Category Archives: Humor

February 16, 2012 · 9:22 PM

I Solutioned the Problem!

I don’t know why I chose to make up a word for this post’s title.  I guess it’s just because I’m so excited that I thought of a temporary solution to my horrible problem.  In case you can’t figure out what my problem is, I’ll tell you.  My problem is that I can’t draw pretty pictures to put on my blog with my tablet right now because my computer exploded.  And I thought it would be such a long time before I’d be able to get Photoshop Elements up and running again and all of my posts were going to have to be boring blocks of text and everyone would hate me and then the world would explode!  But luckily for you all, I’ve figured out a way to save the world!  Because I remembered this ancient technology that was widely used before computers.  It’s called Paper!  And I found some paper and a marker pen!  And a camera!  And then I drew a picture on the paper and I took a picture of it with my camera and now I can put it on my blog for you to see!

Yes it’s lined paper because I was too lazy to go downstairs and find my sketchbook, and this tiny notebook was all I found.  Also I only have a black sharpie and a blue pen, so there’s not really much I can draw in the way of color…

But it’s still a pretty good solution for the time being, yeah?  I’m pretty proud of myself.  Now you won’t have to stare at walls of text all the time.

Since I’m writing a new post, I figure I might as well say something about writing, since that’s what this blog is all about.  For the record, I do remember that I was listing my favorite authors, and I’m not going to stop doing that.  I still want to write about Melissa Marr, and maybe a few others, but I don’t feel like doing that right now.

See, today while I was on the bus, I got to thinking…

And that’s not such a bad idea, because I think it’s important to spell out my reasons for doing what I do.  It might help…save the world or something.  I’m not sure.  But it feels like a good idea so I’m going to do it!

ONE: It’s fun.  This seems pretty self-explanatory, but hey, I’ll elaborate a bit anyway.  You know all those things I talk about in this blog?  The creating of worlds and getting to know characters and stuff?  All that is fun for me.  Don’t get me wrong.  It can be tiring and frustrating and all that, but it can also be invigorating and entertaining.  And it also feels like it’s a part of me now, which is kinda cool.

TWO: It’s an escape.  I sometimes say that I don’t write non-fiction because if I wanted to experience real life, I’d just live it.  I write fiction and fantasy because that means that, in some small way, I get to live in made up worlds with new and different rules.  It also helps on those few occasions when I’m not so happy with my (real) world.  If that happens, I can just go somewhere else for a while, so to speak.  Also…

THREE: I can do things in my books that I could never do in real life.  My characters can do all kinds of amazing things that I could never do.  For example, among all of my characters, the following skills have been accumulated: Magic, shape shifting, fighting, ballet, gymnastics, healthy eating habits, courage, confidence, liking cats, um…being male?  On top of that, they have experience in their lives that I don’t have yet, and possibly never could have.  Like that being male thing.  Or having a boyfriend/husband.  Not that I couldn’t have a boyfriend!  I just haven’t yet.  But that same constraint doesn’t exist for some of my characters.  Get it?  So even though I can’t do/haven’t done a lot of those things, in a way, I still have.  Thanks to (to name a few) Riley, Shauna, Eric, Aaron, Cady, Serrafiel, Molly, Cage, Aiden, Elysia, Aradia, and Kemnebi.

FOUR: I want to share my stories.  Please note that “share” is different than “sell”.  Yes, it would be awesome if I could sell my stories because money is important.  But that’s not why I write.  I mean, come on.  No one ever says, “I really want to make money.  I think I’ll invest any energy at all in becoming an author.  That’ll be worthwhile.”  So no, money is not the ultimate goal.  But I strive to get published and I write this blog because I like to share my stories.  It’s hard to explain, but there’s a lot of satisfaction in it.  I feel like…if I can just entertain one person, or make someone feel something…then maybe my efforts have been validated.  And it doesn’t count if it’s someone who knows me, because truthfully I can’t stand sharing my stories with friends and family.  It’s basically like bearing your soul to someone close to you and then just…living with that.  Like I’m putting myself up on display.  And I really don’t feel comfortable with that.  Some form of anonymity feels better.  Which is why getting published is preferable to emailing my relatives every time I finish a new book.

