The Real Reason I had Kids

Tags

Faith McKay, getting readers, Lipstick and Zombies, marketing, Serendipity, teens, YA books

I don’t consider myself a marketing pro. Or a marketing anything, really.

Selling myself or my work? Meh.

As I approach the reality of my manuscript becoming a book, the reality of facing marketing has slapped me in the face.

Ow.

So, I’ve decided to use my kids. Little did I know that I had them at the perfect time. Ignore the fact that I hadn’t discovered my dream of being a writer when they were born, this whole them being teenagers at the time of my YA release (DOORS, out at the end of the year! <–look marketing! Maybe?) seems to be quite a lovely thing.

My 13 year-old daughter has already told me how excited she is to bring my book in to  show ALL HER FRIENDS AND TELL THEM TO READ IT!

My son? Maybe not so much, but you never know…he might help spread the word.

And I think I can rope my nieces into being my slave labor and waving my book in front of their friends’ faces.

I figure I can ride around in my car with copies of my book in the back and lure teens to me with promises of video games and candy… or puppies? Hello, stranger danger. I promise to not wear a creepy mask. Well, no, I can’t promise this.

And as Faith (McKay… if you don’t know her you should, go follow her here) and I chatted and laughed hysterically over this, later, I thought how much merit there is in using ones children as marketing tools. 

Because I believe that the best way to sell books is through word of mouth. For how do books sell? By people telling other people, who tell more people and BAM… magic.

I need to get my book into the hands of teens. So I shall use teens to do this.

So lucky me. I had kids at the perfect time.

Serendipity, baby.

This post inspired by and dedicated to the fabulous Faith, whose LIPSTICK AND ZOMBIES book is so fun! And she is a critical part of The Midnight Society blog responsible for #SpookyAllYear. And an overall great person.

Keep laughing, GHOST FACE KILLAH DJ girl. You’re the best.

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#SpookyAllYear…Layers of Fear

Tags

art, dolls, horror, horror video games, Layers of Fear, painting, psychological horror games

I know I posted about my new video game obsession, but today is Spooky All Year with Faith McKay and The Midnight Society! Go visit their page here. Click on the links to others’ blogs to see what they have to contribute…heck add your own post to the mix.

So… I want to share the creepiness that is this game. Because I am peeling back layer after layer of fear. I am wandering deeper into the madness that is this game.

A strange house.

Dark hallways.

Disembodied sounds.

Flickering lights.

Things that move on their own.

Rooms that change.

Messages written on the walls.

I exit a room, hear a boom, turn and see the room destroyed. I pass a wheelchair, hear a squeak and turn to find the wheelchair is behind me now covered in paint. A knife suddenly stuck in the wall. Paintings that change, becoming dark and menacing. Dolls… the dolls! They’re everywhere.

I’m finding notes, articles, and letters, all revealing the past. The life of an artist driven mad to complete his work.

And the end game. To finish the painting. I have found flesh, blood, and bone. The final image on the canvas becomes clearer.

 

Buffy and Me…A New Friendship

Tags

be stronger, Fitbit, health, live longer, thoughts, working out

I have a new friend. Her name is Buffy and she is my Fitbit.

*cue happy music and skipping through fields of flowers*

I got her on Saturday. And as I gazed at her purple perfection I have to admit to being a bit frightened. Technology and I don’t always get along. I like working out, I like to sweat and be strong. But mixing tech in with that?

Hmmm…

However, this little gadget could help me build muscle, be stronger and healthier. It tracks everything. Calories in and out. How many steps I’ve taken. How far I’ve gone. It gives me a report of how I slept, of my heart rate through out the day. So much information I never think about.

So I began on Saturday, set it up and strapped in on my wrist.

Since then she has become a trusted ally and together we shall conquer my fitness goals… to be buff. To be strong. To live to be 100 and be able to continue doing all the things of life.

So, yes, Buffy for buff… but also the whole vampire slaying thing.

