Dear NaNo Novel,
How the flying fuck did you go from a simple murder mystery to Lovecraftian horror?  Plz to be explaining this to me.

Thanks... (I think)

PS: Cool outline is cool, however.

So, NaNoWriMo appears to be creeping up on me.  It's going to be a weird year for doing it, to boot.  I'll be couch-surfing through most of November, staying with friends and relatives and possibly on unfamiliar couches, which I'm down with, but it'll make things both odd and interesting.  Hell, I'm not even sure I can do it, but it's worth a try.  All things are, I suppose.

I also woke up early this morning with the base idea already in my head.  My theory is that it's the result of watching too much Numb3rs and rereading my old sociology text books.  Weird combo, but interesting, I reckon, providing I can work out a decent plot.  Well, not necessarily plot, I've got a particularly gruesome series of murders, a highly intelligent and resourceful serial killer, a FBI profiler, a sociology professor out of the deep bayous of Louisiana, a red herring, and no real use for the sociology professor yet...  The sociology professor is supposed to be the focal character, because there's psychologists who are heroes of crime stories but not sociologists, which makes me sad.  Sociology is awesome and more people should think so, in my opinion.

Otherwise, I've acquired a sinus infection, which makes me want to stab my face off.  Because ouch.  Of course, I don't think stabbing my face off will actually help much, might actually hurt more than the infection, but it's the thought that counts.

Recently I also acquired and have been somewhat disappointed by Sarah Brightman's "Symphony" album.  It's starts off really well, two moody and somewhat dark songs which fit with what the cover promises and those are then followed by syrupy sweetness.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy syrupy sweetness as much as I enjoy anything else, but usually the first few songs sort of set a mood, y'know?  I guess it feels a bit disjointed, all in all.  Ah well.

I'm going to bed so I can pretend like I'll be up at a sane hour.  Either that or I'm going to research names.  Either way.

Sweet buggeration!

Not a phrase I should ever utter again, really.  Y'know, even as a kid I never really kept much of a journal.  That's my excuse. Besides, my life's miserable enough without preserving it for all and sundry.  And believe you me, I'm not being all "emo" about it, as the kids are calling it these days.  That's besides the point anyway, whatever the point may be.

Writing is writing, actually quite a lot.  I'm giving my brain a rest for a day or two, but I've been banging out about five pages a day, which is a lot for me.  I don't type or write particularly fast, but the ol' butt in chair equation works quite well.  Tonight, I've decided, is my night off.  The one story I thought would have been a short story, has become what appears to be a two or maybe three book span.  I'm a touch miffed about that, but there's so much detail and so many ideas I want to explore and they just don't fit into a short story.  Oh well.

I'm also making progress on a short story that's been with me for years that I've never been able to finish, just because it never seemed quite right.  The main character, despite being monstrous on some levels wasn't actually all that interesting, but his PR Rep is.  That one blindsided me, it did.  So I've done a bit of research on public relations and have been writing it from her perspective, which is going... smoothly.  Oddly enough.  Things going smoothly worry me, probably unnecessarily, but the point remains.

NaNo is coming up... oh god.  Reckon I'm going to start plotting like now.  I'd love to do it again and actually beat it.  I think I might have the balls to do so this year and I'm used to writing a lot now, so it might work.  Of course, the Holiday Season (Christmahannakawanzaamadan, as I tell the nastier of my customers who get shirty with me over saying Happy Holidays) is almost upon us retail slaves.  I'd love to call in dead for Black Friday.  No one would blame me for slapping a bitch, right?  Well, they might blame me, but they'd understand, I'm sure.

Let's see, I'm looking forward to the end of the month, I'll be doing a project with work and will be spending most of November couch-surfing down Pittsburgh, wherever I can find a place to stay.  I truly, fully, absolutely cannot express how much I am looking forward to that.  Freedom? Fuck yeah!  Adventures? Damn straight!  So that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Hm... I suppose I'll have to find an internet cafe or something.  That'll be a touch bizarre, but so be it.  Won't have a laptop, my old one died, not that I'm particularly surprised, I dug it out of a dumpster, all things considered, so the fact it worked for so long was a miracle in and of itself.

