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Comment to be added. I use this journal to talk about life, writing, books and anything else. This isn't a formal blog - just my ramblings. Any personal entries are friends only.
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***Check out the links on the sidebar to visit the websites of some of my friends and also some of my favorite writers***

CURRENTLY
The Chosen Chronicles - Karen Dales
The Skewed Throne - Joshua Palmatier

COMPLETED

The Gathering Storm - Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
The Courage to Write - Ralph Keyes
Gotham Writers Fiction Workshop
Books of Blood, Vol 1 - Clive Barker
The Born Queen - Greg Keyes
In the Blood - Miranda (Luna) Padgett
Imaginings - collection of specfic novelletes edited by Keith R.A. DeCandido
to Green Angel Tower pt 2 - Tad Williams
To Green Angel Tower pt 1 -Tad Williams
Magic, Mystery and Science: The Occult in Western Civilization - Burton and Grandy
Weird Hauntings: True Tales of Ghostly places - Joanne Austin, compiler
The Supernaturalism of New England - John Greenleaf Whittier
The Song of Farewell - Tad Williams (reread)
Write Away - Elizabeth George
The Art of Fiction - John Gardner
Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay
Emotional Intelligence - Daniel Goleman
The Blood Knight - Greg Keyes
The Sorcerers' Plague - David B. Coe
The Dragonbone Chair - Tad Williams (reread)
The Charnel Prince - Greg Keyes
Cautionary Fables - Everett A. Warren
The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J.K. Rowling

Merry / Happy Yule to those who celebrate!

my iPod is stuck on the "grey apple" screen and nothing is getting it to work :/

a position for a customer service representative opened up here. If you or someone you know might be interested (Center City Philadelphia) let me know and I will send you the information.

Scotch
Dailywritingtips.com
Posted: 29 Nov 2009 05:00 PM PST

The word Scotch has several meanings, but it should never be used as an adjective to refer to a person or object from Scotland. The only exception is that the word is acceptable as part of certain compound names, such as Scotch whisky, Scotch mist or Scotch broth.

Words such as Scotchman or Scotchwoman are obsolete and frowned upon by people from Scotland. The correct words to use are Scottish or Scots. It would be wrong, for example, to say “The Scotch weather is frequently atrocious” but it would be quite correct to say “The Scottish weather is frequently atrocious”. Similarly, the Scottish newspaper is The Scotsman, not The “Scotchman”.

The word Scotch on its own is (as well as being a registered trade name) often used as a shortened form of “Scotch whisky”. Therefore, it is just about permissible to say “Scotch man”, as in “I’m a Scotch man, myself”, but that would mean someone who enjoys or prefers to drink Scotch whisky rather than someone from Scotland.

Footnote : “Whisky” and “whiskey” are often used interchangeably, but the two spellings identify the origin of the spirit. In the UK, “whisky” means the drink from Scotland, whereas “whiskey” is used when the source is Ireland. More widely, “whisky” is also used when referring to the Canadian and Japanese drinks and “whiskey” is generally used to refer to the drink when it is from the USA.

We have job openings for:

Senior Programmer Analyst
Assistant Meeting Planner

The jobs are in center city Philadelphia. If you know anyone interested, please message or email me for the website/details

Making It Happen
Go for It

There are times in our lives when all the signs seem to be pointing us in a particular direction. Our thoughts and dreams are echoed in the songs and stories we hear and the media we see. Maybe the message we are getting from the universe doesn’t even make sense in the “real” world, but somewhere inside, these urges feel right. Maybe you feel you are being told to move to a new city although your life where you are is just fine. Or maybe you feel the desire to pursue a new direction in your career when it never really interested you before. When we spend time getting in touch with our higher selves, our intuition sends us directives to lead us to become our best and most fulfilled selves. And when we are open and listening, the next step is to take action and go for it.

Once we make the decision to pursue our inner urgings, the universe sets into motion the means for all sorts of details to fall into place. A sense of peace will come over us, because we know that any questions will no longer make us wonder if our dreams are possible, but how to make them happen. Instead of deterring us from our goal, these questions only serve to clarify our focus to move us forward. We need not throw caution to the wind to follow our dream. The positive shift in our energy affects everything around us. Like a rush of water, it goes ahead to clear debris from our path so that we can go forward. Our new attitude also attracts likeminded people. Sometimes even the most unlikely angels arrive to help us along our way with the information and support we need.

Wherever your dreams are pointing you today, take a step. Take action and manifest your inner urges and soul whisperings.

we going punkin chunkin!

http://www.punkinchunkin.com/main.htm

finally!

Philip Margolin
http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/interviews/a/Margolin.htm

How long on average do you spend revising a novel?

PM: When I write my first draft I spend time revising, but I'm more interested in quantity than quality. I have all these ideas rattling around in my head and I want to get them on paper. I think of my first draft as a 400 page outline. Then I spend several months of heavy duty editing. When I have the book as good as I think I can get it, the manuscript goes to New York and my editor at HarperCollins beats me up for another two to four months. I'd guess that I spend almost half a year editing, but this is the most important part of writing. Almost no first draft is any good. Every time I read what I've written I see things that need to be edited. If you want to be a good writer, you can't have an ego. You have to be able to listen to criticism unemotionally and objectively and accept it if it is correct.


Dorothea Benton Frank
http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/interviews/a/bentonfrank.htm

AC: Can you talk a little about your process?

DBF: Sure. First, I write an overview and discuss it with my editor. That overview is around ten pages and it just covers what the basics of what the story is about, much like a review of a book already published.