Today, we did our first workout together. She let me know how I did, where my heart rate fell in the land of fat burning or cardio. A tingly vibration let me know that I hit my step goal for the day. I have accepted a challenge to see how many steps I can take this week.

I have to admit that, as I ate LOTS of pizza last night, I thought about lying to Buffy. Why does she have to know what I ate? Right? But I logged all the food. Because this friendship is based on honesty, on trust.

Hubs is getting one too, though I doubt he’ll name his. I hope this means he wants the same things I do, to be healthier, to live a long life (with me, so a crazy life, but crazy awesome!).

Off I go on this new, magical journey with my little friend, my ally. To find my potential. To find my strength. To be better. One more step to being the best me.

 

I Enter the Video Game World

Tags

80's, Atari, horror games, Layers of Fear, Lego games, Play Station, video games, Xbox, Xbox One

I grew up in the 80’s. The age of video games leaving the arcade and entering our homes. We had an Atari. My sister and I loved playing PacMan, Centipede, Joust, and Super Break Out. A joystick with a single red button. Easy. Simple. Fun.

As I got older, I wandered away from these pixilated wonders and watched as the video game world transformed.

Hubs got a game system… a Play Station. Nothing fancy just a Play Station. And I watched him play. I’m sure it was the highlight of his day, having me jib-jabbering at him.

And the gaming world grew. Games changed. To be honest, I let them go, having no desire to even try to attempt to play these monsters. No longer a simple, controllers had two sticks and numerous buttons…no way.

Eventually, Hubs set aside the Play Station, it was becoming obsolete. He talked of the new systems out there, but never did anything. Maybe our video gaming life had died.

Then we had kids. And the kids thought that maybe playing games would be fun…and Hubs knew a guy selling a Wii and all the games for an incredibly reasonable price.

So we got a Wii.

And we played. And we bought new games for it. And I found Lego games. Harry Potter and Indiana Jones… oh my, how fun! Lego puzzles to solve. Coins to collect.

But Hubs wanted a realistic military game… and the Wii just wasn’t what he wanted. So we bought an Xbox 360. Hubs and our son loved Call of Duty. And we got new Lego games for it, games that I would play. Lego…Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, Avengers, The Lego Movie, Star Wars, and Pirates of the Caribbean, which my son and I nearly finished.

And it was fun. The kids and I would play and laugh hysterically.

For Christmas we got an Xbox One. A new shiny I was honestly scared to touch. Heck, my kids wouldn’t let me be player one…ever, for fear I would press the wrong button.

My attention was drawn to horror games. If you know me, you know I love horror. But I’m not interested too much in shooting things… and when I began to research this new-found area I discovered most of the horror games were survival games, in other words, shooting things. What I wanted was psychological horror games. But I couldn’t find anything that really interested me for the systems we had.

Until a Twitter friend tweeted about a game called Layers of Fear. Wait…what? She even shared her screen with me on Skype so I could see it. And HELLO YES PLEASE THIS IS WHAT I WANT. Thank you, Ashley!

So I found it for the Xbox One. I had one heck of a time (spending a while on the phone with an actual person from Microsoft to fix my errors) getting the thing on the Xbox, but I did it! And on Tuesday, I played Layers of Fear. Alone. With all the curtains shut.

AND IT WAS MARVELOUS!

You begin in a house. Thunder sounding outside. Lightning flashing. Rain pounding against the windows.

It took me a minute to figure out the controls. Walking. Looking. Picking things up. Opening drawers. And I found clues. Notes. Articles. Pictures. A dog collar.

Little by little I uncover the story of an artist, an artist focused on finishing his masterpiece. And he had a wife…and their lives weren’t going so great. There was a fire… his agent wrote him a terrible note about some inappropriate illustrations he did. And the empty liquor bottles!

Suddenly there were odd sounds. Then doors began to close by themselves. Closing and locking. That rocking chair moved by itself. The paintings changed. I entered a room and when I went back out through the same door, well…it wasn’t the room I had left.

