Tag Archives: author

Etsy RE: Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?

black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

I just found out Etsy has a forum. You can expect to see me less often on other places for the next few weeks while I go through reading the entire site. ;) There 5 minutes and I’m already posting answers! :)



Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?

indiepin says:
Hello!
well after a recent Storque reading binge, I read most of the QYDJ articles and it got me intrigued as to what most Etsians do for their “real” day job (if they’ve not already quit and gone full time on Etsy, that is).
I’ll start, and I’d love to know what you folks do!
I graduated from University with a Psychology degree in the summer into the harsh economic climate of the recession and so at the moment Etsy is my main “job”. However, I am also a professional magician, so I end up spending most evenings working events!

Who’s next?

When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them: I’m an artist and author.

My blog’s bio-intro reads:

“You have reached the official blog of Wendy C. Allen aka EelKat. I am an author, artist, fashion designer, doll maker, rooster and feral cat rescuer, Squidoo addict, alien contactee, 5 time NaNoWriMo winner, CosPlayer, Steampunk life actor, huge Sesshomaru fan, vegetarian animal rights activist, and the original outspoken Proctor and Gamble Boycotter, who lives on a farm in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.”

Yeah, basically what it says there, that’s my “day job”.

About 90% of my income comes from my art sales on Zazzle.

My second largest source of income is Squidoo but this is keeping in mind that I am listed as one of Squidoo’s top 10 highest paid members as well, due to the fact that I am there #3 member for having made the most lenses at 507 articles written and more on the way – I am in the extreme minority on Squidoo, most folks barely make a few cents per month, so don’t go quit your day job than join Squidoo thinking you’ll make a full time income there like I do, because out of 800,000+ members there are less than 30 of us that make that much money there!

In addition to writing non-fiction and how to stuff online, offline I’m an author of short stories, chap books, novellas, horror, sci-fi, romance, The Twighlight Manor Series, and a couple of novels. I also write doll pattern booklets and non-fiction books about ufology, alien abduction, and crytozoology.

I also have been an Avon Sales Rep since 1997, but I basically sell it so that I can buy their products for my own use at huge discounts, so it’s not really a big source of income.

Additionally I’m an on call temp/seasonal sales associate and fitting room attendant for Macy’s, so I work there off and on for a total of about 8 weeks a year, usually during the Christmas season.

The rest of my income is spread out across CafePress, Associated Content, eBay, Amazon, LuLu, LinkShare Affiliate Programs, and of course Etsy is my newest addition to my income stream and hopefully in the long run will become my top source of income.

My goal is to have my Etsy store bringing in $5,000 per year by 2012, and expanding that goal to $20,000 per year in the long run once I’ve got it fully set up and established.

In short, my career is to do whatever pops into my head at the moment and find a way to make money at it for a strange assortment of multi-streaming incomes, so I don’t end up having all my eggs in one basket.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

>Etsy RE: Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?

>
black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

I just found out Etsy has a forum. You can expect to see me less often on other places for the next few weeks while I go through reading the entire site. ;) There 5 minutes and I’m already posting answers! :)



Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?

indiepin says:
Hello!
well after a recent Storque reading binge, I read most of the QYDJ articles and it got me intrigued as to what most Etsians do for their “real” day job (if they’ve not already quit and gone full time on Etsy, that is).
I’ll start, and I’d love to know what you folks do!
I graduated from University with a Psychology degree in the summer into the harsh economic climate of the recession and so at the moment Etsy is my main “job”. However, I am also a professional magician, so I end up spending most evenings working events!

Who’s next?

When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them: I’m an artist and author.

My blog’s bio-intro reads:

“You have reached the official blog of Wendy C. Allen aka EelKat. I am an author, artist, fashion designer, doll maker, rooster and feral cat rescuer, Squidoo addict, alien contactee, 5 time NaNoWriMo winner, CosPlayer, Steampunk life actor, huge Sesshomaru fan, vegetarian animal rights activist, and the original outspoken Proctor and Gamble Boycotter, who lives on a farm in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.”

Yeah, basically what it says there, that’s my “day job”.

About 90% of my income comes from my art sales on Zazzle.

My second largest source of income is Squidoo but this is keeping in mind that I am listed as one of Squidoo’s top 10 highest paid members as well, due to the fact that I am there #3 member for having made the most lenses at 507 articles written and more on the way – I am in the extreme minority on Squidoo, most folks barely make a few cents per month, so don’t go quit your day job than join Squidoo thinking you’ll make a full time income there like I do, because out of 800,000+ members there are less than 30 of us that make that much money there!

In addition to writing non-fiction and how to stuff online, offline I’m an author of short stories, chap books, novellas, horror, sci-fi, romance, The Twighlight Manor Series, and a couple of novels. I also write doll pattern booklets and non-fiction books about ufology, alien abduction, and crytozoology.

I also have been an Avon Sales Rep since 1997, but I basically sell it so that I can buy their products for my own use at huge discounts, so it’s not really a big source of income.

Additionally I’m an on call temp/seasonal sales associate and fitting room attendant for Macy’s, so I work there off and on for a total of about 8 weeks a year, usually during the Christmas season.

The rest of my income is spread out across CafePress, Associated Content, eBay, Amazon, LuLu, LinkShare Affiliate Programs, and of course Etsy is my newest addition to my income stream and hopefully in the long run will become my top source of income.

My goal is to have my Etsy store bringing in $5,000 per year by 2012, and expanding that goal to $20,000 per year in the long run once I’ve got it fully set up and established.

In short, my career is to do whatever pops into my head at the moment and find a way to make money at it for a strange assortment of multi-streaming incomes, so I don’t end up having all my eggs in one basket.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

Etsy RE: Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?

black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

I just found out Etsy has a forum. You can expect to see me less often on other places for the next few weeks while I go through reading the entire site. ;) There 5 minutes and I’m already posting answers! :)



Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?

indiepin says:
Hello!
well after a recent Storque reading binge, I read most of the QYDJ articles and it got me intrigued as to what most Etsians do for their “real” day job (if they’ve not already quit and gone full time on Etsy, that is).
I’ll start, and I’d love to know what you folks do!
I graduated from University with a Psychology degree in the summer into the harsh economic climate of the recession and so at the moment Etsy is my main “job”. However, I am also a professional magician, so I end up spending most evenings working events!

Who’s next?

When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them: I’m an artist and author.

My blog’s bio-intro reads:

“You have reached the official blog of Wendy C. Allen aka EelKat. I am an author, artist, fashion designer, doll maker, rooster and feral cat rescuer, Squidoo addict, alien contactee, 5 time NaNoWriMo winner, CosPlayer, Steampunk life actor, huge Sesshomaru fan, vegetarian animal rights activist, and the original outspoken Proctor and Gamble Boycotter, who lives on a farm in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.”

Yeah, basically what it says there, that’s my “day job”.

About 90% of my income comes from my art sales on Zazzle.

My second largest source of income is Squidoo but this is keeping in mind that I am listed as one of Squidoo’s top 10 highest paid members as well, due to the fact that I am there #3 member for having made the most lenses at 507 articles written and more on the way – I am in the extreme minority on Squidoo, most folks barely make a few cents per month, so don’t go quit your day job than join Squidoo thinking you’ll make a full time income there like I do, because out of 800,000+ members there are less than 30 of us that make that much money there!

In addition to writing non-fiction and how to stuff online, offline I’m an author of short stories, chap books, novellas, horror, sci-fi, romance, The Twighlight Manor Series, and a couple of novels. I also write doll pattern booklets and non-fiction books about ufology, alien abduction, and crytozoology.

I also have been an Avon Sales Rep since 1997, but I basically sell it so that I can buy their products for my own use at huge discounts, so it’s not really a big source of income.

Additionally I’m an on call temp/seasonal sales associate and fitting room attendant for Macy’s, so I work there off and on for a total of about 8 weeks a year, usually during the Christmas season.

The rest of my income is spread out across CafePress, Associated Content, eBay, Amazon, LuLu, LinkShare Affiliate Programs, and of course Etsy is my newest addition to my income stream and hopefully in the long run will become my top source of income.

My goal is to have my Etsy store bringing in $5,000 per year by 2012, and expanding that goal to $20,000 per year in the long run once I’ve got it fully set up and established.

In short, my career is to do whatever pops into my head at the moment and find a way to make money at it for a strange assortment of multi-streaming incomes, so I don’t end up having all my eggs in one basket.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

Work From Home, Is It Possible?
The Goldeneagle
How to Start a Publishing Company
Self-Publish vs Vanity Press vs Traditional Publisher

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All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Etsy RE: Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?

pawpawpawpawpaw

black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

I just found out Etsy has a forum. You can expect to see me less often on other places for the next few weeks while I go through reading the entire site. ;) There 5 minutes and I’m already posting answers! :)



Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?

indiepin says:
Hello!
well after a recent Storque reading binge, I read most of the QYDJ articles and it got me intrigued as to what most Etsians do for their “real” day job (if they’ve not already quit and gone full time on Etsy, that is).
I’ll start, and I’d love to know what you folks do!
I graduated from University with a Psychology degree in the summer into the harsh economic climate of the recession and so at the moment Etsy is my main “job”. However, I am also a professional magician, so I end up spending most evenings working events!

Who’s next?

When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them: I’m an artist and author.

My blog’s bio-intro reads:

“You have reached the official blog of Wendy C. Allen aka EelKat. I am an author, artist, fashion designer, doll maker, rooster and feral cat rescuer, Squidoo addict, alien contactee, 5 time NaNoWriMo winner, CosPlayer, Steampunk life actor, huge Sesshomaru fan, vegetarian animal rights activist, and the original outspoken Proctor and Gamble Boycotter, who lives on a farm in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.”

Yeah, basically what it says there, that’s my “day job”.

About 90% of my income comes from my art sales on Zazzle.

My second largest source of income is Squidoo but this is keeping in mind that I am listed as one of Squidoo’s top 10 highest paid members as well, due to the fact that I am there #3 member for having made the most lenses at 507 articles written and more on the way – I am in the extreme minority on Squidoo, most folks barely make a few cents per month, so don’t go quit your day job than join Squidoo thinking you’ll make a full time income there like I do, because out of 800,000+ members there are less than 30 of us that make that much money there!

In addition to writing non-fiction and how to stuff online, offline I’m an author of short stories, chap books, novellas, horror, sci-fi, romance, The Twighlight Manor Series, and a couple of novels. I also write doll pattern booklets and non-fiction books about ufology, alien abduction, and crytozoology.

I also have been an Avon Sales Rep since 1997, but I basically sell it so that I can buy their products for my own use at huge discounts, so it’s not really a big source of income.

Additionally I’m an on call temp/seasonal sales associate and fitting room attendant for Macy’s, so I work there off and on for a total of about 8 weeks a year, usually during the Christmas season.

The rest of my income is spread out across CafePress, Associated Content, eBay, Amazon, LuLu, LinkShare Affiliate Programs, and of course Etsy is my newest addition to my income stream and hopefully in the long run will become my top source of income.

My goal is to have my Etsy store bringing in $5,000 per year by 2012, and expanding that goal to $20,000 per year in the long run once I’ve got it fully set up and established.

In short, my career is to do whatever pops into my head at the moment and find a way to make money at it for a strange assortment of multi-streaming incomes, so I don’t end up having all my eggs in one basket.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

Obsessed? I’m Not Obsessed… REALLY, I’m not!

When Next You See Me I’ll Look Like This:

pawpawpawpawpaw

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

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Blingo

Etsy RE: Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?


black birdfall leaves centerblack bird I just found out Etsy has a forum. You can expect to see me less often on other places for the next few weeks while I go through reading the entire site. ;) There 5 minutes and I’m already posting answers! :)


Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?
indiepin says:
Hello! well after a recent Storque reading binge, I read most of the QYDJ articles and it got me intrigued as to what most Etsians do for their “real” day job (if they’ve not already quit and gone full time on Etsy, that is). I’ll start, and I’d love to know what you folks do! I graduated from University with a Psychology degree in the summer into the harsh economic climate of the recession and so at the moment Etsy is my main “job”. However, I am also a professional magician, so I end up spending most evenings working events! Who’s next?

When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them: I’m an artist and author. My blog’s bio-intro reads: “You have reached the official blog of Wendy C. Allen aka EelKat. I am an author, artist, fashion designer, doll maker, rooster and feral cat rescuer, Squidoo addict, alien contactee, 5 time NaNoWriMo winner, CosPlayer, Steampunk life actor, huge Sesshomaru fan, vegetarian animal rights activist, and the original outspoken Proctor and Gamble Boycotter, who lives on a farm in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.” Yeah, basically what it says there, that’s my “day job”. About 90% of my income comes from my art sales on Zazzle. My second largest source of income is Squidoo but this is keeping in mind that I am listed as one of Squidoo’s top 10 highest paid members as well, due to the fact that I am there #3 member for having made the most lenses at 507 articles written and more on the way – I am in the extreme minority on Squidoo, most folks barely make a few cents per month, so don’t go quit your day job than join Squidoo thinking you’ll make a full time income there like I do, because out of 800,000+ members there are less than 30 of us that make that much money there! In addition to writing non-fiction and how to stuff online, offline I’m an author of short stories, chap books, novellas, horror, sci-fi, romance, The Twighlight Manor Series, and a couple of novels. I also write doll pattern booklets and non-fiction books about ufology, alien abduction, and crytozoology. I also have been an Avon Sales Rep since 1997, but I basically sell it so that I can buy their products for my own use at huge discounts, so it’s not really a big source of income. Additionally I’m an on call temp/seasonal sales associate and fitting room attendant for Macy’s, so I work there off and on for a total of about 8 weeks a year, usually during the Christmas season. The rest of my income is spread out across CafePress, Associated Content, eBay, Amazon, LuLu, LinkShare Affiliate Programs, and of course Etsy is my newest addition to my income stream and hopefully in the long run will become my top source of income. My goal is to have my Etsy store bringing in $5,000 per year by 2012, and expanding that goal to $20,000 per year in the long run once I’ve got it fully set up and established. In short, my career is to do whatever pops into my head at the moment and find a way to make money at it for a strange assortment of multi-streaming incomes, so I don’t end up having all my eggs in one basket. Waiting for Emmett to come. http://twitter.com/EelKat http://www.facebook.com/EelKat http://eknano.blogspot.com http://eelkat.wordpress.com http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659 http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659
What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-

Pet Clothing

Photography, Art, and Designs by Maine artist and photographer Wendy C Allen aka EelKat © 1978 – Present

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Blingo

The Script Frenzy Plot Machine Outputs. Hilarity ensues . . .

I love playing with the Plot Machine. =P It’s so addicting. Some of the things it gives you are out right pee-your-pants funny. Here’s the ones it spit out at me tonight:

    In a world ruled by chickens, a group of Star Wars collectors, discovers the meaning of life.

    Awakened from a 1000-year sleep, a marooned alien, must sew up the hole in the ozone layer.

    In a land of radioactive unicorns, a hyperactive poodle, finds the Planet of the Apes.

    While falling from a covered bridge, King Tut’s breakdancing mummy, shuts down power to Walt Disney World.

    En route to a llama resort, a ticklish polar bear, discovers the meaning of life.

    After saying ‘I don’t’ at the altar, a flock of radioactive parrots, must kill the president to save the country.

    After being bitten by rabid penguins, a biker with a flat tire, teams up with David Bowie to save the world.

    After a disastrous safari, an amorous garden gnome, opens a real estate agency on the moon.

    After a tragic cooking accident, Zorro, joins a traveling band.

    In a world where sleep must be paid for, a stoned principal, must cross a ravine on a tightrope.

    During a summer lightning storm, a bored serial killer, finds a lucky penny.

    After seven failed marriages, a talking blanket, starts to fight back.

    At a sci-fi convention, a screaming busker, travels back in time to kill Hitler.

    While lost in the middle of nowhere, a poor lonely french fry, ingests a pheromone that attracts weasels.

    While jogging naked, a mongoose and a white bear, invents the new Jazzercize.

    After a sex change, a near-sighted chemist, represents Earth in a Galaxy Hotties Contest.

    At a sci-fi convention, a group of aging superheroes, goes back to the beginning.

    After waking from a 100-year nap, Captain Crunch’s evil grandmother, travels back in time to kill Hitler.

    After a nightmare, a hyper first-grade teacher, joins a group of undercover magicians.

    After crash-landing in the desert, a nuclear physicist with a broken heart, invents the cure for a broken heart.

    Aided by a lucha libre champion, a sweaty giant, represents Earth in the Galaxy Hotties contest.

    In an attempt to evade taxes, Zorro, rushes an elite Southern sorority.

    While dreaming about a dream, a nuclear physicist with a broken heart, discovers the meaning of life.

    In a world where cats are currency, a German teenager, can be seen only by toddlers.

    Tired of endorsing golf products, King Tut’s breakdancing mummy, washes up on the shores of Zombie Island.

    Tired of a monotonous day job, a talking blanket, discovers the Meaning of Life.

    While lost in the middle of nowhere, a talking lobster, finds a wish-granting mold.

    While lost in the middle of nowhere, a plain human being, finds the missing link.

    In a world ruled by evil flying elves, a dysfunctional self-help club, must kill the president to save the country.

    Unable to find true love, a life-long bachelor, enters a love triangle with Siamese twins.

    After a sex change, Richard Simmons, begins to build a bridge over the rainbow.

    After getting voted off American Idol, a left-handed guitar player, is mistaken for Elton John and goes with it.

    Aided by a Swedish go-go dancer, an assassin who kills with CDs, travels back in time to kill Hitler.

    After waiting in line for a wii, a man wearing nothing but sneakers, gets trapped in an elevator with Dr. Phil.

    Dressed like Liberace, a goat with a parka on, joins Bill Clinton’s reggae band.

    In the middle of the Autobahn, a talking lobster, discovers the meaning of life.

    In a remote jungle in Brazil, a hairstylist with a missing finger, invents a toaster that changes the world.

    After shrinking to 1/4 of normal size, the smallest Ewok, must smuggle druids across the border

    Lost in the Africa wing of the Science Museum, a nuclear physicist with a broken heart, tracks down a renegade leprechaun.

