Happy Vladurday!

oh y'all! I just loved it!

yes, being the absolutely unapologetic Anglophile, I watched the wedding and I LOVED LOVED LOVED it! so lovely! I love weddings despite never having one of my own. hopefully, theirs will be long lasting and full of love and fun. I wish the now Duke and Duchess of Cambridge decades of happiness.
this is the second Royal wedding I've watched. yes , I gave up my precious sleep to watch it and as I type, I'm imagining my words in a British accent.LOL. but all of this is history so of course I'm not missing it. this wedding was so gorgeous and so tradition laden. I had goosebumps countless times as I watched it all on BBC America(of course) and I had tons of smiles as I watched the street interviews with all the Brits along the route to the Palace. I love the hats!!!! why don't we wear more hats? in my former life I know I was a milliner. but I just love the happy, united and optimistic energy of the crowd. this was such a great way to start my day. maybe now my writer's block will vanish.
and by the way, I'm wearing a tiara all day!

the only antidote to a zany scheme is an even ZANIER scheme!

so now I will pass on the honor of the Stylish Blogger award. part of this is that I must reveal seven things about myself. although this might be difficult because I pretty much tell y'all everything. but here goes.
1)I'm terrified of heights
2)despite my brash, comical exterior I am a tender heart underneath (if you tell anyone I'll beat your ass)
3)If I ever met any of my super crushes, I would turn into a tongue tied teen.
4)I'll never stop lovin my first true love. okay so you know this but some might not.
5)I can change my own tires and oil
6)I would rather watch cartoon than reality TV
7)I will sing and loudly I might add any song I love in my car no matter who's in it with me
And now to pass it on:
1) Tiffany's Bookshelf http://tiffanysbookshelf.blogspot.com
2)The Word is My Oyster http://lydiakang.blogspot.com
3)From Sarah, With Joy http://fromsarahwithjoy.blogspot.com
4)Two Nerdy History Girls http://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com
5)Chronicles of a Novice Writer http://novicewriterchronicles.blogspot.com
6)Supernatural Smut http://brooklynann.blogspot.com
go and do good!

Thanks, y'all!

yeah that's probably good advice but the best advice would be don't go to a body piercer who would need that kind of advice. just sayin.
I'm so happy! I got 2 blog awards!!!! I am so honored and overwhelmed.
the first was this lovely award from A Storybook World hosted by author and brilliant illustrator  Dierdra Eden Coppel http://astorybookworld.blogspot.com/

seriously, I was happy/flabbergasted when I saw her comment! it was so nice for someone to drop in and give me such a lovely award! it was like she "got" what I do here. go see her blog and follow! it's awesome!!!
the second award was from my hilarious friend in blogging Steve Bossenberger over at El Blog de Steve www.steveboss.blogspot.com he and I think a lot alike and if I lived anywhere near him, I'd never get anything done because we'd be discussing all the things he writes about along with some of my gems. anyway, the Boss awarded me The Stylish Blogger Award!

I love this award and love that a like minded peer gave it to me! like minded all except for the Gators and we'll just have to over look that. I will do my fact revealing and passing this award on in a later post but I just wanted to say thanks!
THANKS Boss and Dierdra!!!You guys rock!

it's even more spickier and spannier now!

so now at last I think my karma is about back at even and ready for me and my undisciplined mind to wreck it again. but I hope not. I finally got rid of the last bit of karmic messing up stuff in my life over the weekend and I feel better. you wouldn't think I would but I do because I know it was the right thing to do and I feel that now things will be right in my universe. am I really that dependent of my belief in karma and fate. ubetcha. when I started taking notice of things and started doing my karmic cleaning a few months back, right away I noticed a difference for the better. coincidence you might say and I say you're entitled to your opinion but I think otherwise. I am a firm believer in all things happen for a reason and it is our responsibility to learn from each experience. if you don't , you are the loser. no matter what the occurrence, learn from it. there is no better teacher than that in most things. trust me.
so I'll leave you with a little of The Way of the Bodhisattva:
May I become an inexhaustible treasure
For those who are poor and destitute;
May I turn into all things they need
And may these be placed close beside them!
Whether those who encounter me
Conceive a faithful or angry thought,
May that always become the source
For fulfilling all their wishes!
May all who say bad things to me
Or cause me any other harm,
And those who mock and insult me
Have the fortune to awaken fully!

