I feel like I'm going to explode

My aunt and uncle from Texas decided, in the generosity of their hearts, to take everyone out to dinner. And since they lived in Brazil for many years, they love Brazilian food. So we went to Rodizio Grill. I had never been before, so I was exactly sure what to expect. I didn't expect the best meat I have ever tasted, and I certainly didn't expect the way that it was brought to the table.

There were servers who brought skewers of meat, asking everyone if they wanted some, sometimes three or four servers at a time. When someone said they wanted some, they would saw the meat off the skewer and drop it on the plate. We were there for about an hour, and I have never eaten that much in all my life. It was amazingly good, and yet at the same time, I ended up with a little bit of a stomach ache. I'm sure it will take days for my stomach to recover.

I had a great time thought.

Family, family, everwhere

I love having extended family over. I have my favorite aunt living next door, which has been great for the last two years, and right now, for Christmas, we have maternal grandparents over, and just now one my uncle and aunt from Texas has come to visit, for my mother's birthday this week.

It's great. There's love everywhere, everyone is talking, and there have already been a round of hugs, with another forthcoming when the cousins get here.

I sure wish that this could happen more often!

An interesting observation

I have just realized that my most interesting stories/ideas, have all come from two places: Either they have been stewing in the back of my mind for at least three years, giving them time to ferment and become as great as they need to be, or they come to me in a dream.

I love my dreams. They tend to be a little (okay, a lot) on the weird side, and they almost always have a cute/gorgeous guy in them. Sometimes it's someone I know, either personally (though that only happens rarely) or from a movie or TV show, and sometimes it's someone I have never seen in my life. Not even in my writing.

Most of my dreams lately have been about relationships. I'm sure that tells you a little about what I have on my brain right now. Sometimes the relationships are really cute, sometimes they are heartbreaking, and sometimes they are stressful. It's always been interesting to wake up, remember the dream, and try to understand why I dreamed about that particular thing/relationship/man.

My dreams are usually the reason I like to sleep in late, aside from my bed being warm and my room being cold. It always bothers my parents, since I'm stuck living with them right now.

There have been four dreams in particular that I have loved enough to start writing a story based on them. It always takes work to make it all make sense on paper. But once it's down, then I feel so much better.

Technically I have six dreams I had that I wanted to write, but two of them never got written.

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas celebration, and that everyone received great gifts like I did!

A Question needing an answer

This one is to all you readers who are also writers. I need help. (This is the part where you all get to learn my bad side... *sigh*) I am really bad at sticking to one task for longer than a few days. I've only managed to stick to something long enough to finish it once, and I'm still working on it now, after an entire year has gone by. I bounce around between genres depending on my mood and what movies/TV I have been watching, and most of the time I get to between 9k-20k and quit, either because I'm bored, or I want to write something else, or I don't like where the plot is going and I can't stick with it long enough to fix it.

There, now you all know what a bad writer I am. I know that'll shatter at least one person's view of me, and you can think less of me, but it's the truth.

Now, here's the question to all you writers. How do you stick to a novel long enough to see it finished? I would like to know your secret, so that I can do the same, and finish something.

I have a friend who says that he doesn't worry about me and my writing career because he 'knows' that I finish things, but I really don't, and I don't know where he got the idea. I've only ever finished one thing, and it's still not novel length. Sure, I've written two short stories and they both went on to win at least second place in contests at my local library, but that's not the same as a novel. And I really want to be able to finish things, so that I can have them move out of the way for my millions of other projects I have lined up in my head.

Okay, I'm done with my ranting and complaining.

Thank you for any help anyone is willing to give.

You should all watch this

A really cool, $300 movie that looks like it came from Hollywood!

Just for Clarity's Sake

I think some people have misunderstood what my new website, IBDB, really is or is supposed to be. You'll remember I talked about it twice recently.

It's not like GoodReads, it was never supposed to be like GoodReads. It's supposed to be like IMDB. You won't get any 'junk' mail unless you want to, and the whole purpose of the website is to add books. For example: I just finished reading Once Bitten, Twice Shy, by Jennifer Rardin, and I put up that as the first book on the site. If this dissuades you from looking at or helping with the website, you have the wrong idea. Everyone is supposed to join and add books, because I haven't read all the books in the world (nor plan to) and I haven't read the same books as anyone else.

