Short moving account, art, and my book review

Blogger has been down, so I hadn't been able to publish. It would always give me an annoying error message... However! It's working now and I have quite a bit to write.

We finally got the move over with last weekend and I am not sorry to see it past. I don't like the location of the current house, but the house itself is quirky and fun, as Mom says. It has some particularly random traits that don't make sense. Like a storm door leading into the garage and NO storm door leading to the backyard. It has a large pool, but the whole thing is only 3 ft deep. The master bath tub is sunken into the ground. It's all fairly amusing.

The move itself was the worst so far. Kitty #2 escaped while we were trying to pack him up, so I chased him out of the yard, through a cactus patch (in flip flops) and to the canyon wall, where he disappeared.

It was my fault because I was the one who let him go.

Fortunately, I went to the house the next evening and he was sitting outside looking very confused, so I caught him.

It was hard on my poor mom, too, because several of her favorite things got broken, even though the box was clearly marked "fragile."

Also, this morning, I got my review of The Five Trials this morning from Karissa!

She pointed out a few small mistakes that I hadn't noticed (never would have noticed without someone telling me haha) but gave me a great review. I'm so glad. I was pretty nervous, but now I think I will, finally, attempt to turn over the book to mom for the tearing of its life so I can send it to publishers. I need her help to write the outline and letter and everything... One of the perks of having a writer for a mom :D

For art-related news, since the last time I posted, I've finished several things...

First is piece # 1 for the Fire Emblem collab, which has been on the sidebar for about a week. But I'm posting it here now!

It is, in fact, watermarked. I just made it a ninja watermark that you have to really look for XD I haven't even started piece #2. I'm at a bit of a loss for ideas at the moment.

The next bit started off as just a practice drawing and then became fairly detailed.

And finally, I just decided to post this about five minutes ago. It's a preview of a large chibi piece I'm working on of the entire cast from my books. It was supposed to be quick and easy, but apparently I can't do anything that way anymore. I've been working on it for five days now.

Chibis are fun :D

The armor and hair shine doesn't really show up on blogger, but you'll be able to see it when I post it on deviantART.

Well, I guess that's it for now!

I don't have a good title, so here's a demotivational quote: "Pessimism: Every dark cloud has a silver lining, but lighting kills hundreds of people each year who are trying to find it."

The good news is, we finally found a house to rent AND signed the lease, so we'll be moving in the next couple of weeks *sigh*. It's a decent house, from what I could see on the outside. Mom refuses to let me see the inside until the current tennents move out because, apparently, they put my slob ability to shame and she thinks I will back out and move away. Mess doesn't scare me. What scares me is that the house is only the second house down from a MAJOR street and the noise is phenomenal. That and the fact I'm worried about my kitties getting hurt or killed makes me really uneasy about the house. But there's nothing I can do about that, I guess.

Also slightly disappointing is that the house is only two streets down from Quincy St. That would have been freaking hilarious.

The nerd in me would have loved that. "Yeah I live on ____ Quincy St... *snicker*"

So close... D:


In the BETTER news of the week, Karissa of Karissa's Reading Review has agreed to review The Five Trials for me before I send it out to publishers. Having the review before the (hopeful) publication will prevent me from making the "Would have been a great book except for ____" mistake. I am very thankful for her help and will post the review as soon as she lets me know sometime in the coming months.

I also won one of her Spring Book Giveaway prizes, which makes me very happy since I never win anything. XD

In other news, my tablet pen gave out on me. I have been painting like crazy to calm myself down, and it has really helped. Unfortunately, I paint so much that the pen nib wore down to a tiny stub and I had to replace it with a fresh one. Apparently, I can't follow simple directions because now my pen doesn't work correctly. It either doesn't work at all or works in leaps and bounds and won't follow the movement on the tablet. All this right as I was about to finish detailing out the character in a painting I'm working on. I'd show it to you, but I don't want to ruin it for when I finally finish it.

Anyway, after calling Adesso multiple times and only getting the busy signal, I finally gave up on ever getting the help line to tell me what to do. So I started looking for a replacement pen. WHY is it impossible to find a new pen? Apparently, this particular pen only comes equipped with the tablet.

I wish I had the money to just give up and buy a Wacom tablet. No one ever complains about problems with them. Sadly, they run in the multiple hundreds of dollars... If I got a few commissions, I would buy one with the earnings and look at it as a business investment, but without THIS particular painting, I don't really stand a chance.

Enough ranting for now. I have to get some more work done.

PS if anyone is bored and can help me find a pen solution, I would be very grateful.

Taking a break from art and writing to give you an update on art and writing

I've been very busy lately. Not, you know, doing anything useful, but learning a lot and being creative. I've been in such a good mood lately that I even went outside and sat in the sunshine without my shawl le gasp! Apparently, Soren and Rollin aren't useless at all -- they were just trying to get me out of my routine and try something new. I love you guys *sniff*.