    In a world where cats are currency, two blind mice, get revenge on a third grade teacher.

    While camping on the roof of the Sears Tower, a Red Hat Society infiltrator, releases Keith Richards into the water supply.

    En route to a llama resort, a teen idol, learns to see in the dark.

    On a space station filled with mimes, Captain Crunch’s evil grandmother, plans a campout in a haunted bayou.

    After crash-landing in the desert, a queen with one eyebrow, must smuggle druids across the border.

    While shopping for money, a poor lonely french fry, must smuggle druids across the border.

    In a rundown Villain’s Club, a superhero with no friends, befriends a young runaway with a secret.

    Under cover of darkness, a unicycling banker, must cross a ravine on a tightrope.

    After getting lost underground, the oldest park ranger in the Andes, discovers the answer.

    While jogging naked, a god of the underworld, can only been seen by toddlers.

    Aided by a lucha libre champion, an Avon lady with violent mood swings, can only been seen by toddlers.

    After being bitten by rabid penguins, a left-handed guitar player, invents the cure for a broken heart.

    While picking cherries, a disgruntled Yeti, shuts down power to Walt Disney World.

    Covered in marmalade, a lonely piggy bank, teams up with David Bowie to save the world.

    In a world where marriage is illegal, a hunky, dimwitted pool boy, accidentally eats a year’s supply of Viagra.

    At a sci-fi convention, a band of intergalactic spice traders, gets revenge on a third grade teacher.

    Tired of endorsing golf products, a horde of drunk musketeers, sets out to shave a sasquatch.

    In a world where no dreams are sweet, a ballerina with a gun, discovers a shocking use for spray cheese

    At the behest of a dying relative, a toddler with a smoking problem, wreaks Godzilla-style havoc.

    After saying “I don’t” at the altar, a disgruntled Yeti, enters a love triangle with Siamese twins.

    In a world where marriage is illegal, an Avon lady with violent mood swings, begins training for a life of pirate-hood.

    While shopping for money, a poor lonely French fry, finds a lost alien puppy.

    Awakened from a 1000-year sleep, a band of urban cannibals, tries to break into pro Sumo wrestling.

    After a traumatic run-in with a gopher, a candy cane maker, attempts to rewrite Finnish history.

    Badly burned in a meth lab explosion, a suicidal stock analyst, must stop the space-time continuum.

    During the reign of robotic turkeys, a team of Olympic cloggers, tries out for the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.

    After anchoring the CBS news for decades, a teen idol, hotwires an abandoned hot air balloon.

    In a world where cats are currency, a marooned alien, opens a real estate agency on the moon.

    After getting voted off American Idol, a biker with a flat tire, unknowingly arrives at a nudist colony.

    Halfway through the big to-do list, a dysfunctional self-help club, skinny dips with the Golden Girls.

    Badly burned in a meth lab explosion, a geek with a broken heart, is kept as a pet by hyper-intelligent dogs.

    After consuming a powerful laxative, a flock of radioactive parrots, starts to fight back.

    After a traumatic run-in with a gopher, a group of retired superheroes, shut down power to Walt Disney World.

    After a nightmare, a bored serial killer, teams up with David Bowie to save the world.

    On a lifelong quest for pixie dust, a ruthless gold digger, finds a lucky penny.

    Unable to find true love, an angry Italian chef, accidentally eats a year’s supply of Viagra.

    At the corner of Broadway and Grand, a mute heckler, leaves it all behind.

    After escaping from prison, a ticklish polar bear, tracks down a renegade leprechaun.

    During surgery, Richard Simmons, washes up on the shores of Zombie Island.

    Framed for murdering the prime minister, a nuclear physicist with a broken heart, joins a group of undercover magicians.

    In a town called Sandwich, a queen with one eyebrow, is mistaken for Elton John and goes with it.

    While scuba diving in a shallow puddle, a toddler with a smoking problem, travels back in time to kill Hitler.

    After a harsh break-up, a talking lobster, receives the 11th commandment.

    During a summer lightning storm, a superhero with no friends, skinny dips with the Golden Girls.

    Awakened from a 1000-year sleep, a stoned principal, finds a lost alien puppy.

    After waiting in line for a Wii, a geek with a broken heart, represents Earth in the Galaxy Hotties contest.

    After anchoring the CBS news for decades, a poetry-writing middle school teacher, leaves it all behind.

    Tired of a monotonous day job, a horde of drunk musketeers, attempts to win the Tour de France.

    After a traumatic run-in with a gopher, a traveling shoe salesman, accidentally eats a year’s supply of Viagra.

    In a world where time moves backward, a suicidal stock analyst, skinny dips with the Golden Girls.

    In a world ruled by earthworms, a narcoleptic bear, ingests a pheromone that attracts weasels.

    After reading a coworker’s email, a poor lonely french fry, unknowingly arrives at a nudist colony.

    In the middle of the Autobahn, a seriously lost Bedouin tribe, switches suitcases with a Mafia hit man.

    While scuba diving in a shallow puddle, a hamster with impulse-control problems, reinvents the wheel.

    Forced to wear a grass skirt, a monarch named Walliump, starts a rumor at the North Pole.

    Framed for murdering the prime minister, a nuclear physicist with a broken heart, must kill the president to save the country.

    While planning for tomorrow, a suicidal stock analyst, leaves it all behind.

    While stealing girl scout cookies, a hamster with impulse-control problems, is mistaken for Elton John and goes with it.

    After a traumatic run-in with a gopher, the cast of Riverdance, begins training for a life of piratehood.

    Awakened from a 1000-year sleep, a duck with a death-wish, teams up with David Bowie to save the world.

    After saying “I don’t” at the altar, Richard Simmons, ingests a pheromone that attracts weasels.

    En route to a llama resort, a talking lobster, must open for Bjork.

    Unable to break into adult entertainment, a man named Tabbouleh, skydives without a parachute.

    Aided by a Swedish go-go dancer, a poor, lonely french fry, tracks down a renegade leprechaun.

    While planning for tomorrow, a disgruntled child actor, is kept as a pet by hyper- intelligent dogs.

    In a world where sleep must be paid for, an amorous garden gnome, hijacks a bus full of Tae Bo instructors.

    While painting a fence, a left-handed guitar player, is trapped in an elevator with Dr. Phil.

    At a sci-fi convention, two blind mice, must stop the space-time continuum.

    After opening an urgent telegram, David Hasselhoff, wreaks Godzilla-style havoc.

    Nervous about vacationing with the in-laws, a show-tunes singing linebacker, joins a traveling band.

    In a world where people age backwards, a unicycling banker, releases Keith Richards into the water supply.

    While lost in the Bermuda Triangle, a seriously lost Bedouin tribe, wreaks Godzilla-style havoc.

    On a snowy day in Hawaii, a horde of drunk musketeers, wreaks Godzilla-style havoc.

    While jogging naked, an amorous garden gnome, hijacks a bus full of Tae Bo instructors.

    With only a week left to live, a bike messenger with a death wish, finds a lucky penny.

    After a tragic cooking accident, a group of Star Wars collectors, represents Earth in the Galaxy Hotties contest.

    In the middle of the Autobahn, a traveling Bible salesman, must cross a ravine on a tightrope.

    While lost in a wormhole, an out-of-work lion tamer, discovers the meaning of life.

    Deep in the sewers of Paris, a disgruntled child actor, takes control of a police station.

    Halfway through a cup of coffee, a man wearing nothing but sneakers, tries out for the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.

    After putting eyeglasses on for the first time, a toddler with a smoking problem, hijacks a bus with one stowaway on board.

    After anchoring the CBS news for decades, an angry squirrel, accidentally eats a year’s supply of Viagra.

    After putting eyeglasses on for the first time, a monarch named Walliump, represents Earth in the Galaxy Hotties contest.

    With only a week left to live, a slug with a snail complex, attempts to win the Tour de France.

    In a world where cats are currency, an amorous garden gnome, can only been seen by toddlers.

    Unable to break into adult entertainment, Captain Crunch’s evil grandmother, befriend’s a young runaway with a secret.

    Lost in the Africa wing of the Science Museum, a hyper first-grade teacher, gets revenge on a third grade teacher.

    After a traumatic run-in with a gopher, a mongoose and a white bear, gets revenge on a third grade teacher.

    After opening an urgent telegram, a flock of radioactive parrots, is visited by the ghosts of the Wright Brothers.

    After seven failed marriages, a lifelong bachelor, sets out to shave a sasquatch.

    In a world where sleep must be paid for, a 31-year-old masochist, plans a campout in a haunted bayou.

    Tired of endorsing golf products, Zorro, opens a real estate agency on the moon.

    After consuming a powerful laxative, Richard Simmons, is trapped in an elevator with Dr. Phil.

    After shrinking to the size of a pea, a cartographer from the future, must smuggle druids across the border.

    On a snowy day in Hawaii, a hunky, dimwitted pool boy, discovers the answer.

    After anchoring the CBS News for decades, a bounty hunter, travels back in time to kill Hitler.

    With only a week left to live, a world-renowned yodeler, joins a traveling band.

    Forced to wear a grass skirt, King Tut’s breakdancing mummy, tries to break into pro Sumo wrestling.

    Unable to break into adult entertainment, a masked villain with no teeth, begins to build a bridge over the rainbow.

    While wishing upon a star, a duck with a death-wish, attempts to rewrite Finnish history.

    Just after dark, an iguana juggler, learns to see in the dark.

    While scuba diving in a shallow puddle, a blind jeweler, is trapped at a dead end.

    Forced to wear a grass skirt, the oldest park ranger in the Andes, befriends a young runaway with a secret.

    Under cover of darkness, an over-caffeinated kangaroo, stows away on an alien pleasure cruise.

    After eating some bad cheese, a pyromaniac firefighter, gets revenge on a third grade teacher.

    During the eyes of the storm, a merry band of woodland ninjas, wreaks Godzilla-style havoc.

    Halfway through a cup of coffee, a hot-headed public defender, travels back in time to kill Hitler.

    Forced to wear a grass skirt, a superhero with no friends, must cross a ravine on a tightrope.

    In a world where marriage is illegal, a geek with a broken heart, skinny dips with the Golden Girls.

    Unable to break into adult entertainment, a flock of radioactive parrots, takes control of a police station.

    In the back of a pickup truck, Richard Simmons, must smuggle druids across the border.

    At the corner of Broadway and Grand, Zorro, travels back in time to kill Hitler.

    During surgery, a Parisian fishmonger, attempts to win the Tour de France.

    At the behest of a dying relative, an obese triathlete, invents a toaster that changes the world.

    After making purple taffy, a band of urban cannibals, teams up with David Bowie to save the world.

    After opening an urgent telegram, a frightened rabbit, tries to build a bridge over the rainbow.

    After a traumatic run-in with a gopher, a blind jeweler, unknowingly arrives at a nudist colony.

    After consuming a powerful laxative, a fed up lab mouse, must sew up the hole in the ozone layer.

    In a haunted space station orbiting Pluto, a ruthless gold digger, attempts to win the Tour de France.

    Deep in the sewers of Paris, David Hasselhoff, releases Keith Richards into the water supply.

    Lost in the Africa wing of the Science Museum, a stoned principal, releases Keith Richards into the water supply.

    After anchoring the CBS news for decades ,a spelling-challenged writer ,sets out to shave a sasquatch.

    In the back of a pickup truck, a traveling Bible salesman, stows away on an alien pleasure cruise.

    Battling a Red Bull addiction, a hot-headed public defender, attempts to rewrite Finnish history.

    During a parent-teacher riot, a masked villain with no teeth, represents Earth in the Galaxy Hotties contest.

    While playing Guitar Hero, a seriously lost Bedouin tribe, finds a hope chest filled with spiders.

    Forced to wear a grass skirt, a horde of drunk musketeers, tracks down a renegade leprechaun.

    Framed for murdering the prime minister, a DJ with Tourette’s, becomes possessed by Beethoven.

    While jogging naked, an obese triathlete, buys an unreliable time machine.

    While searching for a working pen, a poetry-writing middle school teacher joins a group of undercover magicians.

    After anchoring the CBS news for decades, an enormous grasshopper, is visited by the ghosts of the Wright Brothers.

    After a nightmare, a man wearing nothing but sneakers, stows away on an alien pleasure cruise.

    While scuba diving in a shallow puddle, an Avon lady with violent mood swings, shuts down power to Walt Disney World.

    Covered in marmalade, a god of the underworld, discovers a shocking use for spray cheese.

    After falling out of love, a merry band of woodland ninjas, discovers a shocking use for spray cheese.

    After a sex change, a biker with a flat tire, can only been seen by toddlers.

    In a remote jungle in Brazil, a blackjack dealer, finds a lucky penny.

    In a rundown Villains Club, a hot-headed public defender, begins training for a life of piratehood.

    While lost in the middle of nowhere, a Chilean heavy metal band, is kept as a pet by hyper- intelligent dogs.

    Covered in marmalade, a tightrope walker with a fear of heights, fights a saint in a dark alley.

    Battling a Red Bull addiction, a plain human being, wreaks Godzilla-style havoc.

    While on an African Safari, a marooned alien, finds a hope chest filled with spiders.

    After a tragic cooking accident, a ruthless gold digger, washes up on the shores of Zombie Island.

    While searching for a working pen, a band of intergalactic spice traders, finds a wish-granting mold.

    In a world ruled by children, Captain Crunch’s evil grandmother, is visited by the ghosts of the Wright Brothers.

    During the eye of the storm, a quiet mapmaker, begins training for a life of piratehood.

    After a painful sneeze, a god of the underworld, joins Bill Clinton’s reggae band.

    Nervous about vacationing with the in-laws, a glowworm with the flu, rushes an elite Southern sorority.

    After waking from a 100-year nap, a candy cane maker, hijacks a bus with one stowaway on board.

    While looking for a lost sock, a ballerina with a gun, learns to see in the dark.

    In a world ruled by chickens, a hooker with a heart of gold, is trapped in an elevator with Dr. Phil.

    In a world where sleep must be paid for, a bored serial killer, gets drunk with a stranger.

    After a nightmare, a flock of radioactive parrots, must cross a ravine on a tightrope.

    While planning for tomorrow, a lonely piggy bank, wreaks Godzilla-style havoc.

    Under cover of darkness, an iguana juggler, begins training for a life of piratehood.

    In a post-apocalyptic Peru, a geek with a broken heart, is mistaken for John Lennon and goes with it.

    After shrinking to 1/4 of normal size, a group of Tuvan throat singers, wreaks Godzilla-style havoc.

    Unable to have children, a mongoose and a white bear, track down a renegade leprechaun

    After being bitten by rabid penguins, a kangaroo breeder, is trapped in an elevator with Dr. Phil.

    Just after dark, a midwestern scrapbooking club, finds a wish-granting mold.

    In a haunted space station orbiting Pluto, a feuding polka band, must sew up the hole in the ozone layer.

    After consuming a powerful laxative, an angry Italian chef, skinny dips with the Golden Girls.

    While hanging from a ledge, a band of intergalactic spice traders, finds a lost alien puppy.

    After getting lost underground, a god of the underworld, gets revenge on a third grade teacher.

    While jogging naked, an undead soccer team, gets revenge on a third grade teacher.

    After saying “I don’t” at the alter, an obese triathlon athlete, tries to break into Sumo wrestling.

    In a secret city beneath the Potomac, a llama princess, must cross a ravine on a tightrope.

    While scavenging for zipper parts, a Chilean heavy metal band, takes control of a police station.

    After a disastrous safari, a queen with one eyebrow, sets out to shave sasquatch.

    Framed for murdering the prime minister, a band of intergalactic spice traders, tracks down a renegade leprechaun.

    While wishing upon a star, a sweaty giant, must cross a ravine on a tightrope.

    After shrinking to the size of a pea, a sun-worshiping albino, enters a love triangle with Siamese twins.

    After getting voted off American Idol, a sun-worshipping albino, is trapped at a dead end.

    After a painful sneeze, a glowworm with the flu, invents a toaster that changes the world.

    While scavenging for zipper parts, a man wearing nothing but sneakers, leaves it all behind.

    In a world where sleep must be paid for, a bounty hunter, must sew up the hole in the ozone layer.

    After making purple taffy, a bounty hunter, discovers the answer.

    While falling from a covered bridge, a failing college student, discovers a shocking use for spray cheese.

    Dressed like Liberace, a hyper first-grade teacher, is mistaken for Elton John and goes with it.

    Halfway through a cup of coffee, a nuclear physicist with a broken heart, finds a wish-granting mold.

    After a heart attack, a nuclear physicist with a broken heart, finds a wish-granting mold.

    While jogging naked, the oldest park ranger in the Andes, unknowingly arrives at a nudist colony.

    While sketching an alter ego, a frightened rabbit, must sew up the hole in the ozone layer.

    Unable to break into adult entertainment, an angry squirrel, buys an unreliable time machine.

    At the behest of a dying relative, a hairstylist with a missing finger, switches suitcases with a Mafia hitman.

    Deep in the jungle, a talking lobster, is given the 11th Commandment.

    En route to a llama resort, an out-of-work lion tamer, befriends a young runaway with a secret.

    After waking from a 100-year nap, a god of the underworld, rushes an elite Southern sorority.

    While at a super bowl party, a DJ with Tourette’s, invents the cure for a broken heart.

    While hanging from a ledge, a god of the underworld, is trapped in an elevator with Dr. Phil.

    Aided by a Swedish go-go dancer, a dysfunctional self-help group, tries to win the Tour de France.

    After a harsh breakup, a poor lonely French fry, can only be seen by toddlers.

    In a world ruled by evil flying elves, a one-armed fencing champion, starts to fight back.

    In an attempt to evade taxes, an Avon lady with violent mood swings, switches suitcases with a Mafia hit man.

    While painting a fence, a god of the underworld, can only been seen by toddlers.

    While searching for a working pen, a unicycling banker, must smuggle druids across the border.

    In a world ruled by children, a man named Tabbouleh, gets revenge on a third grade teacher.

