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.

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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.

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Guys, I have to tell you that getting back into Running Down the Moon has been really hard. In fact, I remembered as I sat down to write last night why it was so easy to walk away from the story when holiday travel mayhem set in back in November. I hit a bit of a wall. Not that I don’t know where I want the story to go. It’s just one of those minor things about getting it to the next sailing point.

And trust me when I tell you, it’s not that I haven’t tried or made time. I sat here for two hours last night… two hours and managed to eke out 1347 words. The good news is, it took me to the halfway point for my proposed length. The bad news is, most of those words were added into the pre-existing plot and the actual story did not move forward from my last sentence.

I know what I have to do. I have to unplug you, oh blessed Internet. Flip Twitter the bird, turn off Californication, plug into some good tunes and just write. I have to remind myself that this is only the first draft and at this point getting to the end is the only thing that matters. And I will. Every day this week I have set aside time to work on fiction and poetry. Yesterday I managed to write two short poems and that 1347 words on Running Down the Moon. Tonight, I’m aiming for at least 1000 new words on the novel and at least one poem before bed.

In other commitment news, I’m also committing myself to spending more time reading this year. I have a stack of books on my shelf right now that gets bigger and bigger every time I steal them off of James’ bookshelf and smuggle them home in my suitcase. I’m currently 400 pages into Under the Dome and absolutely absorbed in it every time I pick it up. It’s just a matter of making myself pick it up. I read before bed. I make myself because it’s quiet time and I can relax with a hot cup of cocoa and my blankies. I only have about 600ish pages left in Under the Dome (only…groan…) and then I’m reading Jonathan Maberry’s Pine Deep books. I’ve been coveting them for months, but never made time to read them.

So, that’s all I’ve got on the commitment front today. I’m struggling a little bit, but I won’t give up. I refuse. I hope you’re all hanging in there with your own commitments, whatever they may be.

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Crash against the crag
and chip away
piece by piece
day by day
tiny bits of
stone disintegrate
turn to sand
carried far away
by the constant
churning of the sea
forever carving
until the soul is free.

Disintegrate by Jennifer Hudock is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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In truth, there is nothing more motivational than rejection. Sure, many of us sink into defeat, maybe throw a fit or two and possibly even refuse to submit our work ever again just to avoid ever feeling like a failure again. I’ve blogged about rejection a lot over the last year and a half because last year I submitted more of my work than I ever have before in my life. I also got rejected more than ever, but on the other hand, I had six of my short stories picked up for publication last year. In truth, the numbers balanced themselves out, and while I always feel that twinge of sadness when a rejection comes my way, I’ve learned a lot from rejection.

Even though we’re only one week into 2010, I’ve already gotten my first rejection. w00t! Go me! And it was no slouch of a rejection either. My first 2010 rejection came directly from the offices of “Alfred Hitchcock Magazine.” Not that I didn’t have hope for its acceptance, I also know it will be a hard sell. The story itself is suspense/thriller novella. Novellas, unless your already well-established, tend to be difficult sellers.

I won’t be giving up on the story, despite the fact that it won’t be easy. In fact, I’ve got the 2010 Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market open on my bed beside me, and will be combing through it for about an hour this afternoon looking for potential places I might sell it to. I have two other stories as well, both recently rejected, that I will be searching for a home for this week, so wish me luck.

I currently have one story out that I am waiting for a response on. A werewolf piece I submitted to a Library of Horror anthology back in October is still out there, hopefully dazzling the mind of the editor as she reads through it. *crosses fingers*

Submitting my work takes an incredible amount of commitment. Facing potential rejection can bring you down, but the thing I’ve learned over the last couple years that really keeps me on the level is this: one editor’s trash is another editor’s treasure. Just because twelve editors didn’t want the story, doesn’t mean editor thirteen isn’t going to grasp their chest and sigh with excitement upon reading it. So, I say face every rejection with an “onto the next” attitude.

In other commitment news, I am working Running Down the Moon again. It’s been slow going since yesterday, but sometimes it takes a little extra effort to get back into the groove after you’ve put a story on hold for one reason or another. I also managed to sit down and write a short piece yesterday, which I posted here on my blog if you’re interested in checking it out.

I hope whatever you’re committed to, you’re staying true to yourself because in truth, you are the only one who can and will do the things you need to do in your life.

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I tried to take a nap earlier, but frazzled by the notion that I had to go to the school and pick up the Squeenager, I never quite made it to dreamland. Instead, while Billy Idol sang me to sleep, I thought about a novel I once wrote and started brainstorming a short story to accompany it. I sat down after I came back from picking her up and free wrote this little bit. It’s pretty dark and I’m sure it needs work, but thought I’d share it with you.

Either way, I’m happy to have written something today. Commitment: FORWARD HO!

BTW: This is somewhat graphic, so if you have sensitivities, I suggest you don’t read on.

Sweet Sixteen
The night my mother killed herself my twenty-five year old uncle raped me in the upstairs bathroom while Billy Idol crooned “Sweet Sixteen” from the boom box in my bedroom. As she drew the razor across her wrists in front of the television, Chas bent me over the bathroom sink and clapped a hand across my mouth to stifle the sound of my sobs.

Mom didn’t scream or cry. In fact, she hadn’t spoken a single word since the night my father was killed on duty by a seventeen year old kid outside a Pittsburgh convenience store ten years earlier. She just existed in some sort of self-induced coma while the world went on around her, waiting for the right moment to die. And as I was upstairs praying for someone, anyone to come to my rescue, she chose her moment and bled out all over Gran’s brand new sofa in the while a filterless Pall Mall burned in the heaping ashtray beside a fresh glass of diet pop fizzing on the coffee table.

Bangle bracelets clanged on porcelain as I fought to free myself, and Chas’s hot, strangled breath whispered, “That’s right baby girl. Don’t fight me, don’t fight.”

He pushed himself so deep into me I thought my insides would tear out when his entire body stiffened with grunting release. He drew back away from me. From the full-length mirror hanging askew on the back of the bathroom door, I saw the stark white skin of my back and legs. I tried to avoid the accusation of my own stare, blurred by the tears pouring down my face and leaving flakes of dried liquid eyeliner in trails on my cheeks.

His presence lingered behind me, back against the wall as he drew his jeans up over his hips and quickly worked the zipper to disassociate from the guilt. Pain and wetness burned between my thighs like fire, reassurance that I was falling apart from the inside out, and when he reached out to stroke my hair from the back with a trembling hand, the powder-blue tiled walls of the bathroom wavered in front of me like a mirage.

He drew me to him, my mind a limp rag unable to react or respond or push away, and held me against his chest. Chin perched atop my head while he ran his hand down the length of my tangled hair, he whispered, “I love you, Monica. I love you so much.”
I was suffocating, and downstairs, my mother drew her final breath, but no one even noticed until the next morning. Gran shuffled out of her bedroom in her bathrobe and slippers and headed straight to the coffee pot like a zombie. She passed the living room without a second glance at Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumble going through their Today Show morning routine.

Upstairs I laid in bed, my stomach still a tangle of briars and my body aching with the fever of his untoward gift. I turned off my alarm clock after the third snooze, rolling over onto my side and curling into a fetal ball with my back against the locked door. All I could think about was how everyone was going to notice. They’d all take one look at me and see the mark of shame and loathing like a scarlet letter on my skin.

And then the screaming started. Gran’s cries were strangled frogs clawing at the smoke-stale morning. Guttural and deep, laced with agony and fear, the sound tore me from the coma of my guilt. My first thought was that she knew, she somehow discovered what I’d let him do to me. Punishment after cruel punishment raked through my mind in stinging trails. She’d beat me, then send me away, put me in a home for wayward whores and leave me there to rot forever.

“Oh my god, Elise,” she moaned.

Uncle Chas was the first to react. I listened from the edge of my bed as he scrambled from the room beside my own and tumbled down the stairs.

“What the hell is…”

Silence.

It gripped and suspended the moment so long that not even my overactive imagination could fill the void. Even Gran’s sobs halted, and the only sound I heard was the distant rumble of traffic from the world waking up outside.

Muttering voices carried up the length of the staircase, but I couldn’t understand their words. Chas’s tone laced with a sense of frantic control, Gran shaken senseless in response.

I moved toward the door and turned the cold knob in my hand. Later I would swear I smelled her blood in the gust of air that wafted up the staircase to meet me, but then Chas was on the bottom stair, his grey eyes wide with horror.

“Stay there,” he barked like a drill sergeant.

“W-what’s—” I stretched to see past him from my room.

“Go back in your room, Monica,” his tone was firm, but gentle. “Just go.”

“What happened?”

Gran’s sobs formed a cocoon of grief around my mother’s name, interspersed between words like, “child” and “poor.”

“I didn’t know,” I heard her say. “I didn’t see her, and I don’t know when…”

“Just call the goddamn paramedics, Mom, or the police, or something,” Uncle Chas only looked over his shoulder at her for a second, but it was long enough for me to barrel down the steps and straight into the blockade of his arms.

I struggled against him harder than I had the night before, battering at his chest with my balled fists and jerking around like an epileptic to get past him. Even through the battle I could see her slumped over on the couch, her thin, pale arm straight and bare as a naked branch in winter. A dark pool leaked across the beige carpet, crawled under the glass-top coffee table and stretched toward the television. My uncle wrapped his arms around my waist and carried my kicking and screaming up the stairs. He threw me from the doorway of my bedroom onto my bed and blocked the space with his body.

“I don’t want you to see,” he swallowed.

I choked on my own voice, “Is she…”

I already knew. There’d been so much blood.

He said nothing. He didn’t even look at me as he closed me inside my room, and as the distant wail of sirens drew closer to the house, I could think of nothing. Nothing except that I wish it had been me.

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Over the last couple days, I’ve thought a lot about passion. In order to continually write, day in and day out, whether it be fiction, poetry or one of the many freelance jobs I juggle, it takes a huge amount of passion. One of the jobs I work for, a job which I’ve come to dread doing over the last few months, quashes passion. It shuns it and then kicks it in the backside when no one’s looking. The articles are cookie-cutter pieces. How tos on everything from tying your shoes to pruning grape vines. The majority of them are incredibly simple, but I always choose topics about things I enjoy because otherwise, writing them would be suck the life out of me.

I browse the forums for this company from time to time, and can’t understand how the majority of other writers can devote their entire work week to the place. Some of them spend hours researching difficult topics, just to keep picking up articles when the queue contains topics that don’t appeal to them. Maybe I’m a whiner, but I’d rather eat cockroach feces than write about fixing cracked engine blocks and changing carburetors. First of all, because the jobs don’t pay that well, and if you’re spending three hours doing research on one article, then an hour writing it, you wind up making less than waitress wages. And you don’t get a tip for smiling and bringing your copy editor extra actionable words.

Before I started writing for Real TV Addict, Twirlit and Examiner, this other job was my sole source of income. In fact, it still is where I earn about 60% of my income each month. I complained to James a few times, especially when it was more like 90% of my income, that after sitting here writing all day about cleaning up chicken crap and watering the lawn, at the end of the day I had little to no desire at all to focus on the writing that really mattered to me: my fiction.

And right now my fiction is severely suffering. The holidays took a lot out of me, as I was scrambling to work, work, work to ensure we had enough money for the holidays and travel expenses. At the end of the day, when I thought about sitting down to pump out a thousand words on my novel, my eyes fluttered thrice, and I was snoring before I could shut the screen on my laptop.

But the holidays are over. 2010 is just six days old, and though the next year is going to be a whopper of a year (in so many good ways,) I know I can’t use the excuse of busyness to hold me back from reaching my goals as a writer. One of the greatest things about my life is my support system. I know that if I set my mind to doing something, James will back me up and encourage me to keep at it, even when it feels impossible. And right now, there’s so much on my plate it feels like I’m going to gain ten pounds just looking at it.

Starting today, I’m back on the horse. At least 1,000 words will be added to my Running Down the Moon word count bar before the end of the day, and that novel will be 1,000 words closer to being finished. I’m also going through the handful of rejections I got over the last six weeks, and sending every one of those stories back out before the end of the week. The match is lit. Let’s set this place on fire!

If you’ve slacked off on your commitments, let’s get back on the horse together today. It won’t be easy; it never is, but with each other’s support and encouragement, we can do anything! *locker room towel snap* Hoo-Ha!

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I have to say, 2009 has probably been one of the strangest, yet most exciting years of my entire life. Many of my hopes and dreams were realized this year, and despite a small bit of hardship, the wonders and beauty of this last 365 days have set the tone for a future I look forward to every minute of every day.

One interesting note from the last year: I came to the realization that all that crap they give people about daydreaming is a load of bunk. Allowing yourself to daydream inspires you to take action, even when taking action makes you feel like everything you’ve ever known is tumbling down around you. It is the daydream that yields to great works of art and fiction, inspiring the dreamer to reveal and expose their inner-self to an unsuspecting world. I guess on most levels, I already knew this, but for the first time in my life, I’ve been allowing myself to truly live and experience it.

I’ve written and published more in the last year than in all the other years of my life combined.

I met the love of my life and realized that you can share your dreams with someone else on so large a scale that sometimes they terrify and excite you so much that you can’t sleep at night for all the dreaming.

I took my life into my own hands this year. They say you can’t really do that, and I suppose on some level, they’re right. You can’t control circumstance, or bend fate to your will, but you can make your own choices. You can decide what you will and will not stand for throughout the course of your life. Maybe we can’t stop death, illness or the actions of those around us from influencing the events we experience, but we can choose how to react to them and shape ourselves around them so they don’t devastate our existence.

2010 is already shaping up to be a huge year. I’m going to finish my novel. Expand my freelance career. Travel more than ever. Marry my best friend.

What’s not to look forward to?

Blessing to you all in the upcoming year. May it be the best year of your life.

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It’s 7:42 AM and I’m enjoying a cup of coffee while planning today’s trip to the Royal Ontario Museum. I’m really excited about going, as 1. I haven’t been to a museum myself since I was about seven years old and 2. I have never been to a museum with the Squeenager. (I know, I’m a horrible mother…) She’s been really excited about going all week, so we’re both really looking forward to it. I loaded up my camera with fresh batteries, packed mini-Chewbacca for various photo ops throughout Toronto and plan to completely enjoy a day of culture with my two favorite people plus mini-Chewbacca.

Overall, we’ve had a great visit to Toronto. Squeenager’s been relaxing, enjoying the opportunity to duck out of responsibility for a few days and just chill out. She’s read a ton of comic books, watched two seasons of Angel, drawn some excellent pictures with her set of new sharpie markers and kissed James’ cat so much that the poor little guy smells like Cotton Candy lip balm and Victoria’s Secret perfume. This is the way vacations should be. Even though James and I both had regular work schedules this last week, it’s been great to just be together.

We’ve laughed a lot, played a ton of games, watched volumes of movies and all in all just enjoyed each other’s company. I am not looking forward to going back to the States on New Year’s night. It’s comfortable when we’re all together. When I’m here without her, I am overjoyed to have alone time with James, but I miss her terribly, and tend to get a little melancholy. When he is home with us, however, it’s a much better atmosphere because we’re all together. I do realize how fortunate we are to enjoy each other’s company and presence, and look forward to the day when traveling involves us going to conventions and on vacation together. Life is good because they are both a part of it.

I haven’t written much outside of work writing lately, mostly because of all the travel. It’s tough to settle in sometimes, but I am still plotting in my head. I can’t wait to get back to my characters, and am really excited about finishing Running Down the Moon in the New Year. James and I had a really interesting idea for a collaborative novel yesterday. It’s a complicated mesh of awesome, but between everything, I do hope we can put our heads together and start planning for that. We both have so many projects going on, it’s sometimes hard to focus on anything outside of them, so it is time to wrap up some of the old ones in order to move on to new ones.

Goblin Market will be finished up in the next few weeks. As I mentioned upon release of the last episode, there are about eight more episodes to go. I hope to get through them quickly. I enjoyed podcasting the story, and receiving feedback from everyone, but it is a lot of hard work. I’m not sure I will podcast anything on such a grand scale again. I haven’t really decided yet. Maybe I’ll stick to short stories and poetry for awhile.

In other news, I’ve really been enjoying the personal column I’ve been writing for Twirlit each week: Adventures in Single Motherhood. It’s gotten great reception, with the readership and comments growing monumentally each week. I hope that continues, as writing about my daughter is truly one of the most rewarding things I do. We share some pretty amazing things together, and I love being able to share what I learn from her with a wide scope of readers. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the column yet, you can catch the latest edition: Adventures in Single Motherhood: A Very Canuck Christmas. I hope you’ll take a moment to leave a comment. I cannot express how important it is to leave comments on people’s work. Not only does it let them know the things they write resonated with you, but it lets the powers that be know people are actually out there reading and enjoying the work, especially if you’re a freelancer. An active column with a wide following is more likely to be continued, than a column with no commentary at all.