Then I make an outline and discuss it with my editor, just to make sure we both feel like this is the story to write at that place in time. (In other words I would not want to tell a story about poverty in the time of the Great Recession. Rather I would want to tell one of hope.) We go over the arc of the story, who’s doing the telling and so forth. Then the grind of churning out that first draft begins. I rewrite as I go in case I drop dead no one will see my first draft, which, as I have been told, is basically firewood.


Jasper Fforde
http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/interviews/a/jasperfforde.htm?r=94

AC: How do you balance fatherhood and writing?

JF: The same way that any father balances a work and career. There's no difference. Being a writer doesn't mean you have some special dispensation because you're a struggling artiste, thrashing around in the throes of creation -- that's all bullshit and an excuse for bad behavior. Family can be great levelers, too. No matter what anyone says about my writing, good or bad, Dad is still simply Dad, and is dribbled upon, sulked at, cuddled, or a soft touch to borrow a tenner.

Amanda Eyre Ward
http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/interviews/a/amandaward.htm

How do you balance writing and motherhood? How has being a mother changed your writing (if it has)?

Being responsible for and madly in love with my boys has changed everything for me. For one thing, I can’t bear certain stories . . . dark stories, books about bad things happening to children. For another, I am just rapt when I hear about how women balance life and love and work. It’s an endless mystery. But it’s not considered a “cool” or even “important” topic to write about. While I love to talk about it, even I shy away from buying books about moms -- I want to read about sex and war.

I find myself thinking I want to write about motherhood, and then stopping myself. I am a huge fan of Helen Simpson, a British writer who writes acidly and thoughtfully about what she calls “the indoor world.”

In terms of balance, let’s just say my son is still in his pajamas, watching cartoons as I type. I’ve gotten used to doing things distractedly. I’m trying to make the most of this time, and the fact is, I’ll have decades when my sons don’t want to talk to me at all and I can write all day in a cabin in the woods.

What advice do you have for people who are just starting out as writers?

Have faith. Surround yourself with people who believe writing is important. Fall in love with writers and read everything they’ve done. Be kind to yourself…if you write a page, you deserve to feel proud. And lastly, know that it is possible to make a living as a writer. It’s hard, but it happens, and it’s a great life.

Our Brains on E-Books?
from About.com Fiction Writing

Like most bibliophiles, I approach e-books with mixed feelings. I know this is the future, and I applaud the democratic possibilities of e-books, especially for scholars and students. But I also agreed with Kurt Vonnegut, speaking at a lecture many years ago, when he said that reading books -- the act of holding a book in one's hands, turning pages, translating symbols into ideas -- is Western culture's version of meditation. A recent Telegraph article confirmed what Vonnegut theorized years ago, saying, "This is more than merely a distraction but an active engaging of the imagination as the words on the printed page stimulate your creativity and cause you to enter what is essentially an altered state of consciousness." Can e-books offer this same altered state of consciousness, or is this a cultural gift we stand to lose?

This week, a New York Times blog proved that I am not alone in my concerns. NY Times editors asked five experts -- an English professor, the former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, a professor of child development, a computer scientist, and a professor of informatics -- to address two questions: " Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper," and "Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium?"

In a roundabout way, the researchers answer my question, too, though they dwell less on the physical side of reading a book and more on the multi-tasking that almost unavoidably accompanies on-screen reading. Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics, writes, "My own research shows that people are continually distracted when working with digital information. They switch simple activities an average of every three minutes (e.g. reading email or IM) and switch projects about every 10 and a half minutes. It's just not possible to engage in deep thought about a topic when we're switching so rapidly." Child psychologist Maryanne Wolf pondered what this might mean for future generations: "For my greatest concern is that the young brain will never have the time (in milliseconds or in hours or in years) to learn to go deeper into the text after the first decoding, but rather will be pulled by the medium to ever more distracting information, sidebars, and now, perhaps, videos (in the new vooks). . . . My concern is that they will not learn, with their passive immersion, the joy and the effort of the third life, of thinking one's own thoughts and going beyond what is given."

Surprisingly, it was a professor of computer science who actually presented the most hopeful perspective on the e-book question: "Of course, onscreen text will change and improve. But the physical side of reading depends not on the bad aspects of computer screens but on the brilliance of the traditional book -- sheets bound on end, the 'codex' -- which remains the most brilliant design of the last several thousand years. Technologists have (as usual) decreed its disappearance without bothering to understand it. They make the same mistake clever planners have made for half a century in forecasting the death of cars and their replacement by spiffier technology. The problem is, people like cars." He's right: people do like books, including the youngest generation of Western children, which grew up with Harry Potter. Books wouldn't be worth keeping if they didn't offer something the screen doesn't. So more than likely, we'll wind up with a clever hybrid of the two, as one NY Times expert posited: a book with physical pages -- and a few electronic enhancements. It's up to us to remember what we gain through uninterrupted time thinking and reading and insist that those enhancements have an off-switch. Because the good old-fashioned book may be our best cultural antidote to an increasingly fast-paced and overloaded information society

http://pumpkinrot.com/

He's from Philly too.

Finally getting around to selling some personal stuff. Im getting rid of my black and red tie-in dreads and 3 handbags so far (purple hello kitty, grey and black skull bag and a black and shimmery metallic evening bag). I have the pics taken now I just need Mark to send them to me.

I also free cycled one of my purple wigs.

I feel like Im getting rid of a a part of me but really, I dont need all this stuff any longer. Im just going to keep a few things and that should be enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_believed_to_have_been_affected_by_bipolar_disorder

I know wikipedia isnt the end-all of knowledge but this gives me some hope

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/

of course sean bean plays, yet again, another doomed character