325. Superman Returns!

Thursday, June 29, 2006

If you haven't been to see Superman Returns yet, what are you waiting for? It was great, and yes it was two and a half hours long, but it really didn't feel like it at all. I won't say more here now because I plan to do a detailed review of the movie over the weekend. I'll let you know when that is up on my review site!

324. Hump Day

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Sometimes I like to wait until no one else is home and then blast some music and dance around my bedroom. I've tried doing it in the living room, but it never seems as much fun then. I dance and dance and dance until I'm out of breath and I need to stop. Today, I was doing that and my cat Mikey just laid by the door and watched me as if I had somehow been possessed by some outer force. It was cute, and if I had the camera handy I would have captured him on film stretched out as he was with his head resting on his paws.

Tomorrow, I am on my way to see Superman Returns. I'm excited to see this new release as I grew up watching Christopher Reeve in the Superman movies. I've heard nothing but good things about the movie, so I am really wanting to see what they have done to the story I loved so much as a child and teenager.

I was Superman obsessed when I was younger, and I used to watch all the Superman related television series that even came on air. My favorite being Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman with Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain. I never watched Smallville, although I always thought to. I think it was simply a matter of the show sharing a time slot with something else I watched. That isn't as much as a problem now with my handy DVR, but there is no way to catch up on five seasons.

Over on Media Village blog, I've been following the mess that has become The View lately with Star Jones Reynolds recent departure from the show. She announced she was leaving yesterday, and today she is off the air. Her original plan was to continue until some time in July.  Barbara asked her to not return following yesterday's announcement.

The way this whole situation was handled just felt wrong to me from the beginning. My brother and I were talking about it earlier, and he agreed with me that it was just shady how Barbara handled it. I thought I was the only one, but he told he had lost respect for Walters to, and this only made it worse. I know I don't plan on watching the show anymore. No matter who they bring in to replace Star. I hear she's on Larry King tonight, so I'll have to check that out to see what more she has to say. Hmm, actually she's on tomorrow night. I just checked.

I hope you're all well! Have a great night. Don't forget to check out for my recap of So You Think You Can Dance on review blog later on tonight if you're a fan of the show!

323. Changing things around

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Here are three entries in three days. Shocking I know. I remember the days where I used to post in here everyday, and I know my schedule was a lot less hectic back then. I didn't have my review site or my other blog on Media Village to keep up.  It's hard to find time some days to get everything done, but with the summer upon us my schedule is a bit lighter, and I know how to handle things for next season because I've already been there and done it once.

Thursday nights will be my busiest night of the week with four shows coming on. I'm still trying to figure out how I'll review all four, especially when three come in during the same time slot. The O.C. won't premiere until November, so that is when I'll have to figure it out. I see myself having to do some fancy footwork or having to download one of the programs, unless one of the series moves time slots between now and November.

I've really shifted my schedule around in the last few weeks. I'm getting up in the morning earlier. Going to bed at night earlier. I've shifted around when I do things, and I noticed immediately that with a few small changes that I actually got more done during the day. The only thing I have to do now is hopefully find my muses, so that I can write more fiction.  As the saying goes, one day at a time.

Last August, I wrote ten thousand fiction words in one month, but it was so draining in the process. Not only that, but I lost some friends in the process too. Looking back though, I'm not sure if I could really call them my friends because if they would have understood what I was doing in that one month where I pushed myself to the limits I had with my fiction, then they would still be in my life now in some capacity.

I really don't talk to many people now online. Some through my role-playing, but that is about it.  I actually enjoy my quiet existence. Some in my family tell me I need to do more, want more, but I'm actually quite content with my life as it is. I know when I'm supposed to have more I will.

322. Crazy Monday

Monday, June 26, 2006

Well, this day started off like it ended the night before crazy. Somewhere around 1am, my cable television went out. I know my cable company sometimes does late night maintainence, so I thought nothing of it and I went to bed. I woke up this morning around 10am, and I thought all was well. That is until my brother yelled that the cable was out. We tried a few things, rebooting the boxes, etc, and nothing happened. So I called COX, and after they looked in the system to determine there wasn't an outage in my area, they told the soonest they could have someone out to look at the problem was tomorrow.

This was even after I told them my day job depended on having working cable. The lady even said, "Well, you're probably going to be mad at me then because the soonest I can have someone out to look at things is tomorrow morning." Yeah, it made me mad. Then again, I've learned not to expect much from my cable company once I signed on for the Internet service. I still get dropped more than once a day, and they haven't been able to fix it. I'm not the only one in the area with the problem, so we just have to wait for the problem to miraculously fix itself someday. I know it could be worse though, so I'll just deal with it as I have been.