On that note, I really want to thank everyone who has taken the time to support and comment on all my freelance work these last few weeks. Thanks to your continued support and encouragement, I continually get to live out one of my dreams.

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So, tomorrow is the big day. I’m packing up my laptop and my Squeenager, and we’re heading up to Toronto for the holiday. I’m excited and a little nervous, though I’ve traveled back and forth now more than my fair share. This is the first time I’ve taken the Squeenager with me, and she’s really squeeing about the trip. In fact, she told me this afternoon while nabbing supplies from the grocery store that she had trouble sleeping last night because she was really excited about going to Canada.

She and I haven’t traveled together in a loooooooooooooong time. We never got to take fabulous vacations together. In fact, the last time she and I took a major trip together was when she was five years old and we took an all girls family vacation to Disney World in Orlando. So, I am really looking forward to traveling with her. We’ve got a lot of fun stuff planned for the trip, and I can’t wait for her to see Toronto at night.

I hope everyone will keep their fingers crossed so we have safe and happy travels, and we will pop in while on the road to say hallooooo when we get free wifi. Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday with your friends, family and loved ones, no matter what you have planned.

Oh, and btw, I hope everyone who took time out to comment last week on my Adventures in Single Motherhood column over on Twirlit will check in tomorrow night around 8PM EST to read and comment on the new adventure. It got such a great response and the editor was really thrilled. I really appreciate all the support, and look forward to sharing my next adventure with you. I’ll link everyone up via Twitter and Facebook once the article goes live.

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This has been a great week for me as a freelancer. Not only did I start my regular daily column, Video of the Day, over on Real TV Addict, but I also started my weekly personal column, Adventures in Single Motherhood, over on Twirlit. I put out some great stuff this week on Examiner.com, as the publishing companies continue to battle the uprising of technology. So here it is guys, the weekend report and the list to all my content from this week. It’s a lot of content, but if you haven’t had a chance to check it out, and you find some free time this weekend, I’d love some comments. Comments are a great way to start conversation and share your opinions, and I appreciate them a great deal.

Real TV Addict
Top TV Icons: Jerry Seinfeld
Video of the Day: Palin Goes Shatner
Californication: Drowning
Video of the Day: I’ll Have a Glass of Fat, Please?
A Flintstone’s Christmas Carol
Video of the Day: LeBron James Wants Fries with That!
TV Icons: Fred Rogers
So You Think You Can Dance: And the Winner Is…
Video of the Day: Michelle Heaton Goes Boom
Top TV Shows: thirtysomething
Video of the Day: Christmas Light Hero

Twirlit
Publishers Threatened by Little Old eBooks
Adventures in Single Motherhood: The Power to Squee Compels You
Weekend Movie Preview: “Avatar,” “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” and More!
Rick Springfield to Pen Candid Memoir

Examiner.com
Under the Dome goes digital December 24
Random House digs into the past for electronic rights
A Kingly gift for the troops
Palin book tour ends with a platinum bang
This week in fiction: December 15
Stephen Covey signs exclusive eBook deal with Amazon
Borders hops on the eBook train
Rick Springfield memoir: “Late, Late at Night” coming 2010
Tiger Woods scandal leads to several unauthorized books
Charlaine Harris to lecture at Shippensburg University
Rowling and Meyer named best-selling authors of the decade
Monica Lewinsky says President Clinton lied
Best zombie books of the decade

Busy week? I’d say so. I didn’t even include the twenty-some articles I wrote for Demand Studios, but they’re out there too. Next week will be hectic, with travel and the holidays, so I’m working ahead as much as I can this weekend in order to take some time to relax and spend Christmas with my two favorite people. I’ve earned it. Thanks to everyone who continually reads and comments on my work. It is your support that continues to make it possible for me to do my job.

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It’s been awhile since I penned a commitment report, but that’s not to say there’s nothing going on. Despite our busy travel schedule these last couple months, I still manage to get work done on the road. That’s the thing though, most of it winds up being work, and I haven’t had as much time to devote to my fiction. That is changing now that I’ve got my laptop. Merry Xmas to me and a big thank you to James for that.

I just finished recording episode 16 of Goblin Market and have half the edits done. I hope to have it finished by Monday evening or Tuesday afternoon, so if you’ve been anxiously awaiting a new episode, it’s coming, I promise. For those of you discouraged by the infrequency of episode releases this last two months, I do apologize. While one should never make excuses, and own up to their misgivings, unfortunately I have no control over my computer problems. My eight year old dell hard drive took a huge dive about a month ago, and it was all I could do to hold it together just to get my daily work and writing done. Recording was next to impossible, and the sound quality was suffering nearly as bad as when I needed a new mic. Of course, all of the traveling we need to do right now has also gotten in the way, but at least I’ve got my priorities straight. My family and loved ones come first, always.

I am also working on Running Down the Moon, though slowly as I have to work my way back into the plot. I hate when you take a long break from a piece of work, and you find yourself combing through it to pick up the thread again, but I am committed to finishing this novel. My tentative goal is to have draft one completed by the end of January, so wish me luck. It’s feasible, but we’re prepping to do some holiday traveling again, and this time I’ll have Ye Olde Squeenager with me. I’m looking forward to having a nice, quiet holiday up north. James and I both have to work quite a bit surrounding the holiday, but at least we have Christmas Eve and Day off.

I know sometimes when I blog about work getting in the way of personal writing, it might seem like I’m a little down on my work. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love freelancing. It gives me the flexibility of deciding when and where I work, and whether I even want to get dressed for the day. I am also working incredibly hard to take care of myself, my daughter and the future James and I are building together. We have a visa to apply for, a wedding to plan, a home to move into and a big fat spending spree at IKEA on the mental list. Being able to earn all the things I need through freelancing gives me a sense of independence and pride that no other job has ever done. I just wanted to share that.

Anyway, I’m off to get some writing done before I scramble off in search of nachos. I hope that you’re all out there keeping to your self-commitments. You deserve to be good to yourself.

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James gave me a great idea this morning when he made his blog post. We talked about putting together a weekly post of our freelance work for the week in hopes that it would give others a chance to see what we were up to, and hopefully inspire some intriguing conversation among friends and readers on the topics we write. James has been kicking serious butt over on Examiner.com, and for most of the week we’ve been amicably battling for the top Harrisburg Entertainment & Arts Examiner position, but mostly, he’s been in the lead. He’s written a TON of articles this week while we were relaxing here in the States, so if you haven’t had a chance to check him out, there’s a full list of his week in horror entertainment right here: Freelance Friday.

It’s been a big week for me. On top of my regular Demand Studios and Real TV Addict gigs, I also started writing for Examiner.com and Twirlit, and I picked up a daily column over on Real TV Addict. Here’s a breakdown of everything I put out this week for those of you interested in checking it out. I hope you’ll be kind and comment on the individual articles and posts when you’re inspired to do so, and remember, your support is what keeps us able to live our dream one word at a time.

Real TV Addict
Video of the Day: Frosty the Inappropriate Snowman
TV Icons: Alan Alda
GMA Bids Farewell to Diane Sawyer (Video)
Top Cult TV Shows: Stargate SG-1
A Rugrats Chanukah
Top Cult Shows: Twin Peaks
Rudolph’s Shiny New Year
TV Icons: Bea Arthur
Californication: The Duel

Twirlit
Weekend Movie Preview: Invictus, The Lovely Bones and a few surprises

Examiner.com
HarperCollins jumps on the eBook delaying bandwagon
R. Kelly memoir in the works
Monday the Bullfrog plush book recall
Goodreads scores $2million in funding
E-books on the backburner for major publishers
Tiger Woods gets a grip on physics
Mystery Writer’s of America delists Harlequin
Digital books: Not just for Adults anymore
‘Tis the season to buy children’s books
Saving Brick and Mortar Bookstores

Well guys, that’s my week in freelance. Thank you so much to everyone who took time out of their busy lives to read and comment on my articles. It means a lot to me to know that you guys are out there supporting me!

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Celebrities. The royalty of the ages, it’s amazing how much power of influence they have. This morning I posted an article on Examiner.com about the British professor whose book sales went haywire after a photograph of his out-of-print book, Get a Grip on Physics was photographed in the backseat of Tiger Woods wrecked car. As a writer, my mind started churning about how to boost book sales. Of course, there have been sites all over the ‘net for years featuring pictures of celebrities and the books they’re reading, but what if you wandered around with your less-than-average sales novel in your knapsack just looking for rare photo opportunities to plant it in? Especially celebrity crime scene photos and major events? Imagine the news filming a shuttle launch and there’s a copy of your dog-eared paperback on the ground control panel… Or what if that one time Winona Ryder got caught stealing, and she was arrested with a copy of your book hanging out of her trenchcoat pocket… or better yet, she was stealing your novel in triplicate from Borders? Ahh, the possibilities. In fact, I think there’s a short story in there somewhere. And once it’s written, maybe I’ll tape it to the back of David Duchovny’s shirt like a kick-me sign. Hey, it couldn’t hurt.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll pop over and check out the article, even if it is a little absurd. Tiger Woods gets a grip on physics.

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from my brand spanking new laptop… Today, James and I went holiday shopping. He already knew what he was getting from me, and since our holiday celebrations are unconventional this season due to all the travel back and forth between here and Toronto, we decided we were going to exchange big gifts while he was here this week and save the small stuff for when Squeenager and I head up to Toronto. It’s a lot less hassle to have to travel across the border with a few stocking stuffers and some pajama pants than it is to tote electronics.

We went out this morning and picked out my laptop and bought the Squeenager a really nice Flip Ultra, which she has already christened with some very silly videos of herself walking down the stairs. I’ve been reorganizing and working from my new laptop most of the day, and James spent some time reading on his new Sony eReader.

I am really excited about the new computer. Unfortunately, my tower took a crap just before I left on my last trip to Toronto, so until I got something else, I wasn’t going to be getting much work done. This is so nice. some have said the setback of having a laptop is that I’ll probably never get out of bed again, but how could that be a bad thing? Mmmm, bed.

The nicest thing about this holiday is that we get to spend it together. Despite the fact that many of the holiday family traditions won’t be met this year, I am so grateful for the time we do have. I miss decorating, one of my favorite holiday passtimes, and I won’t be doing much baking either, but I know there’s always next year. James is actually working on Christmas day, so Squeenager and I plan to make dinner so it’s ready when he gets home that night. We might even bake up some of those cookies I was sorely missing. Either way, I am looking forward to the new traditions we will create together. Maybe I’ll even drink some egg nog this year.

On that note, I just opened up my novel, and since James is napping peacefully, I think I’m gonna try to sneak in a thousand words or so before he wakes up. I’m also looking forward to being able to start recording again very soon. w00t!

Oh, and if you haven’t had a chance to check out my latest article over on Examiner.com, I encourage you to do so now. I’d be really grateful for any comments you might have. I think this is a pretty interesting topic:
Mystery Writers of America delists Harlequin Also, James kicked off his own Examiner.com column today as well. Be sure to subscribe for all the latest in horror movie news. He’s already written four articles. He’s kicking my butt.

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Those of you who know me or have been following my blog already know that I earn 100% of my income freelance writing. That means I get up every day, discipline myself to sit down at my desk and produce content to submit it to the companies I am contracted to. After my articles go live, I tweet, facebook, digg and even blog about them, asking people to pop over and check them out. Sometimes people do and sometimes they don’t, and while I know I can’t expect everyone to drop their whole life to comment on my articles, comments and actual visits are essential to a successful freelance writer’s career.

Why? I don’t work a lot of revenue share jobs, but the few that I do generate income based on the number of page clicks, subscribers to my column and comments I receive on my articles. On jobs where I earn a flat rate, getting comments and page views shows the editors that the content I produce is valuable to the site, in turn keeping me on staff.

Freelance writing is a tough, competitive gig, but I love doing it. I appreciate everyone who takes the time to show their support, and hope I can continue to count on it as my career continues to unfold.

If you’re interested in offering a bit of support, you can check out my recent articles on Examiner.com:
‘Tis the season to buy children’s books
Saving brick and mortar book stores

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I mentioned in my last commitment report that I had gotten the Harrisburg Book Examiner job, and today I posted my very first article. It’s an insightful look at the competition brick and mortar bookstores face in light of Internet shopping and the increasing popularity of ereaders. I’m pretty proud of it, and I hope you’ll take a few minutes to drop by and check it out. Comments are not only welcome, but encouraged, as I’d love to hear your thoughts. I also hope you’ll consider subscribing to my page so you can stay up to date on all the latest book news with me.

I also wanted to share more exciting news on the job front. I recently proposed column ideas to the editor of Twirlit.com, a women’s blog, and my proposal was accepted. I’ll be blogging three times a week on Twirlit about movies, books and single motherhood. I’m really excited about this, and again hope I can count on you all for support.

Freelancing isn’t always easy, thought it is enjoyable. Building an audience is one of the toughest parts about writing, especially with constantly increasing competition on the net. Appealing to friends and readers for support and asking them to help spread the word isn’t easy either, but I’ve been blessed with incredibly supportive friends who I know will do all they can to help me expand my growing career.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me emotionally and personally during this last year. Your love and support has meant more to me than you could ever know, and thank you is probably not enough.

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It’s been a week since my last commitment report, and while not much has taken place on the fiction front, I have been working really hard to expand my freelance career. Over the last couple days, I’ve picked up a temporary gig writing some content for one of the Daymix blogs and got accepted to Examiner.com as a Books Examiner. I’m hoping to have my first examiner column up before the end of the week and hope I can count on my friends, family and readers for support. I also just made a pitch for another blogging job, and will share the details once I have more to tell. Please wish me luck.

I have missed writing fiction this last week, but haven’t had as much time to devote to it as I would like. I do have an idea for a holiday short story I’m thinking of putting together, and have been anxious to get the next chapter in Running Down the Moon finished. I’ve got my flash stick with me, so tomorrow after work, I do plan to get some fiction writing done before we head back to the States. Unfortunately, once I get there, I’m not so sure how much writing I’ll get done, as before I left my computer was going through some issues. I’m planning to get a new computer mid-week, so YAY! I’m really looking forward to that.

I started to turn this blog into a bit about the period of introspection I’ve succumb to lately, but in the end decided that right now those thoughts are just for me. In due time, once I’ve had a chance to form and really wrap my mind around them in a way that makes them easier to share, perhaps I’ll blog about it. For now, however, I’m enjoying the solitude and the inspiration that continues to trickle into the silence.

I hope you’re all well and continuing to pursue and achieve the things you’ve committed yourself to do. More news to come soon. Until then, write on and may the muse be with you.

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I just got word this morning that my short story, Black Velveteen, is being reprinted in the December edition of Brave Blue Mice online magazine. What an exciting piece of news to start the day off on the right foot. I hope that even if you’ve already read Black Velveteen, or listened to the July podcasted version of the story here on the site, you’ll pop over and check it out. They do have a voting feature at the top of the stories, where you can rate the story, so I hope if you enjoyed it, you’ll rate it on my behalf.

I’m really excited that the story is being printed in another zine. All part of the self commitment operation. I’ve got a few other submissions out right now that I am waiting to hear news on, so keep your fingers crossed for me, and wish me luck.

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It’s Thanksgiving, and while I am not celebrating traditionally, seeing as Canadian Thanksgiving was in October, this year I have a lot to be thankful for. For the first time in many years, I know I am on the right path in my life. I’ve had a lot of my work accepted for publication this last year. I’ve been writing more than ever. I’ve gotten more of my writing out in the last few months than I did in all the years prior combined. I’ve made some fantastic new friends. My relationship with my daughter is stronger than ever. And, I’m sitting here today with the love of my life giggling about elf-selfs. Life is good.

Making commitments isn’t easy, and I think that sometimes the hardest commitments to keep are the ones we make to ourselves. That being said, despite the difficulty of the last year, it has also been one of the easiest years of my life. Everything has fallen into place just the way it should, and for that, I am thankful.

No matter what you’re doing today for Thanksgiving, I hope you stop and take a moment to reflect on all of your blessings, especially the ones you made happen in your own life because you made a commitment to yourself to live the best life possible. That’s all I have to say today. That, and thank you to the universe for bringing all of the things into my life that make me smile and feel loved each day.

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Morning everyone. I hope you’re all having a good weekend and that you’ve got lots of good things going your way. I’ve been a little on the quiet side lately. Being sick last week prompted some serious reflection on my part, and I have been more focused on getting things done and spending time with my loved ones than being social. That is not to say I haven’t missed my social self, but sometimes it is better for the soul to settle into itself and be quiet. So I’m hushed.