Okay, I didn’t scream, but I might have used a few expletives to show my confusion and/or shock.

Layers of Fear is perfect for me. And fun is all about finding the perfect thing for you. Finding clues. Putting the story of what happened together. Facing creepiness. This is just what I wanted. I sat down thinking I would play for about 30 minutes…well, an hour later…

Yeah.

And I’ve just scratched the surface of this game. I can’t wait to see what happens.

I am a happy girl, living in a dark horror world of video games. Come play with me.

 

Our Truths

Tags

be yourself, identity, just be, labels, our truths, truth

Funny thing… this thing we call truth.

Truth.

Such a little word.

One syllable.

But powerful.

And sometimes mistaken for fact, yet is not anything like fact at all.

For every person has their own truth. A core set of beliefs, of opinions, of thoughts and values. Each person’s truth is unique, like them. At times we connect with someone who shares similar beliefs, yet no two people’s truths will ever match exactly.

What a wonderful thing.

Until we feel as if we must hide our truths. Until we are attacked for who we are and what we believe.

A friend, who is almost 13 years old, revealed a truth to me. A marvelous, personal truth. And she did it with a smile, with pride, though she also admitted to struggling to say it the first few times. Some might say that she is too young to be able to proclaim such a thing.

But who are we to say?

Age has nothing to do with our truth. From 4 to 184 (though that age might only work for the faeries), everyone holds who they are wrapped up in their minds, spirits, and hearts. Maybe a four-year-old isn’t able to articulate what exists deep within, but if he can? More power to him. Over time our beliefs might shift, or perhaps time and experience help reveal who we are. Perhaps we should be jealous of the people who are able to really look at themselves, to find their true identity at a young age…where some of us fight our truths because of society.

Forever, society has dictated normal. And if you didn’t fit in you were…well, not normal. Though I seriously doubt normal even exists.

Lately, labels have been appearing as people find a word to describe themselves, to create an identity. I applause this. Though labels themselves can be a bit of a slippery slope, I like the idea of many communities living peacefully in the land of “not normal”. People have come forth to share what it is to live their truth, to bring all this into the realm of normal, for it should be. Or we can toss the word “normal” off a cliff and just be.

Live your truth, which has nothing to do with fact and everything to do with you, which has nothing to do with normal and everything to do with happy.

From Under the Mountain… Blog Tour

Tags

book, Cait Spivey, evil, fantasy, finding ones voice, From Under the Mountain, witches

It’s my day to celebrate the new book, just released last month!

And my minions rejoice!

As the second child of the Aridan imperial family, nineteen-year-old Guerline knows exactly what is expected of her: be unobtrusive, be compliant, and do not fall in love with her low-born companion, Eva. She has succeeded at only two of those.

But before her feelings for Eva can become a point of contention for the royal house, Guerline’s calm and narrow life is ripped away from her—in the course of a single night—and she is abruptly cast in the role of empress.

Faced with a council that aggressively fears the four witch clans charged with protecting Arido and believes they are, in fact, waging war against the humans, Guerline struggles to maintain order. As her control over the land crumbles, she learns that the war is rooted in a conflict much older than she realized—one centuries in the making, which is now crawling from under the mountain and into the light. With the fate of Arido hanging in the balance, Guerline must decide who to trust when even her closest councilors seem to have an agenda.

Darkly cinematic, From Under the Mountain pairs the sweeping landscape of epic fantasy with the personal journey of finding one’s voice in the world, posing the question: how do you define evil, when everything society tells you is a lie?

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Smashwords | Goodreads
When I heard about this book, I was a little excited…

Let’s face it, fantasy is awesome. And this book did not disappoint. The world of Arido is fantastic…witches, dragons, magic, shapeshifters, and something lurking under the mountain, something dark that has been sealed away. But it’s escaping.

You probably know that I love a good evil character and Ianthe is one of my very favorites. Always there. Watching. Waiting to strike.

Okay…okay… there is more to this book than a fabulous evil.

