there was a young woman from boobville ...

Hi, all! Just wanted to check in because I have a little news.

So I lost my job a few months back, which sucks, BUT. I'm at a point where I want to attempt to stay at home and work on my writing and podcast, using Patreon to pay the bills. I can do it, but I just need a few more people to support one or both to get it to a point where I'm at a safer point.

This is my writing Patreon. If you sign up for that, I'm charging every time I post two chapters. Right now I'm working on my senior project from college, my NaNoWriMo project, and several other things. I'm hoping to get the first draft of that first project done by the end of the year, so I'll be pounding out the chapters on that and other stories for the next two months.

And this is the Patreon for my podcast, Disaster Area. I'm charging per episode, but because I'm not working right now I'll be working my ass off to get as many episodes as possible out coming up. I really, REALLY want to do this, but I need patrons to pull it off.

Thanks, guys! If you can help out, I would really appreciate it. :D

Hi, gang! Just a head's up that I started a Kickstarter for the podcast! I'm hoping to get some new equipment and pay website fees and stuff with it, so please think about tossing a few bucks into the pot. And if you contribute $25 or more I will do an episode on the disaster of your choice! :)

P.S. I'm not getting anything for Christmas so this is the closest thing I may get to a present. If that helps. ;)

I made a podcast!

It's called "Disaster Area" and it's about disasters (surprise!), with an occasional episode on disaster movies. The link is to the blogs, where you can find notes on disasters, ways to support the podcast, and links to the episodes on Soundcloud. If you want, you can also subscribe on iTunes. :)

-- I just finished my very last college class yesterday. So I've basically graduated ... I just need to get the paper degree. But yaaaaaaay. :D

-- Here is my Patreon for the two projects I'm working on this summer before I move on to the Heroine Addiction sequel. Oh, man, free time again. *flappyhands*

-- Here is the link to "The Monsters of Moosic", which is free today on Amazon.

-- Aaaaaaand here is the link to that gay shapeshifter-type erotica I've been sitting on for a while. Yeah, it's a pen name, but that's just to keep the fun stuff separate from the serious stuff.

I know it's been a while and all, but I figured that I'd give a holler and mention that I posted The Monsters of Moosic to Amazon last night. Go buy a copy for a poor starving artist who's got college loan payments coming up in six months. :)

HEY WHAT'S UP MOTHERFUCKERS. :D

So ... yeah. I haven't posted in a while, mostly because I'm usually over on Tumblr these days (and more recently Twitter as well) at everythingsbetterwithbisexuals. But first off, quick summary of the year so far:

Still not talking to my dad; not talking to my mom either; not talking to a lot of my family, actually; my great-aunt's dying of lung cancer; I'm in my senior year at Keystone and doing great; my snake died; I still have the same work-from-home job; I bought a Beetle a few months ago; and I've got an agent again!

Also, my hair is currently dark purple. So there's that.

ANYWAY. It's Yuletide again, and I whipped up a few requests pretty quickly, so I'm throwing together a Dear Santa letter for my prospective writer.

( Dear Yuletide Santa ... )

I wrote four fics this year, which was a good kick in the ass in my writer’s block, quite frankly.

Swing was my original assignment. My recipient asked for a “Poseidon Adventure” fic about Nonnie Parry and James Martin after the end of the movie, which I was thrilled to write because it was one of the prompts I was most hoping to get when I chose to write for that fandom. It’s a bit shorter than I was hoping to write — I think I got a bit overwhelmed with my options — but I quite liked how it turned out.

Flotsam was possibly my favorite story which I got to write. I liked all of them, but honestly, when I saw a request for “Psycho” fic, I pounced. Since it’s one of my favorite movies, I couldn’t resist, and after watching it twice I wanted to follow Lila after the movie and see how she was getting on. It just struck me that we don’t see her cry after everything that’s gone on, when she has plenty of reason to.

Leaving the Nest is the one which got the most attention and whatnot. I saw a “Lilo and Stitch” request on the pinch hit list and grabbed it, and I was pleased that it got the response that it did because it was probably the piece I was most worried about when I posted it. I think I just wished I had longer to write it because there was so much more to explore in Lilo and Nani’s future, and I only had a few short hours in which to write it. I loved my original prompt, but I also would have adored getting this one at the beginning.

And Bookshelves was the last pinch hit I took for “Frances Ha,” so the only reason I didn’t write a ten-thousand-word epic was because I was literally tossing the thing together in the last couple of hours. I did have ideas for femmeslash when I picked the prompt, but because of the timing I kept it simple and went with a short slice-of-life piece instead. And I totally pretended to watch the film later than I did, because I didn’t want anyone to guess what I wrote and I’m a dork like that. :)

I still have to sit down and read my gift, so if my Santa is reading this, I swear I will review it just as soon as I get done with overtime work today. (I got a Galaxy Quest story about Guy, so I'm bouncing up and down in my seat because I can't WAIT to read it.)

