Right when I’m thinking about new beginnings for myself, I saw the quote above retweeted by someone I follow. It really hit a chord with me, so let me tell you why.

Nothing is easy in life, but it is very easy to be led astray. Plans you made years ago just don’t work out, friends come and go; life happens and it can be ugly. Back when I graduated high school, my plan was to go to college, get an English degree, marry my high school sweetheart and then travel overseas and teach English in Japan. Looking back, only one of those things happened:  I went to college. But it’s ok. I did graduate – even if it was with a degree that’s done jack besides getting me a job.  A job at which I made new friends, and settled me into a new city that I didn’t really feel at home at. Now I can say, even though I still miss Florida, North Carolina is home. While none of all those other plans worked out for me, my life is pretty decent with a roof over my head, an awesome husband, and a job I love.

Life is full of ups and downs, and as one of my favorite artists sings “You can’t have the nice without the mean,You can’t have the good times without the hard times in-between.”  I’ve heard this around before but and I take it to heart: how are you suppose to know when you’ve got it good, if you haven’t had it bad? Bad things don’t always happen for a reason, but they can lead you to a change in your life that you may have needed.  I don’t want to promise that everything will be fine in the end if things turn badly because sometimes, they don’t; but most of the time, life can get better – if you’re willing to work for it.

My views on fate and destiny are very skewed. Yes, I believe that we each have a plan/fate/destiny that we’re working to fulfill, but if you want something, and want it badly enough, there’s nothing stopping you from accomplishing your dreams but yourself. Dreams are hard to reach. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be dreams that are out there with the stars. They’d be leaves, or lint balls, anything that’s a dime a dozen and so common you don’t think twice about.  We have to work hard and put effort and energy into our dreams or one day it’s too late, and you think back “I could have done this or that. I really wish I had…” Live and work towards your goals and try your hardest, so that you have no regrets.

Dreams that I’m working towards:

• Being a healthy weight - this is my hardest dream, and the one I struggle with everyday.  I’m 50 lbs overweight and I’ve been trying to lose this weight for the better part of two years. I don’t have the money for any of those fancy programs like Jenny Craig or Weight Watcher, and definitely not able to afford a personal trainer, so all this has been on my own. This is usually what happens: by mostly watching what I eat, and I mean strictly, I’ll lose 5-9 lbs. But when I see that I’ve done so well I think, “Well, I can have just one cookie. I’ve been really good, one cookie won’t hurt.” But that one cookie turns into five, a box of doughnuts, fast food runs – and it’s all down hill from there.  I’ve been going back and forth like crazy, and just a few weeks ago, I nearly hit 180 lbs again. My goal weight is 145 lb. I’ve finally said enough is enough! This is what I’m doing about it: I watch what I eat, but not to the point where I’m crazy about it. I try and make healthier choices, smaller portions, and NO soda. I keep fast food and fried food to a minimum. I snack on almonds and sunflower seeds, I carry a water bottle and USE it all day. The Hubby and I go down to the gym (provided by our apartment complex, no extra charge) every morning. 15 – 20 minuets of cardio, my favorite is the treadmill, followed by a circuit of the weight machines.  It’s difficult trying to lose weight, but if you fall and gain some back, just find where you went wrong and try again, and again, until you reach your goal.
• Finishing a novel - I enjoy writing, but I find it hard to continue through and complete one project. I tend to jump back and forth between three or four of my WiPs. I’m trying to complete Grimm right now, but NaNo plots keep popping in my head. I just jot down these on a notepad and keep on typing.
• Going to Japan – While I no longer wish to teach English in Japan, I still really want to visit, and maybe even move there. It’s a dream that I’m afraid to lose. But it’s just another of life’s ups and downs. We save and save, but something comes along and takes a nice chunk out of the money. It’s kinda like the beginning of that Disney movie UP, minus the baby bit. The hubby and I are afraid it may not happen. What we’re doing about it? We try and save what we can, before we make big purchases we weight the options and ask ourselves: do we really need it? could we live with out it?

I find living life one of the hardest things I do everyday, just dealing with all the ups and downs, the crazy twists and turns. But even though it’s hard,  I’m happy to have this chance at life. Because I know that there are others out there that don’t have this chance; that don’t have the option or abilities to fulfill their dreams. I’ll help those I can and I’ll live my life to the fullest, enjoying the good times and all the hard times in-between.

Music above is Matt Butcher & The Revolvers “On My Mind”

In preperation for NaNo, I’ve been thinking about plots. I had a few picked out with two leading the group as great possiblities. Those two were:

• Sequeal to Grimm Aspects: Grimm Mistakes – All I’ve got for this idea was that I’d be introducing werewolves to the story line and the war between the factions insue. Main characters switch to Lucas and Auburn, with Lucas being the POV focus.
• Character inherits a house and it’s current tenent: a demon or a vampire. 

