June 1, 2011 | "Whoa whoa I gotta go...back to schoooool...again",Book One,Book Stuff,DA Series: The Graphic Novel,Draven Atreides,Draven Atreides, Teenage Informant Series,Life in General,Mentors,Prescott College,School Daze,The 4-1-1 on Me,Writing Movements

This post is brought you by Staind. LOL.

I was thinking of Staind’s song, “It’s Been a While” as I wrote this post. I like that band. And it really has been a while. I can’t remember the last time I visited anyone in my blogroll. There’s a fine layer of dust over there. *blows out a breath and coughs as dust mites fill the air*. Sorry about that. I tend to abandon blogs that haven’t been updated in a while, so I imagine that the few regulars I had have long since found someone else to follow.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but my blog is probably going to remain sporadically updated for a little while longer. School has been an all-consuming evil obligation, to the point where I read if I have any free time. And I’m reading books, not blogs. So, let me catch everyone up before I disappear again.

School Daze – The spring semester ended with A’s in both of my classes, Volunteer Management and Human Relations. Thank you to Shoshana Ross and Chantal Sheehan (again) for being my mentors. You can read more about that HERE. I created the other website to chronicle my journey to opening my own nonprofit, so anything I learn in regards to that will be posted on that blog. Anything about writing will be posted here. The summer session starts tomorrow (I had about a 3-week break reprieve) and I’ll be taking Marketing for Nonprofits with Abbie Fink of HMA PR and an online Moodle course, Self-Exploration Through Creative Writing. I’m still looking for course mentors for the Fall 2011 through Spring 2012 semesters. If you or someone you know would be interested, check out the details HERE.

Writing – I finally finished writing Chapter One of the DA graphic novel. You can read about my first two sessions with Bryan Graham, creator of Section 1138, HERE and HERE. It took a lot longer than I thought because I still want to add stuff and keep the dialogue the same. I realize that I may have to re-vamp the story a little bit and provide more action on Draven’s part. I had an original idea when it came to this series: providing little tidbits at the beginning of each chapter that are based on her assignments. For Book One, since it involved a place called The Royalty Treatment Day Spa, I wanted to put the different spa treatments you could get at this spa at the beginning of each chapter. My mentor from my Novel Revising course stated that the info was distracting from the story, especially since not a lot of the action was happening there. I should only include it if the action is actually happening there. Hence the changes I’ll need to make. Now that I’m going a different route with the series, I can have actual pictures instead of text. In addition to finally finishing Chapter One, the Draven Atreides website is done. Finally! After nearly a year. There’s nothing in The Books area (yet), the newsletter hasn’t been created (yet), I haven’t set up a Twitter account for her (yet), and no thoughts have been written down in her “Diary” (yet), but you can look at everything else. LOL. All of that will come when Book One is released. Now that the series site is up, I’ll be chronicling the process of writing the GN over there as well as here.

Life – Still working the day job, but hope to move into the nonprofit sector by the end of the year. Health-wise, I’m trying to cure a reoccurring body dysfunction. During this process, from Dec 2010 to now, I’ve lost about 12 pounds. And no, losing those pounds was not intentional and not something I could afford to lose. Shit like that just happens when you cut something out. I’m trying to gain some weight back while maintaining a healthy diet, but the good thing is that I got a semi new wardrobe out of it. A lot of the clothes I had before were too big, so I had to go out and buy ones that fit. Oh, the hardship! And it really was for someone like me. LOL. Seriously. I’ve never liked clothes shopping (even when I was young) and would rather spend money on books than clothes. LOL. My good friend and manager left the company last month to move to Florida. Really, really bummed about that. And I found out my best friend is moving to Boston for her dream job at the end of July. Really, really bummed–and depressed–about that. I feel like everyone’s leaving me and moving on with their lives. I’m happy for them and at least will have two new places to visit (never been to either place), but still…*sigh*. It just really sucks.

Soooo, that’s it. In a nutshell. My birthday’s this Sunday and I’ve got some stuff planned, so I may be posting again this weekend.

Technorati Tags: Staind, HMA PR, Section 1138

June 1, 2011 | Road Trip Wednesday

Road Trip Wednesday is a “Blog Carnival”, where YA Highway‘s contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

You’re more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question on your own blog, and leave a link to it in their comments.

It really has been a long time since I participated, so I thought I might jump in this time.

This week’s question: What’s the weirdest/strangest thing you have ever researched?

I’m going to start off by saying that next week’s question should be “what’s the coolest/most interesting thing you’ve ever researched”? I’ve got a better answer for that one than this one. I have yet to research anything weird and/or strange, but I plan to for one of the books in the DA series: human cloning. Don’t know if there’s anything out there on it right now, but hopefully there will be by the time I get around to writing it. LOL.

April 27, 2011 | DA Series: The Graphic Novel,Draven Atreides,Draven Atreides, Teenage Informant Series,Road Trip Wednesday

Road Trip Wednesday is a “Blog Carnival”, where YA Highway‘s contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

You’re more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question on your own blog, and leave a link to it in their comments.

This week’s question: If your WIP or favorite book were music, what song(s) would it be?

My WIP will be the Draven series for a while, so if that series had a theme song, it would be the 80′s hit by Rockwell: “Somebody’s Watching Me.” LOL. For obvious reasons.

Technorati Tags: Rockwell

April 25, 2011 | Random Thoughts,The 4-1-1 on Me

I want to preface this by saying that the woman I’m talking about in this post is frickin’ hilarious. She’s a sassy Latina with a great sense of humor and although I don’t interact with her on a regular basis, she’s a great person.

The other day, my supervisor and I were talking with another co-worker and my supervisor made a comment about her wearing tennis shoes.

“Oh yeah, I have to wear these now. When I was working out, I would get this painful cramp in my feet. Sometimes it hurt so bad that I was practically hobbling back to the locker room! It was a little crazy. It would always happen while I was working out, so I finally went to the doctor and he told me it was because I was wore high heels. Now, I can’t wear them anymore. I may start out wearing them in the morning, but halfway through the day, I have to slip these on. I had no idea high heels could cause problems with your feet, knees and back.”

I just looked at her in disbelief. “I—uh, seriously?”

She was smiling when she said it, but she was serious. Yeah. Wow.

That’s when I started laughing.

I wanted to say, “There’s a reason why they’re called Killer Heels. They may be pretty and make your legs look like they should be insured for millions of dollars, but they kill your feet.” But I didn’t.

All those runway models and famous actresses who wear heels on a daily basis may look good from the ankles up, but I bet you anything they’re feet are a freakin’ mess!

April 20, 2011 | Road Trip Wednesday,Secrets and Kisses,The 4-1-1 on Me

Road Trip Wednesday is a “Blog Carnival”, where YA Highway‘s contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

You’re more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question on your own blog, and leave a link to it in their comments.

This week’s question: Compare your first kiss with your favorite characters first kiss

Well, my favorite character is Draven, and seeing as how she hasn’t had her first kiss yet, that’s not gonna help for this post. Ironically, or not, my first kiss was much like Skylar’s in my first book, SECRETS AND KISSES. Granted, I didn’t check out a how-to book from the library like she did, but I sure as hell wanted to. LOL. If the special moment ever came around, I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to do it. I crushed on so many guys during high school, but never dated. African Americans were the minority at my school, and while I was all down with the whole interracial thing, not too many guys at my high school were. At least, I don’t think they were.

My first kiss was with my first boyfriend, whom I didn’t meet until I started community college. He was white and kinda had the whole free-spirit-Brad-Pitt-in-Legends-of-The-Fall thing goin’ on. It must’ve not been that memorable because I don’t remember when it first happened or my reaction.