First I'd like to apologize for the cranky mood I've been in lately when I post. I know that DBT says you're not supposed to apologize for having emotions and stuff because it, like, invalidates them or something, but I still feel bad being a virtual bitch on LJ. I can imagine that reading me freaking out about something isn't what you all have in mind when you run across my post on your Friends Page. I've bee having weird mood swings, I dunno. But now I'm better. I'm going to post zombie stories! Wooo! Everything is better with zombies. And since notbamf was saddened that I was unable to post my last zombie story, I've decided to put links leading to my three zombie stories here, in case anyone missed my first one. And my last one, Cornflake Man, I've kinda hinted to some people at work that it's based on actual events. If you haven't heard my Cornflake Man story from work, let me know, and I'll explain what actually happened. Hehee. Enjoy the zombtastic fun!

Awaken

Till Death Do Us Part

Cornflake Man

[all these, and more stories, can be found at my writing journal: draygns_lair]

So there you have it. My zombie trilogy. I might write one more before Halloween, I had an idea for it while I was bored off my ass at work the other night. Anyhoo... I'm done posting and stuff for now. Have fun reading zombie stories and such. I know they're kinda rough, and may not make too much sense in the grammar department, I wrote most of these after midnight. I think I finished Cornflake Man last night at about 4am... so that would be this morning. Yeah. But lemme know what you think. =^_^=

So I'm working on the last story to my Thessla Moon Part I section. And it's going to be awesome! Hehehe. It's also going to be longer than the other stories of the anthology, and it's going to star my two favorite characters that we got a little glimpse of in the first story. If you're wanting to catch up on Thessla Moon, I'll give you some quickie links to the other stories I've posted from the anthology. There is one I haven't posted yet to draygns_lair, but you'll just have to wait for that one to come out with the book!

My Beloved
Faerie Dust
Exile (sequel to "Faerie Dust")
In the Face of Death

Okie dokie. Now to the funness of the the fun uber big story. I'll give you the first two chapters (parts?) and then you'll just have to wait until it comes out via Lulu.com. Ha. I'm cruel. But you have to read "In the Face of Death" first to get some of the references in the new one.

( One Step Too Far )

Inspired by my last post, and a comment that lokein made about there not being enough heroes named "Mike/Michael" in stories... I went hunting around my story/creative community draygns_lair to find a short story I wrote that I swore the main character's name was Mike.

And I also went hunting for it now... at 145am... because I can't sleep. Too wound up to sleep. Too giddy from that phone conversation. Way too excited for Thursday...

I found it; I knew I was right. I should be able to remember the names I give to my characters. They are like my children. So lokein, here's a lead character with the name of Mike!

The Mirror Room
Follow the link to the story!

Wooooo!!! So over at fictionwriters, there's a group of people who are putting out a monthly publication of fiction called Dead Letter Quarterly (also at dlquarterly). They are publishing their collection of works through Lulu.com, and a few days ago they put up a little notice, asking for submissions. Well, since I like to help out others of the writing and creative mind, I decided to send in one of my short stories to their anthology collection. The story I chose was Next Weekend, that you can find over at draygns_lair. Well, they sent me back the following email tonight:

X-posted to draygns_lair

Guess what I'm doing now!?

I know that's a hard question to answer, especially when you're talking about me. But... after my last post... a few short minutes ago... I decided to put into action the Decluttering notions of the current session/module of my DBT group. It's called "Distress Tolerance", but it's basically about decluttering and reorganizing your life so that you can function. Get rid of the old crap (things, thoughts, people, memories) that may be holding you back and keeping you from moving forward and healing. So what do I do, at 1130pm? I start decluttering my desk. And I mean decluttering. I tore that thing a part. I threw away old bills, scraps of paper that have been accumulating on my desk from my pockets after work, old letters, just... crap. So I straightened that little corner of my room up, and it felt good! I actually did something, and it felt good to get rid of that old stuff that really serves no purpose anymore. I think that either tomorrow [if i have time] or next week before I go camping, and basically every day, I'm going to tackle a new section of my room and spend a few minutes just clearing that space. Maybe I can finally tame the evilness that is my room... aka Mount Craptuvious... or the Evil Twisted Vortex of Evil.

Then, that somehow gets me to think about scanning my new comics to my computer. I've got quite a few, so I've been doing that for the last half an hour. It actually isn't taking me that long to scan them, but I'm distracted by organizing and throwing crap out. So yeah. It's exciting! I have a new Bargain Section comic that's going to be coming out soon, called Bargain Section: Stampeding Turtles, with a whole bunch of new stuff that no one's seen before (unless I've shown it to you at work in little sneak-peaks). It'll be exciting! And I'm also going to be working on a brand new Bargain Section comic project called...

