my favorite day

well here it is...my favorite day/holiday of the year. I just love Halloween. I would keep Halloween decorations up all year but my sanity might get called into question. even more so than it does now. yeah, I'm an eccentric and I love it but I digress. again. I'm a bit peeved because this year my dim witted town elders decided to move the celebrations to last night because Halloween fell on sunday. But I know what the true day is.
Halloween is such a fun holiday. I'm not real nuts about super scary modern stuff. I like the deep rooted superstitions and festitivities. my favorite traditions and decorations are those from the turn of the 19th to 20th century. I collect the postcards like the one above and I make reproductions of the decorations complete with tinsel, crepe and german glitter glass. Once of the traditions I especially love is the one about how if a single woman looks in the mirror at the stroke of midnight brushing her hair and eating an apple by candlelight, she will see her true love reflected in the mirror. that's a lot of stuff to do to see a dude but I love it. there are tons of old postcards portraying this.
colonial traditions and early american traditions are fun as well. I swear I could totally do a master's dissertation on the history and traditions of Halloween. I love it.
however you celebrate Halloween, enjoy!

Awesome

Awesome

HAPPY HALLOWEENIE!!!

apparently I love food

so here are some of the things I made this week. the cupcakes were a repeat they were so good. the bottom one was our tailgate at home party spread. I cooked for like 3 hours. wings, crab dip, gator bites, deviled eggs, guacamole, shrimp, dip and veggies. oh and beer. good old beer. beer beer beer. I love it. watched the Gator game and then took Maddy trick or treating. I missed the end of the game because our town decided to move trick or treating to saturday instead of sunday. I know. don't get me going. anyway, she had fun and scored some candy. no baby ruth candy bars though. crud.

judging a book by its cover

pretty aren't they? I still keep thinking about the cover art for Life in Moonlight and this keeps coming back to me. now if these shoes were stepping on the man shoes like in the poster I love, this would be perfect. remember this poster? I love it. it is p;erfect. make the pointe shoes red or wash the pic in red and bam!it's perfect. I really worry about the cover of my book. I know it's normal for all authors to worry. after all, this is your baby and now you are trusting someone else to interpret your vision in artwork. I completely trust the art director but I still can worry.

no tricks just treats...Sam Neill

here he is...lovely Sam. I just love him. I picture my MC Eamon like Sam. Or maybe a Sam/AR combo. mainly Sam now that I think of it. just one sexy mo fo. a thinking girl's sex symbol. he'd give you the look and that smile and bam you'd pretty much do anything.
btw, today in my week long Halloween treat fest, I made pumpkin cookies. not pumpkin flavored but pumpkin shaped. cute!

behold! vampire bite cupcakes!!

look what I've been doing!not these in particular  but cupcakes that look like these!aren't they great? I wish october lasted 3 months. I just love it. pumpkins and scarecrows and spooky stories!! although in Florida it looks like every other month. it's all in the the frame of mind, you see. but everyday this week I am making a spooky creepy goody to celebrate my fave month. sunday night I plan on cooking a theme dinner for my family. we are trick or treating on saturday(which interferes with the florida georgia football game) so I will have all of the day of halloween to celebrate!

the dracula appreciation society

so today I watched the original (and in my opinion the best one) version of Dracula with my main vamp dude Bela Lugosi. the version I watched had a new score written by Phillip Glass and performed by the Kronos Quartet. I was in heaven. so then I decided to watch all my Draculas. I was a one woman Dracula appreciation society. maybe I should have shirts made. I watched the Frank Langella version(LOVE his voice), a Christopher Lee version (again the voice) the Francis Ford Coppola version, the Gerard Butler version and am now watching sort of a version, Nosferatu directed by F.W. Murnau. after this one, I'll watch Shadow of the Vampire, a movie about making Nosferatu with John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe. very awesome.
I wish I could watch the Dracula TV series that was on in the late eighties early nineties. that was campy but awesome. it had a very young Mia Kirschner in it. Google the series. if anything it's worth the campy laugh.

cupcakes and character conversations

today I became aware of the fact that I have a cupcake related nick name which I embrace. although I can't reveal it. not because it's raunchy but because identities could be compromised. stan smith knows the name and digs it. I dig it. the person who gave me the name probably doesn't dig it. alas.
speaking of stan smith...I got stan smith II back from the Super Cool Bike Store today. yes that is its epic name and they are indeed epic. I can't wait to ride stan. hopefully when I am on stan I'll be able to come up with some interesting ideas for my mss. today on the interstate I got quite a few. two characters had an entire conversation and a scene played out. that was awesome. what wasn't so awesome was I was driving and had to try and recall it when I got home. that's the down side when those things happen. if you are in an inconvenient place you had better remember it or it's gone.

I've got scissors and I'm runnin' with 'em

well, I've decided to embrace my inner me. the runs with scissors me. I've been that way so long and being anything else is just crap. so there you go. just sayin'.
good news though.I've been writing like crazy. on two different mss. AND I have idea for another. which makes me feel great.

Bite Club: VampBash 2010

Bite Club: VampBash 2010: "VampBash 2010 begins next week over at VampChix, with a different author featured every day! And let's not forget the contests. So mark you..."

only a few days left

that's right kids!only a few more days before the kick off of NANWRIMO! this is the first year I'm participating and I'm excited. I think I can do it!hell, if I can train for a triathlon I can crank out 50k words. and writing is a very cheap for of therapy. if you are still waffling about participating, check out their website. or if you aren't participating, be sure and cheer on the participants. I have a feeling they will need it as the days move on. I'll probably be pretty neurotic(even more so) by the end of november myself.

Life in Moonlight will be released September 2011

yes, Life in Moonlight will be released in paperback in 2011 by Melange Books. it will be out in ebook format before that but I don't have a date yet. no Sam Neill won't be on the cover (that would be FRIGGIN AWESOME) but that's who I kind of associate Eamon with. oh and AR. yeah...Sam and AR. mmmmm.
other than that I am super super excited about this and as it gets closer I will be doing all sorts of giveaways and stuff.

seeing the zen in suffering

yeah, the pic is harsh but funny. I've had it awhile and today just seemed optimal. today is the end of a funk that has lasted for a few weeks and while it was harsh, it was a good zen type learning experience. in all of the crappy events in my life I have always been able to take away something from the experience. some sort of knowledge. today was no different. as I write this the loving calm feeling that I look for in the aftermath of bad experiences is working its way over me. maybe it's the funny pic. maybe it's american dad. maybe it is just time. so I will move on.
meanwhile, enjoy the Timmy video posted below. Tim is BOOM!

Timmy BOOM!