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Month: December 2015

Bad Habits are Hard to Break. Good Habits? Not So Much.

They say it takes twenty-eight days to make something a habit. I think that must be for normal people. I wear sunglasses. Not cute little fashionable sunglasses, but big, cover everything, I want to preserve my eyes sunglasses. I rarely go outside without them, and I never drive without them. At home they hang safely on my closet door. On the go, they hang from my neck or sit on my head. When I get to work, I take them off, wrap the cord around them, and put them carefully in the back pocket of my purse, which holds nothing else so I don’t accidentally scratch my sunglasses. Except sometimes, very rarely, I take them off, carefully wrap the cord, and set them on top of my computer tower instead. Pretty much every time I do that, I forget them and have to go back—sometimes unlocking the gate I just locked, unlocking the front door, turning off the alarm I just set… Three times I’ve had over a hundred days in a row on 750words.com and then blown it. Just didn’t write anything one day. Two other times, I was over two hundred days when I blew it! Yet if I drive up a certain street in Tucson while thinking of other things, I may well drive to my old house that I haven’t lived in for two years and not notice until I’m turning into the driveway. In short, I need to find a way to break the habits I don’t…

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Christmas…Then and Now

It’s funny, but when you’re a kid Christmas is like the best day of the year (well, besides your birthday). And it’s magic, and Santa comes, and it’s all wonderful. But as you get older, things change. But the changes aren’t always bad: 1) Cooking. If you’re spoiled like me, you’ve never had to make a full Christmas dinner. But over time, I’ve had to take on some of the cooking for my mom who’s getting older. One year very recently she was too ill to make a Thanksgiving dinner, leaving me to make a very bare-bones dinner for my hubby and I. Everyone who knows me knows I hate cooking with a passion. But cooking with my mom is entirely different. One, I learn things. Two, we spend time together. And that’s really important as I grow older — taking time to be with the people I love. You never know how much time you or any one else you love will get, so every minute is precious. And, it’s all about helping take the load off of her — she’s not twenty anymore, and honestly needs my help. So, being the good daughter I am, I freely give my help. (Someday, it’ll just be me, and I hope those days are in the far, far future). 2) Stress. This may seem like a negative, but it really isn’t. I tend to stress out because I simply care. I care to take the time to pick out good gifts for…

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And Now, For Something From a Galaxy Far, Far Away

GUYS It’s Star Wars week! \o/ I am so excited and I am not really sure how I got here. I mean, I’ve always been more of a Trekkie. Yes, I saw the original trilogy at a young age and I’ve seen them a fair amount of times since then. I even went through a phase in middle school (though, admittedly, driven by wanting to have something to talk about with a friend who was way more into it than I was) where I read a bunch of the EU (now, sadly not canon) novels. (I also saw each of the prequels on opening night, each time, hoping against hope, that it would be a good experience. My parents always told me about seeing the original trilogy in the theaters, especially the first one, with the Star Destroyer coming in from overhead, and I guess on some level I was hoping to recreate that.) So I’ve been kind of following what’s been happening in the Star Wars universe out of a vague, detached interest. It all seemed kind of inevitable, Disney buying the franchise (I mean, they’ve had that ride at DisneyWorld forever, right?) and J.J. Abrams directing the first new movie. (Coincidentally, some members of the Trek community refer to Mr. Abrams as Jar Jar Abrams. Not in a nice way. And I would tell you why but then we’d never get out of here, so you’ll just have to extrapolate.) And then they started filming, and then the…

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The Dreaded Middle

So Kit Campbell and I are working on a secret project for Turtleduck Press. It’s a novel that we’re co-writing, and you’ll hear more about it in due time, after it’s been made suitable for public consumption. In the meantime, though, we’re wading through the first draft. Well, I can’t speak for Kit, but I’m wading. Or wallowing, maybe. I’ve passed the halfway point and am flailing around in the late middle, feeling rather as if I’m trapped in Zeno’s dichotomy paradox. I’m also fighting the deep-seated conviction that the story sucks (or my half of it, anyway — I’m not about to say that for Kit’s half!). However, I’m not the only one. Check this out:

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