Shitty Weekend, Ahoy!

I'll probably end up writing a lot more this weekend, because I have a fever of 100.1, sinus drainage, and a headache. I've already missed the farewell party for Brandon (he's going to Japan in a month and he'll be there for eight whole months...). Tonight is the Vampire: The Requiem event for the Guild. I've been looking forward to it all week, so I hope to God that I'll be well enough by then (5pm) to go. In addition, Adam was supposed to come see me today, but can't because he's sick, too. Man, this weekend sucks.

I started brainstorming a new graphic novel last night but I don't have the energy to tell you about it. Maybe later.

Noveling and Other Such Things

So, yWriter5 is still pretty fantastic. I feel a little scatterbrained because I can't see everything in one place, but honestly it's no different in that sense that what I was doing before; when I'm using Microsoft Word, I keep one "cumulative" file with everything put together, but when I'm working on a specific chapter, I work on it and save it as a separate file. So really the only difference here is the lack of a cumulative file. Also, yWriter pretty much sets it up so that you not only write each chapter separately, but each scene. While this was a little daunting at first, I eventually realized the wisdom of it - each scene needs to be crafted with as much quality and cohesiveness as is possible from the author. Each scene needs to be strong; no wimpy scenes! Now, that's not saying that each one needs to have the same punch as every other one, because that can wear out the author (and definitely the reader), but you can have a low-tension scene that is also strong. Oh, the things that I am learning from my fiction workshop (did I mention that this is the third time I've taken it for credit?).

Neil Gaiman just made multiple posts about his daughter and her friends and their failed attempt to make pancakes without him. This makes me feel better about my lack of "professional" behavior when it comes to my own writing. I really do adore this man, on an odd sort of level. First it was through his novels - because let's face it, he's brilliant. Then I started following his blog, which was obviously an insight into his life; it was something of a synopsis of what was going on in his head on an almost-daily basis. Following him on Twitter has become a little surreal for me - I get these individual, spur-of-the-moment thoughts from his head that don't really get put into his blog. And sometimes, if I'm lucky, he RESPONDS to me when I mention him on my own Twitter feed. It's like we have a very faint, nonexistent relationship. Or something.

Really my dream is to get deAngelis out, become something of a name in the fiction world. And one day he and I will be at some event, some dinner or something, and I'll lean over and be like, "Oh hey, remember the chick who thanked you on Twitter for the pancake posts? That was totally me." And he will be all like, "O HAI." Or something. (Actually my second awesome dream is that maybe his daughter will pick up one of my novels and fall in love with them. I could die happy, then. Oh please oh please oh please.)

Okay, time for fun stuff that I found on the interwebs.

This one I came across through looking up how to get an apartment properly. I'm transferring to IUPUI in the fall and I need a place to live; while it's looking like I might end up living with my buddy's girlfriend (which would be awesome), I do still need to find an actual, you know, apartment. Now, I wasn't looking on Craigslist, because that just seems like a horrible idea to me, but I did stumble across this little gem. It made me laugh out loud for a good minute or so, which is hard for internet things to do.

My fiance kind of squee'd over this house, because he desperately wants to build a house that is more-or-less mostly underground. While I understand that it will save us on energy bills and all, I really do want my study to have lots of windows. Especially since we're going to build in the woods somewhere. If there's any wooded areas left in this country by the time we get our own place.

Also, this was a fantastic WTF moment that had me giggling all day.

Really I only feel like throwing all that at you. I tend to be better about linkage when I post regularly, which clearly has not been happening lately.

Although, before I forget, go check out my friend Jason's youtube page. I'm tellin' you right now, when I get deAngelis on the big screen, he is definitely going to be in the cast. That's pretty much going to be my only stipulation. Jason is studying to be in the film industry and honestly he is a fantastic voice actor. He sends me little snippets through voice messaging on our phones, and so far I have Sherlock Holmes, David Tennant (as the tenth Doctor), Christopher Lee, and Michael the Archangel from my novel.

Also he has sent me a recording of him reading "Sweet Afton", by Robert Burns.

This guy kind of rocks my world. So go give him some love, but don't tell him I sent ya. :-P

Real Quick

Image via Wikipedia

Having a huge fangirl moment over here, because NEIL GAIMAN is going to be in friggin' INDIANAPOLIS at a date when I CAN ACTUALLY MAKE IT HOME.

http://www.imcpl.org/mcfadden/index.php

That's pretty much it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope everyone, whether they're single or dating or whatever, is having a wonderful day. It really doesn't have to be about romance. Adam and I watched Galaxy Quest and played Magic: The Gathering for two hours. He kicked my ass. Other cinematic attempts involved Appaloosa, which just wasn't nearly as good as I was hoping - there's a reason Jeremy Irons isn't on the cover of the DVD, and that's because he's barely in the movie at all! And to be honest, that's the entire reason I wanted to see the damn thing. Also, Renee Zellweger is just difficult to look at - she doesn't really belong, visually, in a western. We watched maybe the first half hour of the film and then gave up. By then it was too late to start another movie, so once again we are putting off watching La Vie en Rose. Eventually we'll get to that one. Eventually.