I am also preparing to head up to Toronto to spend two weeks with my fiance, James, and then he’s coming back home with me for an early holiday. I’m sure I will be in touch from there, but probably not as often, as I will be focusing heavily on my work and my writing while I’m there. I have a lot of work to do to get my novel finished, especially since I only just barely reached the halfway point and have sort of fallen out of the NaNo drive to sloppily slap together 50,000 words in 30 days or less. That’s not to say I am not still tracking my progress. I may just make that 50,000 word mark yet. The fat lady still has eight days before she starts to sing.

So, I am still committed. I still have the end of my novel in sight, and will finish it when the time is right. I am committed to that and to myself.

The thing is, in my recent quiet reflections, I started to ask myself why I write. Of course, the easy answer is always there. Since I was a kid, I’ve always known that I had to write. It’s what I was born to do. A conversation with someone I thought I respected immensely sparked a series of thoughts in my mind concerning my reasons for pushing myself to the point of confusion about my writing. Yes, I would love more than anything in the world to be an established writer earning my living through the words I create. I just can’t turn that into my sole purpose for writing. If I did, I know the muse would abandon me in a heartbeat, and while I might pump out a few things that sold, my soul would never be in my work. If there is no soul in your work, it falls flat, no matter how much you push it to succeed.

So… I must write because I love to tell stories to the world, not because I think there is some big payoff in the words. If a payoff occurs because I’m fortunate enough to be granted the opportunity to share my words with the world, fantastic. But focusing on the payoff cannot be what motivates me.

I also wrote a poem last night I wanted to share on my blog. I hope you enjoy it. I didn’t record it, as I continue to have bizarre computer issues this week that have limited me from some of my favorite computer activities. Hopefully, over the next few weeks, many of my computer issues will be effectively sorted, and I’ll be back in full swing and enthusiasm. I also hope you’ll bear with me until then.

Underneath the ashes
of a lifetime full of pain
lies an ember in the dark
that whispers my name
and speaks to me of hope
like some undying refrain
from a song so long-forgotten
it barely sounds the same
and yet I let it cull me
let it seep into my brain
like the dying leaves of autumn
soaking up the rain.

Culminating life from the rot
so it stirs beneath the earth
fertilizing seeds of love
inspiring great mirth
as the ember becomes fire
igniting my rebirth
so that like a phoenix
from the ashes with a whir
I rise to claim myself
and recognize my worth.

Happy writing to all my writing friends, and for those of you who don’t write, but have commitments to yourself nonetheless, my the force be with you.

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Hey guys, here is the last episode of Goblin Market for the month. After being downtrodden by evil sickness, it took everything I had to get this one out. I am heading up north for two weeks, and then celebrating an early holiday when I get back to the States, but after that, I hope to get episode 16 out by the middle of the month.

This episode kicks off with the announcement of the winners from the Broken Hearts Club contest, and features promos for Angelo Bell’s Broken Hearts Club, Nobilis Erotica and Jake Bible’s Dead Mech. Special thanks to Angelo and Michael Bekemeyer for helping judge the competition.

As per usual, the intro music has been provided by Kevin MacLeod and incompetech.com, and the outtro music is provided by John Anealio.

Also, sorry about the two players. When I had all the issues with my site, I wound up having to switch from podpress to a new plugin, and I am still getting familiar with it. So far… It’s scary, and I do not love it.

Hope you all have a great couple of weeks.

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This week has been all about catching up on the little things. As I mentioned in my last post, I fell a bit behind on my NaNoWriMo word count last weekend on account of both being under the weather and James being here for a short visit. Over the week I was down for the count, I managed to fall behind about 10,000 words, and the trouble with falling behind that far is that no matter how much you write, you’re still behind until you are completely caught up because the word count increases every day.

I did manage to pass the 20,000 word mark yesterday. In fact, I wrote 4,442 words yesterday, bringing my total NaNo word count to 21,095. That puts me 9,000 words in the hole at this point, but things are looking up. I am going to strive to write at least 5,000 words today, which will bring me within 5,000 words to catch up completely. It can be done. So that is what I am committed to work on today.

On top of that, despite my throat still being a little raw, I plan to record the whopping episode of Goblin Market I promised to put out before I take off for Toronto. I am hoping to have it edited and ready to release by Friday, so thanks to everyone who has been incredibly patient while I’ve been recovering. On that note, that will be the last episode of GM for quite awhile. Not only will I be in Toronto, but I’ve been having a lot of problems with my computer and it has been affecting the sound quality of my episodes. I’ve been really disappointed with how the last few things I’ve recorded turned out. Not to fret, though. I am getting a new computer sometime in the next month, and once I’ve got that, I will definitely get back to the recording. I really want to finish up the Goblin Market podcast because my focus has been consumed with the novel I’m working on. As much as I enjoy recording and sharing the episodes, at times it’s been a huge distraction from my writing. Anyone who podcasts their work can tell you it is a lot of hard work. One episode can take as much as 5 hours sometimes to record and edit. It takes even longer when your equipment is sub-par. Regardless, fear not if you are a fan of Goblin Market. The podcast will be completed, and soon. There are less than ten episodes that need to be recorded, which could take as long as three months, but once I’m back on track, I’ll do what I can to get them out more quickly so everyone can catch up on the story.

Now, it’s time for me to refill my favorite mug and get back to my novel. I’ve already put in about 400 words this morning. A minor dent in the 5,000 I plan to have written before the end of the day. I’ve also got work to do and recording to get out of the way. It’s gonna be a busy day.

I hope you’re staying on track with your own commitments, and even if you’ve fallen by the wayside, don’t worry. It only takes a little focus to get yourself back on the path.

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I started my morning off with a bit of a bang. A major plot twist that had been alluding me since the beginning of the novel snapped into place like a stubborn Lego block, and I just spent the last two hours rearranging the other blocks to put it into place. After writing about 2300 words this morning, I realized that though the strand is in place, I am going to have to do some heavy editing and rewriting when the first draft is done to strengthen the overall plot. I know that is not important right now. Right now, I need to focus on getting the story out and on paper/screen, so the idea itself can be completed. If you’re a writer, you know as well as I do that is easier said than done. The perfectionist in me wants it all to come out perfect on the first try, but I know that is not possible.

I don’t think I really understood that part of the creation process until I took art classes in college. Sometimes I would sit back after sketching something I thought was complete and admire it for a few minutes. Then the itch to add another line led to another line, and then some shading, more shading, more lines. Hours would go by, and then I’d come out of that strange trance the possesses you when you do such things and say, “Ah. That’s it.” Maybe I’d put it away for a couple of days, then take it out again and find more lines that needed strengthened, areas that needed light accentuation and shadow.

Of course, there comes a time when you have to put the pencil down and take what you’ve created at face value. For now, however, I know I’m just building the foundation and structure. The protective layers that will hold it altogether will put themselves in place when the time is right.

Being under the weather this last week has really sucked. On top of not feeling well, I’ve been exhausted, which makes it difficult to focus on the things that really matter to me. Then I remember that I have to matter too. If I don’t take care of the vessel, the soul will suffer. I’ve taken it easy, and will continue to do so until I start to feel somewhat human again. I am happy with the work I put into Running Down the Moon this morning, and hope I am able to record soon. I am itchy to get Goblin Market finished, as I know many listeners are anxious to hear how it all wraps up. Thanks to everyone who has been patient through this last few weeks of mayhem, with the site issues and the feed nonsense. Hopefully, we will get into the Goblin Market by Wednesday. This upcoming episode is a rather long one, and will take me awhile to record under the throat-aching circumstances.

In other news, Nobilis Reed was very understanding and offered me the opportunity to respectfully pull out of my short story contribution this month on account of my being sick. I feel bad, as there is nothing more disappointing than letting someone else down. I did promise him that I will finish up my project for him to use at a later date, so it’s all good.

Over the next week, I have a lot to do before I pack up and head to Toronto again for two weeks. I’ll still be writing, finishing up as much of my novel before the end of November as possible. I hope to get TWIA back on track and perhaps even nudge my writing partner/friend, Michele Bekemeyer into putting out a couple She’s Write About That posts. I know Michele has been under the weather lately too, so send her lots of healing thoughts and love.

Sometimes I get discouraged by my own expectations, despite realizing that there’s a difference between an expectation and a goal. It’s one thing to want something, and to do everything in your power to work toward it to make it happen. It’s an entirely different thing to expect everything in the universe to line up and do your bidding. I forget at times that maybe the universe has other plans for me and my goals, and that I need to bend if I don’t want to break. We can all be really hard on ourselves when things don’t go the way we want them to, but the important thing to remember, at least for me anyway, is that if I do everything I can to stay committed to myself, in the end that’s all that mattered. Not so much of an “I tried…” thing, but an “I stayed true to me through the entire journey,” thing, if that makes any sense whatsoever.

So, that said, I hope that whatever you are doing, you’re staying true to yourself all the way. Making and keeping to your self-commitments because in the end, you’re the only one you’re letting down by not doing so.

Total NaNoWriMo Word Count: 14400
Total Running Down the Moon Word Count: 27,729

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Well, needless to say, this last week has not been very productive. Since Sunday, I’ve managed to squeeze out about 1200 words on Running Down the Moon, and reached 3000 words on the short story I’ve been writing for Nobilis Erotica, when I realized that I wasn’t even halfway through the plot. Boo. That means it would end up being closer to novella length, than short story when it was done, and far too long. So, now I am a week from deadline on that project, and going back to the beginning to start over on an entirely new story. I do work well under pressure, so I have high hopes. Now I just need a plot. 0_o I have a couple of ideas, it’s just a matter of narrowing them down to one I can finish in 3000 or so words. Send juju.

I have also been a little under the weather, which is the main reason I haven’t done this week’s episode of Goblin Market yet. I have it all ready to record and edit, but my throat has been dry and sore from coughing, and reading it just hasn’t felt very appealing. I will get at least one more episode out before I head up north to Toronto on the 24th, and it’s a loooooooooong episode, so I hope it’ll be enough to tide ya’ll over for the turkey season. The story itself will be winding down, there are less than ten episodes left, and while I do enjoy podcasting the story and getting your feedback and encouragement, I will be glad when I have all of the episodes recorded and I can focus my energy on other projects.

I am happy with my progress on Running Down the Moon, despite being disappointed in not being where I had hoped to be by now, but on the other hand, that is what long writing purges are for. I know that if I set my mind to it, map out a few minor things to keep me on track and get to the writing, I can catch up in a day or two, and be back on track again. I will finish NaNoWriMo this year. Oh Yes. I will. I am determined, and while I know the first draft of such a hurried project isn’t going to be worth much of anything until it gets a good second pass, some workshopping and a third draft rewrite, it’ll feel good to complete a novel. It’s been a long time since I finished a novel-length work. I’m looking forward to it.

Since I am heading up to Toronto during Thanksgiving week, I will have a lot of time to get some major writing done while James is at work, and once I get my own work done for the day. That doesn’t mean I’m going to hold out until I get there, however. Oh no. I plan to get a ton of writing done in the next twelve days, and would love to end November with 60,000 words rather than 50,000. We shall see how it all pans out.

On that note, I have work to do so I can get to the writing. So much to write, some days, and just enough time to get it all done. The White Rabbit’s got nothing on me, though I could learn a thing or two from Willy Wonka, I suppose.

I hope everyone who is committed to themselves is staying on track with their commitments. I know it isn’t easy, especially when the holidays roll around, and the weather changes and we find ourselves feeling a little sick and tired. The good news is, colder weather (for some of us,) is a great excuse to stay indoors and get some writing done. I know what I’ll be doing this winter. How about you?

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Ahhh, this weekend has been jampacked with goodness, but I won’t lie. It’s been incredibly busy because of that. On Friday, I was on track with my NaNo wordcount, but after driving into Rochester to pick up James early Saturday morning, we wound up sleeping much of yesterday. When we did finally get around, the very thought of writing expended far more energy than I had in me. I know… Bad.

Today I cooked a huge holiday dinner for the family. We were up at 6 AM, and I was in the kitchen kicking culinary ass by 7:30. In between, I also worked. A girl’s gotta earn a living, and though I wanted to just blow off work completely, I couldn’t. I did manage to kick out about 1000 words tonight, which as me just under where I need to be to stay on track with NaNo, but I’m not complaining. I will catch up tomorrow.

At present, my total NaNo word count since last Sunday is 11,121 words. Overall word count on Running Down the Moon: 24218. I am aiming for about 75,000 words to wrap up the novel, so I’m just about 1/3 of the way there. I’m excited about that. I just started a little over five weeks ago, so that’s not bad. Yes, it could be better, but the important thing is that I’m staying committed even when the going gets tough. I had a scene tonight that I know for a fact is going to need some serious rewriting and polish when all is said and done, but I was proud of myself. I let it go and moved on, because that is what NaNo is all about. Getting the story out of your head and onto the paper/screen. I guess it should always be like that. Whether you’re writing for NaNo or not, because if you don’t get the story out as it’s flowing, it will get stuck, and you will give up.

I’m off to updated my wordmeter. I hope that whatever you are committed to, you’re holding up your end of the bargain with yourself. Keep up the good work. You deserve to treat yourself right!

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Last week while I was rooting around for promos to play on the next couple episodes of Goblin Market, I got a very interesting message from my Twitter pal, filmmakerAngelo Bell. Anyone who follows Mr. Bell on Twitter is privy to the knowledge that recently his film “Broken Hearts Club” was picked up by AMG-TV and began airing on October 26th. That right there is just awesome incarnate, so when Angelo messaged me about trading a promo spot on Goblin Market for a DVD of “Broken Hearts Club” that I could give away to my readers and listeners, the brain gears started to turn.

I asked him if there were any particular contest ideas he had in mind, and he said that since the “Broken Hearts Club” is all about relationships, we should somehow tie the contest itself into romantic relationship oriented stories.

We’ve all had them. Some of them good and some of them bad, and our experiences with those relationships molds and shapes us more than we could ever imagine. Think back to that first person you really thought you were in love with, and the first time you had your heart broken. That’s the stuff that lifelong memories are made of, whether positive or negative.

So, we’re gonna be giving this DVD away, and James Melzer was kind enough to sweeten the pot for you by donating a copy of his audiobook and a membership to the INVASION, but we’re not just gonna hand out these wonderful prizes. No, sir. We’re gonna make you work for it a little bit. How so? We want you to get to the writing. Now before you start to groan about how hard it is to juggle all your writing projects, especially in the wake of the NaNoWriMo season, relax. All I’m looking for is flash fiction. Your stories can be anywhere from 200 to 500 words. The length of this blog post. Three to four paragraphs. Enough space to cover some emotional groundwork.

The contest is going to run for two weeks. I will start accepting submissions today and close them on November 15th. I’m bringing two guest judges on board to help me read through, debate on and choose the three best stories of the lot. All stories will be numbered after reception and read blind by the judges to avoid any type of favoritism. I will announce the guest judges on the upcoming episode of Goblin Market during my intro, so be sure you tune in to find out who’s going to be judging the stories with me.

The absolute best story will win a copy of the “Broken Hearts Club” DVD, a copy of James Melzer’s TZC: ESCAPE audiobook and an insider’s membership to THE INVASION, and I will podcast their story for feature on a future installment of THIS WEEK IN AWESOME! Two runner’s up will also have their flash fiction stories recorded and podcasted for THIS WEEK IN AWESOME.

Email entries to: jennybeanses@gmail.com with BROKEN HEARTS in the subject header. No need to attach any files, just copy/paste your flash fiction story into the body of the email. That’s all you have to do. So get those entries in ASAP! Tell your friend about the contest too, because we’ve all had a broken heart at some point or another in our lives, so there is plenty of inspiration out there. Good luck everyone and check out the promo for the series for some inspiration if you will.

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It’s November 1, 2009, and the official kickoff of the 2009 NaNoWriMo season. Thirty days of novel writing madness. Participants have done the math, and know that in order to reach their 50,000 word goal by midnight on November 30th, they have write 1667 words or more every day. Seems like a drop in the bucket to some, while to others, that 1667 words is more than they can make time for in an entire week.

Nevertheless, people all over the world are putting their fingers to the keys today intent on kicking off their NaNo season with a vengeance. What does this have to do with commitment? Everything.

Completing a novel takes incredible commitment. Completing one in thirty days… not only does it take commitment. It takes incredible fortitude and focus. I am competing nontraditionally this year. I started Running Down the Moon back in the beginning of October and hoped to have at least 15,000 words done by October 31st. I came close. On top of travel, my other writing and my workload, I wrote 13096 words on the novel. I wanted to finish off the last 1904 words before bed last night, but was exhausted, and gave over to sleep instead.

