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Showing posts from 2012

Best Donut Ever?

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Living in the Dunkin Donuts capitol of the world, it's hard not to know about National Donut Day . I mean, hell, you get a free donut if you buy a drink at Dunkin's today. While this is fantastic (because of the word free), it could be so much better. National Donut Day Breakfast of Chanmps Why would you say that? You just got a free donut. I know, but I'm a bit of a donut snob. Since they're totally bad for you, they have to be worth it: cakey, a little bit of crisp, and totally filling. I'm sorry, Dunkin's, but while I would marry your iced coffee, I would only casually date your donuts. So in honor of today's "holiday," I want to let you know of the best donut places in the area. You know, in case you decide to visit me at some point. Ohlin's Bakery . Located in Belmont, they probably have the best donut selection. They have all the best flavors (powdered, butternut, CHOCOLATE) and are one and a half times the size of your average

Dear Blog, Part VIII

Dear Blog, Holy hand grenades! I definitely didn't mean to neglect you for as long as I have. This quick note to you (and The Lurkdom) is to let you know that starting this week, I am coming back. I have books to share and things to ponder. Love, Alicia

Review: Something Strange & Deadly by Susan Dennard

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I'm so excited to be a part of the Something Strange and Deadly ARC tour*! Haven't heard of this book yet? Read the blurb below. Goodreads blurb : Eleanor Fitt has a lot to worry about. Her brother has gone missing, her family has fallen on hard times, and her mother is determined to marry her off to any rich young man who walks by. But this is nothing compared to what she’s just read in the newspaper— The Dead are rising in Philadelphia. And then, in a frightening attack, a zombie delivers a letter to Eleanor…from her brother. Whoever is controlling the Dead army has taken her brother as well. If Eleanor is going to find him, she’ll have to venture into the lab of the notorious Spirit-Hunters, who protect the city from supernatural forces. But as Eleanor spends more time with the Spirit-Hunters, including their maddeningly stubborn yet handsome inventor, Daniel, the situation becomes dire. And now, not only is her reputation on the line, but her very li

So Many Books, Not Enough Time

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One thing that most of you guys can relate to is that new releases sort of creep up on you and then you want nothing else but for the world to stop so you can devour that book you've been waiting endlessly for. The next few weeks have so many releases that I've been dying to read that I'm not sure how I'm going to handle all that reading combined with all of the revisions I still have to do. What books am I waiting on? Let's start with the two that I ended up reading last week because I just couldn't wait another few weeks. BLACK HEART came out on April 3rd and I managed to hold off for FIVE DAYS before breaking this open. I told myself that if I finished writing out all the new scenes I needed to write, I could take a day off to read this. SOMETHING STRANGE AND DEADLY comes out in July, but I'm lucky to be part of the ARC tour. The ARC came to me on Wednesday and by Thursday I was done. (I justified this as writing related work, so reading it du

March and the Nonfiction that Ruled It

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With a few exceptions, March was nonfiction/research month for me and with my internet hiatus, I wasn't able to contribute to last week's Road Trip Wednesday and share them with you. Good thing April is only three days old. First up, DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT MYTHOLOGY by Kenneth C Davis. What I Liked About It: This book gives you a broad overview on world myth starting with Ancient Egypt and working around the globe until we learn a teensy bit about the Pacific Rim. If your knowledge of mythology ends with Classical Mythology, Davis' book is a nice introduction to other cultures and stories. What You Should Know: It reads like a college text where the author periodically intrudes to give a pop culture reference with a smarmy attitude. If this wasn't a free ebook offer from Barnes and Noble, I wouldn't have bothered purchasing it. One nonfiction book should be enough, right? No. While I was reading the Davis book, I was reading another nonfiction title

The Importance of Unplugging

Writers today have a lot more challenges than just what is on the television. In an age where you can be connected to the internet through your computer, phone, e-reader, and probably a hundred more things I'm forgetting, it's difficult to remember a time when this wasn't the case*. With the exception of a few hours a week, all of my online time has been done by phone or NOOK while I worked on my revisions and only then to look up something or compulsively check Twitter and such**. Doing this was important because the revisions I undertook were TOUGH: scene scrutiny, additional worldbuilding, not to mention a lot of yelling at the paper. (For the record my revisions are still going on, but I'm on back end of it now.) Unplugging is good not only for a particularly hard revision, but for life. When you're not attached to the internet (or technology in general), you can do a lot more in the real world: have lunch with friends, spend more time outdoors, socialize***

