RieView — Random Realities by Melanie Fletcher — 5 Stars

Posted on February 27, 2012 by RieSheridanRose

I picked up Random Realities for my Kindle because Melanie Fletcher is a friend of mine, but oh, am I glad she is. This collection of stories runs the gamut from pastoral to parody, and every story is a gem.

From the first story, “Lost in Whitby” — a tale of love lost, and found, and DIY — to the haunting “All on a Summer’s Day” to the space opera with a twist of “Lusts of the Cat Queen: a Dash Manning Adventure”, I loved every minute of it.

My personal favorite was “Think Small” because of the deft hand that shows us the character growth in Emily as the story progresses.

Seldom does a book with stories ranging from fantasy to horror strike the perfect note in every genre. This one does. I highly recommend it.

 

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Always Look on the Bright Side of Life…

Posted on February 26, 2012 by RieSheridanRose

I love the philosophy of that silly song. If things aren’t going your way, look for a way to capitalize on your strengths.

I still haven’t figured out what I can do that might bring me in some extra cash — and “write more” isn’t a helpful answer. Unless I hit it strange in the big time, my writing isn’t the type that will make me rich any time soon. I need something to do that is a bit less time from beginning to turn around. I thought the trees might be good, but Etsy is flooded with trees, and the transport would be problematical, so I am still thinking.

Had a birthday party for two nieces and a nephew today, so not much on the cleaning front, but I did do a load of dishes, mop the dining room floor and get the recycling together for tomorrow morning.

Now I need to go do some proofreading for people. And keep thinking. 😉

 

UPDATE ONE: Got the Time Chart page updated. Seeing the graph get emptier and emptier makes me sad. I have to get back to cleaning that three hours a day. Yeah, my house is much better, but it isn’t finished. I have been slacking off. It really does need to stop. Having the weekends off may help. But only if I have done a decent week’s work.

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Day 56 (Month 2 – 25)

Posted on February 25, 2012 by RieSheridanRose

Just a head’s up — I am finding the Day XXX titles annoying and hard to keep accurate, so I may wind up rethinking that title convention as we head into month 3…

I promised something fun today, so we are going to look at trees… (Okay — you might not find it fun, but I am hoping that they inspire at least one of us to be creative…)

Several years ago, I made some sculptures that I am still quite proud of. Each is a themed “tree”. Unfortunately, a component in their creation is no longer manufactured, so I am trying to decide if it is worth it to find something compatible to make more.

Anndddd…after seeing all the trees on Etsy, probably not. 😦

It is terribly discouraging to find that one of the few artistic things you are good at has no market. 😛

But I’ll keep brainstorming. After all, the trees would probably be a bitch to ship. 😉

But I’ll still share. These are my “H” series trees. And I have parts to make several others, so I may still do them for myself.

      

The first tree — Hope                         detail showing why it got its name

 

      

Home                                                    detail

 

      

Harmony                                              detail

 

     

Harvest                                                detail

 

These are really fun sculptures to make, and almost everyone has (or can obtain) the basic components…a stick, and a rock. I was using a product called PhlexGlu that is no longer available, much to the sadness of my mother and I, but in looking for something similar, I found FlexBond from Rosco which sounds similar enough that it might do the same job. I am eager now to find out!

If you don’t have something like that, hot melt glue to hold the tree in place on its rock, some Gesso mixed with a bit of Elmer’s Glue and some paper towels might serve the same purpose, but you will definitely want to paint over the towels.

That was one of the great things about the PhlexGlu. You could add a bit of paint to it, and the glue would try clear, leaving the color of the paint or dye to show through. It sounds like the FlexBond does the same thing, so we are eager to get some and experiment!

Though kind of expensive, a gallon of that stuff will last a hobbyist for a long time. It also (if it indeed works like PhlexGlu) is great for decoupage and similar applications.

When we did Twelfth Night when I was in college (eons ago) the entire set [image borrowed from the director’s website] was done with PhlexGlu and tissue paper. We could even mop the floor at night, though it was nothing but dyed tissue paper coated with PhlexGlu.

Can you tell I am excited to have found a possible substitute? 😉

 

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Day 55 (Month 2 – 24)

Posted on February 24, 2012 by RieSheridanRose

Dishes done. Day started…

Today is going to be another day where the results won’t be extremely obvious, but they will be important. I need to clean up this computer and see if it helps the performance any. There is no space left on my C drive, and it keeps doing things like shutting down and rebooting whenever it feels like it.

That probably means getting my computer guy to look at it, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to do some file maintenance too. Does anyone know of a program that would go through your photos and delete duplicates? Or is that wishful thinking…lol.

Apparently not.

I think I’ll try the one he says is the best. I liked the sound of the first one, but my photos are FAR from in one folder.

UPDATE ONE: So far, the program has found over a 1000 duplicate photos, and it is about halfway through. Unfortunately, they are on the Terabyte drive, but still…if I free some space on that drive I can maybe move things from the C drive down.