I did kick off NaNo today with a gust of energy. So far today I’ve written 2038 words, and it’s only 3:30. I’m taking a break to watch a few episodes of Buffy, and plan to record the next episode of Goblin Market, but later this evening I am diving back into the writing again. I am incredibly proud of everything I’ve accomplished today. On top of work and family obligations, I managed to meet and pass the recommended goal. Piece of cake? We’ll see. Overall, I am confident in my will to persevere, and my commitment to myself.

If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year, may the muse be with you. Remember, resist the urge to edit and rewrite now, as it will only slow you down on your race to complete your novel. Just write. You can worry about polishing and tweaking later. If you’re committed to something else, I hope you’re staying on track. You deserve to do this for yourself.

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17% complete. That is the percentage of my 75,000 word goal I have met on my current novel project. The current word total is logged in on the meter tonight at 13,096 words, and before midnight tomorrow, I need to write another 1904 words to reach my planned 15,000 word goal before NaNoWriMo kicks off. I know I can do it. It’s just a matter of strategically juggling my time tomorrow between work, play and writing.

It’s funny when you know you’re on the right track with something. Synchronicity. That’s what a lot of the gurus and teachers call it. Everything just flows together harmoniously, and while I’ve been writing Running Down the Moon, that is what it’s felt like. And not just with the novel itself, but with everything else going on in my life. I am on the right path right now, and I know that because there is so very little in the way of internal struggle.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had a couple of down days this week. Emotional stress wearing away at me from time to time, but overall I’m proud of myself. In the past, when I felt like that, I’d crawl away from the things I knew I needed to do to move forward. Not anymore. Despite the effort it sometimes takes to press on in the face of adversity, I’ve been really proud of myself for holding to my commitments.

In the end, it is the effort that counts, not the result. I think sometimes we strive too hard for the end result, and forget to enjoy the weaving of the tapestry itself. All those little threads that twine together to make the whole are equally important to the whole itself, and if just one of them unravels, the entire tapestry becomes flawed… incomplete. So even the down days, the stresses, the overwhelming moments that make you wonder why you even bother in the first place, they are part of the tapestry that makes us who we are. If we try to pull them out of our lives, there are gaps. Maybe they really do build character and strengthen our presence of mind, and so even as they discourage and make us doubt, embracing them makes us stronger.

I’m babbling. It’s been a long day. I worked my butt off at the day gig, plotted backseat cuddle time next Saturday with my fiance, spent a ton of quality time with my favorite girl in the world, gutted and carved a bumpkin of a pumpkin, and met my personal writerly commitment for the day. I’m bushed, and ready to climb into bed with Wayne Simmons’ Drop Dead Gorgeous.

I hope you’ll drop by the site tomorrow for the return of THIS WEEK IN AWESOME. I’ve got some pretty awesome stuff to share with you guys this week. You will NOT be disappointed. Until then, I hope that whatever you’re committed to, it’s just for you, and that you aren’t letting life’s little curve balls knock you off course.

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My fourteen year old daughter has always been fascinated by stories. When she was little, we read constantly, and as she learned to read, she devoured, rather than just “read” books. By the time she was in second grade, she was reading at a seventh grade level, and I had always hoped that once she was a little older she might get into writing. She did. Poetry mostly, but two years ago after reading Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books, she started trying her hand at short fiction. I squeed. I really did.

While I would never push my daughter into becoming or pursuing something she had no interest in, I foster creativity with her in its many forms. Creativity is the spice of life, and a life without it would be incredibly bland. So, the fact that she’s writing not only tickles me, but it inspires me as well.

Mom’s website is like the internet refrigerator, and she said she’d be cool with it if I posted her story here for you all to read. I hope you enjoy it. I think it’s a pretty neat story, and she shows incredible promise as a writer.

WEREWOLVES SHOULD STAY IN LONDON
By The Squeenager

It was another dark and stormy night nearing the night of Halloween. It was another death in the small town of Tivoli. Every night before sundown all the windows were shut and the doors were bolted careful not to let a strange furry beast into their house. Two weeks before Halloween these routines are what the town is used to because on these two weeks the feasting of the BEAST starts, and those who are not careful wind up dead. It’s about midnight and Julia hears a long AWHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. That noise would put a chill on anyone’s neck.

“Well, time to hunt.” Last night was another unsuccessful night, she caught the beast but he escaped and had his meal. Julia hears a crinkling like a bag of chips, she pulls out her gun and… her friend Gee comes up.

“WOAH!!!…Julia…warn a guy next time….jeez”

“Well, Gee you know I was hunting tonight, sneaking up behind people with a gun, and you might get shot….” Gee starts to speak but is cut off by a long scream, it sounds close.

We get to the scene, but it is already too late. “Oh Gee…I’m so sorry.”

“NOO!!!..my sister is dead.. I thought you were the hunter Julia, your supposed to take care of things like this.”

“Gee…”

“No, just leave.” I don’t understand why I have to be the chosen hunter, I apparently fail at it. Julia walks away to her secret place, and hears another noise in the bushes.

“Gee?..I’m sorry” A large beast jumps out in the clearing and attacks Julia, she feels like she has a close relationship to this wolf. Lighting strikes the sky, Julia turns around to find Gee slaughtered by the animal. The werewolf takes a swipe for Julia .

“Excuse me!, I have had a bad day, don’t mess with me.” The wolf’s muzzle is dripping blood like thick syrup. There both standing there like a schoolyard quarrel , both waiting to make the first move. “Hey wolfie, you going to make the first move, or am I going to kill you with my pretty silver bullet here.” The wolf gurgles out a peculiar noise kind of sounds like rock music. He runs faster than the speed of light and attacks Julia. Julia flies in the air and gets stabbed in the chest by a wolf claw.

A light shines down on her from the sky and the wolf starts talking in a gruff voice. “Julia, you are the chosen one.”

“YEAH, I know..tell me something I don’t know,”

“No Julia, the chosen one to become a werewolf not to kill your family. Julia I’m your brother. Your destiny is to kill the humans not the wolves. You must be scared. I apologize.” “Bye bye wolfie..” Julia wakes up in her room, Oh it was just a dream!

Thank god. She hears a growling noise, a wolf is standing in her room. “Oh, hello dad.”

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Greetings everyone, and welcome back to the Goblin Market. I know it’s been two weeks since the last installment, and there have been some antsy fans anxiously anticipating the release of episode thirteen. I apologize for the delay, but as many of you know, I was up north in Toronto for nine days and did not have my equipment with me to record. I also had my website and server hacked into, which wiped out all of my media files. All of Goblin Market was wiped out, which means my iTunes and feed were empty. All of my poetry recordings and images, lost. Fortunately, I backed everything up on my flash sticks and hard drive, so it wasn’t lost for good, but having to reinstall and upload everything again will take weeks to do. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Which brings me to a major decision. I have uploaded the last five episodes of Goblin Market from eight through twelve. The first seven were incredibly poor quality, and I had been mentioning that I wanted to rerecord them, so that is what I’m going to do. Starting with episode seven, I will be rerecording and adding them back in one at a time. So they will be absent from the feed until they are rerecorded. That could be a bad move on my part for new fans looking to start the series, but the quality is so bad, that I’m considering this an opportunity to start over. I hope you understand, and that as you are recommending the story to your friends, you remember to note that it may be a few weeks before they can begin to DL the first episodes, so they might want to hold off.

Make sure you stay tuned at the end of this episode for promos for Steve Saylor’s The Caffeine Collection, a downloadable audio series which kicks off today. There is also a promo for Broken Sea Audio’s Zombie Cheerleader’s II, which sounds like it’s gonna be a real hoot! As per usual, the intro music has been provided by Kevin MacLeod and incompetech.com, and the outtro music is provided by John Anealio.

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Good morning and happy Tuesday everyone. As many of you know, my website recently underwent a huge hack, and all of my media content was corrupted so it couldn’t be fully restored. I spent much of yesterday restoring the last four episodes of Goblin Market from my hard drive, but have been considering leaving it there and going backwards from seven to one to re-record. I had promised I would re-record, since the quality of the original seven episodes was less than desirable due to crappy equipment, so I am looking at this as an opportunity to take on that massive mission. Of course, people interested in checking out Goblin Market from the beginning will be a little put off, but hopefully they will understand. I’m not quite sure how long it will take, as on top of putting out new episodes, work, prepping for NaNo, making wedding plans with James and working on reaching my 15,000 word goal on my novel before NaNo kicks off, that doesn’t leave me with much in the way of time. I will do my best, however, to get it all recorded, edited and back in place, so while I love a great recommendation, perhaps anyone who wants to spread the word about Goblin Market might consider holding off for a couple of weeks until the past episodes are back in action.

I have been working on Running Down the Moon. Some weird conspiracy occurred between here and Toronto, and I lost about 800ish words in transition. It didn’t matter. After I read over what I had, I realized it was probably for the better, and hunkered down to the rewriting. I am currently at 9337 words, as you can see from my word count meter, and as I mentioned above, would like to reach 15,000 words before midnight on Halloween. I know I can do it. I’ve got this week’s episode of Goblin Market recorded and edited, now I just need to hook up my intro, outtro and promos, and it’ll be good to go. So that gives me plenty of time to get hose 5700 words out.

The story itself is progressing nicely. I’ve had to resist that editorial urge to smooth and polish out every little sentence from previous writing sessions before I get started writing each time. It’s hard to remind yourself that a first draft is simply that: a first draft. There will be time to strengthen, fix and polish when the story itself is completely purged from the soul. Easier said than done, however, but I’m committed to getting the job done.

In other commitment news, while I was away, I had two stories rejected. No harm, no foul, but now I’m committed to finding new venues to shop them out to. The one story is a slightly hard sell, as it contains a sexually violent scene, and from what I’ve gathered, editors don’t like it when evil wins. Funny, because in this sick and twisted world we live, evil wins all the time, so I thought it was somewhat realistic. I am not giving up on the story, however. I will keep shopping it out as it is, because I believe in the story and have learned time and again that one editor’s trash is another editor’s treasure. So now I just need to do some market research and get it back out there.

After coming home from nine days away, it hasn’t been easy getting back into my routines. I think that’s mostly because like nature abhors a vacuum, as a Gemini, I tend to abhor routine. I like it when things are shaken up, when my system is jarred and I’m forced to reevaluate and even deconstruct it altogether. In the upcoming weeks, there are holidays to be reckoned with. James is coming for a short visit first week of November. NaNo will consume me. The Rerecording process will takeover, and the continual recording of Goblin Market will take a lot of time as well. While I’d love to petition Father Time for more hours in the day, since Friday, I’ve learned that sometimes 24 hours is far more than necessary, and I can always make time to do what needs to be done.

So, all that being said, I hope that whatever you are committed to, you are following through. Many of us fear commitment because we worry that we won’t follow through, and when you don’t follow through it let’s the people who count on you, but most especially yourself, down. Never be afraid to commit to yourself out of worry that you’ll let others down. It’s an excuse and a cop out to remain stagnant. Since this is the only life we know of that we as individuals get to experience, risk everything… commit!

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If you tune into my website on a regular basis, many of you will have noticed that over the last week, it’s been up, it’s been down, and now as you browse through, you’ll see that everything I had hosted here on the site, audio files, photos and banners, has all been lost. All of my poetry, every last episode of Goblin Market… I am so frustrated I could vomit. My amazing webmistress did everything she could to restore the files, but they are lost for good. And why? Because some people just aren’t happy unless they are screwing with others and making things difficult for them.

Fortunately, I still have most of the audio I recorded, all of Goblin Market and the photos and banners are all saved on my hard drive, so over the next couple of weeks I will be rebuilding and fixing everything that was lost. First, I have to reinstall podpress and get things sorted, so please bear with me while I rebuild.

I am disappointed. I won’t lie. I worked really hard to build the content on my site, and the fact that someone I don’t even know would do something like this is disheartening. Most of the time, I give humanity the benefit of the doubt. I look for the good in every person I meet, as well as in every situation I encounter. I do all I can to see the bright side, and of course, I said to James this afternoon that I guess this means I have to quit flipping around and finally re-record the first episodes of Goblin Market. I could put the old ones back up, but really, should I if I can make them better?

So, I apologize for the lack of content this week, and the fact that all of my episodes of GM are now gone, and hope you’ll all stay tuned as I put the pieces back together. In the meantime, let’s all lift a shiny middle finger to the hackers out there. You can’t keep me down, bitches. In fact, you’ve inspired me to make things better.

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I know it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, and I certainly haven’t been keeping up with my commitment reports. I guess that’s because for the last week, I haven’t been as committed as I should be. I’ve spent most of my writing time these last seven days on my freelance job, because despite the fact that I was in Toronto with James for the week, I still needed to make sure I had income for when I got back home. Oh, if only we could just vacation all the live long day, but alas, this was not really a vacation.

I did manage to get some writing done, so that is why I’m blogging. I agreed back in September to do a short story for Nobilis Erotica, and at the time thought, “Sure, I can do that…” Well, as I put it off and put it off, I could tell that my “I can do that…” was a lot harder than I imagined. In fact, despite having a perfectly good plot to go off of, it took me 6 weeks to actually start the darn story. The good news is, I am about 2000 words in, and hope to have it wrapped up in 6000 words. WISH ME LUCK! Seriously, I need it. This first 2000 words, despite flowing from my fingertips relatively quick, barely scratched the surface of my plot, so I have a lot of work to do.

I am still working on my novel. I am about 7300 words in, just about 10 % of the way to my 75,000 word goal. I’m planning to get a little writing done now, in fact, and will updated my word count widget with my progress before the end of the day.

It’s hard to keep my commitment to myself, especially right now with as much traveling back and forth as James and I have been doing. When we are together, I want to spend my time with him because every precious moment counts so much right now. Again, however, that is no excuse. We both have goals and plans that can’t be put on hold, no matter how much we’d rather be cuddling up on the bed watching movies until the end of time. That’s the thing though. Being with him makes me want to work harder than I’ve ever worked before in every aspect of my career. He’s a great motivator, and he’s incredibly driven when he sets his mind to something, so it acts as an inspiration. I will say that I am not looking forward to going back to the States without him, but I am anxious to get the next episode of Goblin Market out, and to get my novel up to at least 10,000 words before NaNoWriMo kicks off. I plan to have the first draft of Running Down the Moon complete by the end of the November, so lock and load.

We all have our motivating factors, which is an awesome thing. So I hope that whatever you are doing, you are appreciating your muse and thanking your motivator. I also hope that you are keeping your commitments to yourself, because letting yourself down is the worst possible thing you can do. Anyway, I know I say this a lot, but it’s true. I believe in you, and I know you can do anything you commit yourself to doing. Beanses-OUT!

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Okay, okay. Maybe you do need an editor. I know that even doing editing for others, I still need an editor myself. We all need an extra set of eyes from time to time to look over our work, pick out the mistakes and help us improve the overall content., but long before you hit up an editor, self-editing is an essential part of the creative process. Editing your own work will not only help you analyze your strengths and weaknesses as a writer, but you can pinpoint spelling and word mistakes, grammar errors, plot and character weaknesses and points in your story that might need expansion or even reduction. There are a number of self-editing techniques you can put into practice, like proofreading, reading aloud and even reading backwards.

Workshopping is one of my favorite self-editing techniques because a second pair of eyes definitely helps you find things you don’t even think to look for. Blinded to your own errors, it somtimes pays to have someone else help you see where you might need a little work. Not to mention the fact that you will read things as you wrote them originally and will be more likely to skip blindly over simple errors. Someone else unfamiliar with the work will be able to easily pick things out.

Another great technique for catching those hard to spot errors is reading the text backwards. Printing out your work and going backwards line by line through the sentences will mix up the word order just enough so that you can spot spelling mistakes and double words. This seems like a weird technique, but trust me, it works. It also works much better if you print the work out. Trying to read on the computer screen is hard enough as it is, but to read backwards is even harder on the eyes.

And speaking of printing and computer screens doing a number on your eyes, I know it seems a small feat, but you can pick up a lot of errors if you print your work off and set it aside. Give yourself three days to a week before you proofread, so you put some distance between yourself and your story. Putting distance will allow you to catch the aforementioned errors that you may have just passed over because the story and the writing was still fresh in your mind. For longer pieces of work, you may need to wait even longer. Find a comfortable medium for yourself.

One of my favorite self-editing techniques came along long before I started podcasting my work. Reading out loud helps you test the power of your words, the structure and flow, and you can guarantee that you’ll find more than you bargained for in the way of errors. You can test out the conversational impact between characters and really get a feel for the way others will read into your words. You can record yourself reading and listen to the result after the fact for little details that need attention.