Story and Calendar Management

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It's been a long few weeks, Lurkdom. I've reread my WIP about six times and now have 13 pages of revision notes to implement. In addition to the crazy amount of notes, I also have a 3 page long task list of things this revision must accomplish. My revision process will hit the triple digits hours-wise. The first thing on my task list was to create a timeline of events. This step may sound like a procrastinator's task, but when your story includes a ticking clock device, it's important to make sure that everything works within that time frame. (It's also important that events that happen on a Friday actually do happen on a Friday.) What PHOENIX RISING currently looks like. Here's a snapshot of my timeline as it currently stands in my WIP. Not all the dates/days are specified within the story, so I had to guess a few things. The problem with that is that there's way too many unknowns. Then you develop the problem of large gaps in time. (If you don

Behind the Zombie-- Doug Jones

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Zombie Thur sdays is a weekly feature with guest blogger, Miranda. You can read more about her here . Hello! And welcome to another edition of Zombie Thursday! Today I want to profile another cool actor. He's not especially famous for playing a zombie, but he is incredibly famous. He's been in over 90 films and television shows, and even though you have most definitely seen him, you may not even know or realize who he is! Around my birthday back in February, I was watching the Disney Channel. I'm a huge Disney fan and watch it rather frequently. I'm not embarrassed by this fact. It just so happened that one of my favorite movies of all time was on, and one that features a zombie! A zombie in a Disney movie? On the Disney Channel? Not as strange or out of place as you might think (Disney has produced some f@*ked up movies... I love them! But they are messed up. Something Wicked this Way Comes, anyone? But I digress...) Anyway! The movie I'm referring to is Hocus Pocu

A Hiatus, of Sorts

Dear Blog, This is to let you know that you and I won't be seeing each other as much over the next few weeks. Please know this has nothing to do with you, but everything to do with revisions. I'm five weeks behind my self-inflicted revision schedule. (My original plan was to use EdMo to revise my NaNoWriMo '11 project.) Don't worry, Blog. This isn't goodbye and I'll come back when something inspiring strikes. Most likely this will be when I have more brain power to do so. Love, Alicia

Today's Revision Angst Fueled by Diet Cherry Coke

If you've been following me on Twitter or have seen my life via Facebook, you know the following things: I'm still unemployed, I'm still revising, and I've developed an unhealthy addiction to several Facebook games. The first thing isn't related to the last two things, though I'm using my unemployment-ness to my advantage. Example: A revision that would have taken me several months of nights only took a month and a half to complete. True, it could've taken less time if I didn't play as many rounds of Tetris humanly possible, but revisions are hard. Let me repeat: revisions are hard. Now that I've completed revisions on my contemporary, it's time for me to put my focus back on my urban fantasy. This is harder to do than I originally thought, partially because I'm approaching revision burnout. The other reason is shifting gears from one world to another is a challenge. The thing that sucks is that I have to revise: the urban fantasy wi

Rest in Peace, Bill Hinzman

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Zombie Thur sdays is a weekly feature with guest blogger, Miranda. You can read more about her here . Writer's Block. Terrible, horrible writer's block. I've been plagued for weeks. Have you ever had so much stuff going on in your mind that you feel like you creatively have room for no more stuff? That's how I felt all last month. I'm still on a bit of a block. And as someone who loves writing, it really sucks. Since most people who read this blog are writerly types, what do you guys do to get past writer's block and periods of non-creation? This problem is a real first for me. Thank you for your patience with my absence! I've been thinking of things to write for weeks, and it hasn't been easy. I've had some pretty long and heated Walking Dead debates at work, but unfortunately those topics would be so riddled with spoilers that they're something I couldn't even talk about here on the blog (although contact me privately for some good old fas