In other news, I'm happy to report that my three latest book reviews over at Romance Divas went live today. The reviews were for Aussie Rules by Jill Shalvis, Spring Storm by Kelly Maher and Velvet Strokes by Susie Charles. The direct links to the reviews on our my sidebar. Mine weren't the only reviews to go up this weekend though, so head on over to Romance Divas to check out the others listed in the Book Reviews section of the website. You might just find your latest summer read while you're there!

Ever have one of those dreams that you just can't shake? I had a strange one this morning, and it made me wake up and immediately want to get out of bed. It involved death and it just really freaked me out. It felt almost like a movie, and I was in it as one of the characters. One of those suspense thriller movies where the bad guy causes all this mayhem. When you hear children screaming as shots are fired, it just leaves you with an awful feeling. One I know I didn't like. I don't have dreams like that often, so I hope another one won't happen again anytime soon. The last set of weird dreams I had were around the time I lost my cat in January. I don't want anything bad to happen.

Anyway, have a wonderful Monday everyone!

321. The Official Beginning Of Summer

Sunday, June 25, 2006

It'd been a week since my last entry, but I haven't had all that much to say. I've always hated those type entries on blogs where the person only pops up to say they have nothing to say, so I tend to not do those. Why waste the space? I figure when the time is right and I have something to say then I'll come here to say it.

Summer officially started this week, but for us living in Arizona we've had summer temperatures for the last month or two now. We're in the middle of another dust storm right now, and I'm waiting for the first big summer storm of the year, even if I do hate lightning and thunder. I like to watch it. I like to watch as the rain falls down and the wind blows it about. As long as the power doesn't go out, I'm content to watch the storm as it rips things about. I've always loved storms though.

The past week has been lazy and quiet. I'm enjoying it, even if I feel I've been too lazy. I don't really truly have a current WIP on the table. I started that X-men fan fiction, but I'm still not working on anything new towards publication. I've manuscripts in varying degrees of doneness, but they truly don't feel like works in progress because the last time I worked on them was months ago. So the in progress feel has lessened somewhat.

I've been giving thought to this blog and my review site. I thought about possibly buying a domain and some web space, maybe going the word press route instead of blogger. I also thought of maybe combining this blog and my review site together and making just one blog. I'm not sure if that would work, and what those that read both blogs would think. Plus, I would have the hassle of changing links and all those blog moving type things, not once but twice. That would take forever and a day, and I'm not sure if I want to deal with that hassle either.

I was saddened by the news earlier this week of Aaron Spelling's passing. As a television addict, I've watched a number of his productions over the years, and until his death I never realized just how many shows he was behind I actually watched. As a child, I used to watch Love Boat and Fantasy Island. As a teen, I was addicted to Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. I spent countless hours watching his programming, and it does truly feel like an era has ended with his death. I'd heard him and Tori had their problems in recent years, but towards the end she was rushing to his bedside. I only hope she made it in time. Having lost a parent, I know how hard it is. I couldn't imagine having lost a parent and losing the chance to say good-bye as well. I was fortunate enough to be with my mother and our family as she passed on.

A couple of days ago, I saw the front page of my newspaper and on it was news of a plot that was thwarted to attack several federal buildings in our country, including one here in Phoenix. This is a scary world we live in, and the threat of another event to the scale of 9/11 is always possible. The fact that the building here was included frightens me a little. Not only that but I live just fifty or so miles away from a large nuclear plant. I'm not sure if I'm far enough away if something was to happen there. I hope I am, but you never know. Each and every day we live our lives as best we can, but in just one moment these lives we hold so dear can be taken away by just about anyone or anything. We can't let it stop us from living our lives though.

320. Father's Day Ramblings

Sunday, June 18, 2006

First off, Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there that might happen across my blog. I'm fortunate enough to have my own father still living at eighty years old, but having lost my mother many years ago I know how hard it is to lose a parent and have to deal with days like today. Today, I bought my dad dinner. He isn't the type to go out to a restaurant much anymore, so it was the take out of his choice paid for by me.

Also, today we headed out to Best Buy. I purchased another computer upgrade. One that I think was needed and long overdue since I upgraded to high speed back in December, and that was more memory. I could do more Internet speed wise, but at least once or twice a day I would suffer freezes that could last as long as ten minutes. Nothing is worse than sitting there and watching your computer frozen when you have work that needs to be done.

So today, I doubled the amount of memory in my computer, going from about 382 to 768MB. What a difference I'm noticing already. An improvement, and it didn't cost an arm and a leg either because Best Buy had the 512MB stick I needed at half off the normal price. I also got a couple of magazine free trial subscriptions for having to go out in the 106-degree heat.

Last night, I started on a fan fiction idea I've had bouncing in my head the last week or so, something in the X-men movie verse. I've found some decent writing in that fandom, especially in the Rogue/Wolverine pairing. The idea had probably been bouncing in my head since I saw the movie actually, but I didn't sit down and get it out. I have a couple of other ideas bouncing in my head too.