Guerline. You have to love her. From the first scene, as she’s standing wanting, needing to save her parents from a horrible fate, your heart goes out to her. And her older brother is, well, a goober-head, and would have become Emperor, until he’s killed.

Which makes Guerline Empress. Through the book she becomes Empress, transforming from a scared, uncertain girl to a leader. She faces the challenges of ruling with calm logic and lots of heart. None of her advisors agree. All of them trying to be heard, to scream the loudest, but Guerline has her own thoughts, her own beliefs and I loved watching her find her voice.

Even when it conflicted with her love’s. And now the big question, we all know I always  ask…

Well, yes, it is. And we all know I’d rather evil and destruction than kissing, so everyone holds their breath, waiting to see how I react. Overall, the kissing (and more) didn’t distract me. Eva and Guerline’s story was touching, with enough reality mixed into the high emotions of first love.

The witches. Four sisters, four clans, each with a special type of magic, each with a place in the world. And they can fly, but not on brooms. Thiymen clan would be my favorite. Fiona is awesome. Though Morgana is pretty kick-ass.

THERE ARE DRAGONS! Just saying’. Dragons.

The people of Arido struggle with who they trust, with what they believe. Are the witches good or bad? Is it okay that they work out from under the control of the Empress? What of their gods? To worship blindly, is that enough? As Guerline fights for her place, trying to take what she believes and rule.

As the darkness seeps into the world, plotting her moves. So much great creepiness! I loved it!

All leading to an epic battle with armor and swords (and dragons) where the people of Arido fight for their lives, for their world as the witches and gods pour all their magical energy into trapping the evil threat back under the mountain.

At times, I lost who was who with all the advisors, especially when Guerline held meetings and people were talking, but it didn’t take away from the overall story. And all the main characters felt real, which is what matters. I’ve always had problems with too many names.

There are fabulous scenes in this book, ones that I will tuck into my heart forever, the barrier, the fountain, the spell to trap Ianthe, and, well, any scene with Ianthe or Fiona. Seriously… IANTHE!

And, of course, we are left with a great hook… the story isn’t finished.

So there are my thoughts and reactions to From Under the Mountain. I will be waiting to read the next one! What have you found, Lisyne? WHAT?

And meet the author! She’s kinda fabulous. And by kinda I mean COMPLETELY! Always encouraging everyone to be powerful, to embrace every facet of humankind. I stalk her regularly, her being one of the cool kids (which, yes, makes me one of the dorks in the background). Not only did she have a launch party, but it was a fashion show where she brought her characters to life. I’ve seen the pics, and I was left speechless, staring at them.

Cait Spivey is a speculative fiction writer, author of high fantasy From Under the Mountain and the horror novella series, “The Web“. Her enduring love of fantasy started young, thanks to authors like Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Diane Duane, Tamora Pierce, and many more. Now, she explores the rules and ramifications of magic in her own works—and as a panromantic asexual, she’s committed to queering her favorite genres.

Twitter | Tumblr | Website | Goodreads

 

 

My Contemplation of Attempting Fan Art

Tags

books, creative juices, drawing, fan art

Fan art is nothing new, some I’ve seen is neat-o! Heck fans have been showing their favorite authors how much they love their characters for…forever? Maybe.

I’ve seen it, but never added any of my own to the world.

Maybe it’s time to join the fray.

I’ve read plenty of books that have left images to live in my brain forever…in a good way. Intriguing images. Sending chills down my spine awesome images. I have to admit that it did cross my mind to sketch them, but I never did.

I am looking to start sketching regularly. Dude. I love to draw. It’s fun. And I do okay at it. But staring at a blank page can be daunting, I just don’t know what to do.

The book I’m reading now has given me a few of those fabulous images (my turn on the blog tour for From Under the Mountain is Wednesday, so stay tuned!). Maybe I could attempt to draw those. I know the author, being an artist herself, would be thrilled.

And really, showing someone you like the art they have added to the world would be pretty darn great.

