Writer's Insanity--- FEAR

Writers’ Insanity.

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while.  As a write I’m am consumed by fear.  
Here’s a brief list of very personal fears I have when it comes to my writing:
 
1) What if I’m not good enough?
2) What if I fail?
3) What if I end up being the only one of my friends without an agent?
4) What if I get an agent?
5) What if the agent can’t sell my book?
6) What if the agent does sell my book and people read it?
7) What if this is all a huge waste of time?
8) What if I look back on my time and think, I should have played with my kid more?
9) What if I’m successful?
10) What if I’m forced to quit my job as a teacher? (which if you know me by now, you know I LOVED IT)


That’s just a small sampling of fears I have.  My biggest fears are  7 and 8.

And yet despite these fears, I really want to query.  Why?  Because even though I know odds favor rejection, its hope that someone will like it, someone will request it and hope beyond hope maybe an agent will offer me a contract.

For all the rejection and fears it’s the thrill of acceptance that I hope for.  

Anyone else feel the same way? 

Happy Monday: My Nook

Genre: Tech
Topic: Nook

In the battle of the e-reader tablets, iPad, Kindle, and Nook, my heart and soul belongs to my Nook.

Why?  Because Barnes and Noble did it right.  The publishing industry is in the middle of a revolution and they had to evolve.  Did they innovate anything?  Nope.  But they made a quality product cheaper with a better battery life than the Kindle. 

I have the Nook Color, it's like a tablet at the 1/3 of the price of an iPad.  I surf the net, buy books at the touch of a button, I can play Angry Birds IN SPACE...

In the past six months I've seen more and more of my 7th and 8th grade students walk around with e-readers.  I see more kids reading and you know what, it's awesome.

It's VERY motivational for reluctant readers- you only need to focus on ONE page at a time and you can't see how much you have left to read.

I'm a big believer in the e-reader. 

I love my library.

I love my nook.

And one day I'll sit down and figure out HOW to borrow an e-book from the library... I'm sure there's a PDF somewhere I can read.


BTW Today is my HUBBY'S BIRTHDAY!   Happy Birthday babe, I hope you enjoy the shirt I got you from woot!

LOVE  YA!

Erinn Fail: Cupcakes

Last weekend I got it into my head I should make cupcakes with a filling...
I don't know why. But I wanted to bake and fill it with more sugar.

I found a recipe for banana cream filled cupcakes, I spent $34 on ingredients. I started to make them at 2:30 and at 5:30 I was finished.  It took me 3 hours.  This is what my kitchen looked like:

This is what I looked like: (I know you're assuming it's flour on my shirt--- nope, it's corn starch)

Bonus points if you can figure out how nerdy my shirt is.


This is how they were supposed to come out looking:

And my final product came out like this:

I pour graham cracker crumbs and caramel on top afterwards. Promise, but it STILL didn't look anything like the picture

Do you know what I forgot to do?

Make dinner.

I spent 3 hours in the kitchen and I TOTALLY FORGOT TO MAKE DINNER.

Saturday Night Dinner in my house:  Banana Cream filled Cupcakes.

This one could be a fail or a win... depending on how you look at it.

By the way... the cupcakes were AWESOME.

BEST YELLOW CAKE I'VE EVER MADE (probably because it didn't come from a box)

If you follow the recipe on the website be sure to read the comments first--- um yeah, those were really helpful.

So tell me, what it a fail or a win? Sometimes in my life I can't decide.

Happy Monday: Old School Cartoons

Genre: TV Shows
Topic: Old School Cartoons


WAY back in the day when I was a college student (yeah, you thought this was going someplace else, weren't you) Cartoon Network had an amazing array of cartoons.  I LOVE animation, I love the level of art that goes into every frame.  Not once did I ever look at it as 'kid stuff' despite what other people said.

Dexter's Laboratory, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, the Powerpuff Girls, beautifully muted colors, smart storytelling and razor sharp wit.  (This was also the time when Buffy was on the air too... it was a good time for TV)

Recently, my daughter discovered these shows and I'm thrilled.  But I noticed a little something while watching Dexter's Lab, it resembles another animated show I love... Phineas and Freb.


Oddly shaped main characters, with misshapen red hair?  Check

Older sister trying to ruin everything, with a disproportionate body part? Check

Parents who don't seem to care about the secret labs located all over the house?  CHECK--- and they even look like!

Boy's building insanely cool things that's mostly controlled via remote? TRIPLE CHECK

Yep it's the same show and normally I'd be pissed about it, but I'm THRILLED! Another generation is experiencing awesomeness.  A good idea is a good idea, why else are there so many books about vampires falling in love with teenage girls.  