    After eating some bad cheese, King Tut’s breakdancing mummy, rushes an elite Southern sorority.

    During a rave, a traveling Bible salesman, must avenge the murder of an old flame.

    After saying “I don’t” at the altar, a pyromaniac, firefighter learns to see in the dark.

    After getting voted off American Idol, an iguana juggler, finds a lost alien puppy.

    While searching for a working pen, a spelling-challenged writer, discovers the answer.

    While falling from a covered bridge, a guilty judge, joins a group of undercover magicians.

    After a lifetime of pie making, an undead soccer team, receives dating advice from the afterlife.

    After being bitten by rabid penguins, a 31-year-old masochist, finds a lucky penny.

    While looking for a lost sock, a blind jeweler, must cross a ravine on a tightrope.

    Awakened from a 1000 year sleep, a bored serial killer, must stop the space-time continuum.

    After shrinking to the size of a pea, a superhero with no friends, unknowingly arrives at a nudist colony.

    After shrinking to the size of a pea, a marooned alien, is trapped in an elevator with Dr. Phil.

    Aided by a Swedish go-go dancer, a 31 year old masochist, befriends a young runaway with a secret.

    In a world where cats are currency, an assassin who kills with CDs, fights a saint in a dark alley.

    In a world where no dreams are sweet, a hooker with a heart of gold, washes up on the shores of Zombie Island.

    Framed for murdering the prime minister, a guilty judge, finds a new use for belly buttons.

    Awakened from a 1000 year sleep, a ballerina with a gun, teams up with David Bowie to save the world.

    While painting a fence, Zorro, invents the new Jazzercize.

    Covered in marmalade, a sweaty giant, begins to build a bridge over the rainbow.

    At the behest of a dying relative, a fed up lab mouse, discovers the meaning of life.

    In a world ruled by evil flying elves, a blind jeweler, finds a new use for the belly button.

    In a world where people age backwards, a landlocked seagull, buys an unreliable time machine.

    In a world where cats are currency, a bike messenger with a death wish, invents a toaster that changes the world.

    After escaping from prison, a high school security guard, is kept as a pet by hyper- intelligent dogs.

    Under cover of darkness, a plain human being, reinvents the wheel.

    In a world where no dreams are sweet, a cartographer from the future, rushes an elite Southern sorority.

    Nervous about vacationing with the in-laws, the smallest Ewok, sets out to shave a sasquatch.

    In a haunted space station orbiting Pluto, a talking blanket, finds and rears abandoned adult triplets.

    Tired of endorsing golf products, a glowworm with the flu, attempts to win the Tour de France.

    In a remote jungle in Brazil, a high school security guard, finds a lucky penny.

    While on a shopping spree, a near-sighted chemist, stows away on an alien pleasure cruise.

    Fleeing from an angry mob, a spelling-challenged writer, reinvents the wheel.

    While sketching an alter ego, a band of urban cannibals, befriends a young runaway with a secret.

    In a world where people age backwards, a god of the underworld, finds and rears adult triplets.

    Under cover of darkness, a geek with a broken heart, discovers a shocking use for spray cheese.

    While lost in the middle of nowhere, a stoned principal, is visited by the ghosts of the Wright Brothers.

    On a space station filled with mimes, an over-caffeinated kangaroo, takes control of a police station.

    While jogging naked, a robot with ADD, buys an unreliable time machine.

    During an out of body experience, a cartographer from the future, starts to fight back.

    Awakened from a 1000-year sleep, an angry squirrel, joins Bill Clinton’s reggae band.

    Fleeing from an angry mob, an out-of-work lion tamer, is visited by the ghosts of the Wright Brothers.

    Aided by a Swedish go-go dancer, a spelling-challenged writer, must kill the president to save the country.

    While hanging from a ledge, a talking lobster, attempts to rewrite Finnish history.

    While sketching an alter ego, a traveling shoe salesman, must stop the space-time continuum.

    In a world ruled by chickens, a falcon with a broken wing, starts to fight back.

    After a lifetime of pie-making, the cast of Riverdance, finds a lucky penny.

    After a traumatic run-in with a gopher, a fed up lab mouse, starts a rumor at the North Pole.

    While camping on the roof of the Sears Tower, a one-armed fencing champion, is trapped in an elevator with Dr. Phil.

    In a run down Villains club, a merry band of woodland ninjas, hotwires an abandoned hot air balloon.

    While painting a fence, a group of Star Wars collectors, befriends a young runaway with a secret.

    While camping on the roof of Sears Tower, a bike messenger with a deathwish, switches suitcases with a Mafia hitman.

    Tired of endorsing golf products, a slug with a snail complex, gets lost in an ancient cheese maze.

    In a world where sleep must be paid for, a 31-year-old masochist discovers the meaning of life.

    Battling a Red Bull addiction, a showtunes- singing linebacker, is visited by the ghosts of the Wright Brothers.

    After shrinking to 1/4 of normal size, a slug with a snail complex, begins to build a bridge over the rainbow.

    After crash-landing in the desert, a hyper first-grade teacher, must sew up the hole in the ozone layer.

    While wishing upon a star, a hunky, dimwitted pool boy, stows away on an alien pleasure cruise.

    While dreaming about a dream, an obsessive copy editor, can only been seen by toddlers.

    After eating some bad cheese, an angry Italian chef, injests a phermone that attracts weasels.

    While wishing upon a star, a Midwestern scrapbooking club, stows away on an alien spaceship.

    After a nightmare, a hyper first-grade teacher, joins a group of undercover magicians.

    Halfway through a cup of coffee, an Avon lady with violent mood swings, is trapped at a dead-end.

    During a summer lightning storm, a duck with a death-wish, represents Earth in the Galaxy Hotties contest.

    After putting on eyeglasses for the first time, a hairstylist with a missing finger, represents Earth in the Galaxy Hotties contest.

    After shrinking to the size of a pea, a biker with a flat tire, unknowingly arrives at a nudist colony.

    On the planet Zorbot, an over-caffeinated kangaroo, switches suitcases with a Mafia hit man.

    After making purple taffy, a traveling Bible salesman, washes up on the shores of Zombie Island.

    With only a week left to live, a German teenager, plans a campout in a haunted bayou.

    In a world where time moves backward, a bike messenger with a death wish fights a gang of marching band drummers.

    After saying “I don’t” at the altar, a left-handed guitar, player starts to fight back.

    During a rave, a DJ with Tourette’s, tries out for the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.

    Where reality and fantasy intersect, a teen idol, must kill the president to save the country.

    In a world ruled by evil flying elves, a talking blanket, starts a rumor at the North Pole.

    Battling with a Red Bull addiction, a toddler with a smoking problem takes control of a police station.

    While lost in the Bermuda Triangle, a goat with a parka, on discovers the meaning of life.

    While dreaming about a dream, an obsessive copy editor, can only been seen by toddlers.

    While lost in the middle of nowhere, a monarch named Walliump, receives dating advice from the afterlife.

    After saying “I don’t” at the altar, a robot with ADD, must sew up the hole in the ozone layer.

    After opening an urgent telegram, an environmentalist with a Hummer, invents the cure for a broken heart.

    On a space station filled with mimes, a failing college student, finds a lost alien puppy.

    While searching for a working pen, King Tut’s breakdancing mummy, gets lost in an ancient cheese maze.

    While lost in a department store, a plain human being, hotwires an abandoned hot air balloon.

    After crash-landing in the desert, a sentient alien sock puppet, tracks down a renegade leprechaun.

    While painting a fence, a god of the underworld, can only been seen by toddlers.

    While drowning in the Caspian Sea, a monarch named Walliump, receives the 11th commandment.

    While stealing girl scout cookies, a ill-mannered Turkish diplomat, befriends a young runaway with a secret.

    In a town called Sandwich, a god of the underworld, gets stuck at the beginning of time.

    While hanging from a ledge, a talking lobster, invents a toaster that changes the world.

    En route to a llama resort, a narcoleptic bear, hijacks a bus with one stowaway on board.

    In an attempt to evade taxes, a hunky dimwitted pool boy, must cross a ravine on a tightrope.

    In a haunted space station orbiting Pluto, a man named Tabbouleh, attempts to rewrite Finnish history.

    While lost in the middle of nowhere, a duck with a death-wish, is visited by the ghosts of the Wright Brothers.

    In the back of a pickup truck, an enormous grasshopper, ingests a pheromone that attracts weasels.

    While camping on the roof of the Sears tower, Orville Redenbacher, receives the 11th commandment.

    Badly burned in a meth lab explosion, a seriously lost Bedouin tribe, attempts to win the Tour de France.

    While scavenging for zipper parts, a superhero with no friends, discovers the answer.

    After waking from a 100-year nap, a poetry-writing middle school teacher, finds a new use for belly buttons.

    Forced to wear a grass skirt, a tone-deaf opera singer, reinvents the wheel.

    Framed for murdering the prime minister, a merry band of woodland ninjas, opens a real estate agency on the moon.

    Lost in the Africa wing of the Science Museum, a band of urban cannibals, discovers the meaning of life.

    In a world ruled by children, a stoned principal, finds the missing link.

    On a lifelong quest for pixie dust, an angry Italian chef, takes control of a police station.

    After getting lost underground, a poor lonely french fry, joins a traveling band.

    In a world ruled by chickens, a near-sighted chemist, receives the 11th commandment.

    In a rundown Villains Club, a masked villain with no teeth, discovers the meaning of life.

    Fleeing from an angry mob, an iguana juggler, finds a new use for belly buttons.

    Fleeing from an angry mob, a band of urban cannibals, shuts down power to Walt Disney World.

    While eavesdropping, a hawk with a broken wing, hotwires an abandoned hot air balloon.

    Deep in the sewers of Paris, an undead soccer team, sets out to shave a sasquatch.

    In the middle of the Autobahn, a landlocked seagull, fights a gang of marching band drummers.

    Just after dark, an assassin who kills with CDs, leaves it all behind.

    After being bitten by rabid penguins, Captain Crunch’s evil grandmother, skydives without a parachute.

    In an attempt to evade taxes, a suicidal stock analyst, teams up with David Bowie to save the world.

    After winning $1,042 on a radio show, a group of retired superheroes, finds a hope chest filled with spiders.

    While drowning in the Caspian Sea, a group of retired superheroes, fights a gang of marching band drummers.

    While lost in the Bermuda Triangle, a talking lobster, hijacks a bus full of Tae Bo instructors.

    On the planet Zorbot, a sidekick named Hero, fights a saint in a dark alley.

    At a sci-fi convention, a stoned principal, plans a campout in a haunted bayo.

    While lost in the Bermuda Triangle, a left-handed guitar player, learns to see in the dark.

WOW! Some of those sound like script material for a Jerry Springer episode! LOL! I can just imagine people reading/watching these and chanting “JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!”

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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NaNoWriMo RE: Why does CreateSpace ask for your social security number?

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EquuestriaanGlowing Halo
Why does CreateSpace ask for your social security number?
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Joined: Nov 6, 2008
Location: Haverford, PA
Posts: 30
Posted on:
Dec 9, 2009 – 18 33
My mom won’t let me do the createspace thing because it makes you give your social security number! Any idea why they ask for that?

Because you are creating an account to sell books, and every time you sell a book they have to report the sale to the IRS so that the IRS knows who is not paying their taxes. All online sites that are not scams ALWAYS ask for your SSN. That’s how you can pick out a scam operation fast. (Though, a lot of scammer will ask for your SSN as well; but no legitimate place will ever NOT ask you for it either.)

As long as you are over 12 years of age and are bringing in an income, you have to report all your income to the IRS. Even if you do not earn enough to have to pay taxes, you still have to fill out the tax forms and send them in.

The IRS requires your SSN. Than they cross reference it with all registered businesses, that have you listed on their payroll, to make certain that you are not skipping out on reporting any of your earned income.

That’s why places like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Suidoo, LuLu, CreareSpace, Associated Content, etc, ask for your SSN. Because you are selling a product on line, which means you are the owner of a home business, and these sites act as the middle man to collect pay from the buyer and give it to you the seller. They also keep a record of every sale and every penny they send you. Than in April they send all that information to the IRS.

That same April, you have to send your personal records to the IRS as well. The IRS checks to make sure that the info you sent matches the info the company sent.

In other words, if you sell books via CreateSpace and CreateSpace tells the IRS you sold those books, the IRS than knows that you will be sending in your tax forms. If you do not send those records in, the IRS uses the SSN to track you down, come to your house and put you (or your parents if you are under 18 years old) in jail for tax evasion.

(And even before CreateSpace tells them, the IRS already know you sold the book, because that is what an ISBN does – that’s why you can not legally sell a book in the USA without an ISBN on it – the IRS uses the ISBN to track book sales.)

CreateSpace is required by law to keep a record of the SSN of each of their authors, otherwise the IRS will shut them down.

In other words – it’s required by USA law, that every business has a record of each of their employees SSN for tax purposes, and by signing up with CreateSpace, you become a self employed freelancer who has hired CreatSpace to act as your middle man to collect money from your customers.

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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“Rule #3: The main character can’t be clinically insane.” What the hell? Who thinks up rules for playwrights? (A Script Frenzy Rant)

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I was reading Marsha Norman’s Tips for Playwrights and was stunned by her #3 choice as a required rule for script writing. Here is what she lists as her three top choices:

Marsha Norman’s Tips for Playwrights

Rule #1: No passive central character;
Rule #2: On or about page 8, tell the audience why they are here and what is at stake, or to put it more simply, when they can go home.
Rule #3: The main character can’t be clinically insane.

Now first off, I can’t stand any one who is so holier-than-thou that they would go so far as to tell you which PAGE NUMBER you should put what on in your script. So right off the back I had a bone to pick with her with her #2 rule, but it was her #3 rule that really spun me off on a rant.

“Rule #3: The main character can’t be clinically insane.” What the hell? Can you believe the audacity of it? Who thinks up rules for playwrights?

I can’t figure out where people come up with these “rules”, I see them all the time, but this one just pissed me off, because it was so ridiculous! I mean 90% of the plays, tv shows, and movies out there have a clinically insane character in them. Of course, being “clinically insane” myself, this is an issue that gets me ranting because I hate the whole stereotype.

Okay: raise your hand if you know the following plays:

Hamlet

A Christmas Carol

Macbeth

Arsenic and Old Lace

Yeah, all feature a clinically insane main character! WOW! I guess THOSE should have flopped big time, huh?

Now what I want to know is, how does she rationalize this idiotic rule? Why can’t the main character be clinically insane? Or maybe I should take it one step farther and ask her: Do you even know what a “clinically insane” person is? Would you know one if you saw one. If you met me face to face would you think I was clinically insane? Probably not. Most people don’t. But guess what? I am.

So I take it that the woman who came up with this ridiculous “Rule #3: The main character can’t be clinically insane.” probably thinks of all “clinically insane” people as a cardboard carbon copy stereotype. Well, I got news for you, I may be crazy, but I ain’t no damned stereotype! And neither are any of my main characters, who, guess what, they are what you would term “clinically insane.”

I have Schizotipal Asperger’s Syndrome. For those who don’t know what that is, it means I have three different mental disorders: Autism, Schizophrenia, and OCD. I am technically considered to be clinically insane. I guess I wouldn’t make a very good main character according to her would I?

All of my main characters are either Schizotypal Aspies, Autistic, Schizophrenic, or OCD. I can’t write about “normal” characters, because I wouldn’t know the first thing about getting inside the head of a “normal” character. I write what I know, as does every writer. =P

Of course, one of the most famous plays ever written was Hamlet, about a guy who walked around talking to skulls, ghosts, invisible being who no one else could see, and over all spent more time in the company of dead people that living people. Interesting.

And what about A Christmas Carol? Can you honestly say that the violent, sadistic Scrooge who spends his nights hob-knobbing with ghosts and spirits is “normal”?

How about Pirates of the Caribbean’s Jack Sparrow? He boldly goes where no sane person could ever go and is not afraid to say as much.

Would you consider Doctor Who to be sane? Most say he’s a raving madman.

So are you saying that main characters like Captain Jack, Scrooge, and Hamlet and I don’t know, just about every other main character ever used in a play, TV show, or movie is NOT clinically insane? Or do you just not know what it is that causes a person to be classified as be clinically insane?

And are you aware that most mental health physicians would quickly classify EVERY Christian who talks (prays) to God – Jesus – Mary, to be clinically insane because they are talking to a person they can not see, never will see, and can not prove exists? So, all in all, sanity really is a question of perspective.

I have to wonder though, how did she come up with that as a rule for writing a script? Nine out of every ten Main characters from hugely successful plays, TV shows, and movies IS in fact considered to be clinically insane, in fact, it’s the plays, TV shows, and movies which feature “normal” main characters that flop.

And while I’m on this subject, let’s talk about the stereotypes shall we? Let’s look at her cloice of words here: “Rule #3: The main character can’t be clinically insane.” Does any one else have a problem with her using the term “clinically insane”?

What’s wrong with it? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it: it’s no different than calling a black person a nigar, THAT’S what’s wrong with it! Just like no person with any sort of dignity would even think to call a black man a nigar, so to would no reputable doctor who ever think to call some one with a learning disability “clinically insane”. The term hasn’t been used medically in a good 60 years, so why do writers persist in using it?

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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Authors want publishers to buy their manuscripts off Amazon??? What the hell?

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I was just reading the blog post: How not to sell your book on Robert J. Sawyer’s Blog, in which he tells of an author who sent him this request:

A few years ago I sent you an email to see if you were interested in publishing my first novel. You were interested but I did not follow up because I was still working on it. Finally it is complete, and I will soon have it posted on Amazon.com.


If you would be interested in reviewing this work for me I would be extremely grateful. If you would be interested in publishing it, I would be even more grateful.

Well, I have to say I have never heard of that one before, and I agree with his answer and comments about it.

OMG! For starters I’m shocked that the query and the mss were separated by *YEARS* not *WEEKS*.

And secondly – I don’t even know where to begin here – I think I could go off on a hundred page rant over this. Secondly, how can any one in their right mind expect a publisher/editor/agent to actually PAY money to read your MSS?

