Home Articles posted by Erin Zarro (Page 11)

Sun Touched

by Erin Zarro a free serial story in the Fey Touched universe Part 1 Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 I woke up in filth. A dirty, cold floor. Two mice chased each other along one equally dirty wall. It was stained with who-knew-what. Musty, sweat-filled air surrounded me. And, I could smell blood. I looked down. All I wore was a simple cotton shift that opened in the back. I had a bad feeling I knew what that was for. A pool of blood surrounded my leg, so I must have gotten injured somehow. I couldn’t remember what had happened. I was in a small prison cell. A filthy cot sat in one corner, no blankets. A bucket sat in the opposite corner, and apparently, someone had emptied it recently, because I did not smell the stink of human waste. Thank Artemis for that. My prison was in a dark, large room. All I remembered was fighting the rogues with my tribe. I’d spun around to stake one. Then, a punch to my gut, and nothing else. Where were the others? Had they been captured, too? I shivered, curling up into a little ball Freaking hell. Was anyone around? I licked my dry lips. “Hello? Anyone there?” “I see you’ve woken up,” a male voice said from the shadows. He stepped forward, and I saw that he was outside of my cell. And that he was one of the rogues. I uncurled and stood,…

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10 Thoughts From a Sleep-Deprived Writer’s Brain

Yeah, so I’ve had a bout of insomnia for the past few months. Usually, I snap out of it within a few days, but I’ve had some other things working in the background and it’s been BAD. I’ve tried everything and no luck. It is so bad that I am not even sure what day it is. I think it’s Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? Crap, I hope it’s Tuesday. I am constantly asking myself what day it is. According to my research, you cannot “cure” sleep deprivation or “catch up” on sleep. What’s lost is lost. Which really sucks. So this may be a bit of a disjointed, weird list. Just roll with it, k? So, on to the thoughts! 1) I did dream last night, so I must have slept a bit at least. Something about me drawing my own book covers, and showing them off. In the dream, they were in crayon. Yes. Oops. (I assure you, Ever Touched’s cover will NOT be in crayon. Promise.) What on earth would lead me to dream that? I’ve got the cover figured out. I just need to, yanno, do it. (In between editing projects). Thinking about lining up all those sci-fi doodads is already making me tired. Yawn….. 2) My typing accuracy is for shit right now. I either hit the wrong letters, or skip them altogether, or smoosh whole words together. I like that word: “smoosh.” I want to smoosh something now, just because I, in my sleep-deprived addled…

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Holiday Wishes: Remember to Love

Here we are, five days till Christmas, and it feels like time has just flown by. I can remember sitting at work on December 1st thinking, “wow, twenty-four days till Christmas. It will be forever before we get there.” And now, here we are, twenty-one days later. The mind boggles. (I have a conspiracy theory that time is actually speeding up and it’s not just our perception of it. Why, I couldn’t tell you. But it’s real.) Last night, my accountability group was discussing people we’ve lost, and how it’s been affecting our holidays. And it made me think back to my childhood. And this morning on the bus, I tried remembering my grandparents’ old house. Because when I think of Christmas, I am always hurtled through time to when we had Christmas Eve at my grandparents’ house. It was a small, two-bedroom house with a basement, a dining room, and a small kitchen. My grandparents had a beautiful tree with these antique ornaments on it (some of which grace our tree now) and a Santa on a sleigh that actually spun around the tree. It was neat. There was always mistletoe hanging from Grandma’s kitchen doorway. And, of course, there were other decorations as well. But that tree sticks in my mind. So we’d all go to Grandma’s for Christmas Eve — my aunt, my uncle, my cousins, and of course, the four of us — my dad, my mom, my sister, and me. Usually, they’d be someone there who didn’t have anywhere…

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The Perils of Technology

Every year I do a post on thankfulness, but after the day I’ve had today, I’ve decided to do something a bit different. I am a lover of technology. I got my first computer in 1998 (and that was late), a Compaq Presario laptop with a 13″ screen, 32MB of RAM, and a 2GB hard drive. $1,500. I did so much on that thing. Designed my first website (with the now-defunct Geocities — stop laughing), did a ton of digital photography using a very old version of Photoshop, wrote countless poems, and more. I loved that little laptop and believe it or not, I could turn it on today and it would still run (but not go online, obviously). It was my first leap into the computing world, and it opened up so much more for me. Those were the days. I’ve had 10 computers since. I went to desktops for a bit, then decided they were too bulky and took up too much space, so I switched back to laptops. I had the fun experience of Windows ME. I spent $1,700 on a Toshiba laptop with a special graphics card and 1GB of RAM (which was a lot back in 2006) for gaming purposes (now? I can’t even run it. Sad). My computer prior to the one I’m using now had a monitor failure 2 years in that completely sucked patootie. And this one had a fan malfunction and was gone for 11 days and I nearly went nuts…