Best Book of February

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Every Wednesday, YA Highway asks their readership a simple question to answer on your blog. Once you answer, you link your blog in the comments for other readers to hop on board. This is Road Trip Wednesday. Today's topic : What was the best book you read in February? I didn't have many books to choose from this month and I totally blame John Green. The Fault in Our Stars totally destroyed me and all I wanted to do afterwards was read something that wouldn't leave me a weepy mess. Sixteen , edited by Megan McCafferty took care of this for me. Blurb from Goodreads: Remember what it was like to be sixteen? Whether it was the year your teeth were finally free of braces or the year you were discovered by the opposite sex, that magical, mystical age is something you will never forget. Edited by Megan McCafferty, author of the runaway hit novels Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings , Sixteen: Stories About That Sweet and Bitter Birthday is a compilation of short

MARCHing Forward

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Yep, that is a horrible pun for the fact we're approaching March* and I don't care. The last several months for yours truly has epically been made of suck and I'm looking forward to all the things that happen once March 1 arrives. I just need to make it through one extra day of February**. Since blogging at The Pie has been spastic and not terribly brilliant as of late, I want to share with you what I'm looking forward to. Movies Even though there's more hype about the Hunger Games movie, the one I'm more than ready to see comes out in a week and a half. John Carter stars Taylor Kitsch (Tim Riggins to most of you) which means a lot of ogling. I have no shame and am proud to admit it. Don't think I'm not looking forward to seeing Hunger Games because I am. There's talk about a movie date with Bestie Danielle and that alone is a good reason. Editing and Revision For something different, I'll be revising in March. This time it will be a

YA Book Club: The Fault in Our Stars

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This month's selection for the YA Book Club was John's Green's The Fault in Our Stars .When I found this out, I twitter-yelled at YA Book Club's brainchild, Tracey Neithercott. That conversation sounded a lot like this: Me: Why are you making this happen NOW? I'd like to get through a month without crying. Tracey: I wish I could send tissues through Twitter. I'm not sure if it's hormones or age or my mortality is showing, but my eyes began watering on page one and did not stop until the end. TFIOS is one of those books where you just know it's going to end badly. You're reading about teens with cancer-- of course it's not going to end well. But this isn't a cancer book. It just happens that the characters have cancer. It also just happens that I still can't think about it without getting misty-eyed. In fact, I'm still processing it. What I liked best about TFIOS is that, despite the sad factor, it was a very uplifting book

Giraffe Love

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As a kid, I didn't have an imaginary friend. I had an imaginary GIRAFFE. This unnamed giraffe would be my scapegoat whenever I did something I shouldn't. (Which honestly, wasn't that often. I was a well-behaved rugrat.) The giraffe got stuck in the back seat of my dad's boat of a car whenever we schlepped to Connecticut to visit the grandparents. Though I don't remember ever talking or playing with the giraffe, I'm sure that happened too. It shouldn't surprise you then when I say that giraffes are one of my favorite animals to watch at the zoo. They're pretty and seem so peaceful*. They have little horns on their heads and I like the pattern of their coat. Because of my giraffe love, Chez Gregoire has several giraffa camelopardalis items: the magnet, the keychain, the cat toy, the figurine. Yes, even the stuffed animal(s). The best giraffe acquisition of late, though, was found in the Target dollar section. Hubby was kind enough to add it to our

You Tell Me: Best Gateway Books

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Credit The first thing you're told when you decide to write in a particular genre and market is to read what you're going to write. This, of course, is so you know what works and doesn't, what is trending, and whether or not giraffes are a useful protagonist*. So you read all the kidlit you can get your hands on. Some is awesome and others aren't worth the ink used. With each fantastic book you've read, you want ten other people to read it as well. Now we're at the meat of today's post. Over several conversations with Hubby, I've learned that his knowledge of middle grade and young adult books is paper thin**. This is quite fucking sad. We all know that there is so many fantastic worlds and stories in these two areas and he's missing out. What are you getting at? It's Friday and I have stuff to do. I'm so glad you asked. Hubby has agreed to give reading MG and YA a try. Because of this, I want to make sure that he starts off read

The Flippant Girl’s Guide to the Most Ridiculous Holiday of the Year

On non-Leap Year years, February 14th marks the exact halfway point of the month*. It’s also Valentine’s Day. Known first as one of the millions of saint’s days, we can thank Chaucer for making it about sex **. It would be great if that’s all what the holiday turned into, but we all know that is so not the case. If you’ve been around for a while, you know about my thoughts about red roses . So if you’re like me and can’t abide by what you’re supposed to do on this “holiday” or if you’re alone and feeling sorry for yourself, never fear— FLIPPANT GIRL IS HERE . 1. Role play . Pretend you’re an urban cupid, complete with foam bow and arrow. Walk around the crowded city streets and shoot unsuspecting passersby with your love arrow. 2. Live tweet your romantic dinner . Whether it’s for one or twenty, share all the things with the world. Did the waiter have a nice rear? Share! Did the guy with the off-kilter toupee make a pass at the college girl? Share! We should all live vicariously thr

Should I Trunk My Idea?