I mean, I could see having a printer print up one single bound copy of your book, so you could doing the editing directly on the pages, before typing up the final MSS to send in, sure. Why not? An expensive way to edit your book, but whatever. But to PUBLISH it and than list it FOR SALE (on Amazon no less), and than ask a publisher to BUY the MSS and than REPRINT it?!?!?!?! What the heck?

***Here I printed up a sample of my manuscript and it’s for sale on Amazon. If you want to publish my book, please buy the manuscript off Amazon first.***

Yeah, I can just see Amazon starting a section for authors to list *unpublished manuscripts* for publishers to buy. LOL! Where do people come up with these ideas anyways?

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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NaNoWriMo RE: RE: Planning on doing Script Frenzy but I’ve never done it. Shar

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Right now, seeing how NaNo is over, I’m putting most of my energy into planning for Screnzy. I’m very into my plot for Screnzy, to the point that I’l probably have it written in a few weeks and have to come up with another one for April! LOL!

I’m posting over there on the forums, so, you can ask questions over there, and hopefully I’ll find them.

Unfortunately, though I’ve signed up every year of Script Frenzy, I have yet to actually participate in it. The first year of the contest, a funeral took up every free minute of my entire summer. The second year, a flood swept through leaving us without a place to live and my dad in a coma. The third year, nothing got in the way, but than come June, me and some several hundred other Screnzy members got a shock when we arrived at the Screnzy site to find that Script Frenzy had changed their date from June to April and not one of us had received an email telling us of the date change, apparently some sort of an error had caused about half of the emails to not get delivered. :(

*sigh* It’s always something. Oh well. I never let that stop me from writing scripts. I write scripts any ways, and have for, I don’t know 20 or so years now. I think I wrote my first script in 1981, or there abouts, so yeah, it’s not too big a deal for me to miss Screnzy, writing wise, but socially wise, I like the whole community comrade feel you get when doing something like NaNo or Screnzy, so I was disappointed to miss it the first few years. :(

My life has changed a lot since than however. Since than I have lost my job and become a full time writer instead of a part time writer, which means, come hell or high water (again) I’ll be able to join in any ways, seeing how I’m now free to write any one of the 24 hours of the day or night and don’t have to stick to a work schedule any more.

Another change resulted from my 2008 NaNoWriMo book. I wrote and published my autobiography last year, which, has caused my bishop to threaten to excommunicate me, and resulted in my being disown by more than 200 of my 264 relatives, and has resulted in an end of all my personal friendships, except for one. So, I have A LOT more free time on my hands seeing how I no longer have any friends or family to hang out with and am no longer allowed to go to church meeting s and activities.

In other words, when I started doing NaNo and Screnzy, I had a lot on my plate and not much time to write. But today? No job. No friends. No church. No family. Yep, I has plenty of time to be a full time writer now.

I’m signing up to be the local ML, just as soon as the sign up page goes live once again (am impatiently waiting for that to happen), because Maine only has one ML and she’s like 100 miles north of me! Southern Maine (Greater Portland) is the theater capital of New England, people come from all over the world to train for stage acting here and there are like 4 dozen theaters with in 20 minutes of me. Every body and his uncle has written at least one play and thinks himself a playwright, and yet, we have no ML for Screnzy!!!! I couldn’t believe it when I found that out.

Of course, I also found out that last year was a record breaking year, when the ENTIRE state of Maine had 66 people signed up for Script Frenzy!!! Only 66??? Are you kidding me? 66 people was a record breaker?? WTH? OMG! We definitely need to get the word out about Screnzy, because we got enough locals writing plays to break the world wide membership record not just the local record. *sheesh* why don’t these people think to sign up? I mean, they are writing plays any ways right? I can only assume that they simply have no idea Screnzy exists, otherwise lots more folks would be signed up for it.

So, it is my goal to become the Greater Portland ML and than set out to getting flyers and posters out to all the theaters to get people joining in. Plus, leading the write-ins too. We’ve yet to have a single Screnzy write in here in Southern Maine! Not once in four years! OMG! That has so got to change.

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Okay, so there you have my personal story about me vs Script Frenzy. Let’s move on to the advice stuff.

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You don’t say specifically, what you need advice for, so I’ll just ramble on generally, about various bits of script writing advice and, heck, maybe some thing will be useful for you! =P I write for small stage (school/college/local) and for comic books (Disney) so, my own script writing style leans heavy in those areas.

First off, a lot depends on the type of script you are writing. Not all scripts are created equal. The basic types of scripts are:

    Movie Scripts

    TV Scripts

    Radio Scripts: DJ/Talk Show, News Broadcast, or Live Show/Play

    News Report Scripts

    Animation Scripts

    Talk Show Scripts

    Musical Scripts

    Stage Play Scripts

    Advertisement Scripts

    Comic Book Scripts

Each of those is different and each is written in it’s own unique formate and style, and depending on the one you plan to write, you’ll will have to use a completely different style and format. So a person who writes movie scripts may be lost when it comes to attempting to write a comic book script or vise versa.

So, the first thing you need to figure out is: What type of script do you want to write?

To answer that, ask yourself, where do you see your script being published? Here are so things to think about before starting your script:

    Will it be a meteorologist’s report on the latest storm read on the nightly news or will it be the next episode of Pokemon?

    Are you writing hoping to be accepted by BBC for the next season of Doctor Who or are you writing a play for your local collage drama troupe?

    Do you want to write the words Oprah will say in her next show or would you rather write the next episode of Days of Our Lives?

    Are you writing a script for The Price is Right or are you going to write the next big screen movie Johnny Depp will star in?

    Is your script the next Broadway hit or a modern day remake of the Orson Wells War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast?

    Are you writing the next local cable advertisement of Jolly John’s Used Cars or the national broadcast of McDonald’s new flavor milk shake?

    Do you want to write a comic book? If so, will it be for Marvel or DC or Dark Horse or Disney? Did you know that each of the four comic book giants has their own specified script format, each extremely different from the other three and that none will look at an incorrectly formated script no matter how well written?

Before you can start asking for advice on how to write and format your script, you first have to determine, what exactly your script is going to be, and than you need to direct your questions to a script writer who writes the same type of scripts you plan to write.

For Script Frenzy, it is safe to assume that you are planing either a movie, tv show, comic book, or stage play script, as 99% of the scripts written during Screnzy are one of those.

The first thing you need to remember during Script Frenzy is this: Dialog.

Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog.
Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog.
Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog.
Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog. Dialog.

and oh, look at that . . . more dialog!

If you are not good at writing dialog, than you will have a tough time at script writing, because script writing it straight up, no stop dialog.

There is no prose in script writing.

There is no narration in script writing.

There are no long descriptions of scenery in script writing.

There is no pretty and plentiful purple prose in script writing.

Script writing is dialog. Only dialog. Nothing but dialog. Dialog and nothing else. Period.

Script writing will do wonders at teaching you how to cut out adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and pretty much every thing else you would use when writing a novel, as you won’t be using those much if you use any at all.

The basic general format of a script is this:

    DAVE:
    (walks into room)

    MARSHA! What are you doing here?

    MARSHA:
    (slaps DAVE on face)

    I know about you and that hussy.

    (throws wedding ring on floor)

    We are through! I want a divorce!

    :CAMERA: Close up on DAVE’s face.

    DAVE:
    (stares speechlessly)

And that’s about it. A stage or radio script wouldn’t have the camera focus points, but TV, movie, and comic book scripts all do. I’m going to quote something I posted a while back on Script Frenzy:

    How much stage direction is reasonable?

    [quote=]
    Hey guys!
    How much stage direction do you think is reasonable? I’m just trying to figure out what would be too much…
    Thanks![/quote]

    I’d say it depends on the play write’s personal style as well as the style of the play in question. I think of stage direction in a play, like the choreography in a ballet. If every player knows where to be when and what to do at what moment, than you don’t have characters falling over each other and messing up the play.

    For example a one person play may not need any directions at all, simply relying fully on the actor’s personal movements as he speaks. With only one or two actors on stage, the play would be more open to actor interpretation. Two actors could guess each others movements and act accordingly.

    Whereas a full two hour production with intricate (setting, lighting, costume, etc) details, and 20 or 30 actors on stage at the same time, would need quite a bit of stage direction to prevent it from turning into utter chaos. I mean, if you have 20 actors on stage, each one “doing his own thing” when it comes to interpretation, you’d have nothing but a huge uncoordinated mess.

    So, when I’m writing a play, my personal style is: the bigger the production, the more detailed the stage directions need to be, while the smaller production can go with little or even no stage directions.

Also, scripts are very fast moving and high paced. There is no stopping to look at the flowers and talk about sunsets. It’s Action, action, actions, constantly moving forward, never pausing for a moment.

And I’m going to quote something I posted a few weeks ago here on NaNoWriMo, because while it aplies to novel writing, it really, really, REALLY hits home big time with Script writing:

    If you look at a lot of the bestsellers out there, and start counting words, you will find most have seven words or less per sentence!

    OR

    Take a look at the bestsellers. Count the words per sentence. Most have seven words or less.

Notice how one long sentence became three? But both gave the same advice. The first sentence was confusing to read. It slows the reader down. The second set was easier to digest. The reader could read it faster.

==================================================

You want fast pace? Try this: Dialog, Dialog, Dialog, BAM, Narrative, Dialog, Dialog, Dialog

Uh-huh, yep, that’s right. The fastest way to pick up the pace and speed up the action is to let your characters talk and talk and talk and talk. Not one character monologing his fool head off. Get four or five characters in the scene and have them speaking one sentence at a time, back and forth.

[quote=Genuine]I swear I could write straight dialogue for hours, but here’s what my writing looks like. I have lots of dialogue, and giant paragraphs here or there. It’s the talking head syndrome. And it is not good when my characters feel like they’re talking inside a Giant White Room of Nothingness! Here’s an example

The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing. The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing. The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing. The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing. The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing. The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing.

Person1: Blah, blah, bler, fleeble

Person2: BLAH? Dooble!

Person1: Dooble, dooble, dooble.

Person2: Tubbyblubby flur

Person1: Fla, fla, flah

Person1: Blah, blah, bler, fleeble

Person2: BLAH? Dooble!

Person1: Dooble, dooble, dooble.

Person2: Tubbyblubby flur

Person1: Fla, fla, flah

The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing. The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing. The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing. The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing. The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing. The sun swept radiant rays of burblebobble across the quaint scene of XYZ, and the clouds burst into fleecing.
———-
[/quote]

LOL! What a great post! It was like reading Keith Laumer’s Retief series!

Though I write short stories and novels as well, my main writing base is comics. I’m used to reading and writing comics. In other words I am used to write straight dialog, and nothing but dialog. I can write dialog for hours on end. Have characters chatting away, verbalizing everything that they are seeing, hearing, doing, and thinking.

It’s all that straight up dialog that causes comic books to be such fast paced stories.

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[quote=Banespawn]Don’t stop to descibe things. Make the descriptions part of the action.[/quote]

Yep. I say this all the time too.

You could say:

    He walked past the tree.

I’d say:

    He walked past the willow tree.

I only added one little word. That’s it. But it changed the whole picture in the readers head. Nothing big. Just little things. Of course I could also say:

    He walked past the giant, green, weeping willow tree were Billy carved his name way back in 2056.

But that is just too long and wordy, and adds details that do not move the story forward.

Keep it short, keep it simple, keep it familiar, let the reader interpret the minor details themselves, and you’ll write a book that’s easy to read and seems familar to your readers, even if it’s a fictional world lightyears from the earth.

I sit here thinking about the beautiful purple sunsets sending rays of light across the green grassy hills and listening to the sound of pretty blue feathered song birds as they sing their songs of . . . YAWN . . . .

So when is the story going to start? Or when are we going to get back to the characters? Or, you know, when are we going to do something, ANYTHING? A few phrases of flowery descriptions scattered in here and there between dialog is fine, but when you start writing page after page after page of descriptions, I start falling asleep.

There should be dialog on every page. More than 50% (maybe even 75%) of your book should be dialog.(Ask any editor or publisher what makes a bestseller a best seller and they’ll tell you it’s all about the dialog). The remaining should be largely action.

You can tell me that on your planet the trees are blue, but don’t tell me the entire biology lesson on the hows and why of the tree being blue. So it’s blue. That great! Now get on with the action. What else is the character doing besides noticing that the trees are blue? Is there someone hiding behind the blue tree? Why did the character tell me the tree was blue? Why purpose does the blue tree have in your plot? I’m not a botanist, I don’t need to know what every plant on your planet looks like and why it looks that way – all I care about is what your MC is doing.

Less prose – more action.

Less prose – more dialog.

Give me a fast read, don’t slow me down with flowery purple prose.

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But than: What about fight scenes? you ask. Well, what about them? Have you ever seen a REAL fight? A real fight only lasts a few seconds. You’d be hard pressed to find a real fight that lasted longer than 30 seconds. What you see in the movies? That’s just for effect. A real fight is never anything like what you see in the movies.

    A punch. A whack. A quick shuffle in the mud. And than it’s over.

I figure it should take the reader no more than 5 seconds to read the fight. Thus my fight scenes tend to be quick and short. Heck, you just read one of them!

What about epic battles for fantasy or military fiction? Regardless of how many people are fighting, (even if it’s a big battle) I pick out only two fighters, and focus on them. I describe the actual action between the two fighters, focusing more on the inner emotional responce of the one that is loseing, (even if they are not a MC) thus makeing the winning fighter seem much more feirce. Usually I focus more on the pain from the blow, than the actual blow itself.

Generally my fight scenes are less than three paragraphs long. I use short sentences (most less than seven words each, often only 2 words each). I use simple small words. I let it flow past the reader quickly, giving them the illusion that they are being pulled through the action at the same break neck speed in which the action takes place.

[quote=Esteleth]
They could hear the evidence of a struggle downstairs: shuffling then running footfalls, a chase, a muffled scream, the pushing around of furniture, the breaking of a vase, thuds, curses, their mother’s voice rising up in a shrill teary scream…[/quote]

Actually, this would read faster if you had done this:

    They could hear the struggle downstairs. The shuffling. The footfalls. The chase. A muffled scream. The furniture pushed aside. A vase breaking. THUD! CRASH! Some one cursed. Their mother’s voice rose up. A shrill scream . . .

Long run on sentences always slow the readers down. Every time you put a comma some where, go back and see if you can change in into a period.

Also, you are using way to many prepositions. In an action scene the fewer prepositions, the better. None is best. Prepositions slow the pace. Cut them out whenever possible.

Take this writer’s advice to heart:
[quote=havocfett]Write short. Write Choppy. Write dynamic. Don’t stay on one thing. Move quickly through the scene.[/quote]

Short and choppy wins the race when it comes to action and fast pace. Don’t be afraid of fragments. Forget your English teacher. Fragments are your friend. Slice and dice every run on sentence. Turn as many comas as possible into periods.

But remember – only do this for you fast paced action scenes. You don’t want a book of nothing but short and choppy! Your descriptions scenes should have longer sentences, that tire your reader out and make them want to stop and take a deep breath. (But not so many that you put them to sleep!)

You want to mix it up and keep things interesting. Like a roller coaster, your plot should have slow moving ups, and fast moving downs, back and forth through out the entire book.

[quote=wynnie.the.poooh]
3. If it’s a killing spree, kill people. Mention them, their side in the battle and then BLAM!
4. Use a lot of action sounds. BLAM! makes you think of a firing gun. SPLAT! makes you think of something hitting the ground. With a splat. This is actually a phenomenon (the use of words as nouns that sound like the sound they are naming).[/quote]

    BLAM! SPLAT! SOCK! PUNCH!

    Holy Rusted Drain Pipes, Batman, it’s the Penguin!

    BAM! THUD! SQUISH! BOOM!

    Great Scott, Batman! You got him!

Yep, take a cue from Batman – Single word action sentences will move your story along much faster than 10 pages of description ever could!

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And here’s something that I don’t see any one mentioning yet, but when you start preaching and lecturing and pushing a cause, it really slows down your pace a lot. The last thing any author wants to hear from their readers is: I’m Not Stupid – Don’t Talk Down To Me and Preach at Me!

In other words:

Don’t waste an entire chapter telling me why lions live in Africa and Tigers live in China. If I wanted to know that, I’d have looked for it on Wikipedia.

Don’t spend 3 pages telling me the symptoms of cancer. Tell me your MC has cancer and move on to how she deals with it. If I want to know the symptoms and details of treatment, I’ll read a medical journal.

Okay, so maybe I don’t know where Yorkshireville Town is. If I want to know, I’ll look it up on Google Earth, I don’t need you to give detailed directions. I’m not planning on a trip there, I just want to read your novel.

Remember that you are writing a story not a dictionary. You are writing a story not a medical journal. You are writing a story not a travel guide. You are writing a story. Stop explaining every thing to me and just tell the story! Don’t act like I’m a retard and stop the story to explain everything. I’m smarter than you think. I know what you mean, and if I don’t know, I know how to look it up and find out for myself. Just stick with the story and nothing but the story. Stop talking down to me like I’m a little kid who don’t know nothing!

You got a chip on your shoulder? You got a cause to promote? You got an issue to protest? You want to save my soul from hell by getting me to join your church? Write a pamphlet and hand it out on the streets – build a web site – start a blog – do something to tell people about it, but don’t take it out on me your reader! Sure, maybe I will agree with you, maybe I’ll want to support your cause too, but there is a right way and a wrong way to get supporters, and strategically lacing your novel with preaching and lectures is the WRONG way to do it! Just stick with the story and nothing but the story. Stop preaching to me like I’m the enemy!

By removing every thing from your writing that makes it sound like a dictionary, encyclopedia, or church manual, you will do wonders to speed up the pace.

Well, that should give you enough pointers to get you started in the planning stages at least. I hope some of what I said helped you out. Good luck!

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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NaNoWriMo RE: Who’s going back to their ’08 Nano?

