When it rains...

Ever have one of times in your life where it seems like everything is crazy and going wrong?  Lately, it's seemed like that's what my life has been.

My trusty laptop decided to die - just as I finished a novel.  I've been fighting migraines for the past week, and it's drawing ever closer to the end of summer, which means I need to sort out another means of steady income once the kids go back to school.

But I have a secret.  THE Secret.  I know it sounds silly, but it seems to work.  I put it out to the cosmos that I would be able to replace my computer yesterday - and found a decent replacement on ebay.  I put it out that my head would stop hurting, and well - okay, that's still open.  But when my laptop comes in?  I'll be able to get my novel out in the world.  And I think that may be the greatest part of all.

So what's the novel?  It currently called Heartless, and it's the tale of how The Queen of Hearts of Wonderland became the angry, beheading fanatic that she is during Alice's adventures.  I really hope everyone will enjoy it. :)

I hope your week is treating you well!  We'll talk soon!

The world's worst timing!

I hope that everyone had a safe and happy Independence Day!

I have bad news and good news!  Just in time for a Friday night (or Saturday morning, as the case may be):

The good news?  I finished editing my Camp Nanowrimo work and already have an idea for another story!

The bad news?  My laptop needs a repair and I am BROKE!

Sadly, this doesn't explain my absence from my blog.  That, I'm afraid can only be explained by my laziness and the fact that if I'm writing, I'd like it to be fiction!  But it does, however, explain why I'll be slow on writing and why, until I find a solution - no more music mondays. :(

Until it all gets fixed, I want to know - what sort of music motivates you?

Molten Lava...I mean, Monday.

As I sit, typing this out, it's currently 85 degrees outside in my lovely little (read: hole-in-the-wall, everybody knows your business) Texas town, but it feels like 98.  I don't pretend to have any sort of insight into the varying degrees and what makes something somewhat tolerable like 85 feel like almost an unbearable 100, but I know that it's highly uncomfortable.

Though I don't think it ever reached true triple digits here during the day, it certainly felt like it.  Thankfully, I had a beautiful relief method: our local movie theater hosts free summer movies for the kids during the summer.  And it just so happens that, on Mondays, I babysit two of my absolute favorites.  So today, we packed up, grabbed some flavored popcorn (dill pickle for the kids, red hot cinnamon for me) from probably the one of the neatest small-town finds - a gourmet popcorn shop, then it was off to the movies to see Puss In Boots.  Now, the kids had already watched the movie before, but that didn't stop them from giggling like crazy over it all over again.  Next week, they're showing The Smurfs, but what I'm really looking forward to is later in the summer - The Little Mermaid.  Yes, I'll admit it - I'm a Disney fanatic and The Little Mermaid is one of my favorites.  Even better, the little girl I babysit?  She adores Ariel but has never gotten to see the movie.  I've tried hunting it down for her for nearly a year but haven't had much luck.  So I'm kind of excited to get to share that with her.  The Little Mermaid and I go way back (obviously), and it sticks with me.  To this day, I find myself singing "Les Poissons" pretty much every time I'm in the kitchen.  It's sort of become my cooking song, though I very seldom cook fish!

So, for Music Monday, I've been sort of going back and forth on what I want to share.  The truth is, I love music in general.  And I love music that urges me to move - to write - or to simply just feel.  And I don't discriminate.  I've got my fair share of rap, rock, country, etc, all making their dents in my musical road map.  And my personal religious struggles aside, I have nothing but the most profound respect for Christian singers, who feel that they've been called to sing praise.  In fact, one of my favorite high school English teachers is the brother of a rather incredible Christian singer (which is one that I have listed here, but that's all you're getting out of me).  So without further commentary, let me introduce you to some beautiful songs that you may or may not have heard before that have aided some of my writing:

"When The Stars Burn Down (Blessing and Honor)" by Phillips, Craig, and Dean
"You Are Everything" by Matthew West
"I Will Follow" by Chris Tomlin
"I Refuse" by Josh Wilson

Friday Five: Remembering Ray Bradbury

I was planning on posting something yesterday, but the cosmos decided otherwise.  Wednesday was a tough day for me, and I spent all day Thursday trying to make up for it.  I had a major migraine, which was tough enough, but then my laptop's charger decided it wanted to stop working.  I had it plugged in and went to typing away and all of a sudden, I get a warning memo that I had less than 10% battery power!  I may have said a few words that I normally hate to say (and probably a few I love, like "frak" - oh, BSG), but for the most part, I surprisingly kept my cool.  I ordered a new one and now, I'm pleased to announce that I'm back at 100% power!  For now, anyway.  I'm afraid to do too much bragging.

