Running Down the Moon 38505 / 75000 words. 51% done! Jack in the Green 6449 / 100000 words. 6% done! |
As many of our friends already know, James Melzer and I are getting married this coming October. We are planning a very small wedding on October 31, 2010, in my hometown of Muncy, PA. No matter the size of one’s wedding, getting married is expensive. Because we are an international couple, we need to apply for a K-1 Fiance Visa in order for James to move to the States so we can get married.
James and I have a lot of friends and fans all over the world, and while we would love to have a huge wedding, inviting all the people we care about, we know it won’t be feasible. On that note, we started a Chip In fund for friends and family members who cannot be at the wedding, but would like to wish us well.
There are a number of things we need, including a place to live and many of the little things that make a house a home. Filing for the Visa itself is incredibly expensive, and while we are both working as many jobs as we can juggle and saving all we can, it isn’t easy. Please know that any contributions received are more than appreciated.
Setting this up has been a humbling experience, and we are overwhelmed by the generosity and support we’ve already received. If you would like to make a contribution to the wedding fund, you can do so by visiting our Chip In page, or clicking on the widget on the right hand toolbar here on my site.
Thank you to all our fans and friends for their continued well-wishes and support. We are looking forward to starting our life together, and sharing our happiness with you.
Share on Facebook
If you’ve been checking the widget in my sidebar, than you already know that our friends have donated $450 to the wedding fund in just over three weeks. James and I have been blown away by everyone’s generosity, and did not expect to see that much over the course of months leading up to the wedding itself. With just $50 left until we reach the cost of the K-1 fiance Visa that will allow James to move to the States once we are married, we are able to focus our savings on the wedding itself, and a place to live. Since we are basically starting out our life from scratch, this is a huge weight off our shoulders.
Since the day we told our friends and networks we were going to be getting married, everyone has been so supportive. Not just through the chip in widget, but through our day to day interactions with all of you. Many of our creative endeavors have taken a back seat over the last couple of months, as we strove to find creative new ways to make money as writers. Now that we have figured out what does and doesn’t work for us, we’ve both been turning our attention back toward the more creative aspects of our careers. Currently James is setting up a way to sell his short fiction directly to fans and the general public. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can support him, check out his website and the Deviant Dollar Stories post.
I am working hard at Twirlit and Real TV Addict, having recently been given the opportunity to write more feature articles for RTVA. I have also branched off to do a few articles for KidGlue, and am still plugging away on Demand Studios. I am still working quietly behind the scenes on my novel, as well as a few other projects I am not at liberty to discuss at this time.
This is truly one of the most exciting times of my life. Every day is unexpected and new, and opportunities arrive around every turn that help me realize my lifelong dream of writing. It’s not always easy, but it is always rewarding.
We will be putting together personal thank yous to all of our friends who have gifted to the wedding fund, so be on the lookout, and for now please know how much we appreciate everything you’ve done for us thus far.
Share on Facebook
I have gotten several emails and a few comments on the website about the issues with the Goblin Market feed. I apologize for the problem. In November, someone hacked the server that hosts my website, and I lost all of the content hosted on the server. I spent weeks reloading my content, adding the lost episodes of Goblin Market, but unfortunately, the feed got damaged as well. James spent hours searching for a solution, and we thought we’d found one. He tweeked and spliced, and everything was fine for about six weeks, then the feedback started pouring in. Episodes 3 and 12 were missing on iTunes, and they were no longer showing up in the podcast feed on the website.
We switched from podpress, which was no longer compatible with the current version of wordpress, to powerpress, and no matter how many times I deleted the audio and tried to reload it, it did nothing. Now the last two episodes of Goblin Market are not showing up either. I am currently at the end of my rope. Not sure what else I can do.
I am coming up on renewing my domain, and James and I have talked about moving my site to a new host. Moving everything is not going to be easy. I am not sure how much of what I have will get lost in the move, how much of my audio and visual will need to be reloaded. I am hoping that with a fresh slate, and a new server, I can get the feed straightened out. That said, until I do get things straightened out, Goblin Market is on hold. I’m disappointed, as it is so close to being finished, continuing to put it off is a crime. On the other hand, people are having such a hard time actually accessing the content, finding a solution is the only way. It’s a lot to ask people to be patient, and to wait, but I hope you will stand-by and check back as I get this under way. Hopefully, it is something I can get fixed without much hassle.
Share on Facebook
I was watching a lot of old Twilight Zone episodes when I got the idea for this story, so I’m hoping it has that type of feel. Once the overall story is done, I will rewrite and polish it, flesh it out a little more, but for now it’s just a rough, as-it-is draft.