Project Bargain Section Omnibus.

I love that word. I do. It'll be all all four Bargain Section comics (Bargain Section, Bargain Section: Holiday Edition, Bargain Section Presents: The Gospel According to St. Slurpee, and Bargain Section: Stampeding Turtles) and a new mini-comic project that I've been working on in secret. Yes! I know, exciting, no? But the only catch is, that the Bargain Section Omnibus is... not going to be free. It includes stuff that I haven't posted here on LJ (to my journal or over on draygns_lair), or included in the comics I've left in the break room at work. So... it's kinda special. It will cost $$. But not a lot, don't worry! It's priced to sell! I'll get more info out to you when it's coming closer to it's debut. I'm excited for the Bargain Section Omnibus! Squeee!

I'm still bugging about my stupid werewolf's name. Grrrrrr. I just can't get a grip on his name. Although today at work a thought came to me about his name. Quinn. It's unique, strong, but not too out-there that you can't imagine someone with that name in real life. To me it speaks... uptown werewolf... a strong presence, a unique soul, yet strong and commanding, a force among his pack; and at the same time, sensitive, sensual, charismatic, sexy. Yeah. I'm thinking... green eyes. I love green eyes.

Hehehe. So what do you think? Quinn for my werewolf hero? I thought of some other names, one inspired by my cousin's husband's brother's name. I have no idea how to spell it in Polish, but it's pronounced On-Jay. It starts with an A. Or Roman. Those might be Quinn's werewolf buddies in his pack. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with Quinn for my hero. And my heroine is Amber. Her name has been that since the very beginning of this story idea a few years ago. I just could never nail down a good name for her counterpart. But Quinn's got it.

Now I just have to finish Coven and I can get started on this story... ugh! And I really need to go through everything over at draygns_lair and get the tags updated for Coven's new name: Magic and Madness. *sigh* Stupid stories. AND I have to finish Thessla Moon. I have 2 more stories for that one and the first volume will be ready.

I changed the layout and stuff for draygns_lair. Felt it needed a little change. It looks nice. Yay. Go check it out! Whooo!

Other than that...... nothing. I have to work tomorrow. Ugh. I don't wanna work. Wanna work for me?

I've been stumped over what to name one of my main characters in my new story. It's annoying and frustrating, because you have to have a good strong name for a character that will fit them personality-wise. I'm stuck for a name for my werewolf character in my new story that was once named Over the River. But it has a new name, that I came up with at work. The new name is Magic & Moonlight. It'll be awesome. It's the second volume in my The Coven series that I just concocted at work. Hehe. See, what you've known as The Coven will also go under a name change, since just calling it that hasn't really struck a chord with me for a while. So it'll be a series called The Coven and each subsequent book after that will have another title. So The first Coven is now The Coven: Magic & Madness. Yeah. That title reaches out and grabs ya by the juevos! Hehehe. And that title will make more sense once I get going on Chapter 10. Sheesh! I hope to get it started (if not completed) before I go to Portland.

Anyhoo, back to my werewolf. My sister and I actually went through my two baby naming books to find a good exotic sounding name for my werewolf character. The name we came up with him was Thane. But now... I'm not digging it too much. It doesn't really roll of the tongue for me. Then I thought of Cyrus, but that kinda sounds too ethnic... and sorry, my characters are mostly white (they say that authors should write about what they know, and I know white people!). But I like Cyrus. Then I thought of maybe spinning off the Cyrus idea and stick with a C name. I thought of Cyan, Cayn (but that looks too feminine), Cain (the non-feminine-looking spelling of Cayn), Creed (to stick with my theme of naming characters Creedence), and then I ran out of ideas. I thought maybe naming him Zane. But then... eh. Nothing. So I'm stuck on a good unique sounding name for a deliciously handsome, rough-and-tumble, werewolf. Any suggestions? I'm kinda leaning towards Creed. But as I just typed that last sentence, I was reminded of the character Victor Creed from X-Men, the guy we all know and love as Sabretooth. So... hmmm. I dunno. Lemme know what you think? I'm open to suggestions right now. I'm not really in a hurry, since I'm not going to start that story until I get another chapter or two down for Coven I'm in the process of working on now. Cuz what happens in that story will set up events that will happen in Magic & Moonlight. So, gotta have my facts and story lines straight before writing more!

