Let's snorkel and see the jellyfish.

3. What's your favorite part of the writing process?
Writing character interactions. Nothing was more fun in EQ than writing Red/Wolf conversations, or Hunter/Tertius. And in Knight, Erin/Matthew convos.

4. Self-publishing or traditional?
Hmm… I guess self-publishing. I'd like to be a part of both.

5. If you could have any one food every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Rice. Maybe ice cream. I don't suppose the two would combine well, huh?

6. If you met an alien, what would you do?
I hope I would act like Pegg and Frost in Paul. We'd all chill and hang out and have an adventure. Just, no drugs. Alcohol is ok.

7. Would you prefer watching a mediocre movie or a really, really bad one?
"You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"

8. How do you relieve stress?
Video games, for sure. Tetris or Picross are great no-thinkers, or any RPG to level-grind. I like to do monotonous tasks, haha. And, of course, read.

9. If you ever got the chance to participate in a really big tomato fight, would you take it?
Omg, yes!

Who could say no to this madness!?

10. Craziest thing you've ever done/would like to do?
Hmm… I'm a fairly boring person…
I guess moving to Chicago after college! Does that count?

11. What are your favorite boys' and girls' names?
Well, my favorite boys' names are: James, Matthew, & Tobias
And my favorite girls' names are: Emily, Emma, & Anna



Ok, so, 11 new questions for any of you awesome people that feel like doing this. I have no clue who to tag, so if you see this and would like to answer some silly questions, have at it.

1. What's your favorite fairy tale?
2. Have you ever written a scene that suddenly introduces a new character not previously created, and that character becomes important?
3. Quick! You're trapped in a library with a zombie! You just threw Pride and Prejudice at its head. It doesn't appreciate classics. What do you do next?
4. How bad was that joke?
5. Do you have a favorite genre?
6. Would you stay in a supposed haunted house overnight if given the chance?
7. Favorite color or pattern?
8. What made you want to start blogging? If you don't have a blog, would you ever consider starting one?
9. Seven-leagued boots or invisibility cloak?
10. What's the oddest thing you've heard/seen while in an elevator? Or, if you've never been in an elevator (hey, anything's possible), the strangest thing you've heard/seen while waiting in a line?
11. If you woke up inside your favorite movie, what is the first thing you'd want to do (besides find a way back home)?

Write-a-Thon #1 Overview

Well, how many words can I write in a day? Not many, when I let myself get distracted. Haha.

I did fairly well from 10am to 2pm. I didn't write many words, maybe close to 4,000. But I did plan out the first 2/3s of Damsel, a little bit more of WS, and I wrote chapter 6 of WS, and I had a lot of fun. But, and I can't believe I did this, I turned on the TV!

I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe for bg noise? Terrible idea because the next thing I know I'm sucked into two dramas - Morgan Freeman's Lean on Me, and Matthew McConaughey's A Time to Kill  And then at 7pm, which was the time I expected to stop, Once Upon a Time, Desperate Housewives and GCB came on.

(For the record, I don't watch Desperate Housewives regularly. I've seen two episodes, and that's because it's between OUaT and GCB. But I kind of wish I did watch it, because it seems pretty interesting.)

(Also for the record, this is probably one of my favorite episodes of OUaT. Though I was disappointed by one or two things in the real-world of the show. The fairy tale portion was flawless.)

Snow and Red plan to hunt the wolf,
in the episode: Red-Handed

Why did I turn on the TV?!

So, I think next Sunday or the one after that I'll try a mini Write-A-Thon, to see how many words I can write in half a day. And this time I won't turn the TV on.

Week in Review, and Flash Fiction Friday: #3

Why did I wake up at 7:30am on a Saturday? And sometimes I have the most random dreams. I was a waterbender (like from Avatar: The Last Airbender), and I was running from some firebenders on these train tracks (but think cyberpunk-ish, weird train tracks/trains) that circled a big waterfall gorge (being a waterbender, this was rather fortuitous). I ran into these twin ninja assassins that were also hunting me, but a tall, muscular old knight helped me out... and I woke up while in the process of trying to buy a horse called SweetSugar - the horse was not sweet by the way, but insane. The hermit selling him in the middle of nowhere told me so.

Wah? That was an odd one.

Anyway...

1. The WiP Movie Blogfest was awesome. I'm still jumping around to other blogs to see the entries, because I'm slow about these things, haha.