In other news, I had the most awesome purse in the world until it became... not so awesome... Which was really sad mind you.  See, I found this crudely wrought leather purse at the local Goodwill, never seen anything like it, it had two awesome pockets, and strange symbols on the front.  It took me a while to figure out the proper search string for Google to actually find the symbols and what they meant....

Let me tell you, ignorance was bliss.  My awesome purse with strange symbols?  Not awesome.  Not even close to awesome.  More like suck, because I loved that purse.  When I had no idea what the symbols meant, I used to joke around that it meant I was part of an evil secret society bent on world destruction.  (I can be a bit odd at times, of course.)  So with the proper search string, Google tells me what the symbols represent and completely destroyed the awesomeness of my purse:  It's the fucking symbol of Scientology.  I detest all manner of foolishness, and accidentally carrying around a Scientology purse was definitely not a message I wanted to send in the least.  I may get someone to rework the leather or do some sort of design over the symbols, maybe the hamsa or something like that, but I was really rather crushed by that discovery.  Awesome purse was not so awesome.  *sigh*

In other news, I'm rereading the Harry Potter series and am the better part of the way through the fourth book.  Harry Potter was my second fandom, the one I got most mixed up in and then got out of.  I missed it, spent some time reading thrashy fic and loving it.  I forgot how much I loved the series and most of the community (though the majority unnerves me) until I started reading the books again.  Before I was a major Lupin fangirl, that was in my teenage years.  Now I'm finding, a few years later, Percy has become my favorite character.  I certainly didn't expect that.  Still, I loves me some HP.

Speaking of all things fangirl.  Stargate Universe.  Sadly, I think I'm going to hate it and that depresses me.  It's 'dark and edgy' which annoys me to no end, and it lacks the charm of Atlantis and SG-1, which I'm not sure what that charm was, but Universe definitely lacks it.  Also, spaceship stranded in deep space a long way from home with a crew of misfits?  'Cause that's never been done before.  Don't get me wrong, I'll give it a chance, but like Heroes, there's only so many chances a show gets.

I've also discovered Numb3rs and Bones, and discovered I'm seasons behind.  Not that this is shocking.  I'm not always good at paying attention to the telly.  I love me some House, but I honestly couldn't tell you what time or what day it comes on.  Most of the time, I just download or rent it after the season's over and watch it in one long go.  Maybe more on that later, hard to say.  Also, the band Owl City is my new crack.  I can't stop listening to it, cause holy crap, it's addictive.

So, that's the update.  I'm off to sign up for NaNo and plot.  Work in the morning.  Chess in the afternoon and beer in the evening, which pleases me.

In comparison with the last book post, I'm not nearly as cantankerous with these books and actually enjoyed the hell out of them.

#25: Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey
I do love me some Jacqueline Carey and this book was a significantly easier read than Kushiel's Dart.  It was fun, entertaining, dangerous, and sexy.  I'm highly biased towards Carey's work because I'm enjoying the hell out of the Kushiel series.  I read this a while ago and never got around to reviewing it here, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it.

#26: Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey
Woo! The Kushiel series.  I love the series, it's so dense and sprawling.  The mythology blends in seamlessly with the complex plots and social dynamics, characters are completely three dimensional, never evil for the sake of evil.  Oh, and it's sexy as all hell too.  I do have another lighter quick read around when I'm reading these books though just because they tend to get overwhelming in their detail and amount of things to remember.  That's not a bad thing, of course, they just tend to take me more time to get through than other books.