I think that’s it.  Those are the main reasons anyway.  So that’s it for now!  I hope you like my pictures!  I guess you still saw a wall of text in this one but…here, I’ll make it up to you!

Word of the Day: Invigorate (v) – to fill with life and energy; energize

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February 11, 2012 · 9:50 PM

The Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Done

So the reason my computer was running so slow turned out to be… something.  It was running at 100% CPU usage, which, for those of you who don’t speak Computer, is way too much.  In light of that, I called my father, the computer guy, and asked him to help me fix this problem.  After hours and hours of searching through my computer, he failed to identify the source of its slowness, i.e. the thing that was making it eat CPU for breakfast.  Then I took a look through the programs it was running and saw something titled “Bing Bar.”  I assumed this was Bing as in that search engine no one uses, but it might have been a virus.  At any rate, I uninstalled it.

The good news is that my computer stopped running at 100% CPU.  The bad news is…my computer broke.  My father looked at it again, and eventually decided there was nothing more he could do and that I’d have to take it somewhere to get someone to look at it.  Luckily for me, we have Information Technology Services (ITS) right on campus.  So I took my computer to them, and they fiddled with it, and then they decided that the only way to fix it would be to restore it to factory settings.  Gee, I thought, I’m so lucky that my computer is still mostly functional.  Now I’ll be able to back up all my files and not lose absolutely everything I ever lived for.

That night, I plugged in my external hard drive and did some dragging and dropping of files.  My dad gave me the sage advice of checking to make sure everything backed up properly by plugging the hard drive in to another computer.  I thought this advice was good, but (and here’s the important part) I never actually went through with it.  Even though I was suspicious of how quickly everything had “backed up,” I still never got around to checking that everything I lived for was okay.  I have no idea why that didn’t fly to the top of my priority list, but I’m kind of scatterbrained.  Especially when it is least convenient for me to be so.

Skip forward to after my computer has been wiped, and ITS nerd guy plugs in my external hard drive to retrieve all of my everything.  Can you guess what happened?  That’s right.  He looked at me and said slowly and quietly, in the tone of someone admitting to the fact that they just ran over all of your pets and your grandmother, that I had not backed up a thing.  All I had done was copy shortcuts from my computer to my hard drive, which does absolutely nothing.  Then, for about ten seconds, I had to live with this fact.  Ten seconds to try and wrap my head around the fact that I had lost everything, and that this problem could have so easily been avoided.  Then Mr. ITS said, “But…” and I perked up my ears.

Thanks to sheer luck, the damage was not too bad.  Mr. ITS installed a program on my computer that had the potential to recover documents from my computer’s hard drive.  It did this quite well.  So well, in fact, that it brought back Word documents that I had deleted years ago.  But I still thought I’d lost a lot.  None of the JPEG files could be recovered, which meant that I’d lost London.  Remember how I was abroad for a semester?  Maybe you don’t.  But I thought I’d lost that.

NOPE

Apparently, at some point I backed up all of my files, including my pictures from London and my books, onto my flash drive!  I couldn’t fit all the pictures, so I lost Dublin, but I can get pictures of that from my best friend who accompanied me on that trip.  I’m certainly not complaining.  Not only did all of my books get saved and my pictures from London, but the recovery program found my completed version of Grotesque, the only book that had not been recently backed up.  Considering how stupid I had to be to get myself into this situation, I am incredibly lucky that pure serendipity got me out of it, despite the fact that I probably didn’t deserve such a nice bail-out.