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RE: Who’s going back to their ’08 Nano?


phantom000
Who’s going back to their ’08 Nano?
Winner!
53,343 / 50,000
Official Participant
Joined: Oct 18, 2008
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 101
Posted on:
Dec 4, 2009 – 12 02
Well i am thoroughly burnt out on the story i did for NanoWrimo this year and there are just too many holes to fill up, and for some reason i have this desire for knights, ninjas and pirates so i’m going back to my old project i did back in ’08.
Anyone else doing the same?
———-
“If you have a little voice in your head that talks to you, don’t worry your human. If you have three or four voices that argue with each other, don’t worry your a writer!”


My 2008 is being published. Even though it already went through 4 drafts during 2009, it still requires some editing (yes, my spelling is THAT bad – I have Autism and dyslexia – you are lucky if you can make out half my words! LOL!) Anyways, it’s FINALLY nearly corrected, with only a few minor typos to fix now. I got the final galleries (proofs) in September, and am editing out the few typos that slipped through the earlier edits, but once that’s done, all I got to do is send the corrected proof back and it’ll be finished! YAY! The planned release date is February, so as long as I get the editing done before than, I’m all set.

I’d like to go back and edit my 2006 and my 2007 as well. The 2007, has some huge plot holes that need filling in, but pretty much, other than that and spelling errors, it’s nearly ready to publish.

Unfortunately my 2006 dealt with a topic that can’t be published (a 14 year old girl, gets pregnant after an affair with her grandfather) and I’ve already been told again and again and again, that unless I change the girl to 18 years old than there is no way this side of hell that any publisher will touch my book. :( :( :( :( I really liked this one, it is, in my opinion and in the opinions of my beta readers, by far the best story I’ve ever written, and really pulls the reader in emotionally to the plight of the girl and the stress she has to go through because of her situation. Changing her to an 18 year old, would completely change the story – the whole point of the story is the fact that she is so young, which results in her friends, family, church, etc, just pretty much shunning her and treating her as an outcast, and no one bothers with the grandfather at all, except to ban her from ever seeing him again, which farther stresses her, because at this point he’s the only one not shunning her. The whole story just revolves around that fact that she is so damn young, and publishers freaking out about political correctness is, well, just plain stupid. So, I’ll be self pubbing this one, once I go back and edit is for spelling and grammar errors.

I wrote two for 2009, and I’ll be editing to publish both of them as well, but, right now I’m tossing them aside to give myself some time to forget what I wrote so that I can edit them better later on.

Right now, I’m putting most of my energy into planning for Screnzy. I’m very into my plot for Screnzy, to the point that I’l probably have it written in a few weeks and have to come up with another one for April! LOL!

Incubus: Fear the Night!

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http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

On Making Cover Art for NaNoWriMo Novels

This post is for those who’ve asked how I create the cover art for my books. It’s very simple really, and any one can do it, and it’s 100% free.

I use Paint. It’s pretty much the only image editor I ever used. I have a digital camera, so I take my own photos and the editing them using Paint. I also paint pictures with acrylics and watercolors, than scan them into my computer, and again, edit them using Paint. Over the years I’ve written a ton of books and self published nearly ever one of them, always using my own photographs, my on art, and always editing my cover art, using, you guessed it: Paint.

Here is my cover for this year:

And here is how I made it, with out spending a penny:

I spent last night testing various book cover ideas. I know, I’ve still got a few months of editing to do, before I my book will be ready to publish, but, that doesn’t mean I can’t have the book cover ready ahead of time! Heck, even if I DIDN’T plan on publishing it, I’d still be making a book cover just for the fun of doing it! LOL!

Anyways, I knew ahead of time I wanted a ghostly pale blue and purple color theme for this book, because of the ghost like creature that haunts the village, and I spent the past few hours playing around with various ideas, and than it hit me: if I take a bunch of photos of my garden, I’ll have a lot of pictures that are largely brown and green, which once I invert them on MSPaint, will turn the shade of blue and purple I’m looking for. So I did that, and well, I ended up picking three of the photos of my flower garden, to use to make this cover, and WOW! It came out way better than I had expected it would! I must say, I am very happy with my results here.

Once I had the pictures I wanted to use for my cover, I just went to LuLu and started trying them out against their various cover templates, until I got the layout the way I wanted it.

I always make my book covers using http://www.LuLu.com ‘s book cover template.

All you do is start a new paperback book project. Set it for “private”. Upload a doc file (I have a 175 page “test” file I use for this). And than just keep hitting the next/continue button until you come to the cover art creation section. Than you can create your cover art, using their book cover template. Once you’ve got one you like, tell it to save and create a pdf file. Than open the pdf file and take a screen shot of it.

I use Capture-A-ScreenShot http://www.brothersoft.com/capture-a-screenshot-36279.html to save the picture.

Than I use PhotoBucket http://photobucket.com/ to show folks what I made. But be sure to add the 500 pixel tag to the code, so you can show it on the NaNoWriMo forums. It looks like this: width=”500″

In the end, you have an ACTUAL book cover for your book, and, you already have the book project started on LuLu for when you get done editing, all you have to do after is go back and replace the test word doc with the real word doc, and than you can publish, change setting from private to public and start selling your book.

Hope that helps out. :)

I made my 2008 cover the same way, only with that one, I actually painted the cover art myself with acrylics and water color, instead of taking photos with my camera and editing those. I went through several different paintings and covers before I finally decided on the one that it got published with, which is this one:

NaNovel 2008 For Fear of Little Men by Wendy C Allen

Anyways I’m not a graphic designer by any means, I’m a writer first and a writer always, but with a camera, a $5 paint set, and MS-Paint, I’ve created some pretty good cover art with out spending a penny. And here you can see examples of my end results, one with photography and the art with paint, and with both of them, I am quite happy with my end results.

Likewise my 2007 Script Frenzy book cover was also made the same way:

The Pearl Necklace 2007 NaNoWriMo by Wendy C Allen

and my 2008 NaNoRebel Anthology of Short Stories:

Shiver by Wendy C Allen book cover

And here is the cover I made for my first NaNovel of 2009: Dracula Lives Next Door using the “LuLu method” above, with the help of this free photo editor: http://fotoflexer.com

Dracula Lives Next Door by Wendy C Allen aka EelKat NaNoWriMo 2009 Book cover

NaNoWriMo: You wake you tied to a chair and you know you are about to die . . . so what happens next?

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You wake you tied to a chair and you know you are about to die . . . so what happens next?

Well, I’m taking a break right now so thought I’d post, where I’m at and maybe some one can help me figure out where to go next. I’m going with no plot, so I don’t know what I’ll write when I pick up where I left off again, but here is where I left off:

    My MC (a female reporter) has just woken up it find herself tied to a chair in a cave. She has no idea how she got there. Her arms and legs are tied with seaweed ropes. To make things worse, the cave is on a tiny deserted island a mile or so off shore, and when the tide comes in the entire island disappears under the ocean. She has no idea how she got there and so far has not been able to untie the seaweed ropes, and wouldn’t you know it – the tide is coming in and the cave is fast filling up with water. In a few minutes the island will be submerged once again, and if she doesn’t get herself untied and out of that cave, she will drown.

And that is where I left off. No idea what will happen next. I’m going to take a break, than come back in an hour or so and see if I can get her out of this mess.

Her chances of survival look grim, yet, I have to have her alive at the end. I think.

Of course, I also have to figure out how she got there and how she will escape. Does she escape on her own? Does some one rescue her?

Who tied her up? And Why? And why leave her in that island like that?

Any one got any ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions?

Incubus: Fear the Night!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

What is it and why would you pick it? (Need some NaNoWriMo plot choices help)

black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

So, I flew through to 50k without any trouble, mostly because I was writing very fast with out stopping to think about where my plot was heading. I just wrote the first thing that popped into my head. As a result I now have a ton of random not really connected scenes, involving 3 kids (about 10 or 12 years old, I think.) who believe their new neighbor is a vampire. Though the scenes are all on the same theme, they do not connect well, into a coherent story. So, I still have a ways to go before this story is finished and thus I am continuing to write through to November 30th.
Then I had an idea. If I change my book into a Choose Your Own Adventure type novel, I would have a way to connect all these random scenes into a logical story. With that in mind I and now writing up random choices to place at the end of my scenes.
Here’s where you guys come in and where I need your help. I just wrote this:
    EelKat wrote:

    Zeb wanted to pick the blue one. Azreal thought we should pick the emerald green one. Xavier liked the look of the red one best, but thought it would be best if we left them all alone and just went back the way we came. Since there were three choices and four of you, Zeb, Azreal, and Xavier now looked at you to decide.

    If you decide to pick the crimson red one, turn to page 46.
    If you decide to pick the sapphire blue one, turn to page 78.
    If you decide to pick the emerald green one, turn to page 100.
    If you think it’s a trap and want to try to go back the way you came, turn page 56.
It’s another scene not connected to any others, I really like the idea of them having to choose one of three colored objects, but I have no idea what the objects are. And now I have to connect this scene to my other scenes, but in order to do that I need to figure out a few things first.
    1) Where are they? Why are they there?
    2) What are these three colored objects that they have found?
    3) Which option would you pick and why?
    4) Any thoughts on what might happen as a result of each choice?
Any ideas would be really helpful. Thanks!

All Hail Bela Lugosi!
Dracula!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

RE: How the hell did some of you people get to the word count you’re at? (NaNoWriMo)

how the hell did some of you people get to the word count you’re at?

My history with NaNo has been somewhat dramatic and for years I have been known as one of the site’s yearly returning over achievers. To reach 50k was never once my goal, heck, I write more than that in a normal month anyways, 50k is nothing (for me at least.) My word counts each year have soared through the roof, and by my past history I should have reached 50k several days ago. (Last year I hit 50k on day 3 – which inspired an inbox full of flaming NaNoHateMails).

My goal this year was simple: To beat my word count from last year (which was 238,135). To make things simple, I just said I’ll aim at 250k, but than I added, I’d really like to double that and go for 500k this year.

Well, that was in October. Than October 20th I had a stroke. Nothing big, but enough to slow me down and make me lose a bit of my coordination skills, which are slowly returning, but still, I’m having difficulty with some things I previously had no problems with. Than to make things just a little bit worse, due to my being in the doctor’s office on the 21st, I ended up coming down with H1N1 flue on the 23rd, and was out of sorts for the next 14 days, bed ridden from the worst flue I’ve ever had in my entire life.

Long story short – my first week at NaNoWriMo this year was cut drastically due to my health not being at it’s peak, and now instead of being in the 100k range I should be at by the end of week one, I’m ended with first week of NaNoWriMo with a miserable 30k. :( :( :(

I’m feeling much better this week, so hopefully I well get back on track. In any case, seeing how I’m so far behind, I don’t think it’s a realistic goal for me to be aiming at 250k any more. I could probably do it if I pushed myself, but I’m still not 100% over the flue yet, so pushing myself is not really an option this year. As a result I changed my goal. My new goal is to end at some point between 100k and 500k. I figure I’m still in the running to hit 100k before the end of the month, and as long as I do that, I’ll be happy, but than once I hit 100k, I plan to keep right on going, just to see how far past it I can make it before the 30th.

As for, how I do it? Well, this year, of course my health has slowed me down, but even so, I’m still getting a pretty high word count. There is however a simple answer to your question:

I am a professional writer. I don’t have a “regular” day job. Writing IS my day job. I wrote my first book in 1978 and haven’t stopped since. I write fiction, non-fiction, how to books, short stories, articles, chap books, children’s chapter books, novels, novellas, and I write an average of 7k words per day, 5 days per week, 52 weeks per year, for the last 31 years.

I’m an “older” woman. In other words, I finished school many years before most of the other NaNoWriters were even born. Thus I have no school work to worry about either.

I am single. No husband or children under feet. I do however have 19 cats.

I do not have a TV. I can write during times when other NaNoWriters are being interrupted by their Soaps, News, Sports, whatever.

I suffer from Agoraphobia and PTSD. I’ve left the house less than a dozen times in the past 30 years.

My day goes like this:

    I get up at 7AM and start writing.

    Around noon I cook lunch, and than check the forums (which is why I’m here at this very moment.)

    From about 2PM to about 7PM I do whatever needs being done around the house/yard. If I have time I read during this time too.

    Between 7Pm – 9PM it’s time to cook and eat and read. At 9PM it’s back on the computer to write until Midnight.

    Five minutes before Midnight I update my word count that cruise the forums for a couple of hours.

    I go to bed around 3AM, sleep 4 hours and start over again the next day.

That is my schedule all year long – not just during NaNoWriMo, btw. As you can see, my days are spent pretty much doing nothing but writing all day long each and every day. I average 8 hours of writing per day. Just as others spend 8 hours a day at work, so too do I spend 8 hours a day a work, it’s just that I work at home and my job is to write.

What that all means is, I am at home 24 hours a day, and thus I am writing morning, noon, and night. And NaNoWriMo or no NaNoWriMo, I would being writing 100k to 200k this month anyways, so I might as well do it here with you guys rather than do it alone, like I do the rest of the 11 months of the year.

So, when you look at those of us who are way far ahead of the rest, think of it this way – most of us, have done NaNoWriMo many years now, and most of us are profession full time or part time writers who would have written this much anyways, even if NaNoWriMo did not exist, AND once upon a time, long ago and far a way, we were like you, trying to figure out how others found time to write. We didn’t always write like this. It took us many years of practice to learn how to make time to write.

If you have time (like 4 or 5 hours) to read a really long, really detail explanation about how I do it, you can read this: http://www.squidoo.com/The13StepMethod which I wrote specifically for NaNoWriters who ask this question to me dozens of times every single year.

Think of it as playing the piano – you don’t start out at Carnegie Hall, it takes years of practice to get there. You can’t do it over night, but if you stick with it and devote years of your life to practicing, you will eventual reach your goal and become, the writer with high word counts. Slow and steady wins the race, so, don’t worry about it. Just write what you can, when you can. If you have to, get up an hour earlier and go to bed an hour later and write while eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Oh yeah – and Moxie – seriously – lots of Moxie. I drink two cases of Moxie a week during November. The caffeine high has me writing at super hyper speeds, even when I had H1N1 and shouldn’t have been able to write a word. Forget RedBull giving you wings – Moxie gives you jets packs!

Moxie btw way, for those who never heard of it: http://www.moxiefestival.com/

All Hail Bela Lugosi!
Dracula!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

NaNoWriMo – Found My Plot – Need a Title

What is my title and how did I find it? I haven’t decided on mine yet. I haven’t even decided on my novel’s title yet, let alone the chapter titles! yet. Right now all I’ve got is “NaNoWriMo Day One”; “NaNoWriMo Day Two”; etc.

I like to pick out my novel title before my chapter titles, so they’ll “match”. On my profile page it says “Bela Lugosi Fan-Fic” and on my banner in my siggie it says “Dracula Lives Next Door”, but neither is the title of my novel.

As stated in my profile title my story is about Bela Lugosi, who 60 years after his death, has moved into an abandoned house next door to 3 kids, only he’s using the name from one of his movies: Dr Laouse. Dr. Laouse was a character who in the movie turned out to be Dracula masquerading as a mad scientist. The kids, now suspect that Dr Laouse, is in fact the actor Bela Lugosi, and that he’s not dead, because he really is the real Dracula, thus explaining why he could play the part so well in the movies.

Anyways, as of yet, it is untitled, because while I’m good at coming up with this whole idea, I’ve yet to think of what to call it. I made a banner for it last night (which is the one in my sig) and when I got to the point of adding a title, I panicked and wrote the first thing I could think of, which as it turned out was “Dracula Lives Next Door”, which is pretty lame, but for the sake of NaNoWriMo serves the goal of telling what the book is about.

Eventually, at some point while I’m writing, one of the characters will say something and I’ll scream – That’s it! That’s my novel’s title! And than I’ll have to change my banner again, but so far I’m without a title.

Any ideas about what I should call it?

Usually when I’m naming chapters I’ll take a phrase out of the chapter itself and use it for the title. As a general rule, I don’t even start thinking about chapters until AFTER I’ve finished the first draft. Than creating titles becomes part of the editing process.

All Hail Bela Lugosi!
Dracula!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

Thank You Kitty. . .Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

————-

Blingo

Day 2 and Nearing 5k (NaNoWriMo)

just hit 4713 words – trying to hit 5k before midnight

I bet I would have hit 5k hours ago if I didn’t stop every 5 minutes to rush back here and update my word count! LOL! I’ve been updating my word count about every 25 words. ROTFLMAO! LOL! LOL!

All Hail Bela Lugosi!
Dracula!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

Thank You Kitty. . .Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

————-

Blingo

Grade School Series? (NaNoWriMo NaNoRebels)

black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

Well, now that I’ve started writing, I know where my story is going, and surprisingly it’s heading in a way I did not expect at all! It has become a series of Grade School Chapter Books! (70 page books for kids ages 8 – 13) The way I figure, it’ll end up being four separate books each about 13k words long (a total of about 52k more or less).

I just checked out a bunch of grade school chapter books from the library and did a run down of word counts, and found that most of them are between 11k to 15k each, (65 – 90 pages) so my 13k figure will fit in nicely.

So, I guess that makes me a NaNoRebel because instead of writing one 50k novel I’m writing four 13k grade school “mini-novel” books.

Any one else here planning a set of grade school chapter books this year, instead on one bigger novel?

All Hail Bela Lugosi!
Dracula!
http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

Thank You Kitty. . .Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

————-

black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

Blingo

So how’s NaNoWriMo going?

I logged in at 7PM and than went on Twitter and did a count down all over the world – It was like New Years Eve – watching folks in New Zealand shout out that midnight hit; than Australia folks started screaming it was midnight, and it just keep going on like that – I started getting really freaked out when the UK folks started writing, because I’m on the Eastern most point of the USA and that meant I was next in line to start screaming midnight. At midnight I was logged in and typing and freaking out and I did not get any sleep last night at all because once I hit 1667, I rushed back to Twitter and was shouting out word counts with every one else. OMG! Twitter and NaNo at the same time is so much fun. and Twitter and NaNo at midnight all over the world is just amazing!

