Thursday Thoughts: Express Yourself Weekly

Hello again!

I am doing another Thursday Thoughts to catch up on the Express Yourself bloghop that is back in action! Visit the creators, Dani @ Entertaining Interests and Jackie @ Bouquet of Books to see their answers, join the hop, and visit others who participate.

Last week, the ladies said: Tell us about something you haven't tried yet, but would like to.

I have yet to skinny dip. I'd like to. lol

This week, they said: We are 1/3 of the way through the year. Name something you have achieved thus far.

Well, I was published. So there's that. *dances* I will be mentioning that until my next publication happens. lol I also started querying again after a long bout of doubt and revisions. I can't wait to see what the rest of the year has in store for me. :)

Thursday Thoughts: Reflections

Hiya!

Thursday posts are rare for me, but hey, why not? I need to catch up anyway.

This year, I did the A-to-Z Challenge. I had decided last year that I would try to do it again this year, so I began to schedule my posts mid February this year. I can't even remember why I chose to focus on colors. I wanted a quick, simple theme that all writers could relate to, and that's where I landed.

I actually got good reception, and I'm glad people really liked it! I might actually think about doing it again. lol Perhaps by next year, I'll get into a good groove of visiting more bloggers. I started off strong, but April is always a little busy for me, so I petered out in visits near the end.

I would have to say my favorite theme was from Jenn Pitts, who did a Twilight Zone theme! My favorite comments came from the Koopman, Mark Koopmans, that is. lol He also had a great theme about writing the memoir of Donald Braswell, an opera singer who injured his singing voice due to a car accident and regained fame through America's Got Talent!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by, even just to read. :-D

Express Yourself Weekly: WARNING

Ironically, I was home all day Tuesday. Definitely forgot to post.

Hi! Welcome back to Express Yourself, brought to us by Dani @ Entertaining Interests and Jackie @ Bouquet of Books. Each week, they ask us all questions, and we hop around the blogosphere to see what everyone has to say.

This week, they ask a fun one: If you came with a warning label, what would yours say about you?

Hm...I probably have a few, but this is the important one:

I probably have a disorder, but...ah well.

Thank You Thursday: My Followers

Hello!

SO I realized I have a lot of followers, but I never stop to see if any of you have a blog of your own. I want to take a moment to thank you for coming to read what I have or don't have to say every week (I know I ramble a lot), and if you have your own blog, please comment and let me know. I want to start coming around to see what you guys are up to each week. :)

Friday Freeday: Thursday Thoughts

I'm making this a habit, aren't I? lol

But seriously, I was trying to figure out since last night what to write about, but being sick since Monday night, my head's been on the foggy can't-breathe-through-my-nose kick. Fortunately, a random thought from Mindy McGinnis made me think of the weird dreams I used to have as a kid.

I lived in a townhouse complex in a small not-even-on-the-map town in Southeastern PA (Yardley) where many of the buildings were connected by breezeways. As kids, my sister and our friends used to hang out in them because they echoed and were, slightly breezy. As I said on Mindy's page, I think they sucked all the breezes into themselves somehow.

That being said, I always had a love for the fantastical, and I'm honestly just now realizing it. This one was definitely because of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and the idea of getting into another world through something as simple as your closet. When I was a kid, I used to dream about being able to go to another world or even to Delaware where my mom's family lives through one of the breezeways in the complex. I'd know which one it was because it would have lasers criss-crossing through it if you looked at it from a particular angle, and I'd always have to reach it before the lasers disappeared.

So, thanks, Mindy! Pleasant memories. :)

Why I'm Glad Computers Became Accessible to Mere Mortals

Drawing for 2 hours really flares up the carpel tunnel. Or is it tarsal tunnel when it's your knuckles? Or just arthritis? =\

Anyway, I was one of those kids who did nothing by type the moment a computer entered my house in like 1996, so the giant pillowy callus I developed on my ring finger from the weird way I hold my pencil diminished greatly once I was able to save stories onto a computer.