So. Let me say again, you are supposed to join and add books with me, not wait until I have added more books myself.

I really am trying to make this a big thing, so that other people can have a chance to avoid reading things they might find inappropriate. I kind of what this to become a national thing, someone that they talk about in the newspapers or on the Yahoo! news page. Not because I want the fame, that would just get in the way of my life, but because I feel that this kind of website should exist like that. It should be just as large as Facebook, or GoodReads, or IMDB.

Okay, I'm done with my shameless advertising.

Thank you

Who ever you are in Pennsylvania who has visited this blog five times, thank you. I don't know who you are, or how you found this site, but thank you. Your visits mean a lot to me.

The same goes to you in California, though you've only visited once. Thank you.

Now I'm going to say, how bizarre. I don't even know anyone in the Penn state... I think I can guess who it is in Cali (Edit, actually I can't. I don't think I know anyone in San Fran...), but Pennsylvania? And Collegeville Penn, no less!

If you read this Collegeville Penn, I would very much like to know who you are!

Edit: I know know who's from Collegeville. Thanks Kateness!

The Internet Book Database, or IBDB

So, recently I've been having a problem finding clean(ish) good books to read. I really like the urban fantasy genre, and most of the books have scenes I don't want to read. So, I've come up with a solution, though it might take some time for it to get big enough to actually work.

I've named it IBDB, or the Internet Book Database. It's similar to IMDB, which I'm sure all of you have heard of, and the main goal of the website is to have a place where you can check to see if a book you want to read has any content that you would find inappropriate. So, feel free to visit IBDB whenever you get a chance and join me in my quest to find a clean book!

My mouth is on fire...

For those of you who have been to Sam Hawk's, (Creselin, I'm looking at you) there is a dish there called Pork Bulgogi. It's very delicious, and I've had it both times I went there. (both times with BFF Balgram) I loved it so much, that a few weeks ago I began craving it, but had no way to get it, because it's 30+ miles south of where I live. So I began researching into making it myself.

I finally was able to make it tonight, along with noodles as a side dish. It wasn't exactly the same as the dish at Sam Hawk's, but it was still really good. A tad on the spicy side, but nothing I couldn't handle. My second youngest brother didn't like it so much because he's not fond of spicy things, but I can't blame him for that.

Then, when I started my second helping the spiciness really started to get to me. By the time I was finished eating that, my mouth was on fire. I really don't remember the Sam Hawk version being this spicy, so the next time I make it I'm not going to use as much chili paste. It was still really good, and as close to authentic asian food I have ever been able to get on my own.

If anyone one wants the recipe, feel free to ask.

Good memories make me laugh

To pass some time today, I went through and read my blog posts from the beginning. *Sigh* So many fond memories and funny stories. It makes me glad that I have this blog, because I would never have remembered half of the stories if I hadn't written them down. Now I have things to tell my grandchildren, when I have them.

Edit: It also made me see how truly immature I have been, as well as shallow... It definitely makes me want to change.

I am going to get something written if it kills me.

May I direct your attention to the new list below the list of online comics. It's pretty self explanatory. I am going to get something written in the next few months. I don't have school so I have all morning to write, at least until I get a job which should be in the next week or so. Plus, both my laptop and my portable DVD player is currently not working, so I don't have a lot of things to distract me from writing. Aside from housework and Christmas stuff, both of which I'm probably going to be doing a lot of. Got to have the house perfect for when Dad and Jet get back!

I digress. I am going to work on the projects listed down below, a little at a time. Slow and steady. Because I really don't want to overwhelm or burn myself out.

I guess I should explain why 'The Ja'Laxam Wars' is listed with such a high wordcount goal. It's actually a series of 15+ books and that number is basically 15x75,000, which is the average length of a publishable novel. And not only those 15 books, but I have several more that I'm going to work on eventually, but didn't want to list them just yet.