I seem to have more ideas than I know what to do with, and before I'd normally go forward with them and just write whatever came to mind. When I started taking my writing more seriously, looking for publication, I stopped doing that. I wrote things that I thought would get published only. I stopped writing for fun mostly.

Perhaps I started taking writing too seriously. I've been writing fiction since I was in the sixth grade. That's when we had an assignment to write a story and then make a book out of it. I wrote two books that year, and then when I reached junior high I started writing more. My first longer story is sitting unfinished somewhere in my room right now. It was cheesy and awful and full of violence and murder. What a thirteen year old comes up with.

It was mine though. My story. My ideas, as crazy as they were. I just sat and wrote them out. No word processor or computer back in those days. That came a couple of years later when my mother finally broke down and bought me a word processor, as awful as that thing was. Back then I had this love of writing, a love I still have, but these days I'm pushing myself to get published with my fiction so hard, perhaps in a way I'm holding myself back.

I have all these ideas in my head, ideas for everything and anything, sometimes they come and go. Most of the time now, I lose them before I even give them a chance to turn into something, and that is never any good. Perhaps I need to find the fun in writing again. I know its there. I think some of my role play writing has shown me just how productive I can be when I allow the writing to be just a little more fun and not so serious. I think that is something I need to work on.

As for this blog, I tried for a new look. I thought it was beyond time to change it, and I liked the template a lot. however, there seemed to be a problem with all my straight quotes going to curly quotes. Maybe I'll try to figure out how to get that to work later. I tried making my own template and style, but I failed miserably. Perhaps I'll give that another try sometime. I hope you're all well out there. Have a wonderful night!

EDIT: Thanks to trusty Google, I fixed the problem with the quotes not working, and I am now moving ahead with the new template. I knew it was just a matter of figuring out something with the HTML.

319. Restless again

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

I don't know what it is. I never understand exactly how my mind and mood shifts work. If any of us knew how our minds worked, then people would be a lot happier because when you knew the reasons behind whatever funk you're in, you can control it better. The past couple of days I've found myself slipping back into this funk that keeps coming and going. Perhaps it is just PMS. Maybe I'll just chalk it up to that because last week was one of those amazing weeks, and I was in really good mood.

I'd say it was the rejection I received the other night, but I actually handled that quite well. I figured it might not get accepted at that publication because they had already seen it once, and even with all the changes there was a chance they wouldn't want to accept it. The rejection has actually given me a bit food for thought. Right now, I've been sticking mostly to male/male romances and erotica, but it seems the market for that is still a bit on the smallish side.

So I've been pondering maybe going back to my roots of straight boy meets girl romance. It's where I started, and I find when I am in the right mind set I can actually write those scenes well. I just need to try again maybe. I need an idea to hit me in the head first. The only ideas that seem to be coming at me right now seem to be fan fiction in nature. I'm not complaining really because those stories can be fun and good ways to jog the writing muscle back into action.

I just hate feeling restless.

318. Rejected

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Well, I finally heard back on that submission I sent in last month. The rejection came in last night’s email. I kind of figured that might happen after the long wait, but I was hoping. The editor did say it wasn’t the story, but the fact they have so much male/male right now, that they have enough for the next six months. They did say to try again with something else, but up to this point my focus has been on the male/male. I don’t have anything straight right now.

With the rejection and some of the talk I’ve been seeing, maybe gay erotic romance is a bit flooded right now. There isn’t a great market for it, so maybe the little market it does have is overwhelmed. This might be something I have to think about. Maybe I should try to wrap my mind around the normal, boy meets girl, they have sex and fall in love type story.  I just haven’t had much luck with that type of story. Not in awhile.

It is something to think about. Usually rejections hit me a bit hard, but the fact they said it wasn’t the story itself, but the fact they couldn’t take it, made it just a bit easier. I should try to find another home for it. Anyone out there have any suggestions?

317. Stormy weather

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Well, I survived the devil’s day relatively unscathed. I planned to update yesterday, but just as I opened up Word to start it, we had a power outage. It was only off for an hour, but when it came back up I just wasn’t in the mood to update. We had our first storm of the season, and that always throws things here out of whack in the desert.

In Arizona, we have these storms called monsoons that come every June like clockwork. Usually, not this early in the month, but maybe I just wasn’t expecting it. The storms bring wind, dust, rain, thunder and lightning. Sometimes even flooding and hail accompany the storms. Yesterday’s storm was just a lot of wind and dust. I was surprised the power went out actually.

Another storm is actually coming in now. It’s been thundering for about thirty minutes on and off now. The wind picked up, and we’ve had a few drops of rain. Not sure how bad this one will be. I’m hoping it doesn’t knock the power off again. The thunder is getting worse, so I’m going to cut this short.