Yesterday, if you follow me on Twitter, you saw that somewhere around 2pm, I decided to sketch (yes, I do that sometimes lol) some of the essential characters in my fantasy WIP Save the Queen, this time the beasts of the Contagion, the metal army hunting my MC. I finished a little before work got out, so here they are. Each machine has a trait modeled after Boccioni's "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space", a piece I fell in love with my Freshman year of college. Also, the loops on each around the arms and back are tubes. They are magic-infused and water-powered machines.

The Helichimera, who I knew as I drew it that I described them as having 4 heads in my story, but I realized I didn't know what a 4th head would do, so I nixed it thanks to brainstorming this sketch. This is also the first time I took on drawing a ram and a lion. I'm almost sure I've drawn snakes before but can't remember.

The first one I set out to draw and the first seen in my story, the Iron Giant with an armless profile to show the back detail. It's cuter than I meant it to be, but in all-black cast iron and at 12 feet high, I imagine it would be scarier in person. I eliminated the description of the faceless shield somewhere between drafts, but the giants have no hands.

And the one that took 2 takes, lol, the Mythril Eagle. It kind of looks more like a hawk, but I don't draw birds. They're 3x bigger than vultures, and the wings pretend to flap. All of the machines run on jet engines. The detail on the talons are also plates so the talons can bend for grabbing people.

If I take on drawing the actual people again (I did years ago), it will be a slow, slow process. Like 1 a month. lol

Friday Freeday: Throwback Thursday

Confusing, right?

But since I'm scheduling my post, I thought it would be interesting.

In my teenaged writing years, I went through a period of writing tragedy. In my suspense works, someone died. In my romance works, someone died. It got to a point that my cousin threatened to stop reading. I think she actually did, now that I think about it!

Now that I'm older, I do still lean towards darker, sadder tones, but I've tried to not kill any of my characters...for now.

As a writer, did any of you have a different theme than what you trend towards now?

Throwback Thursday: Fitzgiven

Welcome to another most likely sporadic day-specific post. lol

Throwback Thursday is a hashtag on Twitter where people post old pics of themselves. There are rules about this, such as: you can't post a pic that you took about a month ago. It has to be at least a year. It also has to be posted on Thursday. But since this is a blog about writing (mostly), I decided to post pieces of the first story I wrote during my first writer's convention when I was 9 years old. It's going to literally be pieces, more like what I see in my head from the meat of the story because that was almost 20 years ago. I do, however, still remember my mom expressing the hesitation of the teacher who was reading the story out loud. lol

Sara Conrad was 13 years old when she became an orphan. She was coming home from school that day. Her bus let her off at the long, winding dirt road that led her to the log cabin where she lived with her parents and two sisters. Her older sister was away at college, fortunately. Sara smelled the smoke before she saw it. She ran down the rest of the road and came to a halt in front of her home engulfed in flames. Her heart raced. Her parents and kid sister would have been home by then. Without another thought, she ran inside and looked around, screaming for her family. She couldn't go too far inside, for the flames had swallowed almost everything, but she got far enough inside to see the three skeletons hanging from the ceiling of the living room. Written in blood on the wall behind them was one name: Fitzgiven. Sara hurried back out of the house before the smoke could suffocate her, and she knew she had to avenge her family.

I imagine she cried in the original, but I don't remember all that. I also am aware that unless her family was flayed first, they wouldn't be burned down to just their skeletons so quickly, but I was 9.

Sara was one of the recurring mutants in my [insert bad adjective] Hearts series I wrote for 7 years. She had the plasma ability like Jubilee. She was blonde with blue eyes and allergic to cherries (for some reason). Her family was locked in a violent feud with the Fitzgiven family, who had the ability to create and manipulate fire. I never tapped into WHY they were fighting. If I go on to revamp these stories like I said before, I will definitely work on making this whole piece make sense.