Every Wednesday, YA Highway asks their readership a simple question to answer on your blog. Once you answer, you link your blog in the comments for other readers to hop on board. This is Road Trip Wednesday. Today’s topic: What story ideas have you trunked because they were too similar to published/well-known stories? I’m lucky to say that I haven’t trunked anything. Yet. That’s not saying I’ll never will, but so far I’ve been lucky. Confession time: The Assassin Project could very easily fall into the trunked category, if I’m not careful. There were initially a lot of similarities between my story involving an academy of assassins and the Gallagher Girl series by Ally Carter. Because of this, I haven’t drafted Assassin Project. Instead, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on how to make my story different. That’s what needs to be done when a story idea is too close to something that is out there. You have to see how you can make yours unique. I forget who said it (and I might be mi

The Importance of Detail

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One of my favorite shows in the last decade was PRISON BREAK. If you never heard of it, here's the blurb from imdb.com : Due to a political conspiracy an innocent man is sent to death row and his only hope is his brother who makes it his mission to deliberately get himself sent to the same prison in order to break the both of them out from the inside out. Each episode ended in such a way that you had to tune in for the next episode. All characters were fleshed out, including the most deplorable character introduced. And the planning behind the prison break? It totally proves how important detail is. WARNING: THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SLIGHT SPOILERS In Season 1, everything rides upon the plan Michael put in place prior to his incarceration. Michael laid out the entire escape plan on his body, all the way down to how he and his brother will make it out of the country. At one point, part of Michael’s tattoo gets damaged. This jeopardizes the escape. This example illustrates

Things That Amuse Me: Ian McKellen on Acting

There's nothing better than getting advice from professionals in our desired field. Sometimes it's even important to get advice from something that doesn't involve our field at all. This is the case with this snippet from the television show Extras. This clip makes me laugh every single time. I hope it does the same for you. Ian McKellen on Extras by Victor_Bugle When Sir Ian says acting is all illusion, he's right. This also holds true for writing. When we write, we're creating our own universe. As a writer, our job is to make sure that we don't shatter that illusion.

Best Book of January

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Holy hell, Lurkdom! How did it become February ??? I don't know either, but time needs to learn to slow down. I have things to do, you know? Of course, I'd probably get them done faster if I didn't read freaking 13 books. Out of all these books, only one stood out as five star material. EVERNIGHT by Claudia Gray. Blurb from Goodreads:   " Bianca wants to escape. At the eerily Gothic Evernight Academy, the other students are sleek, smart, and almost predatory. Bianca knows she doesn't fit in. When she meets handsome, brooding Lucas he warns her to be careful--even when it comes to caring about him. But the connection between them can't be denied. Bianca will risk anything to be with Lucas, but dark secrets are fated to tear them apart...and to make Bianca question everything she's ever believed. " I know, it doesn't say much. But! It was definitely worth it. What I Liked About It: The twist. It seriously shocked me out of readin

The Flippant Girl’s Guide to Revising with Dignity

Fact: revision is part of the writer life. Further fact: Revision is fuck all hard. You can see where this is going. The point of revision is to take that amazing previous draft and make it that much more awesome. If you Google “how to revise a novel,” you’ll get over 12,000 search results. You can even learn some revision tips here by reading Susan Dennard’s guest post . While all of these posts give you incredible information to make your revision process smoother, faster, more productive, none of them share tricks to maintain your composure under the red pen. Scenes and characters you have lovingly slaved over are about to be sliced and reformed. How the hell can you go through this without crying? 1. Curse and yell. A lot.   The angrier you get at your WIP, the less painful your revisions will be. Make sure you practice saying, “WHY!?” and “You fucking asshole” to the point where a diagnosis of Tourette’s might be in order. It doesn’t matter, because swearing like a trucker is

