Vampires and Robots

Hello humans. It is I, Vlad the (completely underappreciated) Robot. I can't pretend 2018 was a good year. Especially since some high and mighty sack of meat who has the audacity to call herself an author decided to close my Twitter account. Too much upkeep, she said, whilst spending the entire year lazing about, drawing marginally acceptable robot doodles.  And turning my terrifying visage into an unacceptably harmless logo. The indignity! As if that wasn't enough, I'm now required to once again dole out symbolic accolades to the books the human has read and loved, and that I have found passable enough to allow the human race to live another day. So here we are again. Presenting, the Vladdies: Amazing. It almost looks like she took last year's award, changed the year, and fiddled with the color balance. But surely more thought went into it than that, surely. As was the case last year, the following books weren't necessarily written in ...

Back in February of 2015, I wrote this post , which incidentally started with the words "Back in June of 2013, I wrote this post" because I'm  nothing if not original. In it, I showed off my new phone, praised the marvels of technology, and geeked a bit over the fact that I had an Android called a Nexus 6. The geek part led me to make the offhanded claim that I was expecting to get four years out of the phone. At the time, I'd barely gotten 2 years from any phone prior thanks to a number of factors, not the least of which is planned obsolescence by both the phone manufacturers and service providers alike.  Three years and 8 months later, I still have the Nexus 6. Still rocking the bitchin' street art, but lousy with apps. But earlier this week, I purchased a new phone. The Nokia 7.1. Goodbye, bitchin'street art, hello self-referential Existential Dread Fish. There were a number of factors that led to me looking for a replacement, none mor...

Warning: this post is going to be personal in nature. If you don't want to read what is likely to be a long-winded and meandering post about my physical*, mental, and emotional state, then I suggest skipping this entry. *Edited—after realizing how some of this will sound—to add: by physical i mean my health, not my appearance. I've no issue with how I look and do not require validation on that front, despite what you may take away from something I say later on in this post. Unless you've been following my ramblings from the days well before I began publishing (and to the three of you that I know have, thank you so much for your support), you probably don't know that I am a semi-healthy unhealthy human. Confused? Let me explain: From about mid-high school to my early 30s, I was overweight, I smoked for the majority of that time, I ate like crap, I all but ODed on caffeine every day, and although I didn't drink all the time, when I did, it was often to exce...

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, I now have a Zazzle shop to showcase some of the art I've done that I'm most proud of. My reasoning is that my art is more of the fun doodle you put on the fridge for a while variety and not so much of the hang on a wall and pay out the butt to frame variety, so why not put it on magnets and other household goods that could have a practical purpose?  Is there a more practical purpose than housing warm, caffeinated beverages? But I can't pretend this was all my own idea. CB Archer did most of the legwork and convinced me this would be a fun new adventure (check out his store here ). And it was, but not entirely for the reasons I thought. In fact, it seems fitting that CB would be the one to get me started on the Zazzle path because in many ways, it was just like playing a video game. And like all good games, I had to add hearts. There were tasks, each of which would give a certain percentage towards completion. So...

As summer winds down, so does the time I can reasonably remain on a hiatus from writing. I've got my notes, I've got my ideas, I've got plots galore... ...but what I don't have is motivation.  There is a reason for this. There is a reason that I am reluctant to begin writing again and it isn't good. Sadly, there's a good chance that if you're reading this, you've experienced a similar feeling in recent history. Current affairs are overwhelming. Personal happiness is at the lowest in 10 years. To put it bluntly, the world is going to shit and I can't keep pretending I don't suffer anxiety and depression because of it. Sorry for swearing. Here's a cute picture I drew as penance. Writing, especially sci-fi and fantasy, draws a lot from the world around us and often makes a political statement on current events. I can't think of anything I've written that doesn't in some way critique society and social norm...

Well first of all, I didn't take a vacation. Turns out summer is the busiest season at my super secret real world job and my little part time gig became nearly full time for the last couple of months and isn't looking to slow down anytime soon.  But that's not what this is all about! Well, tangentially it is, but more on that later. As I mentioned some time ago, I decided to take the summer off from writing and instead planned to mess around in the art world for a while. Aside from the occasional painting class with my husband, book cover silliness, or artsy gift, I haven't actually done any "art" in a good long time. There were a lot of reasons for that, including the obvious, that I decided to finally finish writing a book, which turned into 6+ years of book writing. But there were other, less productive reasons as well. A real big one happened years ago when I managed to smack my wrist in a ceiling fan, which had the unfortunate side effect of maki...

Sometimes, before you move forward,you have to take a look back. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm on a writing hiatus for the summer. It's been almost two months now since my last book came out and I can honestly say, this break was a great idea. But the reasons why will have to be covered in a later post, because today, we're looking back. Specifically, back to my very first series of books. I recently went through and re-read the entire The Eyes of The Sun trilogy. The reasoning is that while I do love everything I've written, I've also grown a bit as both a writer and a reader over the years and I wanted to see how well my early writing stands up to my new tastes. First impressions: Holy heck do I add in jokes and easter eggs galore! No kidding, nearly every single innocuous sentence in all three books has some little nod to something, mostly just some dumb in joke with my husband or some ridiculous thing I thought was funny (like one scene where Lucy a...

Howdy folks! It is I, the sporadic blogger and queen of reinvention! Today, I'm planning to go into a little detail about why exactly I'm taking some time off from writing (publishing, actually, but more on that below) and some of the ups and downs of author life. I'm going to be dispensing some hot sports opinions about creativity, business, and life in general, so be warned, if you're a creator or business person or alive, you might find yourself vehemently disagreeing with what I have to say. That's fine, these are my opinions and you don't need to share them, but please don't try to convince me that I'm wrong or worse, try to justify yourself to me. I'm not here to tear others down. This is self-indulgent. This is all about me. Don't try to make it about you. To begin, a bit of self-promotional spam: This week I published The Needs of the Many, which is the final book in my latest series. This is my 19th published work, 13th full length nov...

Friday the 13th is one of my favorite quasi-holidays, especially since we get to focus on weird and spooky things. This Friday is not exception! I'm spreading the word about a fun new middle grade book that launches on Friday the 13th and promises to be a great start to a series: Five children find themselves stuck in a beautiful jungle on a strange planet. But all is not as peaceful as it first appears… Twelve-year-old Charlotte has been different all her life. It isn’t just that her father left when she was a child, or her mother ignores her. What really makes her an outsider is the fact that she has strange abilities that she can’t explain and struggles to control. Everything changes in the summer of 1993 when she feels drawn to a certain spot outside of town. Unfortunately, she isn’t alone when things go sideways. When the children realize they are definitely not on Earth anymore, they have to learn not only how to fend for themselves, but how to get along. The pr...