#27: Working for the Devil by Lilith Saintcrow
The Dante Valentine series has become my read-during-breaks-from-Kushiel book.  This they're certainly not the best thing ever, but they're an easy read and lots of fun.  Much like the Nightside in that respect.  But on the other hand where the Nightside's mileau shines, Saintcrow's characters steal the day.  I'm not terribly sure how to describe the books, they're set in a relatively crapsack future where myths and human psychics, called psions, have come out of the shadows after some form of psychic awakening happened.  Demons and all sorts of strange technology go hand in hand in this series.

Dante Valentine, a necromance psion cum mercenary, is hired by the Devil to kill one of her old enemies and a great threat to Lucifer's power.  It all goes to hell from there when she's paired up with the fallen angel Japhrimael and old friends as they hunt for their bounty.  All in all, the story is generally predictable but it was a fun ride that I thoroughly enjoyed.

In Conclusion...
All the reads worked for me, versus the last post, one of which I couldn't explain my irrational distaste of one book I was pretty sure I was going to like (Hero), I'd recommend any of these three.  Right now, I'm reading Kushiel's Chosen, Dead Man Rising (the next book in the Dante Valentine series), and I'm slowly rereading the Harry Potter series as well.

So, catching up on geeky things, I just watched the 2007 movie Cthulhu.  I adore the Lovecraftian mythos but never got around to watching the movie in a timely manner, I'm not much for TV or movies to begin with.

Won't lie, I enjoyed the hell out of it and spent most of the hour and forty minutes on the edge of my seat.  I'm still a little panicky and freaked out too, just like after watching the Doctor Who episode "Blink."  Of course, I watched both Cthulhu and Blink at night with no one home in a dark and creaky house.  Yeah... that's a brilliant recipe for someone who spooks easily like myself.

Currently I'm enjoying a nice cup of tea and listening to Celtic Thunder to calm my nerves.

The film is not without flaws and the low budget definitely hurt it in a few spots, but overall, I found it enthralling and deeply sensual, though confusing in places, unless that was what the filmmakers were going for.  Dunno.  The film has a definite positive homosexual angle and was pretty well integrated into the plotline though a bit overdone at a few points.  I'd watch Jason Cottle, who played Russ (the main character), in another movie any day.  Also Cthulhu is the first anything I'd ever seen Tori Spelling in, I'd only heard about her but never watched anything she was involved with, and was fairly impressed with her creep-tastic character.

Though the movie suffered severely at the finale, it seemed way too rushed, way too confusing, and just what in all seven hells was in that tub?  That said, it was the atmosphere of the film that sold me.  It also scared the crap out of me, I'm not going to bed now, believe you me.  It ranks as one of the scariest movies I've seen in a while.  I'm not talking in terms of gore, blood and gore really isn't all that scary in and of itself, it's atmosphere that's disturbing and this movie had it by the buckets.  Just like those damned angel statues in Blink.

Good movie, if you've got an open mind and like being creeped out, I'd recommend it.  I was glad to see it.

Books twelve and thirteen were on two different sides of the spectrum: Hero by Perry Moore and Eric Nuzum's The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula.  Hero was YA fiction and The Dead Travel Fast could be called sociology, I suppose.  Oh, I reread the entirety of the Dresden Files too.  There's also a few other books I've forgotten somewhere along the line too, hopefully I'll remember them.

#12 - Hero by Perry Moore
I picked the book up after a discussion on women and gay superheroes on the internet.  Women and gay superheroes always get the short stick in comics.  I love me some comics but this fact does piss me off.  This book was Perry Moore's answer to the statement that homosexuals can't be superheroes.  The book is YA and clearly aimed at that demographic.  It wasn't a bad book, per se, it was entertaining and mediocre.

This book makes me irrationally angry and annoyed, I'm not too solid on all the reasons, but there's a few.  The main character and narrator, Thom Creed, was an oversensitive drama queen with an ability to heal people.  Oh, and he's gay.  And it's the worst fucking thing in the world and many pages are dedicated to angst and evil homophobes.  It doesn't help that he's a selfish bitch either, not stopping to consider the others around him until he's forced to by Deux Ex Machina.  He doesn't suffer the consequences of his actions, he just goes 'whoa me, my life sucks and everyone hates me cause I'm gay',.  The supporting cast existed either to die or cause drama or make Thom whine more.