I found this wonderful organizational word processing program, geared specifically toward novelists. So far I've had lots of fun playing around with it, and I've actually gotten some, you know, work done. It's called yWriter5 and pretty much rocks, although I am still getting used to the controls and the organization. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on macs, so I was unable to share its pure awesomeness with my other writer!geek friend, Katie.

We finally got the computer recovered from its massive grand-mal seizure, which was nice, because my laptop was having periodic aneurysms, also known as the horrible BSOD, every so often and for no apparent reason. So now Sharp Tooth is running Windows 7 and so far I love it. Little Foot is going back into hibernation.

But yes, I'm back up there with my Google Chrome and my Trillian Astra and my iTunes, and as I'm typing this, World of Warcraft is downloading, just in time for my last day (tomorrow) of playtime before my account expires. I'm absolutely broke, but then again, Blizzard Entertainment has given me the month away from writing that I needed, so kudos to them.

I'll leave you with this picture of my favorite actor of all time. He captured my heart when I was seven years old and he was bossing around hyenas. Since then he's just been pretty frakking awesome. I love Adam with all my heart, but Jeremy Irons, I wish you were my valentine. XD

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Windows 7 & A Happy Computer...

Well, I didn't really think that I would be posting much of anything tonight, but I got everything in the computer sorted out, thank goodness. No more messing around with that retarded six-year-old laptop. I thought I was going to kill myself. Soooo tired of the BSOD.

I don't really have a whole lot to talk about right now, but I wanted to point out that I am, in fact, still alive, and that I will probably have more to say tomorrow.

Sick Computers & Stuff Like That

Well, the desktop has a horrible virus. I thought it was just a problem with Google Chrome originally, but it turned out that I do, in fact, have a virus - which somehow managed to get past McAfee (no surprise there) and AVG (which actually kind of stunned me). I'm fairly sure that this is at least mildly related to my penchant for torrenting j-pop, but let's not get into that, huh?

At any rate, I am currently using my six-year-old dinosaur of a laptop, a Dell Latitude D505 that likes to BSOD on me occasionally for absolutely no reason at all (that I know of). Adam is coming over this weekend, though, to wiped the hard drive of the desktop and install Windows 7 on it, so I only have to deal with this for a little while. I do admit though, I absolutely love being able to carry my comp around with me, so definitely when I get the cash for it I absolutely have to get a new laptop.

Currently I'm sitting at The Table, the gathering place for my fellow geeklings and I, and there's a three-way Magic: The Gathering game going on. Usually I would be getting in on that action, but I have some internet presence to be making up for and honestly I already got my ass kicked today, I'm still licking my wounds. My blue-back deck definitely needs some more oomph to it, just not up to par. When I do win with it, it's usually a close call, or me getting EXTREMELY lucky.

Well, I've got a game starting here in an hour or so, so this will be all for now. Don't expect to hear from me again until at least Sunday.

Febrooary

Okay, just kidding, I didn't talk to you yesterday but I'm seriously going to talk to you now!

Really there's only one thing that you can blame my absence on, and that would be World of Warcraft. I know, I know, I really don't have the cash to be spending on it, and it eats my time up and I stay up too late and I'm much less likely to get my work done, but I needed something to do to keep me from working on deAngelis for a while, so I did the only thing I could think of, and that was to shell out $15 to Blizzard Entertainment and reactivate my account for a month.

I made a new toon on a new server so that I could play with everyone from the ISU RPGuild. So far it's going okay. My first toon, when I started playing WoW, was a human warrior, and Lordy could I tank. However, after three and a half years of playing the damn game, I have still only gotten Kefirah (on Stormrage) to level 61. Yes, I am an extremely casual gamer.

Lately I've been paying more attention to Kefari, on Doomhammer.


Not bad for two weeks' work, I think. Especially because I've been actually getting all of my schoolwork done in between screwing around in Azeroth.

More or less that's what's been going on right now, I'll post again sometime soon.

My paid game-time ends Feb 16th, so at the very least you'll hear from me then. :-P

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Buh.

O HAI BLOG.

I'm going to bed now. But I will talk to you tomorrow.

Love!