The grass was still damp with yesterday’s rain, and the soft rubber soles of Kenny’s shoes skidded across the lawn. He didn’t stop until he clattered into the yellow dogwood trees planted just below Erin’s window. Branches scraped his wrists and forearms, but the adrenaline dulled the pain. He gasped to catch his breath, and the rich scent of autumn burned in his nostrils and filled his lungs. He stepped back from the skirting of the house and craned his neck skyward, shielding his eyes from the silver light of the late afternoon sun.
Kenny noted the outline of her frame, and focused his gaze in on her. She hadn’t even looked downward when he collided with the house, and for a moment he worried that tossing pebbles at the glass wouldn’t get her attention either. He bent down and sifted through the damp mulch around the base of the dogwood, grasping a few stones.
He stood up, jostling the stones in his palm before closing his finger around them. They were cold and wet in his warm, clammy hand and the contrast made him shiver. Taking three steps backward, he glanced toward Erin’s window again, squinting to find her shape, but she was gone. Kenny stumbled back two more feet, but he couldn’t even make out her shadow in the room.
For a moment he contemplated throwing one of the stones. Maybe if she was across the room, the sound would bring her back and he could finish playing out his fantasy just as he had dreamed it. She’d open the window. He’d say hello. After that he would have to wing it, but he had to get that far first. Cocking his arm back, he was just about the release the stone when the front door opened, and Erin stepped out onto the welcome mat.
“I knew you’d come,” she said.
Startled by her sudden appearance, Kenny’s voice stuck in his throat like he’d swallowed a mouthful of stale crackers without a drink to wash them down. His hand dropped to his side, the stones falling into the grass beside his feet, and for a moment he just stared at her. He’d seen her up close through his binoculars, but in person she was even more stunning. Eyes wide with genuine amazement and awe, her lips spread into a slow smile that revealed small, perfect teeth.
“We don’t have much time.” She closed the door behind her and stepped into the grass toward him. Her feet were bare, but she didn’t seem to notice the chill of damp earth beneath them. “We’ll have to hurry.”
“Hurry…” he felt stupid as that single word passed across his thick tongue.
Erin stood in front of him, almost a foot shorter than he was, staring up at him with those incredible lavender eyes. “Come on,” she slipped her hand into his. “Let’s go.”
Before Kenny could even ask her where they were going, she led him around the side of the house, into the backyard and toward the thinning trees edging the back end of the neighborhood. Just a few feet in, dense forest stretched for miles in all directions. It was the kind of place kids might get lost in while playing pirates or cops and robbers, and when Kenny looked back over his shoulder toward the disappearing neighborhood, a knot in the pit of his stomach forced him to hunch inward just in time to miss a sharp branch across the cheek. It tousled like a skeletal finger through his hair, and he shivered.
“Don’t be scared,” Erin’s fingers tightened around his.
“Where are we going?”
“I have to go home,” she said.
Laughter scuffed against the back of his throat, “Then we’re going the wrong way.”
“We’re going the right way,” she said, stepping around a tangle of thorn-decorated vines.
“Your shoes…” Kenny looked down at her muddy feet, bits of dried leaves and muck exaggerating the whiteness of her skin.
“There’s no time,” she didn’t even flinch as she put her foot down against the jagged combination of twigs and stone that littered the forest floor.
They moved quietly, the only sound coming from their feet and clothing as they rustled through the brush and trees. With every step they took, Kenny’s mind began to wake up, and the questions flooded his brain. Where were they going? How did she know he would come for her? Why did the darkness folding in on them as the forest grew even denser feel like something he’d felt before?
TO BE CONTINUED…
Share on Facebook
Sometimes life grabs you by the hair and yanks you around a little bit. When that happens, you tend to forget there are safe places you can hide from the stress and pain of it all. For me, that place is fiction, and while I have been struggling a bit recently with some overwhelming circumstances, I realized I had forgotten about the safe place I like to hide. I’d been tossing this idea around for awhile, and decided tonight I needed to just get out of my head and into my safe place for a retreat. This is completely unedited, and will be continued as I have the chance to escape. Hopefully, I make more escape time than I allowed myself before today. It’s amazing what a little trip into your imagination can do for the spirit.
Almost There…
From the other side of the glass she looked like a ghost. Perched in her windowsill, one hand under her chin and her elbow propped on her knee, her gaze was far away. She didn’t know he was watching her, that he had been watching her from the quiet solitude of the basement every day after school since his parents had bought the house across the street from hers four months earlier. And if she did know, she never made any indication. She just went on staring, as if whatever it was she watched was the most exciting and beautiful thing in the world.