As I said above, everyone needs an editor. Even editors miss things, so the more polished your work is before you send it out, the less you need to worry about the editor missing. A well polished story will also impress the editor you work with, and make you a client they look forward to editing for. So the next time you think your first draft is okay, because we all do it, think again. Take the time to edit your work before you share it with the world. Employ one or more methods for the best results in presenting the cleanest, tightest writing. Let’s face it, as writers we have a hell of a job on our hands when it comes to drawing in our readers, and the last thing you need is minor editorial distractions to deter from the quality of your story.

Don’t forget to hop hop hop over to see what Michele Bekemeyer has to say about self-editing. We all have our methods, and whatever MichBek has to offer in the way of advice, you can guarantee that She’s Write About That!

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This last week has been incredibly busy, between work, planning, packing and family affairs, and I have discovered a great deal about myself in the process. 1. There are two types of pressure. 2. I only work well under one type of pressure. Deadline pressure. The other type of pressure makes it impossible to focus, and while I did finally pass the 6000 word mark on Running Down the Moon, I am sad to say that I have only written about 300 words since Saturday. However, I am committed to passing the 7500 word mark before I head out to Toronto tomorrow, so that said, this blog will be short because I need to get to the writing, finish up laundry, finish packing and spend quality time with the Squeenager before I head out.

The plot is progressing. I’m balancing it currently between the protagonist and the antagonist chapter by chapter, building up some suspense and brutally murdering some people along the way. As exciting (and twisted) as it all is, I have to say this is probably some of the most violent stuff I’ve ever written. I’m proud of it. I’ll be taking my w-i-p with me up north, and working on it when I can. James and I are both working the entire week, so I should have a lot of time after work, while waiting for him to get home to get some writing done.

On Twitter the other day, I sent out a call for victims, and will be hacking and slashing my way through a few friends in upcoming chapters. My first victim will be Jessica, aka xutraa on Twitter. Poor Jess, her waitress job at a Coweta diner just got a lot worse. Girl’s gonna find herself in some serious trouble in the parking lot after work.

In other news, I finally bucked up and finished reading Robert McCammon’s Swan Song. I know the book is like twenty years old, but man was it good. It didn’t feel the least bit dated, the characters were incredibly real, identifiable and as I turned over the last page last night in bed, I felt sad to be saying goodbye to them. I hoped that despite all their struggles to return the world to its natural state after the devastation of nuclear war and a horrific battle between good and evil, that human nature truly had evolved during the process.

I love a good novel that makes me think, and Swan Song definitely did that. For as long as mankind has recorded his thoughts and the events of the world in history tomes, the great balance between good and evil has been a factor. I found myself reflecting on the state of the world and the present struggles we all face. Between the economy, war in the Middle East, religious rights and wrongs, and the constant battle for someone to prove their righteousness, the world seems awful bleak most days. I know as children, if we’re lucky, our parents’ shield us from these hardships to the best of their ability, preserving our innocence as long as they can, but as I’ve gotten older, and the world’s become rife with darkness, it sometimes feels impossible to shield my own child from the pain of the world. Maybe that’s a good thing, because in her own right she will be harder, stronger and more able bodied in the wake of what’s to come, but on the other hand I find myself wondering if making our children harder is such a good thing. There are a lot of kids out there who are really good people, respectful, mindful and with a strong sense of pride in the future, but then it seems there are also a lot more kids lacking in the basic respect for their fellow human beings, and that scares me. I find myself wondering if it was always like that, and my parents just did a good job of shielding me from it, or if the nature of the times has hardened people in such a way that they’re becoming incapable of feeling each other on an emotional level.

I posted something this morning on twitter, something a dismal old cuss of a friend used to say all the time: “I am never disappointed because I have no expectations.” After posting, I asked other people what they thought about this sentiment, if they agreed, or if they thought it was bunk. It gave me hope to hear everyone who responded note that expectation was somewhat essential to hope, and without hope in a dark world, what is there worth going on for?

My hope for the day is that people never stop setting goals and reaching for them. That they never stop expecting things to get better, because the more of us who focus on living our lives to our fullest potential, the better example we set for the people who look up to us. Our kids, our friends, our neighbors and maybe even our enemies.

I also hope that you’re striving toward achievement today, and staying committed to whatever goals you’ve set for yourself. Happy Monday, everyone. I hope you have an inspiring week.

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As a huge advocate for all things zombie-related, of course I got a shiver of delight when @michbek and I chose brainstorming for this week’s “She’s Write About That.” Even though brainstorming really has nothing to do with zombies, and would probably be a good way to kill them if you could configure the details, it is a great way to add detail, structure, history and backstory to your work. Sometimes it’s a fantastic jumpstarter for creative endeavors, whether writing related or not, and while you may not be a fan of typical brainstorming techniques, I bet you do it all the time, and don’t even know it.

One of my favorite brainstorming methods is the old bounce-an-idea technique. Sometimes in basic conversation about the weather or some odd tidbit of news, lightning strikes in the brain, and you find yourself recovering with the vibration and buzz of an exciting new idea. “Oh my giddy aunt,” you back out of the conversation for a minute. “That scenario would make a great story.” As the idea starts to generate momentum inside your brain, you tell your conversation partner about it to see what they think. If this friend is a writer, chances are you’ll get some great feedback on how to fill it in and get it started, and an outside view into bits and pieces you might not have considered originally. Even if your friend is not a writer, you can get a great perspective from outside the writer’s frame of mind. Either way, bouncing ideas off of interested friends adds fuel to idea sparks, turning them into raging infernos you can’t wait to get started on. Some of my most favorite stories have resulted after sitting down and hashing out the idea with a good friend, so there is definitely merit in doing so.

Recently, while exchanging emails with an incredibly helpful mentor who wanted to know more about what I was asking for assistance with, I added further explanation, which lead to more explanation. The funny thing is, I had nothing more than a basic idea about the one character’s history, but as the emails increased in number, and I found myself digging deeper to explain things, I created the full backstory for one of my characters and didn’t even realize I was doing it. Then it hit me. w00t! That part of my process was done. So I sat down, and wrote the history thanks to that great conversation, which means less work for me to do later. Sure, I’ll still need to do more research to make sure the holes are all filled in, but my direction is much clearer now than it was originally.

While I was in college, I took this weird writing class with one of my favorite professors: Dr. Michael McCully. In truth, I don’t even remember what the title of the course was, but he really emphasized in the early weeks of the course on freewriting. Each day for a week, he had us sit down and freewrite for ten-fifteen minute increments, and then at the end of the week asked us to leaf through the pages to find common elements. Our final project for that time period was to find one theme among the writing and create a unique essay from it. At the time, I was hell bent on reality TV being the bane of universal existence, and every one of my freewrites was this cloud of reality tv ranting. While combing through them, I pieced together a pretty interesting piece that earned me an A. Imagine what I could have come up with he’d asked me to write fiction? Oh, believe me, I came up with some pretty interesting fictional scenarios that would have had him raising his eyebrow, but the point is, just freewriting itself was a huge source of inspiration.

Sometimes sparking an idea to life through freewriting can lead you to some really amazing places, because the whole point of of freewriting is to just write whatever comes to your head. “I think this class is really boring. God, I wish I was home watching TV. Tonight is Destination Truth. I love that show. Josh Gates is my hero. I swear that man could do anything. Last week they went to Abudabe and researched strange alien cats that occasionally arrive in post-marked box from the house of some guy named John. Wonder if he has a cat… Or maybe a dog who doesn’t like cats. Wouldn’t it be funny if cats could send mail? I bet my cat would send me dead mice in the mail. She’s weird like that. Last week, she went outside and ran around in circles for two hours. I wonder what goes on inside cat brains…” You get the point. And while that little escapade was really ridiculous, but afterwards, while coming through it, I could the beginnings of an interesting story about an underground race of cats who use the post office to traffic strange, cat wares. Ridiculous, but it’s an idea.

The thing is, when many of us sit down and start writing, it’s because of an idea that sparked inside the mind. Some people meticulously plan and plot for weeks, sometimes months before they can even start the actual writing process, and others dive “write” in and get to the writing. It doesn’t matter which method you employ, but brainstorming for ideas strengthens your story. It can help you create plot points, characters, character motivations, setting, period details, climactic scenes and so much more.

No matter how you brainstorm, whether you use a microcassette recorder on long car trips, a pad and pen, post-it notes, index cards, a good friend or any of the other dozens of brainstorming techniques recommended by a vareity of writers, it will strengthen your writing. Why does brainstorming work? Because it is a right-brain activity. When you’re writing, you use your left brain, so you don’t think on the same level. Giving your right brain some exercise through brainstorming will make your work even that much more creative AND believable, because you’re putting the time and effort into strengthening your ideas.

Personally, I’m a talker. I love to hash out ideas with friends and bounce them off of other writers for outside perspective. I’m not sure how Michele Bekemeyer does things, but you should check out her blog this week about brainstorming. Whatever she has to say, you can bet the farm that She’s Write About That!

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I’m fast approaching the 5000 word mark in my novel, and just finished Chapter Two last night before bed. I’ve also been doing a lot of researching and bouncing some ideas off of a couple mentors, who have been incredibly helpful and receptive to my backstory and idea. It’s always an inspiration to share your ideas with others, and get positive feedback. While I know you can’t rely on others for your inspiration, it does certainly help to have a good support system in place.

Lately, James and I have really been pimping our articles over at Real TV Addict, asking readers to not only check the articles out, but leave their thoughts and comments. I know sometimes leaving a comment is a pain in the ass, but i have to say, finding out what readers think of what we’re doing is a huge motivator, and it also lets the powers that be know that people are digging our content. The more people who enjoy the articles, the more likely we will be to get continued work for the company, expanding our resources and resumes for the future. Freelance work is how I earn my living. It is both rewarding, and difficult, as optioning work is based on experience, readership and the name you make for yourself. Another great thing about leaving comments is that it inspires conversation among like-minded viewers and readers.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we’re covering some awesome Halloween topics about subjects like the Top Scariest TV Shows of All Time and a look at the Top TV Vampires. We’ll also be covering things like The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror, The Great Pumpkin, The Witches of TV and about half a dozen more great topics. So stay tuned to Real TV Addict for the best Halloween TV coverage on the net.

I just finished up a couple articles for Real TV Addict, and now I’m taking some time for me. Gonna see if I can get Chapter Three in Running Down the Moon in full swing. Go, go, writer power!

Hope you’re staying committed to yourself, your goals and your dreams. I believe in you, and know that as long as you commit to yourself, you can do anything.

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Greetings everyone, welcome back to the Goblin Market. As I prepare this episode, Autumn is upon me in all her fiery splendor. The wind is howling outside, spiraling the leaves like a furious mother who’s lost her cool. It is a perfect day for the Goblin Market, and so I hope you’ll join me as we pass through the gates to see what Kothar and his minions have planned this week.

As you’ll hear in my intro, I am going up to Toronto to spend the week with James on Tuesday and won’t be back until Thursday the 22nd. I am going to try very hard this weekend to get episode thirteen recorded and edited so I can drop that for you either Wednesday evening from afar, or before I leave. No promises. I have to work this weekend and have a lot of family stuff going on right now, so I may not be able to do it. There will probably be no episode at all on the 21st. I hope you forgive me, and remember as you step away from the Goblin Market, that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and inspires the goblins to do more wicked for future episodes.

I also wanted to thank everyone again for their heartfelt warm wishes and congratulations upon the announcement of James and my engagement. Everyone has been so supportive and it’s really made me smile to know that love still has the power to draw communities together.

Be sure to check out the promos in this week’s episode. I’ve got Paul Elard Cooley’s Tattoo and Zack Daggy’s Dark World’s Project 31. As per usual, the intro music has been provided by Kevin MacLeod and incompetech.com, and the outtro music is provided by John Anealio.

P.S. The second player is not working, but the top player works just great. This episode is back in the feed and working most excellently. *tents fingers and laughs like a maniac*

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This last few days have been something of an annoying nuisance, and really that is all I’m going to say about that. The fact of the matter is that just when I decided to buckle down and get to the writing, it seemed like every nonsensical catastrophe under the sun was right there to try and drag me down.

Fortunately, my commitment has not faltered, and last night I finished Chapter One in my new novel. I wrote the introduction on Friday and Saturday, and last night I honestly had no idea where I wanted to start. Thanks to some unexpected drama, my mood was not up to par last night, and as I thought about sitting down to write the words I committed myself to, all I could come up with in my mind was blah.

I didn’t want to write. I just wanted to crawl into bed with my book and read until I passed out. But… I didn’t do that. No, I popped in the Doors, and as Riders on the Storm came raining into my headphones, inspiration struck like lightning. The character spoke to me, and I just started writing. It only took me about forty-five minutes to finish the short chapter, but I was more pleased than I have been with my own writing in a long time. In fact, since I started working on this novel and the prequel short story, I’ve been very happy with my writing.

So I guess that’s the lesson in practicing what I preach. I know in my last report, I noted that sometimes when the going gets tough–it seems like the perfect time to stop writing, but we can’t. That is what defeats us, and I am not taking defeat. Not now, not ever again.

In other news, I signed up for NaNoWriMo again this year. Since I am already working on my novel, I figured that I can clock the wordcount after the competition starts and try to finish the first draft in the month of November. If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, feel free to add me to your buddy list and keep me updated about your progress. I’ve done NaNo for three years now, but only completed it my first year. This year, things are more different than I could have ever imagined. So, I’m feeling very optimistic.

Hope you’re all working hard on whatever it is in your life that needs done. I’m rooting for you!

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While sitting in class, Ken leaned forward to poke Anne in the back with his pencil, “What are we writing again?”

Anne’s annoyance flared over her shoulder in a hot breath, “Dialogue, you idiot!”

Ken looked down at the paper in front of him. Dialogue. What the hell was dialogue? God, he hated English class. It was such a bore. He poked Anne’s shoulder again, “What’s dialogue?”

“Ken, if you poke me again with that thing, and I’ll snap it in half.”

“Dude,” Daryl leaned over and nudged Ken in the side, “that’s what she said.”

Okay, enough with the dirty jokes, but with the title of this week’s She’s Write About That, I honestly couldn’t resist. Dialogue, for many people, is the bane of their writerly existence. Either the formatting throws them off, or it feels impossible to create believable exchanges between characters, but the fact is, dialogue is one of the most important parts of your story. It creates atmosphere, draws away from the “telling” aspect of characterization and plot, develops character and sets the overall tone for your story.

There are a number of basic, structural rules that seem to allude new writers. I’m not going to spend much time on them here. You can learn a lot about how to structure your dialogue by reading and making note of how the dialogue appears within the text, how it is tagged, when to use quotation marks and how every new speaker gets a new paragraph. These things are very important in establishing a readable story, so if you’re not sure how to set up dialogue, you may want to spend some time reading, and studying grammar tomes.

As I mentioned above, dialogue is a great way to develop character. If everyone in your story spoke in the same tone all the time, everyone would sound like a robot. It’d be impossible to tell one character from another. Think back to when you were just learning to read. Many of us grew up on the Dick and Jane books, even though they were horribly outdated by the time.

See Dick run.

“Run, Dick. Run.”

Every bit of tagless dialogue in those early stories was incredibly simple, and obviously used to make a point at the time, but looking back, much of the time you couldn’t tell one character from the next. Every slab of dialogue was as meaningless and droll as the next, and all I ever really learned about Dick and Jane was that they had a dog named Spot, and sometimes they liked to run.

When you’re writing scenes in your stories that contain dialogue, that dialogue should carry the moment. It should be quick, witty and the central focus in the scene, but not because it’s poorly executed. It is a great place to drop plot hints, establish character traits and personality and carry the story by deviating from the narrative.

One of the best tips I ever got from a mentor was people watching to learn about dialogue. Dialogue sequences should be quick, in most cases, just like normal conversations. Sitting in a coffee shop and listening carefully to the conversations that go on around can give you a realistic idea of the natural flow and exchange of words between people.

Realistic dialogue is rarely rigid, and much of the time people hardly speak in complete sentences. People interrupt each other, laugh and groan, sigh and pause, and all of these things are essential when crafting your dialogue to make it believable. After all, despite the fact you’re writing fiction, it needs to be convincing in order for people to follow along as you’re telling the story.

One of the pitfalls with trying to recreate natural dialogue is adhering to closely to social structures. If you sat in a diner and recorded a conversation for later study, one of the things you would notice is how difficult it is to follow without the action between speech to break up the monotony.

“He said he would be there.”

“And he didn’t show?” Marla looked down into the coffee mug in front of her, watching the cream swirl.

“He didn’t show,” she said. “I think he’s cheating on me.”

Marla still didn’t lift her gaze, “Really? Cheating on you?”

“If I could just catch him in a lie…” her voice trailed off into silent reverie. “Maybe I should follow him next time.”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

Stacy didn’t hear the hint of alarm in Marla’s tone, she was too caught up in vengeance, and maybe that was a good thing. It would give her time to warn Derek before it was too late.