The Question of Knowing Our Future and The Future of Us

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It’s pretty safe to say that at some point in our life, we would give our baby toes to glimpse into our future or hop into the DeLorean to change some instance in our past. Hell, Bestie Danielle and I usually play the “I should’ve” game once a season. So when I read the premise of THE FUTURE OF US by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler, it definitely made me go “hm.” Blurb from Goodreads : “It's 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They've been best friends almost as long - at least, up until last November, when Josh did something that changed everything. Things have been weird between them ever since, but when Josh's family gets a free AOL CD in the mail,his mom makes him bring it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they're automatically logged onto their Facebook pages. But Facebook hasn't been invented yet. And they're looking at themselves fifteen years in the future. By refreshing their pages, the

A Walk on the Contemp Side

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Funny thing about me and books: though I write YA contemporary*, I don’t find a lot that jazzes me in that category. In fact, I spent many years actively not reading contemporaries. Oftentimes reading is a means of escape, so why the hell do I want to read something that is based in reality? But, Alicia, you write contemporary fiction. Yeah, I know. This might be why I’m so picky about my contemporary. Fortunately, I’ve read some terrific books in the genre over the last year. A few of them DESTROYED ME, but that’s a testament to how powerful the writing and subject matter was. Out of my top five, 13 REASONS WHY is my favorite. It’s not a light-hearted book and the story seriously left me a sobbing wreck, but it was so well written. I absolutely loved this book. Do you read contemporary fiction? What’s your favorite?   * The other genre is urban fantasy.

Face Off-- Part Two

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Zombie Thur sdays is a weekly feature with guest blogger, Miranda. You can read more about her here . Hello, Lurkdom! Sorry for missing last Thursday. Like most people who work "retail" jobs, I have found that my hours have been cut as we enter the post "black" sales season. January and February are very slow and retailers don't need as many people working as many hours. To compensate, I have been working and taking any shift I can get, including giving up my days off. So, last Thursday I picked up a last minute, nine hour shift. Oy! Today's post isn't particularly about zombies, but it is somewhat zombie related and something I've talked about in the past. The television show Face Off is back on the air for season two! While I was pretty disappointed with season one's finale and the winner the judges chose, I decided to give the second season a shot. Last night was the third episode of the second season, and I highly encourage you to tune in. A

What One Life to Live Taught Me About Endings

Back in November (when I confessed how I loved the reality show Dirty Soap ), I shared with you all my love of the daytime soap, One Life to Live. OLTL has been off air for over a week, but I finally brought myself to watch the finale on Sunday night. I watched it with mixed feelings: anticipation over how they were going to tie up a show with a 43 year legacy, sadness over the loss of one of my favorite shows, and annoyance that I’ll have to now watch General Hospital*. One thing I thought I could learn from watching the OLTL finale was how to effectively create an ending. Maybe the writers would show me a few tricks to know where my final scene is. What I didn’t anticipate in the final minutes was to see someone who we all believed to be dead. And by all, I even mean the supposed killer thought the victim was dead. My shriek of “WHAT!?” may or may not have startled The Stripey One awake** While a cliffhanger is a possible way to end a story, I consider it sort of cheating. The re

Susan Dennard and the Revision Process

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Today The Pie welcomes Susan Dennard, author of the 2012 debut Something Strange and Deadly. This week, the WOA girls have promoted this fantastic debut and giving you a chance to read it before you can buy it. Read on to learn more about Susan’s revision process.   My revising process is...well, the word "intense" comes to mind. As I've talked about before, I'm not a particularly good writer. I ramble, backtrack, infodump, and pretty much do everything one shouldn't do to tell a good story. But you know what? I'm a darn good re -writer and an even better reviser . The key to my process is having a plan and staying organized. I never dive into revisions without a clear idea of what I need to do next--of what my story needs next in order to reach that goal of book-awesomeness. ;) You'll notice as I go through the steps of my revising process that I link to various pages. These are the lessons from my " Sooz's Guide to Revisions &quo

Tuesday Haiku

After a harrowing week of revisions, my brain is ultimate mush. Thank goodness for weeks where the blog writes itself. Like today with yet another bad haiku*. #8 Water tortures me Threatening to cleanse my soul Alack! Bare me not * I need to start a new library of these, by the way. I have only two left. It's tragic, really.