I have also deleted at least 2000 unread emails. That’ll free a bit of space too, I think… 😉

UPDATE TWO: Love that little program! It found up to 5 copies of some of those photos. Deleted over a gigabyte of duplicates. And I also made a grocery list, washed a load of clothes, and paid some bills, so I didn’t sit and do absolutely nothing all day. 🙂

Here are some before and after shots for you. Here is where I started:

          

C drive almost completely full.             E drive has plenty of space, but all the photos.

After the removal of the duplicate photos and unneeded emails:

Reclaimed over a gigabyte on the C drive, and 11 on the E drive. Hopefully, the machine will run a bit smoother now…

Taking off for the day. Remember that weekends will be less cleaning more doing from now on. I hope to be able to share a cool project with you tomorrow. 😉

 

UPDATE THREE: Just wanted to report that after “compressing the old files” (whatever that means) on my E drive, Terrorbite, I now have 633 Gigs free. That retrieved almost another 20 G. Amazing what a little clean up can do…

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Day 54 (Month 2 – 23)

Posted on February 23, 2012 by RieSheridanRose

I needed a focus day, with fewer distractions, to finish sorting out the Kindle. It was definitely work! And it took almost all day to do it. But I now have no books that aren’t in at least one collection. Of course, I have a collection titled “Unread” with 1,043 titles in it…

Some of those are short pieces, to be fair…and–since I have given up getting new Kindle books for Lent–I am hoping to whittle that stack down considerably in the next few weeks.

I am no longer Catholic, but I always try to give up something for Lent. Usually, it doesn’t work–I break down before the time is up–but one year I gave up French Fries…which I used to practically LIVE on, and I still don’t eat as many of them as I used to. I suppose it is more of a psychological thing for me, but that doesn’t mean it has no value.

Anyway, I am declaring that sorting my work for today. It was definitely time consuming and necessary, so I think it counts quite handily. 🙂

(And I’ll be glad to take Kindle recommendations after Lent is up, so save them for me!)

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Day 53 (Month 2 – 22)

Posted on February 22, 2012 by RieSheridanRose

Just read a great post called “Beware the Bags” over on Liz’s blog. It made me think about all the bags around my house. I am trying to get rid of as many plastic bags as possible, but the canvas ones…I just got another one last weekend!

And I do have some bags I know need unpacking. For one thing, the Official Brobdingnagian Bards Archives are currently in a signed canvas bag. The signatures make sure that the bag will continue to be part of the archives, but moving them into a plastic box would make it a lot easier to see what is inside…

Do you have bags that need to be emptied? If so, read the post above. It will give you some great ideas about what to do with all those unneeded bags.

First roll of my new housekeeping dice: upstairs…in the Office…for an hour and a half.

Allons y!

UPDATE ONE: Went through the Bard archives and cleaned them up. Got everything out of the bag, and some of the photos into scrapbooks. It took an episode and a half of House, so that comes out to about an hour and a half. 😉

That didn’t seem like a major amount of work, but it was still productive to me. For one thing, everything didn’t fit into the original bag, but it will fit in the plastic box.

Next roll is an hour in the downstairs hall/stairway area.

UPDATE TWO: While it might not look like a lot (boy…I’ve said that a lot lately, but since so much of the obvious stuff has been done, the things I am doing now don’t look like much…) I did do an hour downstairs. Moved the bikes to get behind them and move the stuff lurking there and mop. Took some more of the books stacked on the cart into the library. Got the cot moved out of the front hall and into a room it makes more sense to leave it in. Did more general straightening up.

     

Hall before                                           Hall after

Things are looking up here. I still don’t know what I am going to do with the bikes. The hall closet, where they used to live does have other things in it now. I might be able to organize it for the bikes to fit there again. That would probably be best.

So, we are at 2 1/2 hours so far. One more roll…: Upstairs, in the Hall for 15 30 minutes. I don’t see any reason to only do 15 when there is only 30 minutes left in the day.

UPDATE THREE: Sorted through a couple of drawers, and picked up some cat fur. I ran out of steam…but I did do closer to three hours today than I have in a long time!

DAILY WRAP UP: 1 1/2 hours in Office + 1 hour Downstairs Hall + about 30 minutes in Upstairs Hall = close enough to 3 hours 🙂

UPDATE FOUR: Not cleaning, exactly, but I got to Chapter Seven on the revision of Skellyman tonight.

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Petting a Peeve

Posted on February 21, 2012 by RieSheridanRose

Just finished a story in How the West Was Wicked and I just had to come and make a comment to all you writers, editors, and proofreaders out there. This is not an isolated instance of the peeve I am about to pet, just the most recent example I have seen. I’ve noticed it quite often lately, so I want to point it out.

A horse is led by the reins.

A king reigns over his kingdom.

The only time a horse reigns over anything is when he is Bad Horse and runs the Evil League of Evil.