I had my plot all ready to go – outlined, character bios, world created – spent 2 months writing it all up, was all excited and ready to go. Than midnight strikes and I start writing a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT plot all together!

I stayed up all night (seeing how it was Halloween) watching Bela Lugosi movies. The Devil Bat ended at 12:13 and I started writing and before I realized what I was doing I found myself writing Bela Lugosi/Dracula fan-fic instead of my plot! Now I have no plot, no characters (except Bela Lugosi), no world created, and yet, here I am writing away at the seat of my pants with no idea where it’s going, and I’m actually liking it and it’s surprisingly really good – damn good! YAY! I may have something worth publishing when I get done!

Just breezed past 2500 words! YAY! Hoping I can reach 5k before the end of the day. Looks like I might make it too. Going good.

It’s only the first day and I’m already procrastinating.

yep – I hit 2900, my goal was 5k for day one, but I got close to 3k and went, I gotta go shout out on Twitter and FaceBook and the forums and my blog and my other blog and call my boyfriend and tell him about it and oh look I need to play Vampire Wars to try to get the extra Halloween prizes I didn’t snag yesterday and oh I need to plant more pumpkins on Paradise Island before the limited edition seeds expire and by the way I need to check my FarmVille cows to see if they need milking and oh yeah I better see what my writing buddies are doing on the forums and I wonder what their word counts are and maybe I should grab some more Dares while I’m there and by the way . . . .

yep, I’m already procrastinating big time. :)

My inner editor is winning this year – YIKES! I’ve been correcting and editing as I go – my word count would be twice as high if I didn’t stop rushing back to fix things every other sentence! ACK!

Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

Thank You Kitty. . .Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

————-

Blingo

The “I Just Completed a NaNoDare!” ShoutOut

It’s the attack of the NaNoDare thread – I’m doing a NaNovel heavy on the Dares this year, and I know lots of you guys are doing the same, so here’s a thread to crash on and shout out each time you completed one of your dares!

I’ll go first -

I’m 4 hours and 2,964 words into my novel and already I’ve got dare shout outs coming left and right. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

- my MC is wearing yellow socks with pink bunnies on them

- his mom is making garlic bread out of rancid yak butter

- his best friend keeps saying “Oh my strawberry Pop-Tart of joy and spectacularly worn T-shirt of sexiness” at the end or beginning of every sentence

- a famous celebrity has made a cameo appearance – my celebrity of choice was Bela Lugosi

- the villain (Bela Lugosi) just sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” at an unexpected moment

yep – the dares are coming along fine, and surprisingly, so far they have all made perfectly logical sense for my story! YAY!

- the first line of your story must be: “Where the hell are my pants?”

It was through my MC looking for his pants, that he ended up accidentally putting on his sister’s yellow socks with pink bunnies on them, so I ended up using 2 dares in one with that! YAY!

and an update on the rancid yak butter – part of the dare was to use it as a weapon, well, I haven’t used it as a weapon yet, but the fact that my MC’s mom is using it to make Garlic Bread in a story about vampires – yeah, there’s a good chance of my using rancid yak butter as a weapon at some point before Nov 30th rolls around! YAY!

I couldn’t find the original rancid yak butter dare, and I couldn’t remember which year’s archive it was in, but at the Saco meetings we’ve been talking about a million and one ways to use rancid yak butter – it’s like been the main topic of discussion at every meeting so far! LOL!

We’ve talked about using it to build Igloos with, filling the White House with it instead of jello ;) , ways to use it as a weapon, etc.

I couldn’t figure out what to do with it until last night when midnight struck and I started writing. My plot I was going to write was about Jack Frost and a Frost Zombie apocalypse. But it was Halloween and my shelves are full of Vincent Price and Bela Lugosi DVDs and I spent 3 days watching nothing but.

I was still watching them when midnight rolled around and I got to start typing. And that’s when something strange happened – I found myself writing about 3 kids who saw this box being delivered to a deserted house and it turns out to be Dracula’s coffin, and they meet up with Bela Lugosi and for some odd reason one of the boy’s mother has joined a Tibetan yoga group that is lead by a monk that raises yaks and makes yak butter and so, the kids come home from discovering that Dracula has moved in next door to find their mom cooking garlic bread with rancid yak butter! LOL!

OMG! I have no idea where any of that came from, except I spent 3 meetings talking about rancid yak butter followed by three days of vampre movies and ended up writing that. I think the kids are going to end up fighting Dracula with Rancid Yak Butter Garlic Bread – and the way it’s going right now, rancid yak butter is going to be a MAJOR plot element this year! LOL!

I must rush back to the Dare Thread and find more dares. OMG! I love Dares, I’m going to try to have at least one dare on every page of my entire novel this year. :)

Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

Thank You Kitty. . .Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

————-

Blingo

I’ve been tagged: Job Interview

black birdOld Orchard Beach Sea Shellsblack bird

I was tagged for this interview . . . well 2 years ago, and for some odd reason the backlink comment only just showed up today!!!! OMG! Why did it do that? Oh well, I figure I should answer it, better late than never, right?

Here is a copy of the MeMe I was tagged with:


In Richard Nelson Bolles – What Color Is Your Parachute?, Bolles wrote about Informational Interviewing. It’s where you contact your friends, family, etc and ask them for contacts in the field that you are interested in and gather information for your career change.

It can be a job you’d held in the past or currently. You can link back to this post but it’s not compulsory. The reason I post this is I’m researching on jobs and would love to know more about your jobs. I’ll comment on some of my job experiences too because I’m not a sucker that takes without giving :p

Job:
Co:
Duration in this position:
Salary & benefits:
Education:
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job:
The job is about:

How did you get this job?

What do you like most about it?

What do you hate about it?

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that?

Who else do this kind of work?

Well fact of the matter is, I have several jobs, all sort of helter skeltered together, so it’s a bit difficult to clearly defin them all, but I’ll try and see what happens. So here it goes:

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Job: Writer/Author

Co: self employed; freelance
Duration in this position: since 1978; still working in 2009; 31 years!
Salary & benefits: varies from $0 – $200 per project 
Education: I left public school at age 8; self taught after that
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job: it’s a job I created for myself because I love to write
The job is about: writing (formaly I wrote fiction, but since 2006 I’ve only written non-fiction)
How did you get this job? I just started writing and than had it printed up (self-published) or sent to a publisher (traditionally published) or posted on a web page (web publishing) or posted on a blog (problogging). Being a freelancer, means I have a lot of ways to get published and I take advantage of every single one of them as often as possible. The more I write, the more I get paid.
What do you like most about it? I like that I can change my schedual to fit my needs: if I want to stay awake and write steady for 48 hours, I can. If I don’t feel like writing for 2 or 3 weeks, I can do that too. I like that I can work around other jobs too. I guess you could call me a work-a-holic, because I’m not happy unless I’ve got lots of jobs all at once.
What do you hate about it? Lack of a steady income – you could end up going weeks or even months between pay checks; lack of any benafits: no social security, no retirment, no insurance, nothing, zip, nadda.

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that? Next? After getting approxamatly 600 fan requests for me to write an autobiography of my strange and multi faceted life with a focus on my time being homeless and the events that lead up to me becoming homeless and how I made it back up off the streets again, I started work on my book “For Fear of Little Men”, to tell the story of how my sightening of what some called and alien and others called a demon (though I called a faerie) resulted in a group of religious fanatics taking matters into there own hands by burning me out of my house. Of course on the side libes of that, and as a result of their religious prejudices, I’m planning to get my 900 page rant about why I dislike religion, edited down to a magageable 250 book, and finally get it published – I started writing it in 2003, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. 
What do I need to achieve that? Not much. Pen. Paper. Word Processor. Memories of events in my life. Time to write it all down. And, since I own my own publishing house, well, I also need to publish it afterwards.
Who else does this kind of work? uhm, well, other writers, here locally we have Stephen King living near by, and you’ve more likely heard of him, so I’ll use him as an example, only he’s more focused on traditionally published novels, and I’m more focused on shorter self published chap books.
You can find out more about what I do for a living HERE.

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Job: Artist/Painter

Co: self employed; freelance
Duration in this position: since 1978; still working in 2009; 31 years!
Salary & benefits: varies from $1 – $200 per project; no benifits; though I was working as a painter for 31 years, I did not recieve my first actual payment for my work until 2004, when I placed my art for sale online via CafePress and Zazzle
Education: I left public school at age 8; self taught after that
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job: it’s a job I created for myself because I love to draw and paint
The job is about: drawing and painting everything that pops into my head and asks me to recreate it on paper.
How did you get this job? I just started drawing and painting. I wrote a really long and highly detailed article about how I got started HERE. Be warned though it well take you a few hours to read, it’s a small novella leagth article.
What do you like most about it? I like that I can change my schedual to fit my needs: if I want to stay awake and paint steady for 48 hours, I can. If I don’t feel like painting for 2 or 3 weeks, I can do that too. Because I never sell my originals, only prints, this is a repeat sale job, which means that I can paint one painting, and than continue to recieve payments, via royalties for many years after I made the painting. As a result I only need to paint one or two pictures each month. I like that I can work around other jobs too. I guess you could call me a work-a-holic, because I’m not happy unless I’ve got lots of jobs all at once.
What do you hate about it? Lack of a steady income – you could end up going weeks or even months between pay checks; lack of any benafits: no social security, no retirment, no insurance, nothing, zip, nadda.

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that? Next? Just more of the same thing really. More paintings, more drawings, more uploading them to CafePress and Zazzle, more marketing and advertising, more getting the word out about my art so more people can find it to buy it.
What do I need to achieve that? Not much. Pen. Paper. Crayons. Paints. Pencils. Time to paint. A camera for my photogray work. Lots and lots of marketing and SEO skills.
Who else does this kind of work? uhm, Everybody else who sells stuff via CafePress and Zazzle!

You can find out more about what I do for a living HERE.
Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Job: Witch

Co: self employed; freelance
Duration in this position: since 1979; still working in 2009; 30 years!
Salary & benefits: varies from free volunteer work to $200 – $700 per session client; no benifits; 
Education: I left public school at age 8; self taught after that – People have been calling me a witch, a poltergeist, or an evil demon possessed girl since I was 4 years old.
I had a very good teacher in the art of casting spells and making Voodoo dolls.
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job: It helps that I have Autism. Apperently as a result of my being autistic I am able to do things that non-autistic people can not do. It’s a job I created for myself because I love to sew dolls, spend time with animals, protect those who can not protect themselves from harm, and listen to things my Faerie has to say to me.
The job is about: There are hundreds of types of Witches out there. So I must break it down so you know what type of Witch I am, as to not confuse me with other types out there. I have written articles detailing what I do and such, and I’m linking those to the words which match their topic, so if you want more info about my job description, simply click on each of the links to read what I do in more detail. 
I am a Sea Witch which is a type of Hedgewitch. This means that I work with Familiars to practice Sea Magic, which is a type of Grey Magic (different that White Magic or Black Magic, meaning I’m also knowwn as a Grey Witch rather than either a White Witch or a Black Witch.)
In short, I I heal broken auras with the use of spell casting, voodoo dolls, color therapy, crystals, and by channeling the energy created by Etiole
For those who saw the job title of witch and instantly thought Wicca, please know that Witchcraft is a career and Wicca is a religion, and though I am a Witch, I am NOT a Wicca. If you don’t know the differance between a Witch and a Wicca than please READ THIS.
How did you get this job? I didn’t seek out this career. It was sort of thrust on me when I was 4 years old. I was “born a freak”, or so I’m often told.
What do you like most about it? That it has no schedual at all. I go where I’m needed and work when I’m needed.
What do you hate about it? I hate the vandalism at the hands of so-called “Good Christians” who claim it is their “God Given Duty” to “cast out my demons”. 
Lack of a steady income – you could end up going weeks or even months between pay checks; lack of any benafits: no social security, no retirment, no insurance, nothing, zip, nadda.

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that? Next? Well, because I’m always saying (preaching???)  what people call “pretty radical” things, and because I’m always quoteing scripture, and because I spent 20 years studying the Bible, and because as a teenager my goal was to become a preacher, and because there is no religion that teaches the things I do, and because since 2003 I’v had more than 200 people tell me I should start a church of my own, that’s what I’m going to do.
What do I need to achieve this? Well, a good working knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, which I have already. Knowledge of the laws regarding churches. In Maine you have to be legal ordained before you can start a church. As of yesterday, I am now an ordained minister, through a non-denominational church (therefor allowing me to start my own religion). I now have the title of Reverand in front of my name. Next step is to figure out how to actually start a church. In the mentime, though, I require a book of theogies, creeds, laws, and docrtines, and well, that’s why the sudden move to publish my previously unpublished 900 page rant “Faith Not Religion” as mentioned in my writing job info above.
Who else does this kind of work? uhm, I’ve actually never come across another person who does what I do. I’ve encounted many “Witches” but none who are able to do the things I do. They just all seem to do rituals and chants and burn candels and stuff. They say I give other Witches a bad name and accuse me of being a poltergiest or working with a poltergeist. Christians call me an evil witch possessed by a demon, but when I turn to other Witches, they tell me I am evil too, and that I’m not a regular type of Witch like they are (whatever that means) that I’m some sort of freak of nataure. Sometimes they get mad because I do the things I do, without any rituals and such, I just say it and it happens, and me doing that freaks them out, because they say it’s not the type of thing Witches normally do, they tell me I am supposed to be useing all sorts of herbs and rituals and candles. They point out that they studied Witchcraft for years and celbrate all the sabets and worship Goddesses, and get angry because they still can not do the things I do, and ask me how I do it, and I just say I don’t know, because I’ve been doing these things since I was 4 years old and I’ve never studied Witchcraft, I don’t know what Sabets are, and I’m a Christain who would never dream of worshipping a Goddess.
So, long story short, while I would like to find another Witch who was a natural born witch with REAL powers, I have yet to find one and am pretty much outcast by the rest of the Witch community because they think you can’t be born a Witch they think you have to spend years learning how to do it. So I can not provide you with any one else to compare me with, unless of course you want to compare me with Jesus or one of the Old Testament Prophets or the ancient Priests of Egypt, because they are the only other ones I’ve ever heard of who did this type of stuff.

You can find out more about what I do for a living HERE.

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Job: Avon Sales Representative

Co: Avon Products, INC.
Duration in this position: 1996 through 2003; 
Salary & benefits: varies from 10% to 30% commision depending on ammount of sales that weekt; no benifits
Education: I left public school at age 8; self taught after that
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job: I had the $20 required to buy the starting kit. That’s all there is to getting started working for Avon – no training, no interview, no questions; you just hand the Sales Manager a twenty dollar bill, she hands you the sales kit, and than you head door to door selling stuff. 
(note – I sold Avon before they opened their web site and started selling online; when they first started the online store in 2003, they cancled the accounts of about 75% of their door-to-door sales personal, claiming that they were going to discontinue door to door sales, and that the few remaining sales reps were going to move on to regional managment jobs. A year later, they changed their minds, reenstated the door to door sales and wanted all their old sales reps back, but I never signed back up again.)
The job is about: being a fast talking door to door sales man who carries around a brief case of products and testers and catalouges and tries to convince people they want to buy make-up, perfumes, lotions, and gift products that they never would have known existed if you had not knocked on their door and told the they could not survive without your wounderful product.
How did you get this job? I had the $20 required to buy the starting kit. That’s all there is to getting started working for Avon – no training, no interview, no questions; you just hand the Sales Manager a twenty dollar bill, she hands you the sales kit, and than you head door to door selling stuff. 
What do you like most about it? I like that I can change my schedual to fit my needs: if I want to stay awake and paint steady for 48 hours, I can. Pretty much it was a one day a week job – one day I deliver all the products to my customers, they gave me new orders, I didn’t have to do anything until the next shippment arrived for me to deliver. I guess you could call me a work-a-holic, because I’m not happy unless I’ve got lots of jobs all at once.
What do you hate about it? Lack of a steady income – you could end up going weeks or even months between pay checks; lack of any benafits: no social security, no retirment, no insurance, nothing, zip, nadda. The fact that you have to try to get people to reorder something EVERY SINGLE WEEK!! Avon would be much better if the shipments were once a month not once a week.

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that? Next? From Avon I moved to Macy’s.
Who else does this kind of work? uhm, Everybody else who sells beauty products door to door.

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Job: Macy’s Sales Associate (part time temp)

Co: Macy’s Department Store
Duration in this position: 2006 through 2008; 
Salary & benefits: $7.50 an hour; no benifits
Education: I left public school at age 8; self taught after that; had 2 years of college for fashion design and merchandising; took the “Give Them The Pickle” sales seminar
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job: my years as an Avon Sales Rep, my training in fashion design and merchandising, my training in sales via seminars
The job is about: running cash registers, cleaning fitting rooms, help customers find the perfect outfit, stocking racks of dresses.
How did you get this job? I walked into the store and asked if they had any job openings, and they hired me about 5 minutes later (she liked the way I was dressed, said I looked like some one who knew a thing or two about the fashion industry – I was wearing a black business suit with my hair tied in an Olive Oyl bun, and make up expertly applied to match my skin tonelearned  via my many years of appling Avon products during my sales rep career with them — if I had learned anything selling Avon, it was that you need to look the part if you want to be a sales rep, and though it’s not what I wear outside of work, I can pull off one hell of a professional career woman look, when I really want to) After hireing me she rememberd that she was required to have me fill out a job application.
What do you like most about it? I like that I can change my schedual to fit my needs: being a temp, ment that I was only working 4 or 5 hours a day 2 or 3 days a week, usually to replace some one who called in sick, and I could fill out a calander of days I was unable to work, and they only asked me to come in on the other days. 
For the first time in my life I had a steady income and a weekly pay check I could count on. Loved that.
What do you hate about it?  Actually, I haven’t bee able to come up with anything I actually hated about this job. I loved it. I think it was my favorite job of anything else I’ve ever done.