Head’s Up: Susan Dennard Blog Tour Week

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One great thing about the YA community is that everyone is super supportive. We cheer each other on through Twitter and our blogs. We share our successes and disappointments over email and IM. When we finally get published, we like to spread the word. That’s what’s happening this week. Debut YA author Susan Dennard is travelling the blogosphere this week to support her novel Something Strange and Deadly, which will be published in July. But it’s January. Isn’t this a little early? Not if we have an ARC to give away! All this week, you can enter for a chance to be part of an ARC tour. For more information, check out Holly Dodson’s blog as she is the hostess extraordinaire. To learn more about Susan and her debut, be sure to check out the blog tour this week. You can find the schedule below. Monday: CONTEST on Holly Dodson’s blog Super Mom Writes Tuesday: a book review with Erinn on Something Else to Distract Me Wednesday: an interview with ME about what happens after you’ve sol

Nomad in the Apartment

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On a previous Friday Fives, I shared my favorite writing locations . These still hold true, but sometimes I need a change of scenery within a location, especially when I’m at the apartment. I have different places to work when I’m working on different things. 1. My desk has been a good place as of late. I work here when my focus is really awesome and I’m not under some self-imposed time crunch. Since the desk is right next to the living room, this means Hubby is usually nearby. So if I need his input this is awesome. 2. The kitchen table works out well when I’m revising and creating charts of large sheets of paper. Or working with shrunken manuscripts. Or spreading out a lot. Basically I use this area when I need a large workspace. 3. The couch is generally reserved for emails, blogging, and readthrus; that don’t require a whole lot of attention. If I’m here, it means I’m also watching TV. If I’m doing this, it’s okay to interrupt my process (most of the time). 4. My bed . The

Let It Snow! Undead Style

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Zombie Thur sdays is a weekly feature with guest blogger, Miranda. You can read more about her here . It's Thursday again, so that means it is time for zombies! I've been checking out the responses to the Pie survey, and it seems as if people want to hear about some zombie science, but also just some zombie musings in general. So today, I will briefly chat about something that came to mind for me, and please feel free to chime in on the comments section. I live in Chicago and usually by this time of the year we've gotten a bunch of snow already. Today is January 12th and Chicago is getting its first real snow of the year. January 12th. That's insane! To make matters more depressing, yesterday the temperature topped off near 50 degrees. Oh, Mother Nature. I guess I really can't complain too much because we've gotten a free pass so far. It's really only snowed once this season, and nothing actually stuck to the ground. Cars buried on Lakeshore Drive during the

The Name Game

Every Wednesday, YA Highway asks their readership a simple question to answer on your blog. Once you answer, you link your blog in the comments for other readers to hop on board. This is Road Trip Wednesday. Today's topic : If you couldn't use your own name, what would your pseudonym or penname be? Well. I've been with my name for several undisclosed years. I've finally accepted that I don't have a glamorous first name and that I do have a last name that trips up telemarketers*. Not to mention my middle name of Marie must be the most common middle name in my graduating class**. There has to be a good reason why I'm going to write under an assumed name. I can only think of two that would be acceptable: I undertake erotica writing or I'm under the witness protection plan. In the bizarre case of either of these things happening, I guess I should be prepared... ...By using formulas found on the internet ! Soap Opera Name: Marie Waverley Porn Name:

Something to Resolve

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If you’ve lurked here long enough, you would know that I’m not big on the resolution thing. You’d also know that I kinda sorta suck at the goal thing. This happens because I usually aim too high* and then get discouraged and kick the whole process out the door. (There’s a reason why the New Year’s resolution to stop resolving is so popular.) There is something to be said about setting goals and stuff at the start of the new year. It is a fresh start of sorts. And after The Year of Epic Suck, yours truly has decided to give resolutions one more try. My resolution for 2012** is broad and simple, yet complex. I resolve to stay on top of things . Without the routine of a 9 to 5 gig right now, this is crucial. It is so easy to fall into the trap of sleeping until four and do nothing but watch reality TV. Not that I’m really doing that, but it is easy to forgo certain things that should happen like finalizing my summary statement on my resume or actually clean out the basement. So like T