The worst part is, in the hands of a better author, this could have been a damn good book.  I hate let downs like this.  Still, I suppose it would have appeal to teenager.  Just not to me.

I give it a meh out of 5.

#13 - The Dead Travel Fast by Eric Nuzum
This was a random "Oh this looks interesting" pick up off the shelf.  It's a non-fiction piece dedicated to trying to understand the vampire.  If you're already familiar and pretty well researched on the vampire phenomenon, don't buy this one for any new revelations.  The conclusions are fairly basic: The vampire is the reflection of society's deepest and most primal desires.

However, it's an excellent and entertaining read.  The author is hilarious and great company on his mad tour from drinking blood, watching every vampire movie ever made, walking through rainy Transylvania with new agers and drama queens, and some research.  It's worth the money and the time just for his commentary

Though I must pose the question:  What do sparkly vampires say about our deepest and most primal desires?
No, seriously.

#14 Storm Front - Jim Butcher
#15 Fool Moon - Jim Butcher
#16 Grave Peril - JIm Butcher
#17 Summer Knight - Jim Butcher
#18 Death Masks - Jim Butcher
#19 Blood Rites - Jim Butcher
#20 Dead Beat - Jim Butcher
#21 Proven Guilty - JIm Butcher
#22 White Night - JIm Butcher
#23 Small Favor - JIm Butcher
#24 Turn Coat - Jim Butcher

I love the Dresden Files.  I had the time, so I decided to reread them.  They're so much fun, just like the Nightside.  Not gonna find the meaning of the life, the universe, and everything in them, but I love being entertained.  Dead Beat remains my favorite, because, y'know, zombies.

Right now, I'm in the middle of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart and Santa Olivia.  Love them both, looking forward to the end of those and more of her work.

I mentioned in a post some months ago that I can pretty well track my life through my various media obsessions.  Star Trek is no different.  Well, there is one difference, I've been around Trek all my life, just never involved.  I grew up watching The Next Generation with Dad but was never terribly into it.  I'd watch it if it was on but never made a point to do so.

The new movie, which isn't really all that new now, was a point of excitement.  I saw it opening night, and four times after.  Geeky?  Hell yes.  But I had so much fun.  But what's become even more fun than the movie has been going back to the television serieses (serii?) and watching them all from the beginning.  The Original Series all the way through Enterprise, movies included.  I've been working on this goal.

( Geek speak under here... )

Just got and finished the new Dresden Files book, Turn Coat.

In two words: Oh, snap.
( Cut for Spoilers! )

Argh!  Haven't posted in a month.  What's been happening?  Honest to Pete, what hasn't happened?

Let's see, I've been reading like crazy, it's an escape.  I turned 24.  My mother went crazy and tried to kill herself.  On my birthday.  She's okay, still a touch off, but no longer a threat to herself and recovering.  I have some very excellent IRL friends, a friend got pregnant but unfortunately miscarried...  Needless to say, I haven't gotten a lot of writing done.  It's been a crazy year.  And it's only freaking March!

I've made up my mind that I'm moving out by the end of spring, I'll do whatever it takes to do so.  Staying at home is driving me to drink.  Or something like that, I don't drink much really.

Good news however, most of my letters of financial hardship have been answered reducing a severe hospital bill to something more manageable.  Back in October, my appendix decided to explode on me.  Unfortunately or fortunately, however you look at it, I have an extremely high pain tolerance and didn't really feel the pain until I had a grapefruit-sized abscess on my side.  At that point, the pain was horrendous.  Honestly, I thought it was a pulled muscle for the majority of the week before I went into the hospital.  Ended up in the hospital for a week, pain-killers were my friends during that stay, let me tell you.  Also, being uninsured blows.  Have learned my proverbial lesson.