Her name was Erin, but it might as well have been Rapunzel or Briar Rose, because that was what she was. A girl in a window-seat tower observing, rather than enjoying the world.
No one at school had ever met her, but they all knew who she was. “Evil Erin.” Dave Summers said they called her “Evil Erin” because her mother was a witch and her father the devil. After her mother died in labor (because Erin tore free from her uterus with talon-like claws and chewed off her own umbilical cord,) she’d been left in the care of her stepfather. The man was terrified if he abandoned her, she and her demon father would hunt him down and tear him limb from limb before stringing what was left of him like bloodied bits of Christmas tinsel all throughout the town. So instead he locked her up and sealed her inside the room with holy water, which would melt her flesh upon contact.
Whatever. Kenny didn’t believe in all that supernatural crap. He just thought she was beautiful in a tragic, fairytale sort of way, and the white knight inside him wanted to break her free from her prison and carry her off into the sunset.
He adjusted the lenses on his binoculars, zeroing in on her eyes. Lavender blue, purple as a field full of violet flowers with small flecks of yellow and green, as though the grass was peaking out from the field during a soft wind. Her lashes were short, but perky, and when she blinked, the motion lifted her cheeks so her eyes grinned like tiny mouths. Long fingers curved against the slender hollow of her cheeks, the nails decorated with chipped purple polish. The round circle of her lips stretched into a yawn, and Kenny sighed.
Meeting her had been on his agenda for weeks, but he had no idea how to go about it. He had seen her father–a military man standing well over six-feet–and he kept her under careful scrutiny. But Kenny had been watching long enough to know the man’s routines. Every Tuesday he left the house for approximately forty-three minutes to buy groceries, and it just so happened to be a Tuesday.
Kenny glanced down at the face of his watch, the glare from the light bulb behind him blocking out the time until he tilted his wrist toward him. It was 4:13. Four minutes and counting before the man would walk out the front door and walk straight to the driver’s side door of his Ford Festiva. By 4:18 he would back out of the driveway, stop to deposit an outgoing stack of mail in the box, lift the flag and drive away. At 4:20, Kenny planned to emerge and head straight to the hedge planted just below her window. He’d grab her attention with a few pebbles, get her to talk to him, and then he’d go from there.
He didn’t know where he would go, but he had to do something. She’d become something of an obsession, even appearing nightly in some of the strangest dreams to ever plague his sleep. Usually they were running with the setting sun at their backs, the sharp leaves of close knit cornstalks slicing at their faces every time they looked over their shoulders. Kenny didn’t know who or what they were running from, just that Erin was holding his hand. Even more than that, she was counting on him. And just before he woke up from every single dream, she would look into his eyes, her own lavender orbs round with the thrill of excitement and fear, and say, “Almost there.”
Kenny checked his watch again. 4:17. The digits shifted, and the front door of the house across the street opened right on time. He watched Erin’s father walk out and get into his car. He listened for the engine, the sound of the car door closing, and then he backed down the driveway, pausing at the mailbox to put his letters inside. Kenny put down the binoculars and backed away from the window.
He was finally going to meet the girl of his dreams. As he stepped up onto the first stair, his stomach knotted with anxiety, and Kenny smiled. There was a familiarity to the nervousness, as though he’d taken that step and the next and the next a hundred times before. He had played this plan out perfectly in his head so often, it was de-ja-vu when he opened the front door and felt the cool, September air against his face.
Erin hadn’t moved from her seat in the window. Even without the binoculars, Kenny could make out the outline of her frame. She was still sitting with her chin her palm staring up at the sky, as though waiting for the hand of God to reach down and pluck her out. He quickly scanned the neighborhood from the edge of his driveway, saw her father’s car turn left five blocks away, and then he dashed across the street.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Share on Facebook
Scrape scrape
and the skin bleeds
paints the sidewalk
drips over pastel chalk
drawings of two girls
stick bodied and
skirted with triangles.
Three-fingered hands
clasped together like braids
and music notes dance
above curly mopped heads.
Afternoon clouds shift,
hopscotch spent, and now
the game is dotted,
bespecked and spotted
droplets–broken dreams.
Share on Facebook
Angel dust slapped against the sky
clouded memoir to the moon
whispered words echo on the wind,
“Goodbye, Mother. Goodbye.”
Pass across wan, gibbous face
shadow leaking tears like tar,
but fear and sorrow slowly wane
in slender, silver grace.
On the hillside perches child
in headstrong reverence,
wings wrapped ’round his nakedness
face painted blue with light.