Thank you, that is all. 🙂

 

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Day 52 (Month 2-21)

Posted on February 21, 2012 by RieSheridanRose

No real excuse for such a late start to the day. That’s just the way it is today. Got more of my Kindle books filed at lunch, but so far, that’s it. About to go tackle the dishes though, which will be a good way to get the day moving.

I’m itching to write, but if I don’t clean anything I will fall even further behind, so clean first and then hit the keyboard. 🙂

UPDATE ONE: Dishes caught up, second load in laundry, straightened up the living room a bit. I’d say that’s about 30 minutes at least. Now I am going to lock myself in my Office to get my con stuff squared away and get to the point where I can get some writing work done in there tonight.

UPDATE TWO: Getting all the books squared away, and the charts for the website caught up took about an hour at least — that’s what I am counting for the Office today. But I do want to try and get some writing done tonight. So, that’s only an hour and a half today, but it is still an improvement.

DAILY UPDATE: 30 minutes Kitchen + 1 hour Office = 1 1/2 hours today.

(Yikes! Looking at the Time Charts for the last few weeks, I can see how little work has been done lately…I’ve got to get back in the groove…)

UPDATE THREE: Nothing to do with cleaning, but I did get the revisions I wanted to do done on the first chapter of Skellyman tonight. That makes me happy.

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Day 51 (Month 2-20)

Posted on February 20, 2012 by RieSheridanRose

Home at last. Have paid some bills since I got here — that’s part of cleaning and sorting too, after all. There are fewer dishes than I feared in the sink, so I will try to get them done tonight. Right this minute, still in decompression mode.

And I had an idea for a filksong on the way home that I need to get written down before I forget it. 🙂

UPDATE ONE: I’ve been cleaning up my Kindle…does that count? When I got the new one, it still remembers most of the books, but not what collections they used to be in. I’ve got almost a thousand books to sort through and file away so they are easier to find. And I am trying to get some things off so there is room to download the Audible book of The Stand, but that may be a lost cause…

 

UPDATE TWO: Never did get more done today. Sorry. I accidentally took a nap, and by the time I got moving again, it was time for Newell to get home, so we watched TV and played magnets together for the rest of the evening. Have much to do tomorrow, so I will have to get back in the saddle.

 

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ConDFW Report

Posted on February 19, 2012 by RieSheridanRose

Friday: I had an interesting panel on Trends in Fantasy. We had a lot of audience interaction, but basically decided that you can’t look at today’s trends and write to them. By the time you are through with a manuscript, and have send it through the submission process, and it has gotten accepted and put into the publication queue, several months — if not years have passed, and you are no longer trendy. So, the consensus was to write what you want to write, make it the best it can be, and then look for a market. Don’t try to write to the market, because that is a moving target.

Finishing the night was the traditional Yard Dog Press Road Show. If you ever get a chance to see one, take advantage of the opportunity. It is always fun. Here are a few shots captured at the Road Show:

    

Melanie Fletcher reads and Julia Mandala and Rhonda Eudaly “dance.”

    

Rhonda performs…while Mel. White plots…

    

Kathy Turski reads while Dusty Rainbolt waits her turn…

The Road Show is always fun, but exhausting. It was a pretty early night.

 

Saturday: I had two back to back panels about the Young Adult trends. The first one discussed whether or not there was too much darkness in the books being published currently. It was an interesting discussion. We decided that the trend is reflecting the climate of the world the kids are living in, and that the darkness in the books can be helpful in learning to cope. (Plus, the darkness has always been there…it just may be less hidden these days.)

Then we discussed the rise of the Heroine in YA, and gave our favorite examples of strong heroines in the current literature. From Hermione Granger to Katniss Everdean, the strong heroine is a role model for today’s girls.

Then I had a signing with Lou Antonelli. He had brought some of the paperback copies of Zombie Writing!, so I got to get one for my archive shelf. It is a neat collection of zombie writing advice, and I am pleased to be part of it. Now I need to read the rest of it and learn how to write scary zombies as well as silly!

Mel. White coaxed me onto the What is Filk? panel, and I actually performed some of the songs from Don’t Go Drinking With Hobbits. She even convinced me to come to the filksinging later in the evening, and I sang three songs…didn’t get back to the room till midnight. 🙂

 

Sunday: Resting up after a great supper to drive home tomorrow morning. Very energized after the weekend. Can’t wait to get back to work on some revisions I have in the queue.

Got some great feedback on the chapters of Skellyman that I read in my reading. Rachel Caine, one of the sweetest writers I know, was extremely helpful and encouraging, which makes me excited to get back to work on it. (And champing at the bit to read her work-in-progress when it is out.)

Then I got added to a panel which included Cherie Priest, the con Guest of Honor. I hadn’t read any of her books before, but I am a third of the way through Four and Twenty Blackbirds, and I am a new fan. It is Southern Gothic and extremely compelling. I’m sure I will get around to her Steampunk trilogy soon now. :)

It was a fabulous con, as always, but I will be happy to get home.

 

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