I'll be back with more inappropriate humor and drama with my next post. :)

okay y'all here it is

after reading an awesome author/ blogger/ friend's (Rod Rees- read The Demi Monde! it's freakin sweet!) recent post, I'm gonna do some revealing. as you may know I'd been doing some hand wringing and emotional sweating over a certain character in BLOOD OF NEW BEGINNINGS. with good reason. the character is Reinhard Heydrich. I made him a vampire and he is true to his human character. I don't make him glamorous or nifty. he's just an opportunistic, manipulative morally bankrupt dude. just like in life.  when I was researching him, I was always terrified people would find my computer, look in the files and see all the Heydrich stuff and think I was a nut. I really was bothered by this, so bothered that I didn't tell very many people about this until it was picked up for publication by Charles River Press. I guess the publisher felt it was appropriate. it's a weird thing writing about reprehensible people. I know I joke about Vladimir Putin and Dick Cheney because I have that kind of sense of humor. but I do take things seriously and don't try to make evil great. I think that happens enough on it's own to humans. face it we dig bad guys, even if it's in secret. we're human and full of flaws. but I just wanted to get RH, vampire out in the open.

Dark Shadows News Page: 4DMax Joins Dark Shadows Movie

Dark Shadows News Page: 4DMax Joins Dark Shadows Movie: "UK-based visual effects company 4DMax is to work on the new Dark Shadows feature film. 4DMax offers a number of digital effects services, i..."

Welcome Evelyn Lafont author of The Vampire Relationship Guide,Volume I: Meeting and Mating!

ladies and gentlemen and others...please welcome Evelyn Lafont, awesome author of The Vampire Relationship Guide, Volume I: Meeting and Mating. she has graciously stopped by to visit and share some of her wisdom!

Whispering WIPs

For most of this blog tour, I’ve tried to focus on reader-centric content. But after reading a few of the posts here, I realize that this blog is favored by writer/readers. Writer/ readers are a challenging group—and I should know, I’m one of ‘em. We love to read, LOVE it. But we also love to create. Often our time must be unfairly split between the reading and the writing, but somehow we find a way to work both in and create some sort of Libra-approved writing/reading balance.

Until our secondary WIPs start whispering.

Yeah, I see your head nodding. You know exactly what I’m talking about. We each have a book or series that we consider our primary work—for me, that’s Josie’s story in the form of the Vampire Relationship Guide series. But we also have other ideas that we’ve started, jotted down, and plotted out that we plan to begin seriously writing later—after our primary WIP is done.

For a little while, this jotting down of secondary WIP notes works. It shuts the voices up for days, weeks, or maybe even months and lets us focus. But eventually, the secondary WIP sticks its tiny little head back out of our brain and knocks on the door to our inspiration, whispering dirty little nothings much too sweet to ignore.

If your secondary WIPs are pulling at you but you are under pressure to get your primary WIP finished (or are simply afraid of abandoning it and never finishing it), then I have a simple fix for you. Allow yourself ONLY 30 minutes a day to work on your whispering WIP. Yup, just 30 minutes. That way, you get to create the story when you are inspired—which is always the best—but you won’t be completely abandoning your primary WIP, so you won’t feel guilty, negligent or like you are being forced to do homework when you work on the primary WIP. Finally, those 30 minutes can be an easy way to grease the wheels of your creativity, and that ain’t never a bad thing. 

Thanks Evelyn for visiting and sharing! 

Evelyn Lafont is an author and freelance writer with an addiction to Xanax and a predilection for snark. Her debut novella, The Vampire Relationship Guide, Volume 1: Meeting and Mating is available on Amazon , Barnes and Noble and Smashwords .

 

Josie wants what she’s never been able to have—sex with a vampire. Little does Josie know that vampires aren’t simply toys there to satisfy her carnal desires—they are dangerous. As Josie starts down the path to vampire concubine, she quickly finds that dating a blood sucker might be a little trickier than she thought, and might require a little more finesse than she’s actually got.

Trust me! YOU WANT TO READ IT! You can get it at:

 Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Vampire-Relationship-Guide-Meeting-ebook/dp/B004UI6HGE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1303499308&sr=8-1 

Barnes and Noble

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Vampire-Relationship-Guide-Volume-1/Evelyn-Lafont/e/2940012319654/?itm=1&USRI=evelyn+lafont

Smashwords

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50548

But wait...that isn't all!!! 

make sure you check out the next stop on Evelyn's tour for the SWEET giveaway happening!! go to Novella Vialli's blog at http://diaryofacambridgestudent.wordpress.com/ to get the details.

the name game

yeah, if you click on the lil pic there you will be in my hell of having that song stuck in your head. and while we're at it... does anyone besides me think the Banana Spilts was kind of trippy? I FREAKIN LOVED that show as a kid but now as an adult, I think the producers might have been high. but that's just me. anyway, the purpose of today's post is names. I recently was asked to consider retitling one of my books. at first I was a bit miffed because it took a long time to come up with the title and now it just seems to fit. then after I took a bit of time I considered the possibility that there might be other titles that could work. A lot of books end up with different titles than they began life with. Incident at West Egg was the title of The Great Gatsby. Fiesta was the title of The Sun Also Rises.Bar B-Q was The Postman Always Rings Twice. The Terror and the Monster was Jaws. See? LOTS of better titles. fact is, I hate hate HATE coming up with titles. I'm not good at it. I can write the crap out of a story but the title is a blank. I had a hard time coming up with a name for my daughter. I just can't name things. I hate titling more than I hate queries and blurbs and that's saying something. I try things like title generator and flash cards where I mix around words or phrases but nothing works. I guess it's just my weak spot. I wonder if it's because I'm too close to it. could be. anyway, I came up with a new title and everyone is happy. but I'm curious about how others come up with titles. feel free to share. and make sure you listen to The Name Game and relive some trippy memories with The Banana Splits.

