Rainbow Snippet

Sorry everyone, still trying to catch up with last week’s. Hopefully this week will be less insane as I’m no longer out on a convention.

This one is slightly longer by a few sentences so forgive me but it needed it to make sense. Brendan and Josh are in his vehicle leaving the Ridges and Brendan has found Josh’s sketch book and has been looking at the wildlife drawings he’s done when he comes across something else.

“And this one is amazing.” Brendan held up the sketch of his character, John Archer, done with John running through the woods.

Joshua’s face went redder than the stop light he braked for. “God, I forgot it was in there!”

“It’s not like you haven’t already outed yourself as a geek a dozen times over.” Brendan chuckled. “I think it’s a great piece of fan art.”

Joshua’s blush spread as his heart jitterbugged. “Thanks.”

“John was Connor’s favorite character. He would have loved this.” Brendan’s voice broke.

Joshua glanced over and saw the tears forming in Brendan’s eyes. “I am so sorry. I don’t really know what to say because nothing I could say would help.”

If you’d like to play along, Rainbow Snippets is a Facebook community where we post up 6 sentences of one of our LGBT stories every Saturday. It’s been fun and you can find it here. Be sure to check out all the offers! It’s been a great supportive group!

Sunday Small Talk

I haven’t blogged much since the every day in April blogfest and honestly while I DO have something to say in this space I don’t have time for it at the moment. Mostly because I have to do edits on my writers group stuff.

And more importantly finish the edits for MLR press on my elves at the anime con story. I couldn’t download it thanks to that internet issue. I’m still having it but at least now I can download stuff. I was even able to upload a picture today so maybe I can get onto uploading my steampunk symposium pics.

I’m excited to be working with a new press. So far they seem as easy to work with as DSP is so that’s really cool. I feel a little spoiled by that.

I am still slowly plugging away at These Haunted HIlls and I’m glad it seems to be popular in Rainbow Snippets.

I all but given up on my Christmas steampunk. I am just swamped and a little depressed, neither making it good for writing.

I DID start something for a horror anthology but it’s gone. I know I typed it but I’ve looked all three places I would have saved it and there is nothing. Luckily I haven’t lost much but still, annoying.

Rainbow Snippets

I know I owe comments from last week. My internet has been hooking up at .09 mbps so welcome 1998. I can’t load much of anything. I’m back up to a full .6 mbps today (when it’s actually on) so hopefully I can do better! (But no accompanying picture today because there’s no prayer of even loading the page let alone uploading anything).

I’m still working with These Haunted Hills. I’ve skipped ahead just a little to the next chapter where Joshua takes Brendan to the Ridges (the Athens Lunatic Asylum) to talk ghosts. It’s a tad over six sentences (I think it’s 8, just like last week.) This time they’re out of the graveyard and going up to the asylum itself.

“We have a vague pentagram of cemeteries in Athens. You might want to Goggle the spiritualist movement origins of the city. I could take you up to the weeping angel statue, right up from that coffee shop we were in, but she’s not the cool Dr. Who kind of angel.”

Brendan chuckled. “You are such a geek.”

“As advertised.” Joshua thumped his chest.

“I’ll be happy she’s not a Whovian angel. I’m not up for quantum locked villains on our first day.”

“I’m definitely not the only geek climbing this hill.”

“No, you are not.” Brendan shielded his eyes against the afternoon sun. “This place is huge. I can’t imagine being locked up here.”

If you’d like to play along, Rainbow Snippets is a Facebook community where we post up 6 sentences of one of our LGBT stories every Saturday. It’s been fun and you can find it here. Be sure to check out all the offers! It’s been a great supportive group!

Rainbow Snippets

Missed last week because I was at the steampunk symposium in a hotel with the world’s most unreliable internet and then went right into finals week so I wouldn’t have had time to read anyone’s. Technically I’m at graduation today but I’ll have the rest of the week to read.

I’m still working with These Haunted Hills. I’ve skipped ahead just a little to the next chapter where Joshua takes Brendan to the Ridges (the Athens Lunatic Asylum) to talk ghosts. It’s a tad over six sentences (I think it’s 8)

Brendan stared at his feet, toes near a cracked, small boxy headstone bearing only a number. “They didn’t even give them names, not even in death.”

Joshua swallowed hard. He hadn’t planned to bring Brendan to the Ridges’s cemetery when he drove the man up to the old asylum. He didn’t want to stir up shit memories for the man. Coffee at the Donkey cafe had gone well. Brendan didn’t fuss at all as Joshua helped him put the sites he most wanted to see in a logical order for them to attack them. Better yet, once he’d settled down and realized Joshua truly wasn’t going to fanboy all over him, Brendan chatted with him like they’d been buddies for years. He didn’t want to lose that. “No, there are records somewhere with the names but no one came to claim these poor people.”

This is from the above mentioned graveyard. You can see the numbered headstone in the back (though Margaret’s family at least gave her a named stone too). I pulled the freaking corn out of the grave before I left her.

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If you’d like to play along, Rainbow Snippets is a Facebook community where we post up 6 sentences of one of our LGBT stories every Saturday. It’s been fun and you can find it here. Be sure to check out all the offers! It’s been a great supportive group!

Z is for Zen

Z is for zen. I try to achieve a zen-like state daily. Oh, I suck at it but I try. I used to have my struggles with zen in my author bio until I changed it to fit my geeky brand a bit better. I tend toward a type A personality with a trigger temper. If anyone thinks changing your temper is easy is either a bit deluded or just plain misguided. I have mellowed in my middle age but still it’s bad.

I’m a high stress sort. I’ve broken four teeth grinding them. I’ve clenched ground and otherwise aggravated the fuck out of my TMJs so badly I now have arthritis in my jaw. I used to be a medical doctor, a high stress job. Teaching and writing have a lot of high stress moments too (what job doesn’t, am I right?) so I started looking into zen meditation.

I’m not looking for enlightenment. I’ll never be perfect. I’m mostly looking for a pressure valve so I don’t break more teeth, punch another wall, have a heart attack etc. (I leave pummeling people to fiction. If you displease me, you may meet a truly gruesome fictional end).

I’ve read up on meditation. I’ve done free meditation sessions via the Chopra Center. I’m not really living in an area where I can go to classes for this sort of thing.

More than a class, I wish we had a zen garden around here. The nearest Japanese garden is 80 miles away at Dawes Arboretum (Still want to go). Or any gardens. I have the hills but sometimes hiking them can be dangerous alone. I feel more calm surrounded by greenery though. I tend to get more out of that than I do out of actual meditation.

I may never be perfectly zen. I can only do my best and if I get some benefits from my attempts, that’s all I need.

And I survived the A to Z challenge. This was fun. Thanks for putting up with me for the month. I appreciate all the people who stopped by. I’ve enjoyed stopping by other people’s blogs. Thanks to our host as well.

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Fantastical worlds, Fiery Love