Mm, like I mentioned, on the writing front, things have been depressing, largely because I have bigger worries.  But I have been able to work on the one story that's been with me for years and I desperately want to know how it ends.  It's one of those stories that are so painful to write because while they're fictional, they're far too honest in many ways.  It's also one of those stories I have to been in a particular mood to write because it comes from that very dark place and it makes me uncomfortable to deal with it.

Enough about that.  Let's see... what else?  I've recently become quite interested in my Native American heritage.  While I'm pasty as all hell, I've got Seneca blood from a few generations back.  I'm planning a trip up into Seneca to research and such, that is after I read books and y'know, not be a sod about it.

And that's life for me at the moment... it's 2 in the bleeding morning.  I have hives, I'm taking some allergy meds and going to bed.

'Night.

Haven't posted in a while.  Life's fairly dull at the moment, work's slow, the Sims are boring, the writing is time consuming, and the internet never fails to amaze me.  In a good way, for once.  See, it's RPattz Day or  Sparkle Tuesday or something over on sf_drama.  In between the dazzle and sparkles, there comes Mr. Rogers.  There's a simple conclusion drawn: Mr. Rogers is better than RPattz, hands down, even if he doesn't sparkle.

The whole thread makes nostalgic and gives me that warm fuzzy feeling that I don't often feel.  When I was young, I lived in the true backwoods, our closest neighbor lived a mile away and she was an agoraphobic, if that gives you any sense of the area.  Cable was a luxury that my grandmother who lived in town had and I spent my days splashing in puddles and chasing after the dog.  But I always came in for story time with Mum, then we'd watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers.

Mr. Rogers was a huge part of my childhood and the childhood a lot of American children.  He was my neighbor and taught me that I wouldn't get sucked down the drain and that the world is what we make of it.  I think the latter is the most important thing Mr. Rogers ever stood for and the lesson everyone forgets so easily.  He was a man who genuinely cared and was genuinely good and kind, a rare condition in a world that turns people bitter and jaded.  Even when brought up on 4chan, 4chan is respectful and that says something so powerful about his influence and the man himself.

Exhibit A:
I mean, Rogers wasn't some badass conquering motherfucker. He was badass because he elected NOT to be. He didn't like what he saw on TV, he went into television to change that. Started his own kid's show devoted to helping kids learn about their world and how to handle anger, sadness, and death. His persona on the show was exactly the same one he showed to all the world, because it was him. No matter where you were, you saw the true Fred Rogers.
-Amazing, 4chan.

Exhibit B:
Shas'o R'myr:  Mr. Rogers is the only person who can make me feel like a total asshole.
Unholy Clown Ninja: Wait, you are an asshole, and you admit it.
Shas'o R'myr:  Yea I know, but he makes me feel BAD about it.

That was Mr. Rogers.  Despite the crudeness of the language in either exhibit, it's the truth.  Mr. Rogers was your first friend, your first neighbor, the one man who could cheer you up and give you some direction in a world that was never certain and sometimes scary.  Now he's gone, but his spirit remains and we're his legacy.

I still miss that dear old man, my neighbor.

I had every intent of having some completely bizarre subject line, something on the order of Holy Shit! Atheist Reads Religious Fiction! or similar.  Obviously, I decided against it for the apparent reasons.  But it's very applicable.

Book 10 (woo?) is more urban fantasy by way of Thomas E. Sniegoski's A Kiss Before the Apocalypse from his Remy Chandler series.  I actually finished it several days ago and have been debating on how to review it.  It's good and it's not.  The characters are beautiful and brilliant and Remy is great company but the plot has no strength what so ever and piss poor pacing.

( Long review is long and also cut... )

Oh, I do so love memes on occasion.  They're wondrously self-indulgent and why yes, I've had a drink or two.
I found this via crevette, btw.  If you haven't read her LJ, you're missing out, truly.

( Miley-ology! under the cut. )

Zombies! Run!

Damn it Pennsylvania, why must you have such shitty weather?