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that? I have to reapply every year for this job, because it’s a temp job and not a regular job. I didn’t reapply this year, because my dog was very ill and required my constant daily care. He died a few months ago. Since than, I just seem to have not been much motivated to do anything at all. He was my constant compainion for 13 years, he was the one who stayed by my side through the flood, the fire, and the ordeal of being homeless and living on the streets. I’ve had a hard time not having him with me any more and some how that effected my going back to work at Macy’s. Or any place else for that matter.
Who else does this kind of work? uhm, Everybody else who sells beauty products door to door.

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

Thank You Kitty. . .Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

black birdOld Orchard Beach Sea Shellsblack bird

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:
Create your own banner at mybannermaker.com!.
Create your own banner at mybannermaker.com!.
Create your own banner at mybannermaker.com!
.

Blingo

I’ve been tagged: Job Interview

black birdOld Orchard Beach Sea Shellsblack bird

I was tagged for this interview . . . well 2 years ago, and for some odd reason the backlink comment only just showed up today!!!! OMG! Why did it do that? Oh well, I figure I should answer it, better late than never, right?

Here is a copy of the MeMe I was tagged with:


In Richard Nelson Bolles – What Color Is Your Parachute?, Bolles wrote about Informational Interviewing. It’s where you contact your friends, family, etc and ask them for contacts in the field that you are interested in and gather information for your career change.

It can be a job you’d held in the past or currently. You can link back to this post but it’s not compulsory. The reason I post this is I’m researching on jobs and would love to know more about your jobs. I’ll comment on some of my job experiences too because I’m not a sucker that takes without giving :p

Job:
Co:
Duration in this position:
Salary & benefits:
Education:
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job:
The job is about:

How did you get this job?

What do you like most about it?

What do you hate about it?

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that?

Who else do this kind of work?

Well fact of the matter is, I have several jobs, all sort of helter skeltered together, so it’s a bit difficult to clearly defin them all, but I’ll try and see what happens. So here it goes:

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Job: Writer/Author

Co: self employed; freelance
Duration in this position: since 1978; still working in 2009; 31 years!
Salary & benefits: varies from $0 – $200 per project 
Education: I left public school at age 8; self taught after that
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job: it’s a job I created for myself because I love to write
The job is about: writing (formaly I wrote fiction, but since 2006 I’ve only written non-fiction)
How did you get this job? I just started writing and than had it printed up (self-published) or sent to a publisher (traditionally published) or posted on a web page (web publishing) or posted on a blog (problogging). Being a freelancer, means I have a lot of ways to get published and I take advantage of every single one of them as often as possible. The more I write, the more I get paid.
What do you like most about it? I like that I can change my schedual to fit my needs: if I want to stay awake and write steady for 48 hours, I can. If I don’t feel like writing for 2 or 3 weeks, I can do that too. I like that I can work around other jobs too. I guess you could call me a work-a-holic, because I’m not happy unless I’ve got lots of jobs all at once.
What do you hate about it? Lack of a steady income – you could end up going weeks or even months between pay checks; lack of any benafits: no social security, no retirment, no insurance, nothing, zip, nadda.

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that? Next? After getting approxamatly 600 fan requests for me to write an autobiography of my strange and multi faceted life with a focus on my time being homeless and the events that lead up to me becoming homeless and how I made it back up off the streets again, I started work on my book “For Fear of Little Men”, to tell the story of how my sightening of what some called and alien and others called a demon (though I called a faerie) resulted in a group of religious fanatics taking matters into there own hands by burning me out of my house. Of course on the side libes of that, and as a result of their religious prejudices, I’m planning to get my 900 page rant about why I dislike religion, edited down to a magageable 250 book, and finally get it published – I started writing it in 2003, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. 
What do I need to achieve that? Not much. Pen. Paper. Word Processor. Memories of events in my life. Time to write it all down. And, since I own my own publishing house, well, I also need to publish it afterwards.
Who else does this kind of work? uhm, well, other writers, here locally we have Stephen King living near by, and you’ve more likely heard of him, so I’ll use him as an example, only he’s more focused on traditionally published novels, and I’m more focused on shorter self published chap books.
You can find out more about what I do for a living HERE.

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Job: Artist/Painter

Co: self employed; freelance
Duration in this position: since 1978; still working in 2009; 31 years!
Salary & benefits: varies from $1 – $200 per project; no benifits; though I was working as a painter for 31 years, I did not recieve my first actual payment for my work until 2004, when I placed my art for sale online via CafePress and Zazzle
Education: I left public school at age 8; self taught after that
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job: it’s a job I created for myself because I love to draw and paint
The job is about: drawing and painting everything that pops into my head and asks me to recreate it on paper.
How did you get this job? I just started drawing and painting. I wrote a really long and highly detailed article about how I got started HERE. Be warned though it well take you a few hours to read, it’s a small novella leagth article.
What do you like most about it? I like that I can change my schedual to fit my needs: if I want to stay awake and paint steady for 48 hours, I can. If I don’t feel like painting for 2 or 3 weeks, I can do that too. Because I never sell my originals, only prints, this is a repeat sale job, which means that I can paint one painting, and than continue to recieve payments, via royalties for many years after I made the painting. As a result I only need to paint one or two pictures each month. I like that I can work around other jobs too. I guess you could call me a work-a-holic, because I’m not happy unless I’ve got lots of jobs all at once.
What do you hate about it? Lack of a steady income – you could end up going weeks or even months between pay checks; lack of any benafits: no social security, no retirment, no insurance, nothing, zip, nadda.

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that? Next? Just more of the same thing really. More paintings, more drawings, more uploading them to CafePress and Zazzle, more marketing and advertising, more getting the word out about my art so more people can find it to buy it.
What do I need to achieve that? Not much. Pen. Paper. Crayons. Paints. Pencils. Time to paint. A camera for my photogray work. Lots and lots of marketing and SEO skills.
Who else does this kind of work? uhm, Everybody else who sells stuff via CafePress and Zazzle!

You can find out more about what I do for a living HERE.
Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Job: Witch

Co: self employed; freelance
Duration in this position: since 1979; still working in 2009; 30 years!
Salary & benefits: varies from free volunteer work to $200 – $700 per session client; no benifits; 
Education: I left public school at age 8; self taught after that – People have been calling me a witch, a poltergeist, or an evil demon possessed girl since I was 4 years old.
I had a very good teacher in the art of casting spells and making Voodoo dolls.
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job: It helps that I have Autism. Apperently as a result of my being autistic I am able to do things that non-autistic people can not do. It’s a job I created for myself because I love to sew dolls, spend time with animals, protect those who can not protect themselves from harm, and listen to things my Faerie has to say to me.
The job is about: There are hundreds of types of Witches out there. So I must break it down so you know what type of Witch I am, as to not confuse me with other types out there. I have written articles detailing what I do and such, and I’m linking those to the words which match their topic, so if you want more info about my job description, simply click on each of the links to read what I do in more detail. 
I am a Sea Witch which is a type of Hedgewitch. This means that I work with Familiars to practice Sea Magic, which is a type of Grey Magic (different that White Magic or Black Magic, meaning I’m also knowwn as a Grey Witch rather than either a White Witch or a Black Witch.)
In short, I I heal broken auras with the use of spell casting, voodoo dolls, color therapy, crystals, and by channeling the energy created by Etiole
For those who saw the job title of witch and instantly thought Wicca, please know that Witchcraft is a career and Wicca is a religion, and though I am a Witch, I am NOT a Wicca. If you don’t know the differance between a Witch and a Wicca than please READ THIS.
How did you get this job? I didn’t seek out this career. It was sort of thrust on me when I was 4 years old. I was “born a freak”, or so I’m often told.
What do you like most about it? That it has no schedual at all. I go where I’m needed and work when I’m needed.
What do you hate about it? I hate the vandalism at the hands of so-called “Good Christians” who claim it is their “God Given Duty” to “cast out my demons”. 
Lack of a steady income – you could end up going weeks or even months between pay checks; lack of any benafits: no social security, no retirment, no insurance, nothing, zip, nadda.

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that? Next? Well, because I’m always saying (preaching???)  what people call “pretty radical” things, and because I’m always quoteing scripture, and because I spent 20 years studying the Bible, and because as a teenager my goal was to become a preacher, and because there is no religion that teaches the things I do, and because since 2003 I’v had more than 200 people tell me I should start a church of my own, that’s what I’m going to do.
What do I need to achieve this? Well, a good working knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, which I have already. Knowledge of the laws regarding churches. In Maine you have to be legal ordained before you can start a church. As of yesterday, I am now an ordained minister, through a non-denominational church (therefor allowing me to start my own religion). I now have the title of Reverand in front of my name. Next step is to figure out how to actually start a church. In the mentime, though, I require a book of theogies, creeds, laws, and docrtines, and well, that’s why the sudden move to publish my previously unpublished 900 page rant “Faith Not Religion” as mentioned in my writing job info above.
Who else does this kind of work? uhm, I’ve actually never come across another person who does what I do. I’ve encounted many “Witches” but none who are able to do the things I do. They just all seem to do rituals and chants and burn candels and stuff. They say I give other Witches a bad name and accuse me of being a poltergiest or working with a poltergeist. Christians call me an evil witch possessed by a demon, but when I turn to other Witches, they tell me I am evil too, and that I’m not a regular type of Witch like they are (whatever that means) that I’m some sort of freak of nataure. Sometimes they get mad because I do the things I do, without any rituals and such, I just say it and it happens, and me doing that freaks them out, because they say it’s not the type of thing Witches normally do, they tell me I am supposed to be useing all sorts of herbs and rituals and candles. They point out that they studied Witchcraft for years and celbrate all the sabets and worship Goddesses, and get angry because they still can not do the things I do, and ask me how I do it, and I just say I don’t know, because I’ve been doing these things since I was 4 years old and I’ve never studied Witchcraft, I don’t know what Sabets are, and I’m a Christain who would never dream of worshipping a Goddess.
So, long story short, while I would like to find another Witch who was a natural born witch with REAL powers, I have yet to find one and am pretty much outcast by the rest of the Witch community because they think you can’t be born a Witch they think you have to spend years learning how to do it. So I can not provide you with any one else to compare me with, unless of course you want to compare me with Jesus or one of the Old Testament Prophets or the ancient Priests of Egypt, because they are the only other ones I’ve ever heard of who did this type of stuff.

You can find out more about what I do for a living HERE.

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Job: Avon Sales Representative

Co: Avon Products, INC.
Duration in this position: 1996 through 2003; 
Salary & benefits: varies from 10% to 30% commision depending on ammount of sales that weekt; no benifits
Education: I left public school at age 8; self taught after that
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job: I had the $20 required to buy the starting kit. That’s all there is to getting started working for Avon – no training, no interview, no questions; you just hand the Sales Manager a twenty dollar bill, she hands you the sales kit, and than you head door to door selling stuff. 
(note – I sold Avon before they opened their web site and started selling online; when they first started the online store in 2003, they cancled the accounts of about 75% of their door-to-door sales personal, claiming that they were going to discontinue door to door sales, and that the few remaining sales reps were going to move on to regional managment jobs. A year later, they changed their minds, reenstated the door to door sales and wanted all their old sales reps back, but I never signed back up again.)
The job is about: being a fast talking door to door sales man who carries around a brief case of products and testers and catalouges and tries to convince people they want to buy make-up, perfumes, lotions, and gift products that they never would have known existed if you had not knocked on their door and told the they could not survive without your wounderful product.
How did you get this job? I had the $20 required to buy the starting kit. That’s all there is to getting started working for Avon – no training, no interview, no questions; you just hand the Sales Manager a twenty dollar bill, she hands you the sales kit, and than you head door to door selling stuff. 
What do you like most about it? I like that I can change my schedual to fit my needs: if I want to stay awake and paint steady for 48 hours, I can. Pretty much it was a one day a week job – one day I deliver all the products to my customers, they gave me new orders, I didn’t have to do anything until the next shippment arrived for me to deliver. I guess you could call me a work-a-holic, because I’m not happy unless I’ve got lots of jobs all at once.
What do you hate about it? Lack of a steady income – you could end up going weeks or even months between pay checks; lack of any benafits: no social security, no retirment, no insurance, nothing, zip, nadda. The fact that you have to try to get people to reorder something EVERY SINGLE WEEK!! Avon would be much better if the shipments were once a month not once a week.

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that? Next? From Avon I moved to Macy’s.
Who else does this kind of work? uhm, Everybody else who sells beauty products door to door.

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

Job: Macy’s Sales Associate (part time temp)

Co: Macy’s Department Store
Duration in this position: 2006 through 2008; 
Salary & benefits: $7.50 an hour; no benifits
Education: I left public school at age 8; self taught after that; had 2 years of college for fashion design and merchandising; took the “Give Them The Pickle” sales seminar
Other factors that helped you in scoring this job: my years as an Avon Sales Rep, my training in fashion design and merchandising, my training in sales via seminars
The job is about: running cash registers, cleaning fitting rooms, help customers find the perfect outfit, stocking racks of dresses.
How did you get this job? I walked into the store and asked if they had any job openings, and they hired me about 5 minutes later (she liked the way I was dressed, said I looked like some one who knew a thing or two about the fashion industry – I was wearing a black business suit with my hair tied in an Olive Oyl bun, and make up expertly applied to match my skin tonelearned  via my many years of appling Avon products during my sales rep career with them — if I had learned anything selling Avon, it was that you need to look the part if you want to be a sales rep, and though it’s not what I wear outside of work, I can pull off one hell of a professional career woman look, when I really want to) After hireing me she rememberd that she was required to have me fill out a job application.
What do you like most about it? I like that I can change my schedual to fit my needs: being a temp, ment that I was only working 4 or 5 hours a day 2 or 3 days a week, usually to replace some one who called in sick, and I could fill out a calander of days I was unable to work, and they only asked me to come in on the other days. 
For the first time in my life I had a steady income and a weekly pay check I could count on. Loved that.
What do you hate about it?  Actually, I haven’t bee able to come up with anything I actually hated about this job. I loved it. I think it was my favorite job of anything else I’ve ever done.

What’s next? What do you need to achieve that? I have to reapply every year for this job, because it’s a temp job and not a regular job. I didn’t reapply this year, because my dog was very ill and required my constant daily care. He died a few months ago. Since than, I just seem to have not been much motivated to do anything at all. He was my constant compainion for 13 years, he was the one who stayed by my side through the flood, the fire, and the ordeal of being homeless and living on the streets. I’ve had a hard time not having him with me any more and some how that effected my going back to work at Macy’s. Or any place else for that matter.
Who else does this kind of work? uhm, Everybody else who sells beauty products door to door.

Old Orchard Beach Sea Shells

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

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black birdOld Orchard Beach Sea Shellsblack bird

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Blingo

InuYasha 558: Sesshomaru x Rin x Kaede

pawpawpawpawpaw

Okay, so if you’ve followed the books these past 12 years, you know that the final volume came out this week, and if you know me, you know I had all ready read it less than 3 hours after it hit the newstands. If you’ve read it you know that everyone lived happily ever after, except as usual Sesshomaru, who for the 7th time in this series has had yet another woman he loves, taken away from from him. Sara died, Kagura died, Rin died twice and he just keeps bringing her back, yo get the picture. Sesshy’s life has been made complete hell in every volume, and this final volume was no exception. InuYasha married Kagome. Miroku marries Sango. Rin is taken away from Sesshomaru and sent to live with Kaede.

As the days go by and more and more people read the final chapter of InuYasha, and I go through blogs and forums reading people’s responses to it (me only being interested in people’s responses to the Sesshy x Rin part of course!), I am finding one thing a bit odd. Most people seem to be reading it as Sesshomaru left Rin behind, forcing her to live with Kaede.

I actually read the ending totally differently… weird… but I guess I’m weird so, yea, it figures, but anyways, the way InuYasha said that Kaede said Rin was to learn to live in a human village (note that he said, that Kaede said it, not Sesshomaru) I took that to mean that Keade took Rin away from Sesshomaru, not Sesshomaru left Rin with Keade… that is what it says after all, that “Kaede said it”…. not “Sesshomaru said it”.

It seems to me that if he had left her, he wouldn’t be coming back with the gifts either; it’s more logical that Kaede took her, thus now Sesshomaru is sticking around the village and bringing Rin gifts, biding his time, until she’s old enough, to take her away from Kaede without Keade or anyone else being there to say she’s too young.

Well, that’s the way I saw the ending as being.

Did anyone else see it this way, or am I the only one who does not think Sesshomaru left Rin behind?

And another thing… why is this bugging me in the first place? They are fictional characters, it’s not like these things really happened anyways, and yet, I’m all riled up over this! I just can’t get this out of my head. Weird.

I need to examine this farther. I don’t think Sesshomaru would do anything he didn’t want to, it’s not his nature, that’s true, but than all the fuss that went into protecting Rin, over a period of what, 460 chapters?, something like that, would be pointless if he suddenly said to himself, “It’s time to leave her somewhere.”

It’d have been nice if Rumiko would have shown us what triggered the sudden, send Rin off bit, because it is so out of character for Sesshomaru to do that willingly. And it’s out of character for him to not fit to keep Rin.

It seems easier to believe that it was Keade who took Rin away, rather than Sesshomaru who suddenly dumped Rin off on Kaede, and yet, his past actions tell us that if Keade did take Rin from him, he would have reacted but lashing her to pieces with his claws, and than walking over her bloody remains to carry Rin away from the village.

Logic tells us that if Sesshomaru suddenly decided to leave Rin with Kaede, that some event had to have happened to trigger such a dynamic change of character for him. The question is, what could have happened to cause him to do a full 360 degree turn like this?

On the other hand, we do know that Kaede has a soft spot for children, and has been seen on countless occasions to be caring for children from the village. We also know that until the death of Naraku, Kaede had no knowledge of the fact that Rin was living with Sesshomaru. Upon Naraku’s death, Sesshomaru and Rin ended up in the village because Sesshomaru was chasing Naraku and Rin was following after Sesshomaru on Ah-Un.