As for me, I wrote four stories this year in four different fandoms. If you can guess any of them, I'll write a story for you. :)

That would be me, by choice, because my family is full of assholes.

Well, that's not entirely true. See, at Thanksgiving I found out that one of my aunts apparently never got the memo that you don't discuss religion or politics with family unless you want to get into a fight, as she decided to go off on Obamacare (and told me I needed to watch more Fox News when I protested, which made me want to gag). Which, hey, I happen to like, even though I'd like universal healthcare a hell of a lot better. But anyway, she, one of my cousins, my dad, and my grandfather then decided to patronize and condescend to me, treat me like a moron for the next twenty minutes, and tell me to shut up repeatedly when I tried to question the "facts" they brought up or the bullshit anecdotes about shifty poor people they knew.

Needless to say, I had a breakdown and yelled at them all. I think my favorite part may have been when I brought up my depression and anxiety and said that their racist comments were a trigger. At which point my aunt said, "What, so I'm supposed to walk on eggshells around you now?" At which point *I* asked if that meant she didn't care about my mental health.

As if she already hadn't literally done everything wrong, she proceeded to say, "You think I don't love you?", accused me of not being who she thought I was, and burst into tears, successfully making my admission about my depression all about her.

... yeah, I kinda left right after that.

So I haven't talked to anybody from my family except for a few texts to my brother since then, and I'm staying home for Christmas for the first time ever. (I've also been bombing my Facebook with every Republicans-being-douchebags news story I can find, because half of the people on my Facebook are my relatives.) In a toss-up between my family and my pets, my pets win right now, because at least they seem to like me.

But I'm more cool with that than I thought I would be. Honestly, I just want to stay home the next couple of days and work and write and snap up Yuletide pinch hits and eat junk food. My weight's held steady at about 150-145 pounds for a while now (depending on which scale you use at my house), which I'm also happy with. Oh, and guess who got straight As again this semester? ;)

In any event, if anybody wants to do anything for me for Christmas, the only thing I really want right now is new glasses. Well, specifically, Harry Potter glasses. (I've already ordered a pair of pretty purple glasses from my optometrist, but her selection is pretty narrow.) And I found frames on Zenni Optical, which I plan to splurge on with all the extras. I plan on ordering them when I get paid this week, but if anyone wants to chip in for Christmas, a gift card for Zenni or a few bucks in my Paypal would help out. I also have to start in on Oscarwatch, so some extra money for popcorn would be nice. :)

Oh, and a couple of people messaged me about Apocalyptothon, which ... erm, I still have to talk with soundingsea about. I'm a little busy for it in the spring, but we may open it up for other people to help so that we can actually have one this year. We'll see.

-- If anybody's looking for me on Tumblr, I changed my username to everythingsbetterwithbisexuals. Just because everything I seem to be writing right now has a bisexual character in it. Apparently, somebody already pounced on my previous username, so ... you know, whatever.

-- I may have found a way to write my personal ethics code for business ethics class not as an academic paper, but as a short story about the garment worker strikes in the early 20th century and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Hey, whatever works.

-- Still nothing heard from the agent I sent "Heroine Addiction" to. It's been about three months, but I've already sent him an "Uh, hi! You still alive?" email (but more polite and professional) so it's just sitting and waiting right now.

I JUST EXPLAINED TO ORLANDO JONES ON TUMBLR EXACTLY WHAT YULETIDE IS.

QUICK, HIDE YOUR PROMPTS, HIDE YOUR PENS, HIDE YOUR PLOTBUNNIES.

My brother got his first tattoo!



He's a gamer, so I kept telling him that if he was going to get video game tattoos, stick with the classics. He found these tats online on someone else and fell for them, because his favorite games ever are the Final Fantasy series.

He still has to get two more on his other arm, so hopefully since I had to miss going tonight to work, I can go next time.

My own tattoo has reached that itchy stage that makes me want to rip my arm off. Owwwwww.

So for anybody who's been wondering what's going on with me:

-- I finished my internship a couple of weeks ago and got an A, which ... yay! I didn't get a chance to meet my mentor face to face, but she was really great, and I'm sort of hoping I can do my second internship with her next summer. (Maybe. I'm still debating if I even want to do summer classes again next summer. Not having a break this year was brutal.)