I have some reservations about starting the sequeal to Grimm Aspects when the first draft of that piece isn’t anywhere near finished. I feel that the elements of Grimm could change so drastically that starting Grimm Mistakes would be a bad idea.

The second possiblity wasn’t much, but it’s hit a strong chord within me. I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure out what I could do to spice it up. Divorcee with kids, family issues, a whole nest of vampires; none of it seemed to fit. So the other night, I took a trip through the Adopt a Plot thread to see if anything I read would spark an idea, and it did.

Here is my idea for NaNoWriMo 2010: The Set of Skeleton Keys

After accepting the inheritance that her grandfather left her, Mary Brooks must pass a series of tests to prove that she is worthy of taking her grandfather’s place as the Grim Reaper’s assistant.

Mary is an antisocial young woman whose only real “friend” is her social butterfly older sister and her trickster mentor-ish grandfather, who has recently passed on. Her grandfather leaves her his shop, which Mary can’t recall ever having seen before with the instructions to “have fun.”
She then finds out that her grandfather was a sort of Grim Reaper’s assistant, and now that he’s dead, she has to pass a series of tests before she can take over his job of helping Lost Souls to move on. Her only assistance comes in the form of a few cryptic clues her grandfather left around the shop and one less than helpful demon who has managed the shop in the grandfather’s absence.

I’ve got my rough outline finished and currently, I’m working on completing character sheets for the main characters, Mary and Apollo (the demon- though, I’m not sure if that’s going to be his name or not). After these are completed, I’ll start work on a phase outline, reward system, and graphics for the NaNo site.

I blame society today. Most are convinced or just so busy that their 20 minuet long commute becomes the only time of day to make those phone calls. But what’s happened to the joy of riding with the windows down, the radio up, the shifting of gears, and just that feeling of having a powerful machine at your control?

I started recognizing this feeling after I learned and became more confident in driving my 5 speed Jetta. It becomes even more apparent when I’m driving my hubby’s 6 speed R32. I don’t want to do anything else but focus on the car and the road because it’s such a wonderful experience. But looking back when I drove my little automatic Mazada, I could see why people would feel the need to be doing something else while they’re driving. It’s boring. All you do is throw the car into drive and go. By driving a 5/6 speed manual car, you’re forced to pay more attention to the car and the lay of the road; Shift up to accelerate, down shift on turns and to keep momentum on steep hills, and on the R32? Finding that sweet spot in shifting between 3rd and 4th that releases that oh-so-sweet purring sound that turns heads.

Okay, I’m done. /rant

Let me start from the beginning. It all started in March this year, when the cover of The Midnight Mayor caught my eye on the shelf. I mean look at it, it’s such a beautiful cover! Who could resist picking that up and buying it? When I got it home to read though, I was just a little confused, and took me a good fifty pages to realize that, while a separate story in it’s own, it was the second book in the Matthew Swift series.  Reluctantly, I went back and found the first book, A Madness of Angels. And I’m glad I did.

These books are really well written. The metaphors and the sayings are pure genius, and just the whole concept of Matthew’s character and the fact that the author did such a wonderful job of explaining the complexity behind him, his death and his resurrection with the angels in tow.  I am we and We are me.

My favorite scenes (to name a few) in The Midnight Mayor:  the actual inauguration – really well done, loved the references back to the first book without having the full flash back. And then there was a scene where Matthew and secondary character Oda, were running from the villain of the book. Matthew pulls them down on to the undergrounds tracks, and after touching the live line, spreads blue digital wings to fly them away!

Besides the characters, and the fantastic scenes, I loved that the books offered a philosophy that anyone, and not just those in the books, could live by. Magic is life, but life isn’t always magic. The theme of urban sorcerers finding magic within the confines of everyday things, within the city itself, was just amazing and really, a whole new look on magic.

I highly suggest reading these books!

We be light, we be life, we be fire!
We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven!
Come be we and be free!
We blue electric angels.

Here’s a quick definition from NaNoWriMo.org:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.

Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

It’s July now and it’s time for me to get to planning! I will make the 50,000 word count this year. I WILL!! Well, I hope that I will. Last year was a success and a fail at the same time. I made it as far as ever have into NaNo, 16,000 words, but that was still 34,000 words short!

So here are my calculations for 2010:

November 2010 = 30 days =50,000 /4 weeks =12,500 words a week (6 days) = roughly 2,000 per day.