As long as it's smart, funny and filled with heart, you can't go wrong.

(My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Powerpuff girls--- same show too.)

What's your favorite copy cat show?  Which one did it better? The original or the copy cat?

What to do when a plot bunny has infected your brain

From the evil laughter of a muse and spark of inspiration gives birth to a plot bunny.  

They’re cute little things, aren’t they?  So fluffy, so innocent and just one is manageable.  But where there’s one bunny, soon it multiplies through mitosis.

How do you tame these bunnies?  Wrangle them up and put them in a pen- outline a book, see if it works and if you love it enough to spend two years on it... write away.

But sometimes there’s an evil plot bunny.  This one isn’t cute and fluffy, you can easily push it aside.  A few months later it comes back, again. And again.  It’s not a bad plot bunny, maybe the story been done before, or maybe it feels like bad fanfiction.  You talk yourself out of it and pull one of the good bunnies out of the pen and write that for a while.

Evil bunny comes back.

And the more you think about it, the more you kinda want to write it.

Despite it’s flaws -- the story is too big, it will be a nightmare to edit, you’ve got more marketable projects waiting for you and well that’s that little factor of TIME and never having enough.

Those could be enough reasons to crush the bunny.

But it’s like a plot bunny Zombie... it keeps coming back again.  

What to do:
I say write it.  
Go for it.
Not every book or story has to be for an agent or publication. Nope sometimes the only person you need to write for you is.

Maybe you can save some part of it, maybe not.

You’ll probably learn something about yourself while writing it.  Go forth and make the plot bunny happy.  With nothing at stake, you’ll probably make yourself happy to and remember exactly why you like writing in the first place.

Book Review Tuesday: Anna Dress in Blood

Summary according to Goodreads.com

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until his gruesome murder by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father’s mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn’t expect anything outside of the ordinary: move, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he’s never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, but now stained red and dripping blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

And she, for whatever reason, spares his life


Review:
 I'm not a HUGE fan of ghost romances, it seems to be destined to end badly,  although The Ghost and the Goth is one of my all time favorite series.   That being said, this book was awesome.  I didn't want to stop reading this book.  Cas was a completely likeable character, well developed too.  But it's the secondary characters where the book really shines. Carmel and Thomas prove to be glue that binds the whole book. 


The writing is stunning, my only complaint would be that I don't know how believable it is that a teenage boy thinks THAT beautifully. 


I already put the sequel on my goodreads list.  I can't WAIT UNTIL AUGUST 7 for Girl of Nightmares.


10 out of 10

Happy Monday: Peace before the choas

Happy Monday:
Genre: Life
Topic: Peace


First of all,  I wanted to thank everyone for my birthday wishes. My birthday was quiet, we saw  "The Lorax"and my daughter has a new orange imaginary friend who speaks for the trees and I couldn't be happier.

At the moment I'm writing this, my daughter is taking a nap, my dog is sleeping and my husband is judging a lego competition.  The house is silent.  I can hear the roars of the planes passing over head and the ticking of my DVR (and I have NO idea why it does that).

I just finished Anna Dressed in Blood (AMAZING), I have only one load of laundry left to do, and I finished revisions of a WIP. 

I am completely at peace.

In a few minutes, my daughter will wake up and demand attention, the laundry will beep and require folding, my husband will come home and will also demand and require attention and probably some food too.

Within the next few days I'll get a phone call and I'll have to attend my grandmother's funeral. My daughter will spend the night with a friend and I'll have to scramble for subplans.  My life will be thrown into chaos all out of my control (and of course isn't that what is chaos--- people tend not to complain too much about manageable chaos).  I will be faced with a highly personal death and I'll have to deal with my feelings. 

However this isn't a woe is me post or a mourning about my Grandmother. 

Because right now, in this moment, it's silent and peaceful.  Everyone I love lives, and it's basically perfect.

Right now I'm happy.

Right now I'm going to ignore the text from my cell phone and listen to my dog snore. 

Happy birthday to me!

Today is my birthday!

YAY.

I'm 33 years old and here are my goals for the next year:
1) Finish revising two books
2) Query Penny and Hank which has been renamed to Accidental Quarantine.
3) Get an agent
4) WOA 2.0
5) Figure out Google PLUS
6) FINALLY GET 200 followers.

If you want to get me a birthday present, comments are like awesome but getting a friend to follow my blog for no other reason than I'm awesome not because there's a prize involved...

prize?

Yeah sure, why not- I'll throw in 33 page manuscript critique just for giggles. 

All you have to do is leave a comment about your favorite birthday gift ever and follow my blog.  That's it!
I'll pick a winner when I get 10 new followers!  It's a tiny number it should be easy, right?