Another thing that made Wednesday tough was the news that Ray Bradbury passed away the night before.  I think, on some level, we're all familiar with his work, even if it's only because you watched the Twilight Zone episode of "I Sing The Body Electric."  That, I think, was my first experience with Ray Bradbury's work, but it was most definitely not my last.  Although I never thought much of it until my first (and currently only) visit to the haven of all things geek - Comic Con International.  I was completely in love with everything there and I was determined to get into every possible panel that suited my fancy.  But it was the Bradbury panel that I stumbled into completely by accident.

I remember listening to his biographer and the other panel members discuss his work and his extensive contributions.  It was inspirational and though I'd come to the room because of what was going to be in the room after the panel (I can't remember what it was now - Human Target, perhaps?  Maybe Vampire Diaries?), I was truly in tears after it was over.  That was when I knew what I was supposed to be doing with my life.  Funny how a chance event can completely change your way of thinking.

My heart broke Wednesday morning, because I will never again get the chance to tell Mr. Bradbury how his accomplishments - his words - changed my life.  But he will never be forgotten and every day I write, I'm reminded of sitting in that room in a crowd of people, watching in wonder with tears in my eyes as I listened to people singing the praises of a man who deserved just that.  All of the praise in the world.

Now, instead of answering five random questions for a Friday Five, I'll leave you with five quotes worth remembering if you're a writer, all from Mr. Bradbury himself.  And just for a hint of trivia: did you know that he never had a driver's license?

• “I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room."

•  “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”  

•  “If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” 

•   “Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day..” 

•  “You fail only if you stop writing.”

Monday, Monday...

I'm about to do some major promotion here, people.  And no, I'm not getting paid a dime for either of the things I'm about to promote.

First off, as a writer in an age where we're constantly "plugged in" - even as I write this, I've got Facebook and Twitter open - it can be difficult to concentrate.  And when it's tough to concentrate, the writing suffers.  Well, this weekend, I discovered a fantastic solution.  Ommwriter.  This thing is brilliant.  When you check out the site, you absolutely must watch the video.  It gives you a beautiful example of exactly what you're getting from the program.  There are two versions - Dana I and Dana II.  The first is free, and gives you three sounds and backgrounds to choose from.  The second expands upon that.

Right now, I have the former (though as soon as possible, I'm getting the latter) and I have to say that I'm in love.  Basically this program is what would come out of a frazzled writer who got into a fight with their word processor and threw it in a blender with a nightlight and an ambient sound machine.  I know that combo sounds strange, but that's really the best way I can explain it.  It's...well, it's beautiful.  Right now, I have it on a sort of dark grey background and playing music that reminds me strongly of the second thing I'm going to praise here.  But seriously - if you're a writer and you find that writing is a struggle with the day-to-day craziness, whether it's at home, school, work or the internet - Ommwriter sort of gently nudges you to write.  It's a full-screen program, which means that, if you're like me and you forget that there are other things on your laptop besides the internet, you can write, all the while ignoring the soap opera drama that somehow manages to explode all over Facebook.  And, by using headphones, you can ignore what's going on around you - like a Yorkie barking at the cows from the farm next door.  I'm using it to work on my Camp NaNoWriMo project - a collection of high school romance shorts, and so far, I'm impressed.  My word count for today was triple (YES!  TRIPLE!) what my word count was this time last year.

Now, for the second.  It's Monday and it's probably just a coincidence that "music" also starts with M.  So it's equally a coincidence that "New Music Monday" sounds like a great blog topic!  But this is exactly where I'm going with my second find.

The band's not new, but until about a year or so ago, I'd never heard of Poets of the Fall.  Then I stumbled across a crossover fandom video that used the song "Carnival of Rust."  And although I loved the fandom video (honestly, who DOESN'T love Dean Winchester?!), I was fascinated by the song - both the melody and the lyrics themselves.  So I started looking into the band.  And listening to more of their music.  If you're a fan of the video game Alan Wake, you might recognize their music as the Old Gods of Asgard.  So many of their songs have incredibly deep lyrics and if you're a writer looking for music for a particularly haunting sound for your soundtrack (if you have one - so many do, but I know a few writers who can't write with music), this is definitely a band to check out.

Some personal favorites:
Carnival of Rust | War | Sleep | Someone Special | Roses

Let me hear it:  What bands do you like that maybe aren't new, but they're new to you?

Camp NaNoWriMo (AKA Amanda is clearly crazy!)

There have been so many times that I've meant to post to this thing and I've failed.  Miserably.  The truth is, sometimes, real life gets in the way and you have to put it first.  And until recently, blogging has honestly been the last thing on my mind.  I mean, I babysit and I make hair bows and spend my weekends at a flea market and I write - a lot.  So much so that my Hulu queue is almost embarrassing.  I'm pretty sure that, eventually, Hulu is going to email me and say "listen, we appreciate that you're a Plus subscriber and all, but if you don't watch some of this stuff, we're going to have to shut you down."  I've easily got half of this season of Glee waiting on me.