Happy Vladurday!

check this out

I'm always on the lookout for Eamons. I know em when I see em. so this past season during Being Human on SyFy I was introduced to the awesomeness that is Mark Pellegrino. yeah. have a long look. I'll wait for you. anyway, this is a smexy dude. and seeing him as a vampire was nifty. I could totally picture him as Eamon. although he'd have to do a British accent. finding this bit of eye candy hasn't helped me write anymore. I'm still stuck at like 13k words on my wip and that's bad. I've tried picturing scenes and dialog but it isn't working. I'm stuck still. maybe I'll become unstuck in a few weeks. I'm not worried. yet. maybe I'll just wait til NaNoWriMo and blast out another book. that worked for BONB so why can't it work again?

been mighty quiet

I've been the world's worst blogger this past week. I don't know why but I haven't felt much like writing ANYTHING. I think the fact that I have been out of work for 6 months now is starting to get to me. it's sucking energy out of me. I'm not a good unemployed person. I thought I would be but I suck. and I also thought it would be super duper easy for me to find a new job but apparently in this economy, even a nurse with 14 almost 15 years of experience can't find a job. so now I am having to entertain thoughts of switching careers. I've come up with several plans/schemes. they're all viable believe it or not and they all involve going back to school. I wish I could just go to school for a job because it seems like I spend a crap load of time there. anyway, my ideas were and they are in no particular order.
a) going to cosmetology school. yeah I know. Beauty School Dropout.Lalalala.
b)getting my legal nurse consultant certification and going to work for an attorney.
c)going to midwifery school and being a midwife at a birthing center.
d)getting an advanced degree in history and teaching at community college or high school.
yes, these are my options. I've gotta get something lined up so I can shake off whatever funk of unemployment that is weighing me down and keeping me from being non productive. I've got 2 active WIPs and 2 ideas that I am developing and now is not the time for me to be cracking!

Happy Vladurday!!

Happy Vladurday!

making work fun

well, wouldn't it be awesome to work wherever this is? they must have people with amazing senses of humor. work should be fun. or I think it should be. you get higher productivity for multiple reasons. I think if you can make your work fun, you do a better job but that's just me. I try and make my writing fun. especially research. research is always an opportunity to buy new books and watch films. LOVE IT.
I have been buying bunches of books lately for an unrelated future WIP. they're history related so I am really going to enjoy them. the bad thing about these books is that they really get into my brain. sometimes I even end up dreaming about the subject matter. it's okay because like I mentioned in another post, I dreamed the idea for this book. so reading and sleeping, two of my all time favorite things yielded productive and positive results. if I could find a job that combined that, I'd be all over it. I'd love it. anyway, I got a really cool book in the mail today and I'm dying to get to it. it looks even better in person than it did on the Barnes and Noble website. I just can't start it yet because I have stuff to do for our local writer's group meeting tomorrow, work on my blog posts for my guest stops(they are gonna be terrific!) and do laundry. I loathe laundry. it comes from my days as a theatre student and having to do show laundry. but the things must get done. I'll figure out a way to make them fun.

so...now what?

you know, I think I have griped more about this WIP than any of the others. it's not moving along. I swear it sometimes feels like I'm going backwards. it could be that I'm spoiled by how easy the last one was. Blood of New Beginnings practically wrote itself. it helped that it was a NaNo book. I cranked out 50k words in a month and finished it in December. the words just overflowed onto the screen. not this one. it comes in spurts. like rain showers. right now I'm in a drought. a couple of nights ago, I just drew a blank. a big fat, black hole style blank. as in no light was escaping from its massive gravitational pull of suckage. I'm still at that point. none of the characters are talking to me.and I've had no ideas for scenes or plot twists or dialog or even settings. I'm beginning to not like it. the WIP not the situation and that's not a good thing. I think I'm going to back away from it for a while and see what happens. I'm going to pretend like I'm dating my WIP. I'm going to ignore it and wait for it to start chasing me again.

It's in the bag!

Congratulations to the winners! Beckah-Rah, Cheree and Sara Allen! I decided to pick three winners because I love the bag so much!
email your snail mail address at maddy56 at ufl dot edu

Happy Vladurday!