I hope that this attempt will shake my creative drawing brain awake, allowing my own images to sneak through onto that white paper.

One can hope.

We all have to start somewhere. Starting is good.

That Real World Thing Out There

Tags

happy, News, not let bad stuff in, politics, the world of stuff, words, your truth

My hubs told me the other day that I NEED to pay attention to what’s happening in the world.

Need?

I know there’s a great wide world full of people and news and politics and stuff. I know that. I choose not to join it. I choose not to watch the news. I choose to step away from politics.

Does this make me a terrible person, a un-American American?

No?

The news has never interested me, the pages and TV full of all the awful things people are doing to other people. So, no, I don’t know exactly what so and so did to cause what…I don’t know all the details (but really because they’re reported by the news, does that make them details, fact?) of all the wrongs out in the world. No, I don’t know what all the politicians are screaming at the top of their lungs about.

Yes, I stick my nose in the world of fiction.

I wander happily around my own life, knowing what will keep my family and me wrapped in comfiness. I know what we need. I make what we have work for us. The economy is in big trouble? Gas prices are going through the roof? The healthcare system is changing? Instead of spending time listening to all these big problems and worrying about what it might mean…I simply live the best I can.

When Presidential elections came, I used to listen. Then I realized that no one was saying anything. The news took their words and twisted them to manipulate my feelings. I would vote, happy in my choice, because I listened to the high and mighty speeches, until I noticed that they were only high and mighty speeches.

The world is full of words. Stories of what is happening, people talking about what it all means, people ranting about how the world needs to change. Words telling me how to feel. Even my dear Catholic Church preaches about truth, telling me I must believe what they tell me to believe.

Is there injustice in the world? Yes. We’re human. We’re all trying to live on one world, all trying to have our voices be heard, all trying to hold on to our truths. But I do wish we could get over ourselves and find peace and acceptance.

I get one chance at this life. I choose to be happy, to not let in the words get in my way, to not waste my time screaming about what is wrong and focus on what is good, to live my truth.

Maybe your happy is watching the news, is ranting about all the things you don’t agree with, is loving the conflict. Great! Carry on.

But not mine. So no, I won’t watch the news. I will stay out of the elections, but not because I don’t care, but because I care about me, my sanity, my happy. Ignorance is bliss? Except it’s not ignorance, I see it. I choose not to let it in.

*skips away*

It’s a Miracle!

Tags

goals, no more fear, thoughts, word count, writing

It’s a miracle that I finally got to blogging today? Well, yes, that.

But no.

My writing. My sitting on the couch and typing words. Before I began this manuscript, I was scared. I hadn’t written anything new (other than short stories) for years. I had drafts to revise and happily did so, but when it came to staring at a blank page…I panicked.

I knew I could write a book, because I had done so in the past, but the idea was foreign. Weird. HOW DID I DO THIS BEFORE I DON’T KNOW!

But I did it, slowly.

I put no pressure on myself. No word counts to achieve. No judgement if I couldn’t work my way through that transition. No worry about it being crap… dude, that’s what first drafts are.

I kept at it.

And now…I have found myself at a point where the fear has left. I have been writing consistently. My word count rises at a steady pace, not super fast rocket pace, but not too shabby. I do stare at the screen plenty, searching for the next word or scene, but I’m no longer afraid that my brain will let me down.

I’ve accepted how I work best. Instead of screaming at myself all day to write, I let myself have the time to workout, to do all the chores, to know I will get to the words. A bit of balance between all the things has appeared. I have allotted myself reading time and soon I will be adding drawing time, because I miss it. I write best after dinner, even though I do have the document open during the afternoon, the words flow better after the laundry is done, dinner is eaten and the kitchen is clean, when the dog falls asleep (seriously that is important!) and life slows down.

And now I have a crazy mission. To finish this draft before I get into developmental edits for DOORS. Can I do it?

Maybe.

I will do my best.

And for now I will be happy with my little miracle.