At this point, you might be wondering why I’m telling you all this.  Aside from the fact that it’s funny in a “Ha ha, I almost lost my entire reason for living” sort of way, it also pertains to this blog.  See, I recently acquired a Wacom tablet, which I was using to draw funny little cartoons, if you’ll recall.  Unfortunately, I lost Photoshop Elements when I wiped the computer, as well as all the things I drew using it.  This means that I lost an entire artistic series of pictures I drew based on those iconic, red phone booths you see in London.  Hours and hours of work.  Gone.  I will redraw them anyway, and maybe share a few, when I’m able to reinstall Elements.  The only problem is that the CD to restore it to my computer is somewhere back in California, in a large cardboard box maybe.  (We just moved)  So it looks like I won’t be able to illustrate my blog for a while.  Not until that CD or some other solution is found.  My only other option is MS Paint, and well…

…I just don’t think that would work out so well.

That’s all I have to say for today.  Somehow I will persevere.  I’m lucky that I got back what I did, even though I still lost many things that were important to me.  Obviously, I learned to be more careful with my files.  I’ve already gone back through and properly backed them up again.  I also learned that there is no point kicking myself forever about this mistake, because it’s in the past.  Yes, I had every opportunity to prevent it, but I didn’t.  And nothing I say or do is going to change that.  All I can do is deal with the consequences and try to learn from it.  I’d like to say I already have learned a good deal.  Only time will tell if this lesson will stick, but I have a feeling it will.

My father will probably be somewhat peeved when he reads this, so let me just say: I’m sorry, Dad!  I know I should have listened to you.  Thanks for all the help, though.  I don’t know what I’d do without you.

Word of the Day: Serendipity (n) – The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident.  Also, the fact or an instance of such a discovery.

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January 24, 2012 · 4:09 PM

Failure is Just Another Word for Success

So a friend of mine, Alan [EDIT 3/13/21: LOL I am married to Alan now. We just celebrated our sixth anniversary, and we have two kids. Funny to see this post now.], shared a link with me on the Facebooks.  It is funny and involves writing, so I am posting it here for your amusement:

For those who don’t have three minutes to spare for this video, here’s the gist: Success is hard to come by, but if you work at it, you’ll eventually get there.  This guy, John Green, is speaking from experience.  He wanted to write, he took some menial jobs after graduating, and eventually he found a mentor who helped him write and publish his book.  This is very great for him.  BUT, because there’s always a but, I can’t totally appreciate the happy message in this video because I have trouble with other people’s success stories.  Honestly, I do.  Because A) I am a person who is very prone to jealousy, so I am literally jealous of every successful author on the planet, and B) my brain is prone to anxiety, depression, and exaggeration, the last being evidenced by point A.  So when I see someone else’s success story, I tend to view it as them taking up my chance at being successful.  Like, I see success as a finite resource, and I work myself into a nervous frenzy thinking that if I don’t jump on that train soon, all the success is going to get used up and then I won’t have any chance at it ever.  Here is an illustration of this crazy view, in chart form:

Yes, I know that this is a crazy way to look at things, but hear me out.  In other careers, there is at least some guarantee that new positions will open up for newcomers because the old hats will retire/die.  But with authors it’s different, because authors can die and their books will still be published and put on the shelves and held as a standard that new authors must live up to.  It’s maddening!

And now I have officially been a Debby Downer for too long, so let’s move on to some lighter material.

There is this thing called the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award that runs every year.  The submission period just opened, and yesterday I submitted one of my books.  I did this last year, too, with a different book.  And I didn’t even make it past round one.  But I didn’t give up, see?  I’m trying again with a different book, because I do believe that true failure only occurs when you give up, or worse, never try at all.  So I’m going to keep trying, and if I don’t make it this year, I’ll try again next year.  (I’ve got a lot of books to work with)  And if I make it to Round 2 this year, but not Round 3, then I’ll still consider that a win on my part, because that’s better than I did last year.  Also, I have to remind myself that this contest is very subjective.  Just because I don’t make it doesn’t mean my idea or my writing isn’t good.  It just means that the judges weren’t looking for that particular idea or style of writing.  So no, don’t give up.  Ever!