If I can break my story into the 4 Sequences (parts) of 12,500 words each, that will be my weekly goal, with me trying for a daily goal of 2,000 words.   …Yikes.

My first step to preparing for NaNo is to start thinking about what story ideas I have lurking around my brain that I’d be comfortable writing for a month. My second step is kick up writing on my current Work in Process, and start trying to hit 2,000 words a day.

Is any one else going to do NaNo this year? Let me know and we can start planning together!

Vampire Andy :

I lay across the couch. My eyes closed, body still. I’d even stopped the needless motion of breathing. I let the sounds from the stereo across the room wash over me. The CD spun as the disks change. The lightest of touches brushed my shoulder. I opened my eyes and looked up at my roommate, irritated at being disturbed. Maxwell looked away. He frowned as he held the cellphone out to me. I already knew from Maxwell’s expression that this would not be pleasant. I took the phone.

“Hello?”

“Andrew, dear, how are you?” the satin voice floated through the receiver.

“Emily, it’s nice to hear from you.” I lied. Emily loved gossip and loved it even more when she could flaunt it.

“Brother, you are ever so polite. I guess that’s what you get for hanging around Maxwell all the time.” I could hear her soft giggle, as childish as an elementary student’s.

“What do you want, Emily?” My voice was dry with impatience.

“Well, so much for being polite. It’s been two years since I saw you and I haven’t heard a word from you! And here I am trying to do you a favor.”

I waited.

“Fine.” she said in an angry voice. “Mother has decided that she wants to travel. She going to tour the covens; make sure everything is in order. I’m sure you would be happy to hear that you’re also included on that list. She’ll be arriving in Richmond on the 6^th.” The phone went dead.

I swore under my breath and hung up. Sitting up, I passed the phone back to Maxwell. He had heard as well as I did. His expression probably mirrored my own. Horror. The Mother of our Clan, here, in Richmond, just to see little old me. It was not something that I was about to leap for joy for. I was the youngest of Mother’s direct ‘children’, her favorite as she chose to call me. But, that really didn’t make me feel any better about what she’d done to me.

“Book a suit at the Jefferson.” I told him. “See if you can get any more information about when they’ll be arriving on the 6^th. We need to be prepared.”

He nodded and walked out of the living room. I stood and turned off the stereo. My thoughts raced through my mind. Why? Why of all times, would she chose to travel now? It’s been twenty years since I left the Clans’ home in up state New York. And really, it’s only been two years since Max and I visited.

I let out an aggravated sigh, and left the room. Walking down the hall to the sanctuary of my rooms, shutting the double doors behind me. I let the soothing dark red walls, the thick black velvet curtains and lush black carpet comfort me. I know the color scheme was very cliché for a vampire, but had I still been human I probably would have still chosen the same.

And, oh yeah, I’ve read about 10 books, maybe more, since I last posted. I haven’t really kept count. Crazy much? Yeah, just a bit. I must admit that the obsessive reading has having much kept me sane these past few weeks, but it does have drawbacks. I become very withdrawn, I tend to ignore my emotions – bottle them up and don’t think them through, I’ll have trouble on focusing on anything but the stories I’m reading while I’m at home. And if I can’ read while I’m home? I get cranky, upset, and not fun to be around until I can get back to my book.  I like not having to deal with reality while I’m reading, and that’s a little scary.

I know I say this quite often, but I am really going to try and keep this blog of mine up to date.

I’ve started posting these shorts every Sunday on my Wattpad account, but I’ll be kind to you and post them here as well. :) I will also start posting Grim Aspects on Wattpad on June 1. Those I will not post here, but I’ll let you know when they’re up. I’m not sure how often I’ll want to update that yet, either a chapter once a month or half to a full chapter every two weeks.

NICKOLAS

“NICKOLAS!!”

His fingers hesitated over his keyboard, eyes closing for the brief moment it took Sammie to bust in the door. He glanced up. She’d practically torn the bedroom door it’s hinges. Sammie stood there in the door way dressed in her normal jeans and tank. Anger washed off her slender body in waves as she tried to form a coherent sentence.

“A week. A fucking week you’ve been back, and there’s already some lousy, junkie in my apartment! God damn you, Nickolas, why do you have to bring that filth inside my house?!”

He studied her carefully, before turning his eyes back to the screen. “He’s not a junkie. That would imply that he was addicted to …”

“NOT a junkie? Are you kidding me?” She interrupted. “Nick, the kid has more bite marks than I’ve seen at once on anybody! He looks like he was used for a freaking pin cushion, there’s no way he isn’t.”