Edit: I wrote this before I moved everything around. The list is just below the blog list now. And I also forgot to add that Reality Repair is actually a series of 8 books, hence the 800,000 words.

Well... I'm a little disappointed in myself.

I just read about a girl who is just 2 years older than me and who wrote 1,000,000 words in November. Yes, you read that right, one million words in thirty days. That's roughly 33k+ per day. Kateness, I know you will never read this, but you are my hero.

As for me, I didn't do anywhere near as well. I worked on my planned novel for about 28k and one week before I decided that I hated the characters, didn't like where the plot was heading, and didn't like the fact that while it was a little bit of a fantasy, it was mostly a relationship drama. And I hate relationship drama's unless it's a sideplot underneath an adventure. So I stopped working on that and started on a new novel idea that I had, about a bookseller who gets involved with a murder mystery.

I loved the main character, Jaz Parker, who was smart, funny, and a little bit eccentric, I thought the romantic interest, Samuel, was interesting and had a few quirks of his own that I would have loved to explore, but the story was boring. It was just a straight mystery with no sign of magic or gadgets anywhere.

So I just stopped writing altogether. I was way ahead of schedule, and I figured some time off would help me get my mind back in the game.

But when I started falling behind, I had to start writing something and there was nothing to write. So I wrote stories based on my *really* good dreams that I had been having all month. And I loved them. I wrote up three of them, and each one was a little bit different. One was about an immortal and her lover who were stuck pretending they were just friends while they were working for a monster hunting company. I had some trouble with the last part of that one, because it took a turn for the worse plot wise, and I really didn't like where it was heading. But the beginning is really good. The relationship between the woman and her man was interesting, and how she handled the seperation was heartbreaking.

The next one I wrote was about a woman on vacation with her african american (that part was very important) boyfriend. It was the shortest of the three, and I never actually finished everything I had dreamed about. But it was good, I really liked the boyfriend, and will probably return to this one some day.

The third one I wrote was a lot on the sad, depressing side about a woman who had been kidnapped and thought dead returning to find that her fiance had moved on and got married to someone else. It was heartbreaking and I felt really, really bad for the woman.

I had two other dreams I really enjoyed and wanted to write, but I got bored again and wanted to move on to something else. So I opened a new Word document and just started writing. What came out was a bit of a pleasant surprise. It was about a woman who was a demon/alien/ghost hunter (it's not really clear what she hunts) for hire who has purple energy and her disposal as well as a gun and a sword. There was also a man who was just like her who had been her lover for more than three thousand years before disappearing for a thousand and had just barely returned a few weeks ago, only his energy was a bright gold color. They didn't get along very well because she was angry that he had left, and angry that he had returned because she had eventually gotten over him and was now engaged to a mortal. He had returned to bring her back to their homeland, which is actually underground, because there was a Bringer of destruction coming, etc. It was really interesting, and I think I might do something with that as well.

But I, again, got bored, and couldn't find anything to write. I stayed behind schedule and had to write about 15k on the 30th. That was not fun. I picked random words out of the dictionary and began writing the first thing that came to mind, but I still struggled to make it. I did make it, thank goodness, but I didn't get the same sense of satisfaction I had gotten last year.

After some careful thought of what I had done wrong, I figured out that it was because I was working on all new stuff. Huntress worked last year because the basic idea had been fermenting in the back of my mind for several years. The first novel I tried during November didn't work because it was something I had thought up a few days before the month had started.

I am now kicking myself in the pants for not writing what I had decided on writing back in August. That was a story that had been in my brain for a few years, and I'm sure that it would have pulled me through the entire month.

Oh well, what's done is done.

I'm going to say, though, I'm thinking of doing JulNoWriMo (July Novel Writing Month) or any of the other programs during different months. There are a lot. Not one for every month, but a lot. And since I won't have INSANELY long papers to write and an Oral report to work on during nect semester or the summer, then I will have much more time on my hands. I will have a job by then, but I did NaNo while I was working full time in 2008, so it's definitely possible.

And now I will stop rambling. I really have to post more often so I don't get these overly long posts...