-- I also finished my social diversity class and got an A in that, too. My final project was to participate in an ethnic or cultural event which I've never been to before, so I attended morning services at Temple Israel in Scranton. I don't know if you can say you had fun at a prayer service, but everyone was so lovely and helped tell me what page we were on in the prayer book since everything was in Hebrew (which I expected, but still). Being raised Catholic had its advantages and disadvantanges. On one hand, when other people stand, I stand -- I've got that rule ingrained in my head. On the other hand, people were walking around and greeting each other, including me, during prayers, and there's a part of my brain that kept saying, "But ... but you're just supposed to sit there and repeat what the priest says!" I had a great time, though, and the building was gorgeous.

-- Right now, I'm in the first couple of weeks on my new semester. I have business ethics online (which seems pretty laidback so far), technical writing (with the awesome new teacher who used to be a plus-sized model), and web design, a class in which I am sitting next to a girl who put a Deadpool wallpaper on her computer and laughed when I made a Geocities joke on the web page I was writing for class. So either I've made a friend or I've proven I'm an enormous geek. Or both.

-- The agent who's looking at "Heroine Addiction" still hasn't gotten to me to say whether or not he'll take me on. He did tell me he's a slow reader, though, and we spoke on the phone and had a great conversation where we really clicked (especially when we started in on comics and talked about Marvel vs. DC), so I've got my fingers crossed.

-- I scheduled an appointment to get a new tattoo. I was going to get it tomorrow, but a.) I'm more broke than I thought I would be and b.) I've had the flu for the past week and it's still hanging around. So I rescheduled for later this month. My birthday's at the end of the month, so if anybody wanted to chip in for my tat, I'd love you forever and make you cookies. (Just kidding, honestly. I think my brother's going to chip in money for it, and I have an Amazon payment coming up, so I should be cool.)

-- Oh, yeah, the flu. Which I got from my brother last weekend, and spent the rest of the week trying to fight off and failing miserably. I'm still tired and have a sore throat, but I'm not feeling as awful as I did on, say, Wednesday when my fever spiked. Good times. *eye roll*

-- Also, I blame the flu for the fact that I'm still losing weight even though I haven't exercised in a few weeks and I've barely eaten anything. And not in a "I'm just too busy or distracted to eat" sort of way, but in a "I genuinely haven't had any appetite in a week" sort of way, which is just annoying. I've been forcing myself to eat, though, which is good, but it's mostly poking at diet frozen dinners with a fork.

When I weighed myself this morning on the crappy scale I first started weighing myself on in January, I finally cracked the 150-pound line to hit 149 pounds, which puts my weight loss at 46 pounds since the start of the year. Not the best way to do it, obviously, but still. I'm hoping to start back up on the cottage cheese, fruit, and diet bread again tomorrow, because I don't want to get back into bad habits. Still, I'm only nine pounds from the goal I gave myself in January. \o/

-- So I've sent out the second query to an agent for "Heroine Addiction" to see if I can get it published by a traditional publisher. The first one got shot down. Have I mentioned I hate writing queries?

-- I took next week off, which means I'll have plenty of time to look for a new job. Which is good, because I am literally THIS CLOSE to just quitting. Whenever I think it might possibly not be so stressful, it gets so much worse. (Case in point: We keep getting sent worksheets of claims which need to be processed that day. If we can't finish, we have to email our supervisor as to why we couldn't get them done every damn day. So basically we're expected to make excuses why we're not good enough every night, unless of course we manage to do ten to twelve hours of work whether we want to or not.)

-- The job is stressing me out so much that today I logged out so I wouldn't have a panic attack and call one of my supervisors to yell at her, then went to the cottage at the lake my parents are renting for the next two weeks for a breather, *then* left to come home to finish my work only to feel a panic attack coming on the closer I got to my apartment, THEN got pulled over by a cop for speeding in an attempt to get home before I had a panic attack. He gave me a ticket even though when he came back to my car with my paperwork, I was bent over the steering wheel hyperventilating.

You're goddamn right I'm pleading not guilty. I've never done it before but I'd genuinely like the cop try to explain to the magistrate the reasoning behind giving a speeding ticket to someone who was clearly having a medical emergency.

(He offered to call EMS, but seriously, fuck that. I would rather drive the two blocks to my parents' house and have my brother calm me down than sit there and wait for medical attention with a guy who's too busy trying to give me a $112 ticket to give more than a passing shit about me.)

-- Aaaaaaand now I have to work for the rest of the night, which means I've felt on the edge of another panic attack since something like noon.

I seriously cannot wait until tomorrow, when I can go to the lake and sit on the dock and get wasted while reading a good book.

Since I'm still running a little low on funds, here's a link back to my original post about the short story collection I threw together to sell.

