With the exception of a few odd jobs, yours truly has been out of work since October 2011. For someone who has been working since 16 1/2, this is horrible*. The uncertainty of where the next paycheck is coming from, whether or not health insurance is happening, the meaningless-ness of TGIF. I'm sort of used to it by now and thankfully I had a 5 month reprieve from job searching, which ended 2 weeks ago. That's right, I'm looking for work again. If you've ever looked for work, you know how aggravating it can be. You apply. You wait. You wait some more. You either get called in for an interview or you get a form response saying that they went another way. If it's the latter (and it was a job you were salivating after) you feel the rejection on a visceral level. Yet, you go back for more. Querying is exactly like that. For those who don't know, there isn't much difference between looking for work and querying an agent. All of the job search princ

A week ago, I went to see a collegiate production of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. I know it isn't groundbreaking blog fodder--especially when there is legit drama happening all over my city this week--but I do like to share things that are relevant to writing. Which this post will be. Eventually. First, some important background information: This production was at my alma mater, where drama isn't a major.  I'm pretty sure that this is still the only production during the academic year. I "acted" for this theater troupe for 5 years. I have zero acting ability outside my feigning enjoyment from horrible gift ideas. I went to this play as an additional level of support for a friend, who wasn't even involved in this production. (Which is a totally separate story and not mine to share.) I totally admit that I embarked on a Twitter spree during the production heckling a lot of what I saw. Don't get me wrong, I do acknowledge the amount of

When I was still tied to my Aerosmith fan contract , whenever I or one of my Aero-related friends would return from a forum hiatus, the requisite announcement was to create a thread entitled, "I'm BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!" because of the 1976 song, Back in the Saddle. It's no surprise that my return to blogland begins with a hat tip to this. OMG, I missed you so hard! Where have you been!? In short, Facebook. A lot of crap personal stuff attacked me from 2011 until very recently, which made blogging and tweeting very difficult as everything got worse. I had no energy to be entertaining. I couldn't muster any creativity. It blew harder than Hurricane Katrina. However! I'm over the hump of my pity party, and pushing my back to you. For real this time. Thank god. The internet hasn't been the same without your special mix of sarcasm and cat obsession. I know. Fortunately, my sarcasm is more, um, sarcastic and my cat obsession hasn't waned. (It ha