It's horribly, horribly cold and snowing both snow and ice.  The roads are a shot in the dark, pretty much to the point where you have to make your own lane and hope for the best.  Hopefully that tractor-trailer won't lose control and kill you horribly as you try to pass it.  Never mind all the other loons on the road.

I got home at half-nine and am very, very glad that I am not out there now and do not have to go out there in the morning.  Largely because in my little corner of Pennsylvania, the road I live on is one of the last in the area to be plowed and ashed.  Salt?  You can forget about salt.  That shit's for the people who live in towns and stuff.

Bah.

Any roads, 5 DAYS TO THE SUPERBOWL!!!!

I hear Cardinal kinda tastes like Raven...
GO STEELERS!

I am in a particularly weird mood today, both because of sleep deprivation and sarcasm overdrive.  Probably the sleep deprivation is doing it.  I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow.  Don't have a whole heck of a lot planned as I'm working graveyard, which I hate with a passion.  For whatever reason, people are much more annoying at night than in the day.  I'll get through it I suppose.

Still, I had an excellent weekend and spent most of it with a dear friend.  One of those rather unplanned things, but it turned out marvelously.  Can't complain there.  We watched movies, well parts of them and stayed up talking until four in the morning.  That's part of the reason why I'm sleep deprived.  Yesterday I was up writing to unholy hours and had to get up early for work.  Silly Miley for wanting to be an author.

Any roads, excellent weekend.  The Big Game is this coming Sunday, which will be celebrated with much alcohol, friends and family, and calories.  All of which are good things.

In other news, today many packages arrived on the doorstep via the UPS guy who's begun to creep me out a bit.  I find this vaguely worrying, so I don't answer the door unless I have to sign for a package.  Dad got sprockets and tires for Frankenstein the Motorcycle; a bike he's working on to be just the way he wants it.  Right now it looks like a hodgepodge of metal but I don't share the vision.

What else?  Oh, yeah, I agreed to do a survey for Nielsen TV Ratings (or something) about our television watching habits at home.  Most of the time we stick to news, documentaries, and trivia shows.  On occasion, we'll watch something like House but sitcoms are right out.  I barely find them even amusing, let alone funny.  I normally listen to talk shows in the morning and Craig at night.  So that came today as well.  It'll be interesting to actually get a good overview of what we truly watch at home.  I'm also looking forward to the comment section and informing the survey company of how badly I hate reality TV.  Momma's Boys?  I mean, seriously?  Who the hell thought that was a good idea?

Finally, and most exciting, the books I ordered from Amazon came.  I already read through Mean Streets, so I'll have to review that eventually.  I'm more interested in writing at the moment.  The Unusual Suspects came too, it's a collection of urban fantasy short stories and what not.  Apparently it includes a new Sookie Stackhouse story which is shouted at me in big bold letters.  Not interested, I tried reading Dead Until Dark but the poor writing only depressed me.  I'll get around to reading that book eventually.

The other book that came was Thomas E. Sniegoski's A Kiss Before the Apocalypse, a book which I knew next to nothing about and went out on a limb to buy and which I'm currently reading.  It's another urban fantasy with a particularly strong religious bend to it, given the main character Remy, is an angel who gave up heaven to live among humans.  I'm an atheist but I love religious mythology and mysticism, I have no idea why.  So far, it's really interesting and a fun book, Remy is great company and believable.  Once I get through that book and get my reviews in for the 50bookchallenge, I'm thinking of an essay comparing and contrasting the religious themes in the Nightside series, Dresden Files, and Remy Chandler series, each have unique viewpoints and no doubt the authors' backgrounds and locations contribute to that.

Right.  Back to writing and eventually sleep.

I'm writing this from my alma mater's computer lab.  I haven't been up to the place in months, still feels like home even with all the changes.  Always has been my home, always will.  Just wish I had some head phones.  I'm almost never without music, it's strange.

( Cut! For teal deer and musings... )