I'm maybe like twenty-five bucks short of rent, but I'd much rather get it from selling something than asking my mom or my brother (who's making an absurd amount of money at his new job, which is upsetting me and my piecerate-paycheck-earning ass more than I'd like, because it's not his fault my dad is a sexist idiot who never bothered to let me work with him as a teenager instead of at Burger King so I'd have construction work on my resume instead of customer service experience).

A couple of people have been very helpful, and thank you, seriously -- I haven't been able to say a proper thank-you between the holiday and trying to get school in order and work being a pain in my ass. And now my checking account's in the red, which is a pain. I get paid on Friday, but ... well, rent, so. *shrug*

In any event, I'm thinking about taking two of the longer stories I wrote in my fiction classes, putting them in an ePub or MOBI or whatever anybody needs, and selling them for a couple of bucks. I'm working on getting "Monsters" done finally but everything's swallowing all of my free time, and the gay romance I was working on up until everything went to shit is going to have to wait until I can breathe again.

So, yeah. I may have something to sell sometime tomorrow. I don't know what I'm going to do for a cover, but whatever.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love it when I have car problems the day I get my paycheck which then proceed to swallow my paycheck nearly whole, leaving behind a few miserable crumbs in their wake?

*headdesk*

So I didn't move to the semifinals in the Amazon contest, which I'm cool with. Why? Because my Publisher’s Weekly review from the contest is really, really good. :D

Supervillainy mixes with soap opera in this imaginative and entertaining adventure tale of doughty heroes, dastardly plots, and dark family secrets. Teleporter Vera Noble — daughter of super-strong Paladin (aka: Ivy Noble) and mind-reader Wavelength (aka: Everett Noble), the world’s favorite super couple — hung up her cape five years ago to build a normal life. As the owner of a coffeehouse in a quiet small town, the worst she faces is occasionally bumping into her tattoo artist ex, and finding notorious supervillain Morris Kemp, aka: the Quiz Master, sitting in booth five. The truth is that her dad left her mom to shack up with Morris, a secret her parents have hidden for years now. But now Dad is leaving Morris and coming home. Whatever caused the change — robot, clone, brainwashing, amnesia, or something more insidious, Everett Noble isn’t himself. Then Morris turns up dead and Vera’s brother Graham (aka: Fortress) is arrested for the murder. Determined to learn the truth, Vera starts to dig, only to find herself stuffed in another superhero’s body with no idea who to trust. This action-packed mystery, along the lines of The Incredibles, reminds readers that being “super” doesn’t make you immune from being human.

• I've lost twenty pounds so far this year.
• I am thiiiiiiis close to cracking 180 pounds on my digital scale. (I have a cheap scale I bought years ago and the digital scale I bought about six weeks ago. The digital scale reads six pounds heavier than the cheap scale. The cheap scale read me at the start of the year as 195 pounds. So when the digital scale reads me as 179 pounds, which it'll probably do tomorrow morning, I'll probably do a little dance in my bathroom.)
• I don't have a coronary when I go up a flight of stairs anymore.
• My favorite XL yoga pants are now bagging at the waist so much I have to keep yanking them up.
• I went digging through my closet looking for a top to wear to a family dinner at a nice restaurant tomorrow night and found a cute red sweater I bought a couple of months ago when I got my first tax refund. I made the mistake of not trying it on before I brought it home back then -- it was a large and I figured I wouldn't have to -- and when I got it home I couldn't even button it shut. I tried it on just now, and aside from being a little tight over my boobs, it fits just fine.

I'm not going to lie -- I'm a little giddy about dinner tomorrow night and Easter dinner Sunday. Tomorrow's dinner is for my parents' wedding anniversary, and my grandfather and my cousin, both of whom haven't seen me since I started this whole thing, will be there. Then on Sunday, there'll be more relatives there who haven't seen me since I started this.

Apparently my mom has been telling people I've been working out and dieting and losing a whole bunch of weight, which I get, but I also kinda wish she hadn't, just because I'm finding I like the phrase, "Oh, wow, you've lost weight!" more when people are surprised. Yes ... yes, I have. :D

I signed up for the American Heart Association Heart Walk in Scranton in May, so right now I'm just "training" for that, such as it is. I got my mom to say she'd do the Heart Walk with me so I can't cop out, but it also means I have to be able to walk a few circuits around Nay Aug Park without passing out. 

My goal is to crack 140 pounds. To be honest, I'd be happy to get back below 150 pounds, but I'm aiming for the 130-somethings mostly because my mom's 145 pounds and I kinda want to be skinnier than her. And I'm really, really patient when it comes to this whole thing. I want to be there by Christmas, which is seriously not a huge expectation considering this isn't as difficult to stick to as I was afraid it would be. Normally when I try to drop weight, it works but after a few weeks I miss Cheetos and Pepsi and burgers and pizza and I quit. This time ... not so much. 