316. Taking the challenge

Monday, June 05, 2006

As a writer, I like to challenge myself. I like trying new things out. With my fiction, it might be a new genre or idea. With my fan fiction, it might be a new fandom or pairing. Role-playing wise, it might be a new character. As with anything in life, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The fun in it is trying.

I like the challenge. I like trying something I’ve never done before just to see if I can indeed do it. Sometimes though I know right away it just isn’t me. Something doesn’t click, and sometimes just as quickly I know I made the right decision by trying. That’s how life works. You need to try things to see if they somehow fit you.

I’m not much of a risk taker in life. The only place I am is in my writing. That’s the only place I really enjoy taking chances. In other areas of my life, I’m definitely more cautious. I stand back instead of moving forward. I watch and observe. I’m, quiet while others are loud. It is just the way I am, and I have these mood swings where I hate the world, and I seclude myself. It could last for a day to a week, and sometimes even months.

I like my quiet time, my alone time. It lets me think. It lets me find my mind and set things in order, as they should be. Sometimes I like the noise and upheaval of a lot around me, but then there are times I don’t want any of it.

I’ve been challenging myself lately with my writing. Trying new things, and I’m not sure what happened, but a lot of it has just clicked. My schedule is a bit light at the moment, so I’m taking the opportunity to have a bit more fun with my writing. I wrote another fan fiction piece, and it is up on my fiction blog. I’m playing with another idea as well. I emailed to check on my submission, and I heard back, but still no news on that front. I’ll keep you posted.

315. Why do you blog?

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Ever have those times where you’re busy, but it isn’t a bad busy. It’s actually kind of fun, and you find yourself enjoying it, even if you do happen to be doing a million things, its fun. That’s where I’m at right now myself. I kind of like it. Although my schedule is a bit out of whack with not much television to review at the moment.

Right now, I’m reviewing two shows that premiered just this week, this season of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge and So You Think You Dance. Next week, I think I’m picking up Windfall, and the week after that, America’s Got Talent. Those might be my four shows for the summer. I’m thinking of one or two others, but I haven’t decided yet.

I’m just more used to having something to do almost every night of the week. When I realized I had Tuesday off without anything to watch and review, I did a little dance. I love what I do, but I like having some time where I can just watch television. I actually find myself watching less of it when I don’t have to. I just do my nightly soap viewing before bed. I need my soap fix!

I’ve been giving a lot of thoughts to my blogging lately. I’ve been blogging on one service or another since July 2001. I joined blogger back in January 2005 with my first blog, but that didn’t last. I returned with a fresh start in March, and it stuck. I’ve had journals on Live Journal and Greatest Journal over the years. They are still there, used to keep up with friends or communities.

Live Journal seems to be a great place to join a bunch of informative communities. I joined some of the fiction based ones this week with my new fiction journal there. I used one of the prompts found in one of the communities to write a short drabble, which you can find on my fiction blog. I added my fiction blog to Blog Explosion and a few exchanges earlier this week, get it a bit more traffic.

BE has had some issues with my thumbnail, but I’m hoping to have a set thumbnail soon. The first one they took was of the FireFox homepage. They redid it, but I realized the font just didn’t show on my blog on the thumbnail. So I redid the font color, and asked for another thumb. That should be done soon.

Like I said though, I’ve been thinking about blogging and why I do it. I had jumped up on the bandwagon with some of the meme’s in recent weeks, and those are nice. They help you meet people, but I’ve noticed with Click & Comment that people just drop by and say “Happy Click & Comment Monday!” It makes you wonder if they actually read anything else on your blog. Thursday Thirteen’s just didn’t work for me, but I actually liked Wordless Wednesday. I just forget yesterday. Oops!

It seems everyone has his or her own reasons to blog though. As a writer, some blog as part of promotion. As an every day person, they might blog to get whatever they are feeling out. There are so many personal blogs out there in the World Wide Web. Some blog to share knowledge of some sort. I maintain three blog, so I guess I do a little bit of everything with my blog.  I think a lot, more than most, and sometimes I need to get my thoughts out. Sometimes I’ll see something others might find interest in. I didn’t come into blogging really to make friends, but it happened too.

I know when you’re blog you’ll make friends and even enemies.  There will be drama, although I’ve seen more of the idiot drama (as I call it) over on Greatest Journal. I’ve been watching some of the current Blog Explosion drama, and I just find myself shaking my head. Fighting over how people vote over at Battle of the Blogs and such. I vote and I battle. I look at the blog, its content and template, and then decide. You don’t have a lot of time to vote sometimes. I’ve also noticed it is a lot of the same blogs that battle, so you get to know who is who. I’ve opted out of the Rent My Blog for now, so no new Blog of the Week this week. I had been thinking of stopping for a while, but I think the time has come. Maybe I’ll pick it back up another time.

I hope you’re all well out there! Have a great Thursday night.