So, as if I haven't failed enough with blogging, I've also decided to take on Camp NaNoWriMo.  If you've never heard of NaNoWriMo, it's "National Novel Writing Month" and takes place in November.  But if you're completely insane (as so many of us are!), that's not enough.  So now, we have summer camp!  For both June and August, Camp NaNoWriMo exists, and like the masochist that I am, I want to take on BOTH summer months AND November.

But I promise that things are going to be different.  I'm going to keep a better grip on blogging now, with a schedule and the handy-dandy app for Android.  In other words, I'm live and in living color 24/7 people!  MWAHAHA!

(Okay, ignore that part.)

Here's the part that means something:  I'm going to be writing here more.  That's it.  No silly stupid announcements, no silly twists in the schedule.  I'm just going to be writing here more.  Because my writing deserves it.  And so do you.

Just because we're small doesn't mean we're not professional!

I'm thinking that I'm going to implement something I want to call "TV Tuesday."  Basically, it's going to be my random reviews of the shows I usually end up watching back-to-back on Hulu.  I'm a fandom junkie - what can I say?

But instead of doing it today (which, you can thank me later - the only show I watched tonight was last night's Pretty Little Liars and you do not want to hear my thoughts on that show!), I want to talk about something else.  Professionalism in small business.

I'm part of a family-owned "bowtique" (I feel like I should be shot for using that term - it's too cheesy even for me), Lil' Southern Expectations.  Because we're a small, family business, we keep our prices extremely fair and we're more than willing to work with our customers to make sure that their experience with us is a good one.  We're not perfect - we've had a few snags in the fabric, so to speak - but for the most part, we're doing good.  But we know that we need to get our name out more.  Especially in our local area, as most of our business has been done online.

So when my sister-in-law got the heads-up about a small business fair in our little community, we all agreed (and by we, I mean the three of us that are involved in our business) that this would be a great idea.  Already, visions of how we could display our products and make our booth enticing were swimming around in my head.  I was even considering mini rainbow cupcakes (and anyone who's made the layered 'rainbow' cupcakes knows how time-consuming that can be!) as giveaway gifts in containers wrapped with a mini-bow of some sort.  We made arrangements to meet with one of the women who are running the event to pay our dues - we were late in hearing about the event and wanted to get our money in before the ever-nearing deadline.

This is where things went sour.  The woman who agreed to meet to get the money never showed up at the meeting point.  I should point out that my mother went out of her way to meet her, and waited over twenty minutes (at least - we were texting back and forth while she waited) for her to show, and finally, my mother had to leave.  She has another job to do.  She's a home health nurse and had patients waiting on her. Bows and tutus just aren't paying all the bills at this point.  When we contacted this woman to find out where she was/what the hold-up was, she informed us that she'd been waiting at the location for forty-five minutes and no one ever showed.  She also went as far as to say that she tried to call/text and no one ever responded.  This, we know to be false, as phone records show that no incoming call/text was ever received from her.  And when my mother called to arrange to meet her at her home later in the evening (on her way home - again out of the way from the direction she would have been going), the woman wouldn't respond.  Yet had the nerve to, once again, claim that we were at fault in all of this.  By posting on Facebook.

This could have been easily solved and showed a severe lack of professionalism on the part of the person running this event.  Yes, we're small businesses.  Yes, we're in a lake area that's often considered 'backwater' and 'redneck' by the world at large.  But does that mean that you can lie and point blame at a vendor?  No one ever WANTS to be wrong.  Ever.  It's just the way things work.  We never want to be considered anything less than perfect.  But this could have easily been laughed off.  "Oh, we must have had a mix-up on the location."  Or "I must have read the number wrong."  When you're running an event - especially one in which the vendors are essentially paying for your venue - you have to be willing to accept a fraction of the blame.

We've had customers ask about prices on our items, only to misunderstand when we say that an item (such as a diaper cake or a candy bouquet) starts at a certain price.  We accept that perhaps we didn't state it as clear as we should.  We tell them that we're sorry for the misunderstanding.  We try to work out an agreeable solution.  We don't just say "well, we did nothing wrong so just pay us."  It's just not professional.

Now, with all of that ranting done, I'd just like to point out that not once have I mentioned the name of the other person involved, nor am I trying to cause tension in the face of what I honestly hope will be a very successful event for those that attend, as we've decided that Lil' Southern Expectations will not be part of it.  Because naming names wouldn't be professional.  It'd just be spreading gossip and seen as trying to sabotage something that could be beneficial.  And it doesn't mean that Lil' Southern Expectations might not ever be part of any small business events in our area.  It just means we're not going to be part of this one.  We'll forgive and forget - just not today.  We are Southern girls, after all.