We now that Sesshomaru hates humans, but we know also that of all humans he reviles priestesses the most, esp. Kikyo and her kin. We have heard these words come straight from his lips on more than one occasion. He refers to both Kikyo and Kaede as “that woman”, with a deep tone of disgust and hatred that far outweighs the hatred in his voice when talking about half-breeds or regular humans. His hatred of human priestess is unfathomable. And yet, not only does he leave Rin in the care of a human, but also a priestess, and to make it one step worse Kikyo’s sister! We have a major mega triple whammy on our hands here, one that glares off the page at us like a hand with 20 sore thumbs on it.

If he had left Rin with anyone else, there would not be so many questions, but the fact that he left her with the human, priestess who was the sister of Kikyo, just goes against everything Rumiko has ever told us about Sesshomaru!

It is completely impossible to believe, knowing what we know about Sesshomaru, that he would ever by himself, come up with the idea of leaving Rin in the care of Kaede.

It would be so much simpler if Rumiko had just added one more page, to tell us why the dessision was made to leave Rin with Kaede. I mean, we all know Sesshomaru would die to protect his beloved Rin. Likewise we all know Rinfights like hell against the idea of either leaving Sesshomaru or worse, living with humans (her worst dreaded fear of all!)

So taking all these facts into consideration, we come to the conclusion that something must have happened in the three year period, something drastic, to change either Sesshomaaru’s or Rin’s mind.

So whose mind was changed and why? Let’s look at what we know and than draw some conclusions:

We see Rin (wearing Kagura’s kimono no less!) happily helping Kaede. Giving that Rin now seems to enjoy living among humans, we can assume that she has somehow lost her fear of humans. We can also assume that she is no longer 100% dependent on Sesshomaru’s protection, and no loner feels the need to run to him for help. In fact her reaction to his presence suggests a tone of indifference. She does not seem to care that he came to visit her, it seems to be just another thing that happens. She is neither pleased to see him, nor displeased. This is out of character for Rin, who normally is overflowing with bubbling joy at even the slightest glance from Sesshomaru. Rin’s outlook towards Sesshomaru has changed, and rather dramaticly.

And why is Rin wearing Kagura’s kimono? How did she get it? If it’s not Kagura’s kimono, than why is she wearing a duplicate of Kagura’s kimono? Kagura being the woman Sesshomaru loved and probably would have taken as his mate had she not died, we must question the change in Rin’s wardrobe and the motive behind it. We know that Sesshomaru gave Rin her golden Noh robes, and we know that he gave you yet another kimono in 558, so we can safely assume that he also gave her this duplicate one that is like the one Kagura wore as well.

Okay, so that’s Rin now, lets look at what Sesshomaru is doing now.

We know how obsessed with Rin, Sesshomaru is, so to see them sepperated, is odd to say the least. Giving that Sesshomaru is still lurking around the village, in spite of his outspoken hatred for humans and his avoidance of setting a foot within a human village, we can assume that he not only still cares about Rin, and still desires to watch over her and protect her, in spite of the fact that she no longer lives with him, but that he is now forcing himself to put aside his hatred for humans, just to be near her. How odd and un-Youkai like of him! To make this whole series of events just a little bit wierder, we now see Sesshomaru flying in to not only visit Rin, but also to bring her gifts as well! Now that is the most, un-Sesshomaru thing to do of all!

Sesshomaru knew that Rin knew he cared for her, and while he knew this, he was not giving her gifts. It seems to indicate now, that Rin is questioning the fact that Sesshomaru cares for her, and he is now overdoing it, by bringing her gifts to prove to her that he does still care for her. If one was to look at the old Rin and Sesshomaru and compare them to the new ones, it would seem that their roles have reversed. Rin is now the cold emotionless one, no longer bringing gift after gift to her lord, while Sesshomaru is now the one bringing gifts to the girl ho no longer seems to care.

Why, is Sesshomaru, bringing her gifts? That part is so odd. Is her afraid that she will forget about him and brings her gifts to keep him on her mind? Is he afraid she will never return to him, and live the rest of her life with the humans, and so is bringing gifts to try to sway her to come back to him? Is she angry with him, and he brings gifts as a way to ask forgiveness? Any one of these things is out of character for Sesshomaru. He’s showing emotion. It’s like the episode of Star Trek, when Mr. Spock started laughing. It stunned everyone because Spock is devoid of emotion. Sesshomaru shows no emotion. Emotions are a thing humans do that make them weak and pathetic… he has said this in the past. Yet now here he is showing emotion, by giving gifts. What emotion is he showing? Love? Fear? Guilt? Does it matter? Either way it’s still an emotion, something that Sesshomaru does not admit to having.

So while most fans are saying that Sesshomaru had a change of heart and left Rin, it seems to me, that the one who changed was not Sesshomaru, but Rin. It looks more like Rin left of her own accord, and while Sesshomaru did not want her to leave, he also does not want to hold her prisoner and so let her leave, but is now regretting that he did so.

Why would Rin leave him? What could Kaede have said that could have gotten Rin to leave? Did Rin leave because Kaede told her to? Or did Rin leave and seek refuge with Kaede? Is it possible that Sesshomaru some hoe scared or hurt Rin, to the extent that she no longer felt safe in his care?

What could have happened, I suppose would be affected by how you view their relationship: Master/servant-pet; father/daughter; or lolicon, being the three most commonly accepted theories.

The whole gift-giving thing, completely throws out the father-daughter theory, because, lets face it, how many dad’s go out of their way to buy gifts for their kids for no reason at all? Fathers have a hard time remembering to buy gifts for Christmas and birthdays, and rely on the mother to buy the gifts for them… it’s not logical that Sesshomaru would be buying gifts for Rin if he thought of her as his daughter, though it is logical to believe that Rin did look up to Sesshomaru as though he was a father. I think the father-daughter theory, would only hold true in Rin’s mind and not Sesshomaru’s.

The master-servant or master-pet theories are so similar that I’ll call them one and the same. It is this theory that I personally felt held true for this couple, throughout the series. Rin clearly looked up to Sesshomaru as her master, and obied his every command without question. His fierce protection of her, is no different than the protection one gives to a beloved house-pet. He protects her, keeps her safe, kept her feed and healthy, and pretty much did nothing else. When a dog runs away or gets lost, you look for it, and when you find it you are so filled with joy that you shower it with gifts and treats. This seems to hold true for Sesshomaru’s actions. He has lost his beloved pet to a new owner and is trying to convince her to return to him, through the bearing of gifts.

Than there is the lolicon relationship, which I have already read posts from fans who are pointing the dreaded lolicon finger at Sesshomaru. Actually, as much as I hate to admit it, this does seem to be the most logical and highly likely reason for this unexpected turn of events. Weird, I find myself agree on this point, because until now, I had never actually believed that the lolicon theory was even possible. It just seemed to unlikely and out of character for Sesshomaru. The Sesshomaru gone lolicon was a theory that I pointed at and laughed. However, after reading 558, I can see this being a distinctive possibility, and one that could have gone one of three ways:

    One, Sesshomaru, did as most fans suggest, and sent Rin away against her will to live with Kaede. For this to be true in the lolicon theory, we would have to assume that Sesshomaru no longer trusted himself and sent Rin away to protect her from himself.

    Second would be that, Rin left of her own accord after a lolicon confrontation between herself and Sesshomasru left her scared to live with him anymore.

    Third would be that Kaede, accused Sesshomaru of being a lolicon and took Rin away from him. This one could go one of two ways:

    One Sesshomaru is in fact lolicon and Kaede somehow found out and took Rin away.

    Two, Sesshomaru is not lolicon, but Kaede just assumed that he was, and took Rin away.

Reading 558, I actually got the impression that the later was true. Kaede, saw Rin and Sesshomaru together for the first time, after Naraku’s death, and was not aware Rin lived with Sesshomaru, before that point (chapter 552). InuYasha said that it was Kaede who said Rin should prepare to return to a human village. (558). So we know that Shortly after Kaede discovered that 7 year old Rin was living with 700+ year old Sesshomaru, she told them that Rin should live in a human village. The question is, how did Kaede convince Rin to come with her, and why did Sesshomaru let Rin go?

We do know that more than once Sesshomaru has told Rin, she could leave if she so desired, so we can assume that it was Rin who decided to leave Sesshomaru, otherwise, I can see no way he would have let her go. He would not have sent her away. He would not have allowed anyone to take her away. The only way he would let Rin go, is if, Rin, left of her own accord. But why would Rin leave?

Have I gotten anywhere with all of this? No. But at least I got it off my chest and now I’ll let someone else unravel this mess and figure it out. I’d love to hear how other fans are taking this. Me? It’s safe to say that I am very upset over this and not taking it very well at all, otherwise I would not have spent the last 3 and 1/2 hours sitting here typing up this rant about it.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

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If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

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Blingo

Plagiarism Update: Sent Report To WordPress

Plagiarism Update: Sent Report To WordPress

I have just sent a report on this evil thief’s activities to WordPress. I urge anyone with the sewing related WordPress blog to look at the thief’s blog and see if your posts are being stolen. If they are, please send a report to WordPress as well. If there is a way to identify this plager and send them to jail, let me know, because I will pursue that course of action. As an author I take plagiarism very seriously, and so should you. Well, at least they chose the right name for their blog: Scum Bag Clothing. I can’t think of anything that makes a person more of a scumbag than being a thief.

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to WordPress:

Posts off of more than 30 different WordPress blogs (all sewing topics) are being copied and posted word for word, picture for picture, on someone else’s blog!

I use CopyScape on my posts, and CopyScape notified me that my posts were being copied and distributed on someone else’s blog without my permission, so I went to their blog to check and CopyScape was right. They copied everything, word for word, picture for picture… even the CopyScape plagiarizing warning gif!

Because they are copying posts off of my sewing blog, so I started checking all the other posts on their blog, and they’ve plagiarized every single post on their blog, by stealing posts and pictures off of other people’s blogs! I’ve only checked the posts for Jun so far, but so far I’ve counted over 30 different WordPress blogs from which they are stealing posts and hotlinking images from!

Here is their blog link:

http://www.scumbagclothing.com/category/dressmaking/

I don’t know how to stop them. I’ve been trying to find a way to notify their blog host, but so far have not had any luck. If you know of a way to stop them from stealing the posts off of our blogs, please let me know, cause I don’t like them claiming that they wrote the articles I wrote. They are even displaying my drawings on their blog and claiming they drew them!

Sorry for the rant, but I thought you’d want to know that they’ve been stealing posts and passing them off as theirs. :(

This is so frustrating. I put so much work into writing my articles and drawing my artwork, and I know other folks do as well. It’d be one thing if they were linking back to our blogs with a review or something, but they are claiming that they wrote all of these posts and drew all of the art and took all of the photos themselves!

Is there a law enforcement agency I can contact about this? I was told that the FBI had an identity theft division that handles online predators that steal other peoples identities. Should I contact the FBI about this? I mean who ever is running this blog is claiming to be me, by saying they wrote those articles, so that’s identity theft as far as I can tell.

What should I do?

Is there anything that you can do about it, since they are stealing posts off of WordPress blogs?

Who Are You REALLY?

Another question found on CosPlay.com, asked:

    [QUOTE=DarknessSummit] Who are you when ur “not cosplaying”? what kind of person are you, what social group are u, what clothes do u wear, random hobbies, things like that…[/QUOTE]

I am a writer, editor, publisher, artist, doll maker, animal rights activist, costume maker, make-up artist, sale representative, and fashion designer.

I write in the Gothic, Horror, and Science Fiction genres. My works include a horror series, and it’s spin-offs. Some of my other writing habits include children’s stories, comic books, and the dark retellings of classic folk lore & fairy tales. I am the owner of The Twighlight Manor Press.

I live on a farm, which is the headquarters for The Pidgie Fund, where we take in roosters and feral cats, and other animals in need of a home. I’m currently caring for 70+ roosters and hens, 14 cats, and 1 dog, but the animals here change over time and have in the past included horses, goats, ducks, squirrels, turtles, wild birds, and just about every type of domestic animal you could name.

I also do gardening, both flowers and veggies.

I live on a farm, in the forest, on the beach. I am very in touch with nature. I spend more time with animals and trees than I do with humans. Me and my dog spend hours each week on the beach collecting shells.

In alphabetical order: I like Alan Rickman, Alice Cooper, Alice in Wonderland, anime, birds, candy, Carl Barks, cartoons, cats, C*C*DeVille, Colombo, comic books, CosPlay, Darkwing Duck, David Bowie, Disney, dogs, Don Rosa, Donald Duck, Dr. Who, dvds, eels, Etiole, fashion, Gothic, haunted houses, horror, ice cream, InuYasha, Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp, Kieth Laumer, manga, movies, NegaDuck, peacocks, pigeons, Lord Sesshomaru, Prof. Snape, Retief, roosters, sci-fi, Scrooge McDuck, Sir Roderic, Star Trek, Tom Baker, Twighlight Manor, Uncle Scrooge, video games, Vincent Price, Willy Wonka, writing, X-Files, Xena, Zorro.

When I go out in public, usually it’s to one of the five local libraries, where I practically live. I am a complete and total bookworm, and own a private library with a collection of more than 10,000 books and over 7,000 comic books, and still I end up at the public libraries doing research for my writing, mostly because I just love being in a library surrounded by all those books!

I dream about opening my own Gothic fashion shop; Gothic~Lolita~CosPlay Clothen Store, that has yet to be built. Everything is still in the planning stages.

As for what I wear: I change from CosPlay to Glam to Gothic to Lolita to Punk to Renaissance depending on my current mood. I’ve been one or the other since the early 1980′s, and often a mixture of all at once. Most people who see me call me “Goth”, but I don’t really think I fit in with the overall Goth look, but whatever. I prefer the term historical reenactor myself.

One of the dangers of being a Goth-CosPlay-type person in an area where no one but you is a Goth-CosPlay-type person, is that every time you set a foot outside, people gawk at you and start asking the silliest stupid dang questions. Like:

Are you promoting a play for the local theater?

Are you on the way to a costume party?

Is there a Renaissance Fair nearby?

Are you a circus clown?

OMG! It’s a Harry Potter fan!

Are you a witch?

. . .and my personal favorite:

What the hell planet did you drop off of?!?

yea . . .okay . . . whatever.

So what prompts these non-ending string of questions everywhere I go? My cloths.

CosPlay is my life. I have never been to a Con, but that hasn’t stopped me from wearing “costumes“, though technically these are not costumes as they are my actual street cloths or garb and therefor I do not call them costumes because I do not think of them as costumes. I do not own any “normal” non-costume “street cloths”. What you see me wearing as CosPlay type things IS the way I dress when I’m not CosPlaying, because for me, this is not about “playing”. My CosPlay can more correctly be termed as “historical reenactment of fantasy costumes“.

My clothen style includes velvet, capes, empire gowns, gowns with trains, burnoose, shawls, runas, fishnet hose, striped stockings, combat boots, velvet, top-hats, long dresses, ruffled frilly skirts, cosplay, Gothic, Lolita, Victorian, Edwardian, velvet, frock coats, Alice in Wonderland, vampire fashions, Medieval fashions, crinolines & petticoats, kimono, ethnic costumes, eyelash-fringe fabric, sequins, beads, glitter, lace, cloaks, ruffles, broomstick skirts, stripes, plaid, poet blouses, peasant dresses, fairy tale princess gowns, faerie outfits, wizard-look stuff, big hats, bright colored hats, ballet flats, platforms, anything that Dracula would love to wear, and also stuff like worn by Jem*, The Holograms, and The Misfits.

Whenever I go out in public, my conversations with strangers sounds something like this:

I was dressing like Jem, before Jem was invented.

I love anything made of velvet!

I don’t like pants: won’t wear them, won’t own them.

I the 1980′s I wore min-skirts, but as the years have gone by, my dresses and skirts got longer; today my hems sweep the floor and they often have trains. I have one dress that has 7 yards of fabric on the skirt alone, it can be worn with or without hoops.

No, what I’m wearing is not a costume.

Yes, I dress like this every day, all day long, even around the house, when working in the garden, and when shoveling manure out of the barn. Yes I am a farmer. Yes I do dress like this while doing farm work.

No, I don’t own any “normal” clothes.

No, I can’t tell you where I bought them, because I didn’t buy them, I sewed them.

No, I can’t tell you where to buy the pattern, I didn’t buy a pattern I made the pattern. I’ve been sewing since I was 6 years old when I made my first doll. I made my first ball-gown at age 12. At age 16 I graduated from a 2 year course in fashion design & merchandising. I’ve spent most of my life studying fashion history and the art of recreating historical clothen from the Gothic periods (1300 – 1500 & 1850 – 1930), and those are the clothes I thus wear.

No I already told you this is not a costume, these are my regular cloths, I don’t care if you think this is a costume, it is not, please stop asking me if it is.

I don’t like people who think I’m wearing a costume even after been told that I am not.

Yes, I know this looks like a Willy Wonka costume, yes, Johnny Depp inspired it. Yes, I do wear a top hat everywhere I go. No, I repeat this is not a costume.

Yes, I REALLY am making a historical reproduction of Lord Sesshomaru’s costume, and yes, I do intend to wear it daily as part of my street cloths, fluffy tail, battle armor, and all.

No, I’m not crazy, I just hate that Halloween only comes once a year so now I live every day like it was Halloween.

No, THIS . . . IS . . . NOT . . . A . . . COSTUME . . . I already told you, I always dress like this. I’ve been dressing like this for the last 20 years. Please stop making me repeat myself.

I have had that conversation so many times now it’s burned in my brain.

I think the funniest thing is that I am constantly asked for my ID….“You got to be over 18 . . .” yadda, yadda, yadda

Than I whip out my ID… “Is this real? Wait, you’re really THAT old? . . .but . . .but . . your cloths…. I thought you were a teenager! I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize… it’s just that your cloths… I thought…”

Honey, I haven’t been a teenager for 20 years! But thank you for thinking I was one, it’s not every day some one my age gets mistaken for a teenager… will, with me it is, but for other folks my age . . .

Well, that’s me. And as you can tell, I really like to write . . . a lot! LOL!

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

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If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

Thank You Kitty. . .Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

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If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:
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Blingo

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