In fact, while I was driving home today I got to thinking about my encounter with Demon Spider no, I'm still not over it -- I had to jump the threshold today and all of a sudden Soren starts having a grade-A fit! I turned my music off and listened to him. Turns out, he had a really great idea for a short horror story. It's been ages since I wrote anything, but I came home and typed out the beginning. I'm in such a good mood that I'll even show it to you!

***

            As I drove, I surfed absent-mindedly through the stations on the radio, not really listening to each as I passed. My mind was too preoccupied with other thoughts.

            They were going to be throwing me a birthday party at the office, for sure. I really hoped they remembered I was thirty-five, not forty-one. I’d been thirty-five ever since I was thirty-five. Last year, some idiot had given me a cake with forty candles. A month later, I fired him for mislabeling a case file. Two good things had come from that – one, no one ever dared mislabel anything again and two, they started getting my age right.

            Hmm… I wondered if Mr. Cruz had decided to file the charges against his wife? That would be a press-garnering case… Great media for our firm…

            I was yanked from my thoughts by a sudden searing pain in my left wrist. Forgoing several different defensive driving experiences, I yelped and released the wheel, grasping my wrist with my other hand. A thin red line had become visible across the veins of my wrist, throbbing incessantly. I stared at it dumbfounded.

            “What…?” I mouthed, a chill creeping down my spine.

            There was no way. It couldn’t be… I should have another year left, shouldn’t I? Right? I started counting in my head. 1992… 1993…1994…

            A car honked and I remembered I was supposed to be driving. With a gasp, I threw my hands back on the wheel to steady my car.

            Then I froze.

            A huge, bloated tarantula was creeping up the steering wheel, twitching its inch-long fangs as though itching to sink them into my flesh.

            A large red skull was marked on its abdomen.

            I screamed bloody murder and backhanded it across the car, jerking the wheel in a panic to pull over and run like hell. However, in my terror I overcompensated and found myself tearing across the median into oncoming traffic, directly in the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler.

            Right before the impact, I glanced at the tarantula in the passenger’s seat and heard a raspy voice seeming to come from the spider itself say:

            “Time’s up, Caroline.”

***

Sounds like the ending, but it's not XD. You'll just have to wait and see. I'll probably post it as I write. Soren and I are still working out the meat of the story and I'm hoping tonight Rollin will throw in his two cents... 

In my artistic endeavors, I've made a scientific breakthrough -- people really like my comics *giddy*. I had thought they weren't funny because my brother never laughs, but apparently other people out there really enjoy them. It's really given me a lot of encouragement, as well as a lot of ideas to play around with. I'm still sketching and painting, but my distaste for time-consuming detail makes comics the more attractive of my options. I have no patience. 

I did sketch/overlay paint an illustration of Scott and Ann from The Five Trials. It's not my best and the background sucks as always, but I'll post it here. I did it in just a few hours, so don't hold the lack of quality against me XD

I've found that if you tilt your head to the right, everything looks better. I have a bad habit of drawing with the page and my head tilted, so everything's more in proportion if you do so as well. It really DOES make a difference so weird.

Um... I guess that's all for today except it's Friday and I still don't have my Bleach and Naruto :(

Sumimasen!

Excerpt on immortality

This is kind of a really long comment on my friend Amy's blog, but what she said got ME thinking. She just finished reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels and started thinking about immortality.

"I wondered, what would it be like to live for hundreds of years? What would it be like to live through history and see the world change, not just hear about it?"

That, in turn, made me dredge up some oooooold writing from a previous re-write of The Aoudanian Chronicles where Leiliya is telling Aoudin exactly what it means to live forever. She's not a vampire, but she is immortal. I'll just post the bit and let you read for yourself...

***

Perhaps it was the stillness that made me voice the question I’d had since I’d begun traveling with Leiliya and Eniath, or perhaps it was that I was actually alone with Leiliya and knew it would be useless to ask for anything a bit more fun. Regardless, I glanced over at her where she lay back against the wall, staring intently at the ceiling as though it held the answers to the mysteries of life itself.

“Leiliya…” I began slowly. How was I supposed to ask something this ridiculous?

She turned her gaze to me and smiled wearily. “Aye? You look pensive. That’s rare.”

I scowled. You know, everyone says that to me. It’s tiring.”

Leiliya grinned. “I’m not sorry.”

“Of course you’re not.” I started to lose track of what I had been intending to say, but caught myself just in time. “Leiliya…” I began again. “What is it like to live forever?”

I couldn’t quite discern the look that crossed her face. I wasn’t sure if it was annoyance or pain. Either way, I hadn’t expected that kind of negative reaction.

“Why do you ask?” she asked after an awkward pause.