2. I received my proof copy of the EQ from CreateSpace! (print-to-order book seller, if you didn't know) It looks amazing! I'd have flagged is as good-to-go if I hadn't found one chapter - one chapter! - where I accidentally forgot to delete some header content. So, it's not up for general sale that way yet.

I apologize for the dopey look on my face. And my crazy hair. Except not really because eeeeeeee PROOF COPY! I love eBooks, but I'm always going to love print copies more.

For those who don't know, which is probably most of you, haha, I'm interested in both sides of the publishing field - self-published and traditional. The Eternal Queen is a weird book (though I think it's great and a lot of fun, as did my beta readers), but weird from a traditional published/marketed type of book pov, so it didn't seem like I'd have a better reason to jump into the self-published world then with EQ.

3. Speaking of EQ - Today is the last day of Read an eBook Week! You can still find The Eternal Queen for free on Smashwords (coupon RE100).

4. Do any of you watch Awake? It's a snazzy new show on NBC. It has a) Jason Isaacs, b) weird 'which world is a dream-world' or 'are they both dream worlds?' concept, and c) the acting is quite top-notch. Apparently, I heard the ratings aren't that great, which baffles me. It's only the second episode, so I hope they don't think of shutting it down before it has a chance to start.

5. And since I got on the topic of TV - Who else is super excited for the Red Riding Hood story on Once Upon a Time? Since Red Riding Hood fractured tales hold a dear place in my heart (EQ is heavily inspired by RRH), I cannot even begin to tell you how patiently I've been waiting for Ruby's story. ^_^

I think that's all the exciting news from the past week. I'll leave you now with the delayed Flash Fiction Friday! Happy writing everyone!

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: #3

     The first time she sees Marla trapped in a vision it's a Friday-night-that's-really-Saturday-morning-damn-it-to-hell-it's-so-early-it's-still-late and she's just managed to slip into the strange floating realm of exhausted almost-dreams. A blood-curling scream rings throughout the house, ignoring the boundaries of doors and walls like they're not built for the purpose of keeping unwanted things out.

     Like the rest of her dorm-mates, she stumbles from her room into the hallway, feet slapping the hardwood without care, eyes wide, a half-formed spell caught between upper teeth and bottom lip. Once they realize they're not in danger or under attack or about to be pulled into one of Gregor's mad drills, they focus on the important thing – Marla.

Marla's mouth is opened wide, but the shadows from the dim lighting make it look like a black hole, an abyss, a gateway to hell – that's the only explanation for the inhuman screech. Her lips are red and wet in the flickering candlelight. Gregor's thick arms are encircling her bird-like body, cradling her.

     She thinks, later, when she's nestled back under her covers and the adrenaline of surprise has faded completely, that it wasn't that impressive. The terrifying scream had only lasted a second, and then the only sounds escaping Marla had been strange, low whimpers, like a begging dog. Her body hadn't convulsed in a seizure. She'd just lair there like a limp doll and then suddenly closed her eyes and gone to sleep, mouth clicking shut with a loud snap.

     'In fact,' she scowls into her pillow. 'It was barely nothing. But she'll get all the attention for months after this. Just what she'll want.'

Writing Update! NaNo & More

Oh, disappeared there for a while. Been working hard on the first draft of Knight. I'm seven chapters (give or take) away from the end of the first draft. My goal is to finish by December 9th, because then life gets hectic as I head to NJ for the holidays and I don't want to potentially leave two or three chapters unwritten for a month.

So, I won NaNo! Sort of, I mean, by there definition maybe not so much, since it was not a brand new idea that I started and completed in 50,000 words. But I did write 50,000 words, most for Knight. But I also started planning the next book I want to work on, as well as Book 2 in the Mist Walkers series. And I also wrote a bunch of little snippets from future books, new story ideas, just for fun, etc.

It was a great experience, especially having my writing buddy to act as cheerleader while she worked on her own NaNo (she also won!).

That's basically what I've been working on, that and eagerly awaiting new episodes of One Piece and Once Upon a Time.

It's so great to see the Strawhats all back together again! Just goes to show how great a writer Oda is (in my opinion), where for 2 years (literally and in the story), we were exclusively following Luffy and only got a handful of scenes to update us on the other characters! Now, I started watching One Piece over the summer, so I didn't actually have a two year wait to see the reunion, and you can bet there were several arcs, the Marineford arc the most recent, that my boy and I watched in marathon runs over several weekends. I was actually the one making us slow down during the Marine/Whitebeard war since I knew we'd soon catch up to the real schedule! And man, does it hurt having to wait a week for one new episode when you're used to sitting down a watching eight episodes over a weekend. Ouch!