So obviously, Marla and Derek are up to something, and if you’re blinded by emotion and on the brunt end of that something, chances are you won’t see it, but the reader can. Without the extra action added into the scene, it would be impossible to tell what was really going on, and your plot would take even longer to unravel.

You also don’t want to give away too much information all at once. If you spill out the entire conversation in two sentences, you don’t have time to develop plot, action and personality.

And speaking of personality, another important thing to consider is how your dialogue shapes your characters. If everyone speaks in the same, dull tone, it will be hard to tell one character from the next. Adding quirks to the action and tags of your dialogue will help you make stronger, more identifiable characters. One thing you want to avoid is resorting to over-exaggerated dialogue with too much slang, profanity and regional dialect, unless that is your character’s natural voice. Even still, over-exaggeration, unless your writing a comedy will make it harder to take your characters seriously. Referencing region and interjecting elements that demonstrate the region will strengthen both the plot and character. For example, if one of your characters is a hard-nosed cop from Brooklyn or a delicate southern belle, you’ll want to avoid relying too heavily on conversational stereotypes to enhance the character. Through characterization and action, you can draw these elements out more effectively, than by relying on dialect.

Avidly study other writers and how they employ dialogue in their stories. Some writers seem to do it effortlessly, while others may struggle with it, but you can learn a lot from your fellow writers. Some great dialogue masters that I’ve always loved include Charles Bukowski, Anne Rice, Jonathan Carroll and Neil Gaiman. No matter your personal opinion about these writers, or their work, there is something about the way they craft that dialogue that draws me into their stories and makes me believe in their imaginary worlds.

I could go on for days talking about dialogue, but instead, I’m gonna direct you now to see what my partner in words, Michele Bekemeyer, has to say about the subject. Whatever it is, you can bet the farm that She’s Write About That!

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I really enjoy writing these blogs a lot more than I thought I would. Making the commitment out loud seems to strengthen my resolve to achieve the things I set out to do. Not only because I make the commitment to myself, but I feel like when I say it out loud here on my blog, I make the commitment to you, my readers. There is nothing more I hate than letting people who depend on me down, and if I’ve said anything over the last few months to inspire anyone to write, work, walk, whatever, I want to make sure I don’t let you down by acting like a slacker. Not that my ego is that immense that I expect to inspire, but sometimes sharing goals and progress really does inspire the people around you. I know that watching someone climb to the top of something they want is a major source of joy, so, that said, I aim not to disappoint. I also don’t want to be one of those people who blogs endlessly with all this advice on how you should do this and do that, but never put those things into practice myself.

So, first on the commitment report agenda for today: my short story. It has been finished, edited titled and sent on to the editor of an upcoming werewolf anthology. “Between Moons,” is a freestanding prequel story to the novel I will be talking about in a few sentences. After running it through the ringer, thanks to the excellent editorial help of my friend Michele (you rock more than you’ll ever know!) and James (thanks baby!), I am incredibly proud of this story, and think it is perhaps one of the best short stories I’ve ever written. So, wish me luck!

Now, onto the novel. While we were at Horror Realm, and I started to kick my own horror novel writing ass, I decided I wanted to write about werewolves. I’ve always been intrigued by the nature of the beast, so I sat down and started brainstorming for ideas, and came up with one that I am really excited to work on. While I was writing the prequel short story, I started the research process as well and developed a little bit of back story for my werewolves and put together history for my main character. Along with online research and a scheduled trip to the library, I’ve been reading Jonathan Maberry’s They Bite. I cannot stress enough what an excellent resource this is for monster fans and writers alike. I set up a word count widget to track my progress in my sidebar. Last night, I passed the 1400 word mark, and have a long way to go, but again, I’m really excited about this!

I hope that you’re all working really hard to meet whatever commitment is on your agenda. I know it’s not easy sometimes. We all have down days, when the last thing on our mind is doing what we know needs to be done, but those are the days you need to stick to your commitment the most. It’s too easy to turn away from the things that matter on a down day. So stay focused, and commit, commit, commit. You deserve it!

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Since I started podcasting Goblin Market, I have seriously slacked off in my poetry writing. Boo, but not all has been lost. I still pen the occasional verse and rhyme, but I’ve been keeping them to myself to spare you all from vomiting. For the last two months, I’ve been wanting to dive back into Sestina writing.

For those of you who don’t know what a Sestina is, it is a seven verse poem written in iambic pentameter and hinged on six words that must appear in specific sequence at the end and beginning of the lines. For me, Sestinas have always been a major challenge, but I love writing them. In fact, my very first paid publication was a Sestina, which appeared in a fall edition of Strange Horizons. I will post that Sestina at the end of this blog so you can get an idea of what one looks like, but please remember it is nearly four years old.

So the contest? I want you to email me six words you’d like to see me turn into a Sestina. What do you win? Aside from my eternal gratitude and your name in lights on an upcoming edition of THIS WEEK IN AWESOME, you also get an audio print reading and print version of the poem to do with what you like. You can post it on your website, line your cat litter box without, give it your mom for her birthday, whatever.

How do you enter? Email me at jennybeanses@gmail.com. In the subject include the words: SESTINA CONTEST. Type me up a quick note in the body of the email and include the SIX words you’d like to see me write into a Sestina. That’s it. That’s all you have to do. I will assign each email a number and do a random drawing to pick out not one, not two, but three winners. Tell your friends, pass the word on, and get those entries in ASAP. I will be accepting contest submissions until October 12th, and the first winner will have their Sestina posted by October 30th, and the others will follow within one to two weeks after. Please feel free to email me any questions you might have about the contest. I’m happy to answer them.

Blood Moon Sestina
by Jennifer Hudock

You open up your arms, embrace the dark
night absorbed by the freshly fallen snow.
Face upturned, as if waiting for a kiss,
you think he’s your lover-it’s just the moon.
The neon sign stains the streets like his blood
You can’t wash the memory from your hands.

And now the snow is melting into blood.
Old dying moon no one will ever kiss . . .
it’s on your hands now. Everything’s gone dark.

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Greetings everyone, and welcome back to the Goblin Market. Thank you all for being so patient while I pieced this episode together after Horror Realm. Unfortunately, we came home with some sickness, so all of my energy these last few days went into getting this episode recorded and edited for you guys. To make matters more ridiculous, I’ve been having so many problems with Audacity lately, and I’m afraid to say that the quality of this episode is not up to par. I’m considering looking into another program, but in the meantime, I hope you’ll bear with me.

As always, I want to thank you guys for continually tuning in to my podcast. It makes me so happy when I get your feedback, so thank you all for that! You rock my world each and every week! Also, a big fat thank you that words alone cannot convey to my friend and blog-partner, Michele Bekemeyer for the generous donation she made this week to the Goblin Market. I was stunned speechless, which rarely happens. For those of you interested in making a donation, please note that 10% of all received donations go to the Crohns and Colitis Foundation of America.

Stay tuned at the end of this week’s episode for promos for Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing and J. Daniel Sawyer’s Down From 10. As per usual, the intro music has been provided by Kevin MacLeod and incompetech.com, and the outtro music is provided by John Anealio.

Feel free to drop me questions or comments about this episode or Goblin Market in the comments form for this page, or you can email me directly at jennybeanses@gmail.com. Also, if you are subscribed to Goblin Market through iTunes, please take a moment to leave a comment feedback. Comments and positive feedback help draw more attention to a podcast, and I always love picking up new listeners!

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I woke up this morning feeling incredibly inspired after last night’s success. What? You haven’t heard? The mock-article I wrote for Library of the Living Dead Press’s “Moron’s Guide to the Inevitable Zombocalypse” was accepted for publication in the upcoming anthology. I got the news last night around 8:30, and much dancing and squeeing ensued. Commitment really pays off.

So does having people who support you. Having a strong support system really makes all the difference, because no matter how strong you are, you can’t do the things in your life that you want to do alone. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. You COULD do them alone, but why would you really want to?

The thing is, I just saw the call for submissions on that anthology on Friday night. I had written a humorous how-to article on surviving the Zombie Apocalypse when I was still writing for that hideous company I refuse to name, so I knew I could do it. I sat down and wrote the first draft in one night and sent it off to my friend and She’s Write About That blog partner, Michele, who is not afraid to tell it like it is while reading my work, and to James to get some feedback. By Saturday morning I had completely revised it and spent much of the day sitting on my thoughts before adding a few more tweeks and rewrites that evening and sending the next draft out for thoughts. Between James and Michele, I got great feedback on Sunday, and felt confident enough to move on to the next step: sending it in to the editor. DUN DUN DUN…

It was commitment and support from people who care about me that pushed me to do what needed to be done. Because let’s face it. Sometimes we want to do things, but maybe we don’t feel confident or strong enough to take the steps we need to take. When you have people in your life who truly care about you and want to see you succeed, they don’t pull any punches. They push you when you start to step back from the edge, because they know you need to learn to fall before you can fly.

Further news in the commitment field, I finally passed the 3000 word mark in the short story I’m working on that will act as a sort of prequel to my upcoming novel project. Writing this story has really put me in touch with the two main characters, and before work yesterday I did about an hour and a half of research to put together the mythos and backstory I’ll be building on in the novel. This morning, I’m going to write, then start my outline. Though I’ve always scoffed at outlining in the past, my perspective has changed immensely during this self-commitment process. I’m gonna do the outline. See how it goes from there. Wish me luck.

Here’s hoping your commitment to you has been going well, and if you haven’t made a commitment to yourself yet, what re you waiting for?

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Homework. The word brings dread to the hearts and minds of nearly everyone who hears it. It inspires memories of high school algebra, chemistry and vocab. It may even bring to mind that horrid teacher, you know the one who was always on your case about turning in late assignments, but when I talk about homework, I’m talking about something different. I’m talking about research.

Michele and I picked this topic for She’s Write About That! almost two weeks ago, and I’ve been itching to get started writing my post ever since. No matter what genre you write in, research is an essential factor to creating believable fiction. Research keeps your facts straight, strengthens your hold on the subject material, but most of all it keeps your mind fresh because you’re always learning.

A long time ago, I read a horoscope that said, “Gemini: You must always be learning. To stop learning is to stagnate. Stagnation leads to depression and death.” Wow. Way to layer on the doom, cosmos! In all seriousness, those words resonated with me. In high school I wrote constantly, and part of the joy of writing my stories revolved around doing the research that made them more identifiable and real. I dug deep into the heart of the places I was writing about so that even if I hadn’t been there in person, I could try to capture the essence of that place through research.

Research is how you come to know material you wish to write about, but have no prior experience with. There are people who will tell you that you should write what you know, and that trying to write outside your knowledge sphere will lead to unrealistic and unbelievable material. As a writer who’s delved into horror, fantasy and science fiction nearly all my life, I can tell you that gathering first hand experience in demonic unicorns is not easy. Those little bastards are tough to find in the wild, so turning to other forms of research is necessary.

Reading is fundamental. I’ve blogged this topic inside and out over the last year because I firmly believe in that those old plugs they used to play between Saturday morning cartoons. The more you read, the more you know/grow. Since it is impossible to hop into Doctor Who’s TARDIS and head back in time to Victorian England to gather knowledge for your novel, history books are there to guide you. Hundreds of scholars have specialized over the years in putting together thorough historical accounts on everything from period behavior, literature of the time, appropriate clothing, rules of courtship and so much more.

Another great source of information is well-versed authors specializing in the type of fiction you want to write. If you’re going to write about werewolves, check out other authors who have explored the beast within. If you’re writing romance, check out all variations of the genre. The books you read don’t have to be NY Times Bestsellers either. I’ve read and learned from books by some rather obscure authors that unfortunately most people will never even hear of. You should too.

Outside of reading and taking extensive notes while doing so, hands on experience is a beautiful thing. While I realize that gaining hands on experience is often difficult, especially if you write in a genre that doesn’t allow much in the way of reality, there are ways you can get close to even the most imaginative creations and time periods. A few years ago, while I was writing Goblin Market, I spent every weekend working the local Renaissance Faire. The reality setting for Goblin Market is set in an obscure time period, and the fantastic setting is a place that doesn’t even exist, but traipsing through the faire every morning and watching it come alive with faeries and goblins, royalty and peasants was an eye opening experience that provided more inspiration than I could have ever asked for. Here were people who loved the historical and fantasy aspects of history and literature so much, they dove into character and created something so unique that it deeply influenced my writing.

Conventions and reenactments offer a peak into lost and forgotten worlds and time periods. Imagine all the experience and information you could gain from partaking in a Civil War reenactment, or the Vampire’s Ball. Laugh if you must, but these experiences are more inspirational than you could ever dream, and they will put you in the frame of mind you need to be in to write about them.

Travel is another aspect of research that will lend credibility and strength to the settings of your stories. If you’re writing about a local place you’re familiar with, spend time learning the folklore, legends, landscape and history of that place. The ability to walk the land and breathe the air of that place will seep into your fiction in such a way that your readers will really feel as if they are there, experiencing the moment.

Not everyone has the travel budget of their dreams, unfortunately, so sometimes you may have to wing it and travel vicariously through documentary and written guides. A couple of years ago I wrote a series of urban fantasy stories about Selkies. Selkies are legendary beings from Celtic mythology, seal people, if you will. The stories passed down from generation to generation tell of these magical creatures who shed their seal skin to walk on the earth in human form. If their skin is captured, they become the property of whoever holds it. Many a poor selkie woman became wives to greedy and possessive human men, bearing their children, but all the while longing to return to the sea. My ancestors come from Norway, Scotland and Ireland, so this legend intrigued and inspired me. I was unable to travel at the time I was writing, but I sunk deep into the legends, the land and the sea. All of my stories in this collection were set between America and the Orkney Isles, a place that I still long to explore after having spent so much time researching and learning about them. I read every travel guide I could find, watched every video in the public library and spent countless nights online exploring Orkney, and increasing my longing to one day walk its pebbled shores in search of selkies.

I guess what I’m getting at in this long-winded blog post is that even in school, when they assigned us homework, it was for a good reason. Doing your homework strengthens your grasp on the things you wish to become well-versed in, and as a writer you must have a strong grasp on your subject material. You need to live, breathe, eat, sleep and dream it twenty-four hours a day in order for your depictions of it to be realistic and memorable.

And now, I’m off to the werewolf farm to study waxing and waning moon cycles and cast a few silver bullets, but before you take my word on all of this, don’t forget to check out what my co-blogger and friend, Michele Bekemeyer has to say about doing your research. Whatever it is, you can guarantee that She’s Write About That!

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If you’ve been following my blogs for awhile, you already know I’ve been making a huge stink about how important it is to commit to the things you want from life. As a writer, commitment is such a huge ordeal, as you can’t just start things and leave them to wallow by the wayside while you run around willy nilly talking about the things you want to do. You have to follow through and see them to the end, even if it’s hard.

And it’s hard. You have an idea, it feels sharp and perfect in your head, then you start to put it down on paper. It doesn’t always come out the way you originally saw it. You get frustrated, step away and plan to come back later, but maybe you don’t quite make it back. All that inspiration: wasted.

I’m done with that. I’ve been working very hard on committing to myself and my projects, and I’m pleased to say that operation commitment has been going well. Off the waves of Horror Realm, which was incredibly inspiring, I decided if I ever wanted to be taken seriously as a horror writer, I needed to get my stuff out there. That meant not only starting projects, but finishing them, polishing them and sending them out one at a time.

My first commitment to myself was writing a horror novel. I’ve been mapping it out slowly, planning the storyline and developing the character and her back story. So far, so good. I even started writing a short story to introduce myself to her and her world. I’m about 2200 words in at this point, and very pleased with how it’s coming along. I even already know how it’s going to end, something I struggle with constantly as a writer.

My second commitment was getting as many short stories written and sent out as possible. Some of you know I was looking for a place to send a horror/suspense novella I wrote. I finally decided to send it out to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. I dropped it in the mailbox last Monday. Huzzah. In line with that same commitment, I just finished a humorous piece I plan to submit to an upcoming zombie anthology. I completed the first draft last night, the second draft tonight, and now I’m waiting for some feedback from a friend before I take one last look and send it off.

It feels good to follow through. To not make excuses and just do it. I noted about 90 minutes ago on Twitter that I was going to bed because I’ve been sick these last couple days, but after I posted it, I thought about how much I really wanted to be writing. So, despite feeling like zombies ate my brains, I sat down and kicked out about 700 words between the two pieces I was working on. One of them got finished. So go me!