I began to feel like an ignorant child for reasons I could not explain. “I was just wondering. It seems fascinating to be able to watch ages pass. See it with your own eyes instead of just read about it, I mean.”

When Leiliya smiled, it seemed the smile of a very old teacher who only humored her young and inexperienced student. I had seen Leiliya act serious numbers of times, but never quite like this.

“Yes, put from that perspective it is rather fascinating, isn’t it?” she nodded and looked away from me, returning her relentless heterochromatic gaze back to the ceiling. “But what is it that makes history happen, Aoudin?”

“Fate…?” I guessed.

Leiliya shook her head. “People. People make history happen. So tell me now, Aoudin, what happens to people as history passes?”

“They die.” I was certain about this one.

Leiliya chuckled and shook her head. “Aye. They die. What you mortal types don’t realize is that death itself isolates us – the Simani and Aztriathans – from the rest of humankind. We can’t enjoy watching history pass when the people we would have to be involved with in order to enjoy it inevitably grow older and die, leaving us alone and not a day changed. As if they had never existed, except in history.” She paused. “… This is the reason the Simani do not leave our city of Elnestre and live among the mortals. True, we do have a weakness for human disease, but this is the real reason. It’s simply too painful to become close to people we will inevitably lose.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—” I began, but Leiliya cut me off with a raised palm.

“Don’t interrupt. You asked, and you’ll be getting the full story now that I’ve started. As I was saying, it’s hell, Aoudin. You know, there’s a small town in western Hyrodoc I’ve visited once every year for the past 125 years. A very small town, currently with only about 30 or so residents. I know them all by name. But every year when I go back, something has changed. Someone has been married, or born, or died. And I see that difference. The endless circle of life that I miss out on. I see the great-grandchildren of the people who lived in the village when I first started visiting. They’re getting old now. Pretty soon, they too will die.”

This was a bit more long-winded than I had wanted, but I let her keep talking. It seemed as though she needed to talk about it.

“Eniath and I knew what we were doing when we took this job.” Leiliya shook her head. “We knew we would be getting attached to you all. Fighting alongside you, risking our lives. That forms a deeper bond than ordinary friendship. But both of us have thought about it… About how soon, you, Ces, Thei, all of our dearest companions will finish out your time in this circle and die, leaving us alone with only traces of that bond that shouldn’t be broken. Honestly, I doubt we’ll recover from it.”

I stared at her in amazement. “I had never even considered that. When I asked you to come with us, I wasn’t aware of exactly the pain I was asking you to suffer.”

“Of course you weren’t.” Leiliya grinned. “No one does. It’s not something people even seem to consider.”

“You have my apologies.”

This time, she laughed. “Oh, don’t go getting all sentimental. What’s done is done. Neither Eniath nor I would trade our time in this merry little group for anything. Sure we will suffer, yes, but we’ll always have fond memories. So don’t let it bother you.”

As if she had never been depressed, she began humming lightly and went back to studying the ceiling, not saying another word. Her mood had shifted back to her normal chaotic self.

She was happier this way, and so was I.

***

Leiliya is my favorite character to write XD She's totally bipolar. I will be working on a portrait of her soon, but I have a fair number of people on deviantART begging me for another comic...

But anyway, that's just an excerpt of Leiliya's and my opinion on immortality.

Sumimasen!

Soren and Rollin don't get paid vacations

You might notice I have dropped the -san honorific from their names. I realized I know them too well and get so angry at them that I don't want to give them an honorific. They're horrible pains-in-the-ass. Now especially.

All day, every day, they're buzzing in my head; rather, Soren is since Rollin specializes in dreams and big-picture plots while Soren is dominant in spur-of-the-moment and story details. Anyway, they're always nagging me with ideas. Write this or this, they say. But, when I actually sit down with my fingers to the keys, they totally shut up. Or go into insane hangover mode and talk rubbish.

This has led me to, not just writers' block, but full-out writers' drought. I got nothin' goin' on up there when it counts. I want desperately to pen or type, as it were my characters' lives. It was just the other day that Soren helped me create a few finer details to add to Leiliya, one of my main characters and my favorite. The problem is, I haven't even reached the point in the book where Leiliya even exists. After 11 years, I'm only a few pages into chapter three on my 822nd re-write. I'm at a total impasse with myself. I just don't know what to do anymore. Drawing keeps me from suffering stifled-creativity disease (SCD) which would eventually kill me, but I've had to stop drawing now in order to catch up on some of my digital coloring. I really hate leaving my drawings unfinished. Would that it were the same for my writing.

Should I ever get Aoudin and Leiliya's story written, it would either fall into obscurity probably driving me to inevitable suicide or become the next LOTR. Of course, it will always stay in my head, so I really don't think it's an issue...

Bah... I'm going to bed now, so it's Rollin's turn to nag me incessantly. At least I'll sleep harder with my new blackout curtains

Sumimasen!