Luckily, Castle has picked up it's pace and is back to be the wonderful show it is! I wasn't completely upset with the opening episodes to the season, they were just soo dark, and there were several scenes I knew I was giggling at that I wasn't supposed to, and I just wanted to see classic Castle goodness. Surprisingly, one of the last episodes I've seen was a dramatic one, and wow! Amazing! The way they shot it was perfect. So I know Castle can do great dramatic episodes, I just don't want that to be dragging over several episodes at a time. Castle, at its heart, is comedy first. Maybe that's just me.

Also, Once Upon a Time has been so much fun. I forget the name of the actor playing Rumplestiltskin - and am too lazy to check right now - but he is fantastic! Creepy, and mysterious, and a little crazy, just awesome. And it's been a lot of fun seeing new character unveiled, and getting fairy tale backstories. I'm not sure how it will last more than one season, but that's something to worry about later. Right now it's fun just watching things unfold.

And now that I've talked more about TV than writing, I'm jumping into the next chapter. I would love to finish three today, but I'll be happy with two. I've been stewing on them all week!

TV Review: ABC's Once Upon a Time

I've realized that I'm not very 'official' with my blog. So I feel like I should first start off with a bit of an apology - I do try to make sure I've caught any grammar/spelling mistakes, but I'm sure I'm not very good at it  -_- . But I try my best.

Anyway! That's not the point of this post. This post is about ABC's new show, 'Once Upon a Time'. I was tentatively excited when I heard about this show, because I LOVE fractured fairy tales. My first novel (currently querying for an agent), is a dark, subverted, very loose re-telling of Red Riding Hood.

'Once Upon a Time' stars Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan (Snow White and Prince Charming's daughter), Laura Parrilla as the Evil Step-Mother/Regina Mills, Ginnifer Goodwin as Snow White/Mary Margaret Blanchard, Joshua Dallas as Prince Charming/John Doe, & Jared Gilmore as Henry, Emma's son given up for adoption ten years ago. And many more...

It aired last night (Sunday October 23) at 7:00pm central time, not that I watched it then. I watch everything on Hulu since I don't have TV.

I guess what I'm going to do is split this review up in a couple of different sections, because that's how I review things in my head.

EXPECTATIONS:
As mentioned above, I was tentatively excited about this. The concept was something I immediately loved, especially since I was so disappointed when the quirky, fairy-tale-like 'Pushing Daisies' was cancelled. However, anything shooting to have so many quirks, switch between a fairy tale world, graphics, etc. has high potential to crash and burn and fail with the crowd (and be cancelled because of that). The writing for something like this, in my humble opinion, needs to be flexible and willing to take the idea and go all the way with it. It should be a little dark, a lot of quirky, and yet balanced. I'm not sure how else to explain my fears, so let's move on...

FIRST THOUGHTS:
I finished the episode and just... smiled. I was SO happy that it had met, and exceeded, my expectations. I love Morrison as Emma. She feels like a real person, and that someone like her would react the way they did if their 10-year-old child (put up for adoption) suddenly appeared on their doorstep on the night of their 28th birthday.

Jared Gilmore plays young Henry with just the right mix of child-like innocence & precocious wit. I'm... not very fond of kids (or every character in a show) talking back and forth with these witty one-liners that build on top of each other, unless it's done with a level of humor, or the show itself is so quirky that you'd expect them to speak like that (once again, Pushing Daisies).

The fairy tale characters were fun to watch, in both the fairy tale world flashbacks, and picking them out (if possible) in the real world of Storybrooke. The fairy tale world flashbacks were a little cheesy, but I still loved them. However, this episode really builds up Emma and Henry, more than any of the others, because the fairy tale characters are a little flat to start out. They act like you'd expect them to act in the flashbacks, and they're only just being developed in their real-world counterparts.

WHAT I LOVED:
Morrison's performance as Emma, Gilmore's performance as Henry, and switching between the two story lines/worlds. Whatever budget they've been given for the fairy tale world, wow, I think they're really done great things with it.

WHAT I DISLIKED:
Nothing really, at least not right now.

WHAT I'M A LITTLE WORRIED ABOUT:
Naturally, how the fairy tale characters will be developed in their real-world counterparts. I want to see them do unexpected things with the characters and concepts.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
If you can't tell, I really liked the pilot. I'm looking forward to the second episode, a lot, and I hope it only gets better. And that it doesn't get cancelled, haha.

If you're on the fence about watching it, I think you should give it a chance. You might be just as pleasantly surprised as I was.