Vampires and Robots

I haven't been ignoring vampires, I promise. I'm still writing my series vigorously, but for this blog I seem to be gravitating toward the shiny metal hooligans because they are currently my biggest audience. Obviously, I love the idea of artificial intelligence. I love silly, cute little robots that serve no bigger purpose than to be toys just as much as the giant machines meant for the technological betterment of society. But there's one robot I've never understood and that is the 'bot. I mean yes, I understand that they are malicious code, poorly masquerading as a human in order to lure the gullible into giving up their personal information. It's their methods that confuse the crap out of me. Take this blog, for example. I've got two, maybe three people who read regularly at best. Yet looking at my traffic stats, you would think that I've got a huge international following and that tons of other sites are regularly feeding me tons of traffic.  ...

As I have mentioned about a million times, one of my obsessions is past visions of the future and whether or not they ever come to fruition. Most of those I've seen have come from publications such as Popular Science, but Hollywood has their fair share as well. This is a look at futures that have either passed us by or are on the near horizon. I'm skipping the obvious, like 2001, 1984, and Radio 1990 . Okay, so the last one wasn't science fiction at all. But the internet has proven that this was a real show. I had thought for a while that it was a fever dream I had as a child, especially the week where The B-52s were the featured artists. Now about that mid 80s Tab commercial I only saw once... Sorry, I got distracted there. Anyway... Off-world colonies will be populated by replicants in six years.  At least according to 1982's Blade Runner . But if you go back to the source for the movie, Phillip K Dick's 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep , t...

In my head, I'm an anal retentive, highly organized, punctual neat freak. In reality I'm a clueless, scattter-brained, disorganized ball of hot mess. Every so often I spend an entire weekend coming up with a new organizational system that is utterly fail-proof, only to find that by the end of the week, the mail is once again piled on the dinner table, the laundry is on the floor, and the desk is covered with whatever projects I've halfway abandoned. It's the same way with writing. I've recently started a huge timeline on the wall of my office to make sure that the dates I keep throwing around don't contradict each other too much. So far I haven't run into too many problems, but let's just say it's a good thing I've established Andre as a boy-genius because he might have had to finish his three degrees before he was of legal drinking age to have accomplished some of the things I've made him do. But creating the timeline had done me the favor...

My husband caught me writing my last blog post and was completely baffled by the fact that I was typing it up on my phone. I was baffled by his baffledness seeing as part of the reason I fell out of habit with my last blog was the absence of a good blogging app. Now that Google put out an official Blogger app I've become unstoppable. See, don't tell my husband, but I'm kind of in love with my phone. I have to laugh when people are baffled (I'm going to use this word until it has no meaning!) by the fact that I don't own or watch television. I actually think they imagine me sitting on my sofa, staring at the empty space on the wall where the tv would be, lamenting my boring existence. Well the joke's on them because I don't even have wall space for a tv, let alone a sofa the dogs haven't claimed as their own! Ha! The truth is, I've got every time wasting form of entertainment I'll ever need in the palm of my hand. Games? Check. Books? By the hu...

So now that everyone knows my whole online presence is like that dream where you have to give a speech and you forget to wear pants, allow me to explain why I'm standing here in my underwear by having a completely rational conversation with myself: So, what is your book about? You have no idea how much I hate that question! Back when I first came up with the idea, I would have just said, "Vampires" and left it at that. Or I might have added that it's a new take on vampires. But that was nearly a decade ago. Now if I just say, vampires, I'm likely to get a polite nod or an impolite eye roll out of the person asking. Then again, had I written the book at eighteen, I would have told you it's a metaphor for the human condition and man's inhumanity towards man or something equally as stuffy and baseless. No, I am not exaggerating. I was really into the human condition back then. So what do I say? Well, after the awkward pause, I usually mumble something a...

There are two things you need to know about me: 1. I'm crazy 2. That is a self-diagnosis The closest I've ever come to a medical professional telling me I'm insane was when my doctor handed me a questionnaire on a clipboard emblazoned with the Paxil logo and a Paxil-branded pen, and concluded that my occasional insomnia made me the perfect candidate for... wait for it... Paxil! But I'd be a liar if I said I didn't have a touch of the crazy known as social anxiety. I don't take medication for several reasons, not the least of which is my slight paranoia that all the readily available anti-anxiety meds out there today remind me a little too much of Soma, the happy pills that keep the population blissfully unaware of the social injustices in Brave New World. For those who know me, either in real life or as the lame joke cracker on the internet, it may come as something of a surprise that I absolutely hate online social interaction. Well, okay, I kind of hate ...

The Feels will be the first of a reoccurring theme that I'll post from time to time, featuring books, movies, or other stuff that has had a profound emotional impact on me. Why am I calling it The Feels? Because the internet is fond of taking perfectly normal words and slashing them into pidgen-English for the sake of humor and I am known as one of those cool cats who is hip to the jibber-jabber of the cyberwebs. Or something like that. So without further ado, grab your tissues and read on: To preface this post, I have never seen Up and I refuse to watch Marley and Me for a very good reason: I was born a woman with a man's sense of machismo. Tearing up at a movie embarrasses the crap out of me, yet I'm hormonally predisposed to doing just that. I remember being so incredibly pms'd when I went to see A League of Thier Own that I was bawling before the previews were over. Additionally, I'm not the kind of person who reads books or watches movies more than a hand...

I've never considered my nerd status to be particularly odd. I grew up in the eighties. We really were, sadly, the last generation to witness major space exploration. But a quick glance at my library shows that, much like the corporate world, science fiction has been the domain of mostly men, and that hasn't changed much in the current century. And while there haven't been as many women writers in the genre, there have been a few who stand out. Below are a few who I hold in high regard: Andre Norton Of the names on this list, hers is probably the most recognisable, considering there is now an award named for her. She was born Alice Norton in 1912 and wrote under several masculine pen names, Andre Norton being the most recognized, because... duh, science fiction is for dudes! I'll freely admit that I'd probably read at least 10 of her books before I noticed the words 'her' and 'she' in the about the author pages. Norton's works span all genres ...

The this in this instance being a great idea birthed too late to be of use. I'm sure it's happened to you. Like when you make a sandwich, which is okay, but not wonderful, and you realize you have this fabulous pepper blend that would jazz it up, except you are now on the last bite. Happens to me all the time, and as a matter of fact, it just happened to me tonight, while I was eating a sandwich. No, I remembered my peppers, my realization was about the editing process. Let's get one thing out of the way right now: all writers make idiot mistakes while writing their first drafts. Some of these mistakes are caught in rewrites, some go on to get caught by the editor, and some make it into the final edition. Unfortunately, for self-published authors, who cannot afford an editing service, this whole process is done by rereading the manuscript over and over until our eyes bleed. It's super easy to miss things, which is why my first edition of Eyes was an abysmal batch of w...