Nickolas pulled off his glasses and rubbed his face before looking back at her. “Samantha, I saw the kid last night. He’d looked lost or something, but he wasn’t a junkie. He was the healthy kid he should’ve been. I caught some of them trying to dump him in an alley earlier tonight.”

She ran her hands through her long hair and let out an exasperated sigh. “Nick…that still doesn’t mean you have to bring him here. There’s places you could have taken him to-”

“You know as well as I do that those so called ‘centers’ do not actually help people. I’m not going to let some unlucky kid get stuck in one of them.”

She began to pace in the confined space between the door and the bed. “You can’t save them all, Nick.”

“We’ve had this conversation before. You know my feelings on the topic.” He turned away from her, clearly not wanting to talk more.

Sammie visibly shook herself. “You can’t do this here, Nick! You’re going to draw attention to yourself. And frankly, I may be stronger than the average human, but I’m not up for a fight against the strongest coven of vampires on the east coast. Damn it, you know what they’re like, you use to be one of them!”

“I was NEVER one of them.” he spat back. Nickolas stood then. He stepped around the desk and stopped barely an inch from touching her shoulder. He kept his face straight on as he whispered, “Yes, it was their leader who turned me, but I did not take part in what the others did for ‘fun’.” He turned his face into hers, taking a deep breath as his lips hovered over the pulse on her throat. “I may not know what I am, but I know what I can do. If killing enough of them will wake my sire from his sleep, then I will drain every single drop from their bodies.”

Sammie held her breath, staying as still as she possibly could.

Then suddenly, he was on the other side of the room. His arms wrapped tightly around himself. “Get out.”

“Nick…”

“Now.”

She often forgot how dangerous Nickolas could be. He had mastered the art of acting human and frail but he never had to pretend to be a monster.

Copyrighted by Lynoir (AKA Sachi) on Wattpad.

My 10th book, that I’ve read this year, ended up being Flirt by L. K. Hamilton. For the love of all, I could NOT put it down! Even in my half-conscience state, I did notice in some places that she repeated very similar phrases, often in the same paragraph. This stood out to me because as a aspiring author, this is one of those things that is frequently pointed out to me that is a no-no. I began to wonder, how did this work so well in Flirt? Is it because the author is very established in the industry and can break the common rule for the sake of art? Or was it the character’s mind set at the time in the novel that allowed it to work so well?

For example, here’s one of the passages that stood out to me:

“You want me to raise your wife as a zombie,” I said, and my voice was utterly empty. I’d started to fold away inside myself, going to that quiet place I went when I killed someone not in a fire-fight, but when I stared down the barrel of a gun and pulled the trigger with thought and time to change my mind. It was the quiet inside my head when I decided to take a life even if there was opportunity to save it. When I had decided that someone deserved to die, and my conscience was clear. I had one of those moments now, and it helped chase back the heat of the lions. It was a cold place, the place I went when I killed.

This excerpt is from page 87 of ‘Flirt’ by L. K. Hamilton.

I underlined the parts that I mean, but even if they stood out to me, they seem to work well on the whole. I think it’s meant to emphasize the point, but does it go too far?

All in all, it was an awesome Anita Blake novel and what I really liked about it, was that at the end of the book, L. K. Hamilton outlined her process for the book! How she got the idea and how it evolved; I was hooked! Not to mention that Nathanial was in it, however briefly it was. Of Anita’s guys, my favorites are Nathanial (Just the mere thought of a guy with all that beautiful hair is just mesmerizing, and I guess his take on, uh, the kinkier types of bedroom play is a nice aspect too! XD ), Asher, Jean-Claude, and well, most of the vampires will get me going, and then, I’ll always have a soft spot for Edward…

In some new news about the site, I’ve added another chapter on the right hand panel ->

The Bookshelf is where you can find the books I’ve read so far this year, and see what I’m currently reading now.  As you can guess, most of it -well, nearly all of it is paranormal of some kind.  Feel free to leave comments and suggestions!

I’m excited about this one.  Story a Day is an adventure to write a story every day in the month of May. Now, before all you writers go and tie your pens in a knot, let me say that the rules are very interesting.  Stories can be of any length – wasn’t it Hemingway who wrote a six word story? – as long as they take us or the characters somewhere, and you get to decide what ‘everyday’ means.   The whole purpose behind this exercise is to inspire creativity. By writing a story everyday, you’ll end up with 31 story ideas, something you can build on later!

My idea for the month of May:

Over the next two days, I’m going to come up with a list of 31 names, 31 interesting settings, and 31 objects. Each morning, I’ll roll a die 3 times and choose from each list, crossing it out after it’s chosen. That should be interesting. If I’m feeling particularly good about what I write that day, I’ll post it here for you all to read.