If you’re struggling right now with your work, and I really hope you’re not, sit down for a minute and have a talk with yourself about commitment. Are you really committed to yourself as a writer? Are you willing to go the extra mile and do everything it takes to get your work and yourself out there to your readers? Do you take time even when you feel like utter garbage to see to your writing? It isn’t easy, so don’t think I’m up here on a soapbox telling you what you need to do. I just know that I needed to make a commitment to myself and follow through. Maybe you do too. Whatever you need, I hope you find it and put it to good use. We only live once, as far as we know. And those of us who write know in our hearts that writing is what we were born to do. So I guess there’s nothing left to do, but write.

Hopefully this blog post was not too convoluted by the dreamy, delicious threads of Robitussin.

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This morning while lying in bed, we were talking about great books we had read over the years, and books that just went *zoom* over our heads and back into the universe as though we’d never read them. We talked about Homer and Shakespeare, and then the discussion turned toward movies until we wound up talking about M. Night Shyamalan for a few minutes.

I will probably get a lot of crap for this blog because there are so many people who don’t like Shyamalan’s style, but I do. I have enjoyed every M. Night movie I’ve ever seen except for The Happening, which incidentally is a great story, but suffered the fate of poor casting. In my opinion, M. Night is the Master of Allusion, not to be confused with that not-so-good Clive Barker film from the 90s.

Allusion, for those of you who might not know what I’m referring to, is that subtle hint in the plot that tells you what’s really going on. In many cases, it may not even be intentional on the author/creator’s part, but on a subconscious level, it’s what clues you in to the a-ha moment and ties everything together. It can be used to help define and strengthen plot points, character traits and setting factors in your stories, but don’t kid yourself. Allusion is a subtle art that even a master can overdo if not careful.

Since I started out by talking about M. Night Shyamalan, let’s look at his first blockbuster film, The Sixth Sense. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, you’ll have to forgive me and look away, as I’m going to talk about it like you have. After the big reveal at the end of the movie, when we find out that Bruce Willis’ character has been dead the entire movie, my jaw hit my chest in disbelief. He was kidding right? How could he be a ghost? I could have sworn he’d interacted with characters other than the little boy who saw dead people… hadn’t he spoken to the boy’s mother, hadn’t he tried to talk to his wife…to save their obviously failing marriage?

The thing is, my mind saw what M. Night wanted it to see. A normal, psychologist trying to help a little boy suffering from a severely debilitating psychosis. On the second time through the movie, all of those scenes I mistook for evidence that he couldn’t possibly have been dead the entire time, so obviously alluded to the character’s true nature that I felt like a complete and total moron… It was all there, written in plain English, and yet I read it exactly like M. Night wanted me to. That is what makes him the Master of Allusion.

You can’t capture that sort of thing intentionally in most cases, not without over-thinking and eventually destroying it the fragile nature of your plot’s impact. In a way, it’s just like stage magic. You build up the great reveal with the illusion created by great allusion. Most writers allude to their reveal without even realizing what they’ve done until after the fact. Stephen King even pointed out in his collection of writing memoirs, On Writing, that as a writer you should look for these hints in your stories after the fact while you’re editing and proofreading, and if you find that thread of allusion strengthen, but make sure you don’t overdo it.

To me, that is what M. Night Shyamalan does best, and again I don’t care what anyone says. He does it so well, that despite knowing he’s got some weird ace up his sleeve, I still find myself surprised as his plots unravel for the climax.

So, even if you don’t love Shyamalan’s movies, I bid you take a moment to analyze those scenes in The Sixth Sense that could have given away the plot. Study them, and then reread the last piece of fiction you wrote. Look for the subtle allusion in your plot, and strengthen it. I guarantee that if you put that into practice in your own writing that you too can become a Master of Allusion.

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I know it’s Tuesday, and I promised to bring the AWESOME horror realm report. No fear, my friends. It is coming. I have been slowly piecing it together all over the net and have a TON of awesome to share with you this week. Today, however, I am in a frame of mind that requires much blogging.

Rhiannon Frater. She was the only female author at Horror Realm this last weekend, and while I understand that Horror Realm is a relatively new con, there were quite a few male authors on site and on panel. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not reverse-sexist! Go men! It’s just that I keep noticing lately that the feminine side of horror is seriously under-represented these days. That is not to say there aren’t female horror authors out there, but all too often it is the men of the genre who get the hype and buzz.

My reasoning for this goes well beyond Horror Realm. I also thought about the anthology I was recently published in. Shortly after I got my copy of Book of the Dead, I was browsing through it only to realize I was the only female author in the anthology.

I’ve decided that this just won’t do. So, I’m on a quest to personally write and put more horror out into the world. Though Goblin Market is dark fantasy, nearly everything I have written in the last eight months has been horror, and I’m glad. Considering that all I’ve ever wanted to write was horror since I was a wee writer back in the day, it’s time to get more of my horror work out there.

I also wanted to pat myself on the back today because I made a list of things I wanted to do while I was Horror Realm, and I managed to achieve all of them. I even wrote an impromptu flash-fic piece for the Permuted Press apocalyptic flash fiction contest. GO ME! Also on my list of things to do: meet Jonathan Maberry and have him sign a copy of “They Bite” for me, and meet Tony Todd. There were other things, and I did them all, so YAY.

Anyway, I’m just reflecting today. Being around all of those prolific, published authors was a huge inspiration. Been home for two days and I’m already fifteen hundred words into a new story. Hope you’re all having a great week and getting everything you planned to get done this week done. Go you!

Evidence of my divide and conquer weekend: Me with Tony Todd–

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My bag has been mostly packed for about 30 hours now and truth be told, I’m ready to go. I didn’t want to leave you guys without any awesome this week, especially since I’m rushing off to the ‘Burgh for an entire weekend of nothing but Awesome. I plan to bring back plenty of awesome to share with you guys, from pictures and video content to the complete lowdown on how I squeed like a total fangirl before asking Jonathan Maberry to sign the copy of They Bite I intend to buy during Horror Realm. There are also going to be a handful of Permuted Press authors there, including that guy I’m so incredibly fond of, James Melzer. James will be giving away special edition Escape: A Zombie Chronicles Novel audiobooks with two bonus stories and a brand new introduction just for the audiobook.

And speaking of James, which you all know I am wont to do, let’s kick off This Week In Awesome with a picture…

This last Sunday, James traveled cross country and into Michigan to meet self-proclaimed FDO and NY Times best-selling author Scott Sigler. Sigler is currently touring The States to promote his novel, The Rookie, and since there were no scheduled stops in Canada on his tour, James, Laura and Jason Church and new media broadcaster Steve Saylor all headed out of Canada and into Michigan to represent. James did not release a new episode of UNLEASHED this week, but I hear he’s plotting to get some awesome interviews while we’re at Horror Realm. Here’s a picture of James, Laura and Steve. Be sure to browse through the Twitpic stream for more fun photos from the day’s events, and thank you to Jason Church for permission to use his awesome photos!

Next up is the Creebobby.com Ninja Zombie Robot times table chart. I don’t even know where I got this thing, someone on Twitter posted it and I knew it was too awesome not to bookmark and share. In classic timetable format, you can now see robot times zombie, or zombie times Abraham Lincoln… 0_o Excellent!

My friend Kate Sherrod, who hosts the Kate of Mind podcast and Suppertime Sonnets, sent me this excellent Gawker link titled “Empire Strikes Barack”. What could possibly be more awesome than Barack Obama playing with a Star Wars lightsaber on the front lawn of the White House?

And now, for this week’s Superficial Gallery Awesome Post of the Week… In the spirit of going on a road trip with my best girlfriend this weekend: Why Girls’ Weekends Were Invented! Don’t forget, if you need a good laugh throughout the week, the Superficial Gallery has got one with your name on it!

Here’s another one I found on Twitter. Author Patty Jansen wrote a pretty humorous blog called the 90% rule about following the “rules” as a writer. She makes some great points and got a few laughs from me. As long as I’ve been writing, I’ve been a big fan of the old adage, “You shouldn’t break the rules until you know them like the back of your hand,” and Ms. Jansen goes above and beyond here with a self-imposed 90% rule. Even if you’re not a writer, check this out. It’s funny stuff.

The Laughing Vixen Lounge is giving away an AWESOME Halloween Goodie Bag! I love Halloween so much that I couldn’t leave this little gem of a contest out. The Goodie Bag contains nineteen awesome, spooktacularly themed Halloween goodies from vendors all over the net. If you love Halloween as much as I do, you will NOT want to miss this. Seriously. Go check it out and enter. Maybe if you tell them I sent you, it’ll increase my odds of winning .

I know this week’s awesome is a little on the short side, but I’m already on the road as this posts, so know that when I wrote it I was incredibly distracted by the awesomeness of the weekend I’m probably having as you read this. Before I do disappear for the next two days, however, I would like to share one last bit of awesome… Last week Seth Harwood invited me into the Hot Tub with him to sit down and talk about writing, podcasting and a whole host of other interesting tidbits. If you haven’t heard that interview yet, I do hope you’ll follow the link and have a listen: Hot Tub Cast. Thank you to Seth for having me on. I had a great time and my shoulder blades have never felt better!

And now, I’m off! I hope you all had an awesome week and that you tune in next week for another tribute to AWESOME! Don’t forget, if you happen to find something AWESOME on the net throughout the week, and you think it’s worth sharing I’d love to check it out and possibly even feature it in an upcoming THIS WEEK IN AWESOME. You can even hook me up with announcements about your own personal AWESOME! If I feature your recommendation I will note the source and link to your site. Send recommendations to me via email (jennybeanses@gmail.com) if you’ve got ‘em. Be sure to include the word AWESOME in your email’s subject so I don’t drop you into my spam folder by accident.

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During vacation I wrote a blog post about making a commitment to yourself. Talking about how important it was to commit to the execution and completion of our goals. In the last three weeks I have been focused on working, and even picked up a second freelance gig to help in my quest to write full time no matter what it takes. The sad part, however, is that I have not focused near as much on my writing as I would like.

Don’t get me wrong when I say this, but I feel a bit like a liar now because I preached something inspirational, but did not put it into practice in my own life. I’m not feeling sorry for myself, or even beating up on myself, just giving myself, and you if you need one, a kick in the pants.

This morning while listening to Mur Lafferty’s ISBW #130 Lite, during which Mur talks about “Fear,” I got to thinking about my own fears. It is a lot harder to commit to yourself when you’re afraid. One of my greatest personal fears is “What will happen once I finish what I’m working on now?” It is almost as if I hold on to this one inspiration as long as I can because I’m afraid that there won’t be anymore left inside me when I finish. It’s classic fear of success/failure with an exaggerated twist.

Here’s an example for you to chew on: there is a manuscript sitting on my desk, already in envelope and ready to send out to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. I could come up with about twenty different excuses as to why I haven’t sent it out yet. Everything from not having access to a car to drive to the post office to not having an extra $2 to spare on postage. Pathetic now that I’ve said them out loud. I even feel a little ashamed, but I can’t let that keep me from taking care of business. A lot of the time, excuses become fodder for not completing the tasks we set out to do. First the excuses, then the woe is me, but not caving in to the “woe is me,” is essential to moving forward. We all want to move forward. Well… most of us anyway.

I said something last night in a semi-drunken slur that was still resonating inside me when I woke up this morning. I was complaining about how slow time seems to be moving right now because of a variety of factors, this weekend especially. This is the first weekend my daughter has been away from me all weekend in about a month, for one thing, and I really miss her a lot. So yesterday time felt like it had slipped into backwards mode. ME: Oh yay! It’s almost 9 o’clock… hey? Wait a minute? What do you mean it’s 3:15? It was just 9 o’clock!

As I reflected on this in conversation last night, I said something to the effect of, “I don’t want to complain about it because I really want to enjoy and appreciate every moment of my life. Yet today I kept thinking about how slow time was going and (insert random drunk nonsense here…)” You get the point… So what was I doing during this slow-moving Friday from hell? I wasn’t writing… that’s for sure. I could have been. Gods know that after I finished work I had plenty of time to get to the writing and could have finished at least one of the short stories sitting on my flash-drive waiting for an ending.

What was my excuse? I am not going to make one. I just didn’t do it. And that is indicative to the commitment I want to make to myself and my dreams.

And maybe your instinct is to pipe up saying, “But, it’s not always easy…”

Bullshit! I say. Bullshit. Because it is easy. It’s as easy as sitting down at the keyboard and just typing until the words are done pouring out. It’s as easy as worrying about polishing the idea once it is fully formed. Mur mentions this in her episode of ISBW as well, but I also took note yesterday when J.C. Hutchins posted the following words on Twitter: DONE IS BETTER THAN PERFECT! He’s right. Because no matter how meticulously polished your story or novel is, it isn’t worth a damn if it’s not done.

That said, it’s time to reign in the writer and put her to work. I hope you’ll do the same and keep me posted on your progress. Today, I finish at least ONE of the short stories I’ve been working on. Go me!

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While I honestly haven’t been a part of the TGIF crowd since I worked at this really awful 9-5 telemarketing job back in 2001, I do really look forward to THIS WEEK IN AWESOME, which has Friday written all over it. As many 9-5ers wander around unraveling from work-mode frame of mind on Fridays, I hope the awesome finds you entertained and smiling as you keep reminding yourself that it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere.

With one week left before I hit the road to Horror Realm, I’ve been focusing all of my energy on the awesome around me. This week has seen some serious awesome, let me tell you. Now I know last week I poo-pooed all over the fun down at Dragon*Con, and even admitted I was jealous as all get out. I wanted to be down at Dragon*Con, but like many of my friends and colleagues, I was stuck attending Dragon*Can’t instead, which was filled with much grumbling about how we weren’t at Dragon*Con. While Dragon*Con is filled with more awesome than I could even begin to describe in this little post, I am only going to talk about two things in this post: the Parsec Awards and this dude who got to hang out with Colonel Tigh, Dualla and Sam Anders while giving blood:

Because Battlestar Galactica and donating blood are both AWESOME! And that’s all there is to say about that. And now, I gush and squee about how James Durham and his fully produced podcast novel, FETIDUS won not one but two Parsec Awards. FETIDUS won Best New Speculative Fiction Podcaster/Team, and Best Speculative Fiction Story – Novel. That is awesome! And if you haven’t checked out FETIDUS yet, what are you waiting for? This award winning podcast will blow your mind. While you’re there, don’t forget to clap Mr. Durham on the back and congratulate him. His winning was well-deserved. Also, congratulations to all of the other Parsec winners at Dragon*Con as well. Oh, and if you’re looking for a pretty awesome Dragon*Con recap, Paul Cooley put one up on his site, and you can check out that awesome right here: Dragon*Con Wrapup.

This next bit of awesome was brought to my attention by James Melzer, who is an awesome magnet. I don’t know where he finds these things, but in classic Chuck Norris style, author and blogger Jim C. Hines posted 20 Neil Gaiman Facts that had me wondering Gaiman will ever teach a class at Harvard on living in Omniscient point of view, and if so, could he also tell me the secret formula to resurrect Shakespeare. I have a lot of questions for old Billy Shakes. As a twenty year Gaiman fan, I thought this was definitely awesome.

And speaking of James Melzer, it wouldn’t be THIS WEEK IN AWESOME if I didn’t tell you what awesome he has going on over at his site this week. On episode five of UNLEASHED, James talks about James Patterson’s recent seventeen book deal and then he sits down to chat with sixteen-year-old filmmaker, Emily Hagins. Hagins begin filming Pathogen, her first full-length film when she was just twelve years old. At age sixteen, she is already working on her third full-length movie. Talk about ambitious. It’s an awesome interview. You won’t want to miss it!

And now it’s time for the Superficial Gallery AWESOME post of the week. Superficial Gallery is a humor/entertainment website that regularly brightens my day with its content, so of course I consider it my personal duty to pass the awesome on to you. During each installment of THIS WEEK IN AWESOME, I will pick one post from the Superficial Gallery that I consider to be the most AWESOME post of the week. This week’s most AWESOME post of the week is Celebrity Look Alikes and features hilarious comparison photos of Mick Jagger and Stripe the Gremlin, Dr. Phil and a smiling walrus… you get the point, no go see the funny. Especially if you need a good laugh, because you’ll find one at Superficial Gallery with your name on it.

Here’s a slice of awesome for the writer’s out there. A blog I frequent from time to time called The Blood Red Pencil is written by a group of editors to help writers polish and hone their work before it faces the critical, blood red pencil of the editor (press drama button now). One post in particular leaped out at me this week: Self-Editing One Step at a Time: Identifying and Eliminating Your Habit Words. How many of us actually think about habit words, words we’re unconsciously dependent on, but that disrupt the flow of our manuscript. BRP contributor, Patricia Stotley offers tips on how you can catch those unsightly habit words while polishing your manuscript.