I'm super thirsty... so I'm gonna go grab me some beverages!

x-posted to draygns_lair

Things I love:

• Target
• Fall Out Boy's new CD Infinity on High
• Avril Lavinge's new CD The Best Damn Thing
• Comfy pajamas
• Days where it's about 70*
• Coupons
• Short shifts at work
• My Dragonlance graphic novel coming in today!
• Running into my friend Lynn at Target the other day!
• Entering poems into the 1st Annual (Ever?) Poetry Contest at the B&N

Things I hate:

• My GIR lanyard snapping when it catches on my car door
• Feeling lethargic
• Realizing that I haven't posted anything to draygns_lair in a looooong time
• Eating more Chex mix than I should have
• My Wendy's fries tasted a little metallic tonight
• Not cleaning my room
• Leaving crap in the living room

I guess that's about it. I took my Seroquel last night (Monday night) and whoooo! Was that fun! I had the weirdest dream last night! I'll tell you about it (or at least what I can remember). I guess I was in some sort of medaevil castle or something. And there was a big commotion going on, because someone had written the forbidden letter or word. So all the elders of the castle and the village outside the castle were up in arms trying to find out who wrote the letter. Everyone was accusing this boy, who was somehow attached to me (either I was his guardian or mother or relative, I dunno) and I was trying to defend him. One of the elders, who looked a lot like John Malcovich, came up to me and grabbed the boy and started taking him towards this chopping block. Another elder, who looked like Jeremy Irons (and no I haven't seen Eragon) was preaching to the crowd that had gathered and was telling them all that this boy was the one who had wrote the offensive letter. They brought up another criminal and put his hand on the chopping block, and then proceeded to chop off his hand, because he too wrote something that was forbidden. Then I think they flung that man's body over the castle wall with a catapult. I rushed up to the chopping block just as they were dragging the little boy I was protecting up to the block. I pleaded with them to stay the mauling just long enough to show them that the sample of the evil letter they were accusing him of writing wasn't the same as his normal writing. They allowed me that much, to let him write the same letter again, to show them the handwriting was different. And it made a huge difference, because the boy wrote with his left hand. Which I guess in this community is rare. So the crowd of people go into a frenzy, and the two elders are trying to calm them down, not sure if they should chop off his left hand, because that might be offensive as well. During this, I had grabbed the boy and sat him and myself in the catapult, and flung us over the castle wall to safety.

Yeah. Weird. It was bizarre, because at times it almost seemed like I was watching the dream as a movie, and at other times, I was the main character. Odd. But it was great. Then I woke up from that, in a drug-induced daze and tried to get back to sleep, but when I closed my eyes, this dizzying display of swirling colors---like a kaleidescope---appeared when I closed my eyes, and that almost made me dizzy and sick! But thankfully when I switched positions in bed, that went away and I was out once more.

The end.

Remember my secret story project thing that I was freaking out about a while ago?? Well, it's finally underway and ready to be revealed to the awesome people I know! Although, I must say, one of my coworkers has already known about it before I was ready to expose it. I started a new blog over at Yahoo! 360*. I know, I know... I have soooo many blogs, why do I need another one? Well... it started out as a blog site for Cracked Spine Books & Comics, my little story-comic writing project, but that's basically what draygns_lair is for, so I really didn't need another one. Then, suddenly, I was inspired to write a story... in blog form. Basically, it's me writing a story, but as if my character, Chloe Baker, was updating her own blog! My coworker has Yahoo! 360* and we friended each other, and she knew it as my blog and had read some of my few posts there. Then, without telling anyone (which was easy because like only 1 person looks at it!) I switched it over to Chloe's blog. Which concerned my coworker (but it was also funny, too!) So yeah! That was my great spark of inspiration! Neat, huh?? Well, if you're interested in learning about Chloe's life...

The Inevitable Destruction of Chloe Baker 

thefridayfive
1. If you could suddenly speak one language fluently (that you don't currently speak) what would it be?
I would speak German. I can kinda speak Spanish decently.
2. If you were to suggest a foreign film, that you really enjoyed, what one would you suggest?
Hmm. I don't watch many foreign films, other than anime. But I really liked Life Is Beautiful.
3. If you had to call another country home (other than the one you currently live in) what one would you choose?
England, Scotland, or Ireland.
4. If you went out to buy an import music CD, what one would you buy?
Fullmetal Alchemist soundtrack, volume one. ^__^
5. If you were to chose an ethnic dinner, what would it be?
I liked cuscus chicken (spelling?) and goat kabobs that I had in Morocco. I'd like to have that again!