Golden morning rises into grey
mist swirled life, the child trembles
wings spread wide and he lifts off
to face the dawning of his day.
Share on Facebook
I grew up in a smalltown neighborhood with the same group of families nearly all my life. My family and I moved here when I was just five years old, and because we were all so close together, our families looked out for each other. Most of the kids in the neighborhood were very close in age, and just happened to fall into my peer group, which meant I was fortunate enough to have a close knit group of kids to play with most of my childhood.
We had sleepovers, adventures, camp outs and years of petty arguments that seem incredibly insignificant now that we’re all grown up with lives, families and children of our own. We don’t see each other very often, but I know that if anything every happened, I could call on those people from my youth and they would be there for me.
This afternoon one of our mothers passed away. A woman I have known for thirty years of my life. A woman who looked out for me, took care of me, shared her home and her family with me… She had coffee with my mother at least once a week, and I always looked forward to coming up and saying hello when she was by for a visit. She babysat for my younger sister, and kept her own granddaughter on a regular basis right up until she got sick. She was the kind of person who gave with her whole heart and never passed judgment. She was a good friend and the kind of neighbor most people wish they were blessed with.
She recently had surgery on her lungs to try and correct an infection, and she was recovering. Losing her was a huge shock. It was so hard to see her family, her children in such turmoil.
I cried a lot today. For her children, her grandchildren, her husband and all the other people whose lives she touched. And it’s always the little things that really touch you during a time like this. Like knowing I will never walk outside and see her cooking on the grill in the middle of winter again, or that she’ll never invite me to another Longaberger or Princess House party. I won’t be able to share the pictures of my wedding with her, even though she was intrigued and amused by the idea of a zombie wedding.
I know that as life moves forward, we lose people. Sometimes they are family and other times they just felt like family, but either way it still hurts. And though I’ve never been big on prayer, I’m praying now for her family and loved ones because she was the glue that held them all together, and they are going to be so lost without her. I think we all will be.
Share on Facebook
I know it’s been awhile, but here is the long awaited episode of Goblin Market. Unfortunately, I currently live in a battle zone filled with dogs, trash compactors, ice grinders and more. There is no ideal time to record, which makes for some pretty crazy background noise from time to time. I did my best to edit out as much of the melee from the episode as possible, but there may still be some random nononsense. At least I cut out all my swearing. There was a lot of it, as each time I’d get into the groove, someone would barrel into the house and stomp the stairs or fill buckets with ice.
Hopefully I’ll have a new episode for you in about two weeks. I’ve been working my ass off lately trying to get money saved for the wedding and for us to move, so forgive me as I prioritize for the future. I’m doing my best to get this wrapped up so you all don’t have to wait as long between episodes. I hope you can forgive me and be patient with me.
Share on Facebook
Podcast (goblin-market): Play in new window
| Download
Well, I did it. After a rocky start, which prompted the deletion of about 700 words, I managed to repair one of the stalled parts in Running Down the Moon and add 1600 new words to my word count. I am now standing about 51% completion, as you can see from the fancy pants word count tool in my sidebar. Though they were probably not the most exciting words I’ve ever written, I am pleased as punch (what the hell does that mean anyway…) that I moved forward.
I am on Chapter Twenty Two. Just about 800 words into the new chapter and ready to embark on some of the turning points in the plot. I had to do about an hour of research tonight just to get the motor started, but once I was ready to get to the actual writing, it felt really good to be back on track.
I’m aiming for about 75,000 words, but as the plot unravels and the backstory unfolds, I start to wonder how far past that I will go. I’m not going to try to guess, just keep writing until the story is done. I’ll worry about the other stuff when I get there.
Overall, today was good. I got out. Took the dog for a nice long walk and despite having numb cheeks for about thirty minutes when I came home, it felt good to be outside. I loathe the winter, and often use that loathing as an excuse to stay holed up indoors like a hibernating bear. I decided today, however, that I can’t let myself fall into seasonal depression, otherwise I’ll do nothing. No writing, no socializing, no being happy. Just a lot of sleeping and moping and working and moping.
In other news, Goblin Market is ready for recording. I’ll be doing that first thing tomorrow morning… well, right after I get my Video of the Day all ready for Real TV Addict. Looking forward to getting that done.
So, now that I’ve got my commitment back on track, I’m feeling pretty darn good about myself. I hope you’re fairing well with your own self-commitments. Even if it isn’t easy, sometimes following through is the best reward in the world.
Share on Facebook
|
Subscribe to Goblin Market
Goblin Market Promo
Would you like to play the promo for Goblin Market on your podcast? Grab the MP3 here!
|