Today is 9/11, a day that America will not forget as long as our banner stands united over these states. In honor of 9/11, I found this really great blog post on Twitter that I wanted to pass along to you. Editor Colleen Lindsay posted a blog based on a gallery tribute called Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs. Her reflective blog post was a great read, so check that out, and if you’d like to browse through the original site gallery, here’s the link: Here is New York

Now the last thing I want to share with you this week is pretty awesome, and I had my reservations about posting it because I would rather talk about what everyone else is up to, than focusing on a project I’m doing. However, this project is not just my own. Last week Michele Bekemeyer and I decided to team up and write a weekly blog post on writing. Each week we’ll choose a topic and each write an individual blog post sharing our thoughts, practices and advice on that topic. At the end, we link to each other’s blogs so you can get a two-for-one take on some pretty cool topics. Our joint venture is called She’s Write About That! and will release every Sunday evening for your reading pleasure. Michele and I have a great rapport, so I am so excited to be sharing a project with her. We also have some similar takes on writing, but our opinions, methods and thoughts are also very unique. I hope you’ll check it out and join us for installment number two of She’s Write About That! this Sunday evening.

I could go on with this blog all day, as there is more awesome out there than one woman can blog about, but don’t you worry. I will be back next week. I’ll be gathering the AWESOME all through the week so I can schedule the post to drop Friday afternoon while I’m in Pittsburgh. Don’t forget, when I come back I am going to do a special Horror Realm edition of THIS WEEK IN AWESOME, and will hopefully have some pretty exciting stuff to share with you guys. Don’t forget, if you happen to find something AWESOME on the net throughout the week, and you think it’s worth sharing I’d love to check it out and possibly even feature it in an upcoming THIS WEEK IN AWESOME. You can even hook me up with announcements about your own personal AWESOME! If I feature your recommendation I will note the source and link to your site. Send recommendations to me via email (jennybeanses@gmail.com) if you’ve got ‘em. Be sure to include the word AWESOME in your email’s subject so I don’t drop you into my spam folder by accident.

Have an AWESOME week everyone!

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Greetings everyone, and welcome back to the Goblin Market. Thank you all for tuning in this week, and for your continued support. This week’s episode is a turning point of sorts, as Meredith, Him and Sir Gwydion prepare to set out for the Darknjan Wald.

There is some neat stuff in the Goblin Market this week, including the fact that today is September 9th, 2009, and I am releasing episode 9. 9-9-9-9… Isn’t that cool? Of course, you know I planned it out that way… 0_o. Yes, yes I did. Anyway, that means episode 9 is my lucky episode. Close your eyes and make a wish while listening to episode 9. Just be careful what you wish for. You know how goblins can be.

Also, I did some tallying yesterday and discovered that Goblin Market has been downloaded just over 1500 times so far, and the number climbs to greater heights each week. That’s awesome, and I’m so proud. Thank you all for continuing to listen each week, and for telling your friends about my endeavor. I am hoping to find a few spare minutes this week to re-record episodes one through five so I can begin submitting to podiobooks.com, and reaching an even larger audience, so wish me luck.

In other Goblin Market news, I know this is a bit early, but there will be no episode of Goblin Market on Wednesday, September 23rd. We’ll be at Horror Realm the weekend before, and weekends are when I squeeze in the majority of my recording for the week. Fret not, my lovelies. Goblin Market will return, right on schedule Wednesday, September 30th.

Be sure to stay tuned at the end of Episode Nine for promos for Philippa Ballantine’s Weather Child and Michell Plested’s podcast for writers, “Getting Published”.

As per usual, the intro music has been provided by Kevin MacLeod and incompetech.com, and the outtro music is provided by John Anealio.

Comments and feedback are always welcome! You can email me directly at: jennybeanses@gmail.com or leave a note right here on the site. Also, if you are subscribed to Goblin Market through iTunes, please take a moment to leave a comment feedback. Comments and positive feedback help draw more attention to a podcast, and I always love picking up new listeners!

Thanks again everyone for all of your support. Sharing this story with you is something I look forward to every week, so I’m glad you keep tuning in and going on this journey with me.

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I hope you’ve all been following Starla Huchton’s The Dreamer’s Thread since I recommended it a few weeks ago. The Dreamer’s Thread is a fully produced podcast novel with a full cast of characters stepping in to bring the story to life. Not that the story needs any extra breath into its already fully inflated lungs, mind you…

Anyway, I wanted to take a moment to let you guys know that my very first line appears in episode four, which Starla released last night. I am reading for the character Elsaar, who has only one line in this episode, but two full scenes later on in the story. You can find episode four, which features the voice talent of some amazing people-including Starla herself-right here

For a small taste of the story check out the latest promo, featuring Mory:

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Yesterday, my friend Michele Bekemeyer (MichBek) and I were discussing the implications of insanity that probably come with talking to our characters. They are, after all, imaginary people, right? Somewhere along the lines, we got to talking about what a great writing blog post that would make, and our conjoined blog plot was born. I can’t fully take the credit. It was actually the brilliant idea of James Melzer, who while listening to me relay my conversation with MichBek said, “You know what you guys should do…” So, I talked to MichBek, and here were are embarking on our first tag team writer’s topic blog post. Are you scared yet?

Each week, we will choose a writing topic to tackle, and without looking at what the other had to say, we’ll post on Sunday evening and link to each other’s blogs. It’s a two for one on some pretty interesting topics, so I hope you’re as excited about it as we are.

And now, on to the topic of the week: Talking to your characters…

I won’t lie. I do it. I do it all the time, and sometimes I talk to those imaginary people with more emotion and feeling than I use when talking to actual people in my every day life. Our characters are a part of us, but as we weave them into the tapestry of their own stories, they take on a life of their own. They become separate entities with wants, needs, desires and emotions beyond that which we first envisioned when we first conceived of them on random slips of notebook paper while daydreaming during work or school.

Now before you scoff at me, and start dialing for the men in white coats, I have to ask you this: how well do you know your characters? If I asked you what his favorite color was, or the place she would most likely run off to if she were having a bad day, could you answer me? Who is his mother? Does she have any siblings? Are they close to their families, or estranged? How does his familial structure play into who he is today, and what kind of effect would that have on him if he found out his girlfriend or wife was pregnant with his first child?

I could go on all day, and I’m sure you could too, especially if you talk to the people who live inside your head. It sounds crazy, but hey, we’re writers, and in order to orchestrate lives and universes you almost have to be unhinged. Sometimes my relationships with the characters I write about (note how I did not say create, as I really think these people existed somewhere in the universe long before I wrote about them, and I just channeled them to tell their stories…) is so intense that I find myself arguing with them over details in the story that we disagree on. I think he should wait to kiss the girl, he thinks they should have had sex yesterday…

All crazy talk aside, maybe you don’t hear your characters that clearly, and that’s okay too, but I will tell you this: knowing your characters inside and out is essential to making them into believable people. Believable characters resonate with readers and become old friends by the end of a story. Think about the last book you read that left you feeling lonely as you closed it upon reading the final page. It wasn’t the words you missed, or the smell of the paper… it was the people you shared the journey with–the characters.

So maybe you have some trouble hearing your characters clearly, or you just really want to get in on the crazy I’ve been talking about. Either way, there are things you can do to tune in to your characters and make them spill their secrets so you can write them the way they were meant to be read.

Long before you ever start writing the serious parts of your story, spend some time getting to know the people who will frequent that world. Create character sheets, many varieties can be found for free download online, and print them out. Sit down somewhere quiet, fill in the blanks and answer the questions on your character sheets. Answer the questions naturally, not allowing yourself to put too much time into them. Over-thinking will lead to the creation of a stubborn character who doesn’t really know what he or she wants or stands for. Natural answers are instinctual, and your character’s way of saying, “Yes! That is me. That is who I am!” Keep your character sheets and notes on hand when you start writing, as you may need to refer to them for minor details.

While you’re writing a scene, pay attention to the thoughts that go through your mind, and look for subtle nuances in the tone of voice. This is often the voice of your character breaking through. Personally, this takes a lot of focus for me, as I tend to tune out completely when I’m writing, as though I’m channeling wisdom directly from the muse. Take notes if you can, as sometimes these notes will lead you to great discoveries about your characters that will impact the nature of your story.

Write side stories. A great way to get to know your character and the events in his or her life that led up to the person you are writing about now is to write side stories. Remember all those details you wrote down when filling out your character sheets and the notes you took while tuning into your character’s voice? Now is the time to draw on those things to get to know your character better. A great example of this, to demonstrate what I mean, occurred in the third Indiana Jones film. Since Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was no small secret that Indy wasn’t fond of snakes. In the third film, we find out about an event that happened during his childhood that likely perpetrated that fear of slithering, legless beasts.

Now you may be asking me about the actual conversing with my characters, since I haven’t really mentioned that yet. Don’t worry, the crazy is coming… and by crazy I am not afraid to admit I have written letters to my characters in moments of frustration to try and help me unearth ways to get to the bottom of monumental standoffs. By standoff, I mean writer’s block, and now I want you to ask yourself how often your writer’s block has been the direct result of not seeing eye to eye with your character’s needs. Sit down and write a letter to your character and ask him to show you the way to a solution. You’d be surprised how often this works.

Now I’m going to get really hokey. Some of you may be incredibly surprised by how hokey, but I would be selfish not to share the techniques that work for me. I’m a little new age, have been all my life, and I’m a firm believer in guided meditation. This may take a bit more work for those of you who do not practice meditation regularly, but over time and through meditation, plan out a face to face meeting with your character. Sit down and talk directly on this level and find out how you can work together.

Short of these more extreme methods, it’s not uncommon to find me sitting at my computer screen with my face twisted into a scowl and the words, “What the hell are you trying to prove you stupid zombie slayer…” just on the tip of my tongue. Most of the time they’ve already been spoken, and I have no shame about that.

In closing, talking to your characters is also a clever way to disguise what some people might term as mental illness. If anyone dares to look at you and exclaim, “My word! You’ve got multiple personality disorder!” You can always shake your head and say, “Oh no, I’m a writer.”

Now, go find out what MichBek has to say about talking to your characters because you can guarantee that She’s Write About That!

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Greetings all! Welcome back to the Goblin Market. I have to say, as much as I love Goblin Market and podcasting my episodes, I really didn’t want to end my vacation last Thursday. James and I had an awesome week, much of which was spent relaxing, but there comes a time in every vacation when you realize you have to get back to work simply so you can earn your next vacation.

Hopefully you will hear a vast improvement in the sound quality of this episode. I am now operating with new equipment (GO ME!) and though I am still learning daily about setting sound levels for the best quality, I am much happier with the quality of this episode than I have been with any of the others.

Before I get on with the episode, I wanted to thank the good folks over at Art By Tech Web Design for donating to Goblin Market. It was my very first donation, and much appreciated. 10% of all donations made to Goblin Market go to the Chron’s and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA). So thanks again! I was both humbled and honored by your support!

The promo at the end of this week’s episode is for Starla Huchton’s The Dreamer’s Thread. As per usual, the intro music has been provided by Kevin MacLeod and incompetech.com, and the outtro music is provided by John Anealio.

Comments and feedback are always welcome! You can email me directly or leave comments here on the site. Also, if you are subscribed to Goblin Market through iTunes, please take a moment to leave a comment feedback. Comments and positive feedback help draw more attention to a podcast, and I always love picking up new listeners!

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I won’t lie. Sometimes as a writer I can be incredibly egomaniacal. I have moments when I am creating a scene, and I sit back and grin at my own compositions thinking, “Top that!” On the other hand, I can also be incredibly shy and withdrawn, often lacking the confidence and bravado to push and promote myself as much as I should. I tend to hesitate, thinking no one wants my work shoved down their throat–and really no one does. But the thing is that we (not just me, but many of us,) lose our confident edge in the face of potential criticism and rejection, so we hold back instead of moving forward.

It takes a lot of courage to put your work out there, whether it be to a critique group, an editor, or even as a full blown podcast or pdf for others to download and listen to/read. You may wonder what will others say? What will they think of you? Better yet, they may even start asking who you think you are, believing your work is good enough to be shared with the general public?

Insecurity is a hindrance that holds many creative types at bay. It prohibits us from opening ourselves up and experiencing the joys and rewards of sharing our creativity with others. Before you know it, you’re on your death bed and you’ve got volumes of written work stashed away in some secret, underground compartment with a high tech locking device protecting it from the world outside. All those years… all those words… all for you?

All for you. Yes. It’s true. As writers and creators, we must create for ourselves first and foremost. We must enjoy those quirky, behind the hand giggles and grins when we subject our favorite characters to torment and bliss. It is our duty to bask in the glory of the moments we’ve created. Isn’t that what a “god” would do?

Now before you get all hoity toity and lecture me about ego and smack me down for comparing writing and creating to “god,” one does not have to be a self-righteous bonehead to be proud of the work they do. We were born with the gift to tell stories, and tell stories we must. So if you’re feeling shy about the work you’ve created, worried that the world will criticize and poke your precious piece of prose with a sharp stick, get over it. People get mad at mother nature all the time when she rains on their parades, but she rains and shines on despite them.

Peel away the layers of your shell and share your words with the masses. Once you’re putting that work out there, tell people about it. Wave the banner of your creation high everywhere you go. Tell your friends via email how they can access and check out your work. Post to your blog, link to it on facebook, twitter, myspace and every other social networking site you belong to. Don’t be shy, and don’t worry that you are shoving your work down everyone’s throat. Your creation is your livelihood, the driving force behind your very existence–the world deserves will thank you for sharing it.

Of course, you can go too far, and even get annoying if you’re doing nothing brandishing your own flag. Trust me, I’ve seen it, I’ve probably even done it myself, but here’s the thing: even if you overdo it and get on everyone’s nerves, you’ve got their attention. They may moan and complain about you, but remember that old adage about there being no such thing as bad publicity? It’s true. Others will get curious… who is this annoying blabber who only cares about promoting their own work? Maybe they’ll want to check your bragging rights and there you have it, another reader.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that all too often we shy away from showing and telling the world about our worth and wares because we’re ashamed of being labeled conceited. I say if you have a gift, don’t be shy. Share it with pride.

Now, get out there and start promoting yourself.

And speaking of promoting…today, September 1, 2009, is the one year anniversary of James Melzer’s The Zombie Chronicles Escape. One year ago today, James started podcasting TZC. To find out about his awesome journey, read his blog post for today: Happy Anniversary, TZC!, and don’t forget to congratulate him. This last year has been an amazing journey for James and his novel. He’s worked so hard, and deserves lots of kudos, back pats and support. Happy anniversary, TZC! Here’s to another great year!

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As many of you who follow me on Twitter know, yesterday was the last day of our vacation. We had a wonderful and relaxing week, and gratefully got very little accomplished. We went to a barbecue with good friends, watched about a million movies, took more naps than an entire nursing home full of 90 year olds and star gazed, just to name a few things. It was bliss… but now it’s back to the grindstone because my goals are not going to achieve themselves.

Though today was back to work, I did not get much done in the way of personal writing. Yesterday’s long trip to Toronto and back was exhausting, and I spent much of today dragging through my day job and editing/posting vacation photographs and videos. I will be back though. Tomorrow will see a late edition THIS WEEK IN AWESOME, so stay tuned for that.

I finally got a new microphone. It’s a lovely, Blue Snowball, and I can’t wait to get to the recording. Not just Goblin Market, but some voice work for a couple of side projects I was asked to participate in. I’ll be recording my final lines for The Dreamer’s Thread and sending them off to Starla Hutchton, recording an intro an outtro for Nobilis Reed’s Nobilis Erotica and starting to record my lines for the X-Files audio drama David Sabkowiak asked me to participate in.

I will also be wrapping up my unfinished short stories and getting some writing done on Jack in the Green over the next week. More writing blogs coming up this week as well. I’ve had an entire week to think about the topics I’d like to cover and discuss with you all, so stay tuned for that.

Now, however, I am completely exhausted and plan to pour myself directly into bed. Good night, and don’t forget to check back in tomorrow for THIS WEEK IN AWESOME!!

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Committing one’s self to writing is not an easy task. I decided when I graduated from university with a degree in English and Creative Writing, I could not settle for a job that did not include writing on some scale. What I wanted more than anything else was to write full time, preferably fiction and creative nonfiction. It’s been just under three years since I finished my degree, and though it hasn’t been easy, I have spent the majority of the last three years writing freelance for different companies.

All too often, however, I’ve let this level of writing interfere with my desire to write what I want. At the end of a long day spent pumping out freelance articles, I sometimes don’t feel much like writing fiction. This morning while running errands, I realized that I needed to change my approach to this. Yes, writing freelance isn’t always fun. I often have to write articles about subjects I could truly care less about, and the work can be tedious and exhausting. It’s no wonder at the end of a