So I've finally decided to enter some of my short stories into some writing contests, to see what happens to them and stuff. If I can actually win one of those things. And my coworker Jeff says it's a good way to start getting your name out there, so when you want to try and get something actually published, you have something on your resume. I got the March-April volume of Writer's Journal, and found some contests to enter. I'm going to enter my story Next Weekend into their Fiction Story Contest. The only downer is that it has to be a maximum of 5000 words. I did a word count on the original version... 6637 words. Ugh! So I did a lot of cutting and editing and stuff. But I think it's still a good story. I'm going to have someone proof-read it or something. Maybe my sister. I dunno.

My coworker Jeff also let me borrow is 2007 Writer's Market book, and I've been looking at publishers and other writing contests. I found a sci-fi/fantasy contest to enter. And I'm going to enter In the Face of Death in that one. And I also cut that down to <5000 words as well, in case they have that limit. So I'm excited. I'm actually going to get some of my stories out there and published! I'm also going to work on getting deadlines set for when stuff needs to get done on The Coven. But I think that since Coven is on the slow track, I'm going to work on getting Through the Woods/House of the Dead published first. That's actually done. Yeah. This is serious people.

Word.

x-posted to draygns_lair

I just like this comic so much... so I'm going to post it here too! Squeeee!

And now I'm off to bed...

X-posted to draygns_lair

I love snow. I really do. If you question my love for snow, go read this piece I wrote back in college that I have over at draygns_lair. It's good stuff. I want to write more like that. Do a whole fun thing about weather, and weather faeries. that'd be neat. Do some summer faeries, and some fall and spring faeries. Very fun. It's neat. And probably because I feel bad about what I did to a faerie. If you're interested about what I did to a faerie, go and read this. But you'll probably might want to read the beginning of that story over here. All good stuff. But the second story made me sad. Only for a little bit. So yeah.

Don't really have anything else to say, right now. It's 1215, and it's snowing. I don't work tomorrow, which is good. Maybe I'll get some reading done. Or work on The Coven. I think I've come up with a new title for it. I think I might change it to Power Rising. Yeah. That jumps off the cover and slaps you in the face! I think. Lemme know what you think. I'm open for suggestions. Yeah. I guess that's all. I'm gonna go... to sleep or play some puter games... or something. Yeah.

F**k off, I'm the queen! *motors off on Vespa*

Guess where that quote is from, and I'll give you a cookie!

So I imposed upon myself a voluntary lack-of-time-on-the-computer week... and it was great! I mean, I really didn't do anything really fantastical, but I was just not on the computer as much as I used to be. I checked my emails when I got up in the morning, eating breakfast before work; then I'd check them before I went to bed. Oh, and checked LJ, Myspace, and the like, too. And it was nice to be off the computer, away from IM bings, and just staring at my computer screen. There's a whole world outside, and it's great! ^__^ This is what I did when I wasn't on the computer:

1. Read Crimson Rogue (freakin' amazing!) and began reading Shards of Crimson (equally freakin' amazing!)
2. Cleaned my room
3. Went to church
4. Did my DBT homework
5. Began plotting the "sequel" to The Coven
6. Decided to rename The Coven
7. Totally revamped the story idea for Over the River. It is now going to be the "sequel" to The Coven. I've decided to start a paranormal-action-romance series as well... hehehehe! Sorry Crimson City crew!
8. Came up with a list of possible names for the "sequel" story
9. Made crafty coupon things!
10. Watched TV
11. Did laundry
12. Celebrated the birth of Barrett McClelland! (2-16-07)

So yeah.  Pretty mediocre week... but it was nice to be away from puter stuff for a while. I like it. I feel more positive than I have in months. I'm more creative, and giggly, and weird. Last night (and tonight when I'm done with this update) I was working on the character layouts and story lines for the new Over the River (which will be renamed pretty soon). I'll have to update all the story stuff that's happening over in draygns_lair. I've also been brainstorming ideas for The Coven, which is good, since I NEED to get that finished if I'm going to have a chance at accomplishing one of my goals for 2007 (finish Coven). And I'm excited about where the new direction is going, and it'll be awesome. I think the reason why I had been so stuck in that story is because I really didn't have much for the characters to do; they were really only interacting with each other, and that was boring. Now I'm bringing in a whole new story line, some more characters, and more possibilities for the story to go in. It'll be grand!

So... I guess that's all. Not much here. I wanna go grab a snack and go work on The Coven stuff I've been churning over in my head (and also break in the new lapdesk I bought at work tonight!) Hehehe. I guess I'll leave you then. If you monitor me on LJ, Myspace, or on IM, and don't see me for a while... I'm off being creative and shit!

Squeeeeeeeee!