I don’t want this post to go on too long, but I realize some of you might be curious as to what books I submitted to this contest, so their summaries will be below the Word of the Day for those who are interested.  Not their official summaries that have to be all concise and carefully worded.  It’ll just be whatever I come up with at this particular moment.

Word of the Day: Perseverance (n) – Steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.

Summary of Ink Stains, my 2011 submission:

Riley doesn’t know her last name or her parents’ names or anything like that.  She has some pretty bad amnesia.  But she does know how to kill a man with her bare hands.  She works for this super secret organization of vigilante-types, and she has a tattoo for every life she’s saved.  The best part is that she’s the only woman in this group of vigilante do-gooders, so the other guys give her a rough time, but some of them only do it jokingly (her friends Aaron, Joker, and Kris) and some of them, and by “some” I mean “one,” are really jerks (Paul).  So Riley does stuff along the lines of catching criminals, bounty hunting, body guarding, etc., but then someone starts leaving her little notes.  And these notes are totally creepy, like the person leaving them knows more about her past than she does.  And Riley is used to being on top of things and one step ahead, so when she’s put in this position where she’s suddenly the prey instead of the predator, it wigs her out.  And there’s also the fact that she has to figure out who’s leaving all the creepy letters before they do something seriously harmful to her or the people she cares about.

Summary of Hellbound, my 2012 submission:

Way back when, I did a post on books about dreams.  This is one of them.

Aiden is the son of Tor, who is better known as the Devil, and a human woman.  He lives in Tor (both the name of his father and the name of this Hellish dimension) which is also better known as Hell, and he hates it there.  Every now and then, a person conducts a ritual that allows a soul to escape from Hell/Tor and bind themselves to that person on earth.  It’s Aiden’s job to go to Earth and find the person who is possessed and bring the soul back to Hell.  But Aiden loves it on Earth and hates it in Hell, so he tries to prolong his stay on Earth by not doing his job.  If he doesn’t find the escaped soul, he doesn’t have to go back to Hell.  With me so far?  So yeah, the book starts with Aiden getting sent to a high school to find an escaped soul.  And at first he thinks it’ll be really cool because he’ll get to be around other kids “his age.”  It’s in quotes because he’s 366 years old, but since he’s immortal he still looks and acts like a teenager.  Right, so Aiden goes to school and tries really hard not to do his job, but then he meets this girl (as often happens in these types of stories) and starts to fall for her.  The problem is that this girl, Elysia, is clearly tied up in the evil soul’s plot, so he’s faced with this dilemma because saving her means he’ll get forced back into Hell, and then he’ll never see her again.  But if he doesn’t save her, obviously she’s gonna be in constant danger.  There’s also more to Elysia than meets the eye, though she is completely unaware of that, and I won’t reveal what that means because it’s supposed to be kind of a mystery.

And that’s it!  If you want to know more about either of these books, or read some of them, let me know and I just might indulge you.  Oh, and if you want to know the dream that led to Hellbound:

In the dream, there was this guy and a girl who fell in love in that vague sort of dream-logic way, and there was this scene I remember clearly where they were kind of lounging in a grassy park somewhere, on a hill, under a tree.  And then this man – early fifties, bald except for some hair around the crown of his head – in a white suit approaches and asks the guy, “Aren’t you going to tell her what you really are?”  Then the boyfriend guy gets all angry and the two of them kind of…run at each other, and they both burst out of their skins into these huge, dog-like creatures with immense bat wings.  The guy in the white suit is white, and the boyfriend character is red.  And they had this epic battle, like they both used their wings to keep themselves steady while standing on their hind legs, and then they shot into the air and had a huge battle in the air, and then somehow the white dog thing went away and the girl asked the guy, who had turned back into a human, what he was.  His response: “I’m a Reditor.  The Hero of Hell.”  And I woke up and was like, “What the what?  How do you get to be the Hero of Hell?  Does that mean you’re evil because Hell’s Hero would be a bad guy?”  So I wrote a book about it.  Don’t know where the dream came from.  I swear I’m not on drugs.  Ok, now I’m done.  Phew.

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