Or the alternate title for this post, "A quick update about 'Monsters of Moosic', BUT NOT THAT UPDATE OMG DON'T GET AHEAD OF ME HERE."

Basically, I am done with work for this week. Okay, that's sort of a lie, because technically I should have worked until I either reached my quota or reached forty hours, but I still had three hours and 250 processed claims to go, and since I just spent an entire day pending claims from the same damn provider to the same damn department, which I don't think I need to point out means that I processed almost nothing today, I finally just said, "Oh, my God, fuck this noise," stopped working, and emailed my supervisor my damn payroll sheet.

If he asks me why I stopped early, I'm just going to point to the "pended claims" column on my sheet and glare. Goddamn it, I was getting quota every damn week until this ridiculous excuse for a workday, I swear.

ANYWAY. Aside from the fact that today has been as frustrating as possible, I am now ecstatic for another reason. Want to know why?

Because guess who has two thumbs and took all of next week off with the express purpose of finishing the edit on "Monsters of Moosic" or else?

THIS MOTHERFUCKER RIGHT HERE.



... this video is entirely necessary. Mmm-hmm.

Okay, now to go exercise and write "A&P" futurefic. (Not even joking. We had to read the story for my fiction class today, and that's our assignment for tomorrow.)

... would you care to leave a review on my "Heroine Addiction" entry for the Amazon contest?

I'm not sure if it impacts whether or not I get into the semifinals, but it's worth a shot.

If you do, just remember:

1. Make sure to download the free preview, even if you already have the whole book.
2. Only review the portion in the preview, not the whole book, just in case.

If I'm remembering correctly, the prize for semifinalists is a review by Publisher's Weekly. I don't think I have to emphasize how completely fucking awesome that would be. :)

*happy dance*

The first few thousand words of "Heroine Addiction" are available free here for the contest, and while I know that a few of you were nice enough to review it on the official page on Amazon (and thank you SO MUCH for that, seriously), any of you who have the time and would be willing to go over and put in on a good word at the link ... I would really appreciate it. Obviously, since they only have the first nine pages or so available, it's probably best just to review those few pages, since the entire novel itself isn't available through the contest itself just yet.

I'm not exactly sure if reviews are necessary, but they sure as hell can't hurt. ;)

Oh, and check out the other quarterfinalists's entries as well (searching for the contest title brings them up). I plan to do that myself when I get a chance later on. I'm just happy I ended up a quarterfinalist. If the book goes any further, I'm fairly sure I'll implode.

... but I've been trying to lose weight since the start of the year. And it's working, which is awesome.

I started out the year at about 195 pounds, and I hit 180 the last few days. I've managed to cut all of the crap out of my diet with the exception of my weekly treat -- I get one crappy meal a week so I don't get frustrated and stop -- and I've been exercising pretty regularly, which should become more frequent when the weather gets warmer. (I bought a new basketball and I'm getting a folding bike with my amended tax refund so that I can try to ride every day no matter where I go.)

My belly seems to be getting smaller before everything else, which I have nooooooo problem with. I haven't worn any of my jeans in a while -- partly because they made me uncomfortable around the waist and partly because working from home means quite frankly I don't have to wear pants at all if I don't want to -- but I put a pair on today and they're neither digging into my waist nor giving me a poochy belly.

I'd like to be down to 130 pounds by the end of the year. I'm seriously not in a hurry to lose the weight, I'd much rather just get back into shape again. I signed up for the American Heart Association Heart Walk in May, and I asked my mom to do it with me so I can't cop out at the last minute. So basically I'm in training right now so I don't pass out twenty feet from the starting line.

It would be really awesome if I was down in the 140s by the first week of August, though, since my family has a sort of family reunion that weekend every year and it would be nice to talk about something other than "How's school going?" and "Why aren't you married yet?".

I wonder what it says about me that the thing that broke my recent bit of writer's block was writing a short story shipping Britain and America.

Which is great, because it was due today at 11:45. But then we didn't have class because of the storm, so instead -- thanks to the fact that I finished all my claims for work yesterday and I only have one more assignment to worry about that's due tomorrow at midnight -- I spent most of today slacking off on the couch watching "big Fat Quiz" clips on YouTube. I haven't had a Saturday off in FOREVER. :D

Anyway, here it is if anyone's interested. It's not perfect, but then again I think it's the one I'm workshopping so it doesn't really have to be.

*

( The machete was meant for fieldwork. )