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New Release: To Rule the Stars

New Release! To Rule the Stars: A Space Princess Anthology, by us! In it, three of us wrote stories around the theme of space princesses. We thought it’d be fun to put princesses into space, and we ended up with a really great selection of stories. Here is the official blurb: Meet the princesses. A trained diplomat, kidnapped by an alien race desperate for justice, and its dashing leader… A political pawn, on her way to meet her betrothed, who stops in the asteroid belt to answer a call for help, and finds a princess both beautiful and brave… A captive raised to believe that the greatest evil is magic, when it–and the handsome ship’s engineer who wields it–are the one thing that might save her… For this week only it is on sale for 99c! Then the price will go up to $1.99. Grab the Kindle edition here. (No princesses were harmed during the making of this anthology.) This anthology also includes a sneak peek of Ever Touched, our May 2017 release, third book in my Fey Touched series. All proceeds go to UNICEF, as always.

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10 Reasons Why I Have the Best Husband in the World — Possibly the Whole Universe

Today is my husband’s birthday, so I thought I’d put pen to paper (figuratively speaking) and tell you 10 reasons why I have the very best hubby in the world. Of course, I’m biased, but let me know what you think after reading this! We’ve been together for 10 years (one reason for every year!) and married for seven. And loving him — and being loved by him — has completely changed my life, and for the better. #1 He is always there for me. Always — after a crappy day at work, when I feel lousy, when bad things happen, when my health sucks, when I need a hug…Always. He has never, ever ever let me down. He has unending patience and kind words to say no matter what’s going on. Especially when it comes to my health. I don’t have the best health, and sometimes I feel just plain crappy, or I’m in pain. He’s always there. I have a stomachache, he’s there with Vernors. I injured my knee recently and he offered to spread Biofreeze on it, even though I could do it myself — that’s just the guy he is. He puts my oatmeal out in a bowl in the morning so I don’t have to run downstairs to get it. In the fall, he’ll surprise me with hot chocolate, because he knows I love it. He’s gotten me to wherever I needed to go without complaint (I don’t drive). I need my meds picked up, we’re there.…

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107,000 words written on Ever Touched – and Deep Thoughts

So, since I’ve hit the 100k milestone on Ever Touched and went beyond it, I thought I’d talk about some things I’ve discovered or learned or just plain thought about with this novel. #1 The first draft is not done yet. Technically, I have till the end of the month, but as that is fast approaching, I may not make it. I have at least 15-20k more to go minimum. I may do what I did with both Fey Touched and Grave Touched. Start the revision anyway, and write the ending once I get there. #2 The good news is that I have a comprehensive plan for the ending. The bad news is, I had to replot it twice. I’m not ruling out a third or fourth time. #3 Usually, a book’s theme song comes to me while planning. And I usually listen to it as I write the book. With Ever Touched, the theme song announced itself last week, after writing over 100,000 words. What the hell. (For the curious, it’s “The Sound of Silence” covered by Disturbed. Once you watch and hear it, you’ll understand why. Helpful link is helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7RVw3I8eg #4 In every book I write, there’s a scene that could be a movie scene: intense action, intense feels, heartbreak, distress, characters in peril, etc. It’s the one scene that for me, encapsulates the entire book. Fey Touched has one. Grave Touched had one.  Ever Touched has one, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I almost…

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I Think I Need A Planner – Or Something

Wanna hear something scary? I went through my entire day, oblivious to the fact that it was my turn to post a blog here. Normally, I’m plan it in advance, and I get it written early in the evening. Nope. It’s after 10:30pm, and I am now just sitting down to write this. I spaced on a recent TDP meeting. Just…forgot. The other scary thing is that I have a planner. It’s called Commit30, and I thought it would be fun to try. But please note that the last time someone asked me to use a planner (teacher in high school), I did all my planning in my head and then wrote it all up the day it was due. Because I usually plan in my head, and for years, it has worked. I was younger then, and I had a better memory. Now? It seems that I need something more. The planner is cool, but I still have trouble finding the time to write stuff. I still plan in my head mostly. And, oddly enough, I write it in, but I rarely ever look at it after that. Epic fail. I’ve also experimented with using the app Trello. It’s cool because I can do a version of Holly Lisle’s planning: one list for To Do, one list for Doing, and one list for Done. And then I move stuff along as I go. I’ve been using it with great success for camping to do lists, and recently when I was so overwhelmed with…

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TV Shows and Endings

This is actually Siri’s scheduled slot, but since I will be out of town in two weeks, we decided to switch. So that meant coming up with a topic rather quickly (a few hours!). Since Castle was canceled, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about TV shows lately. TV shows that had either crap endings or died too soon in particular. It has gotten to the point where I am terrified to get invested in a TV show because it could end prematurely and end on a cliffhanger.  Or just end, period. There were a bunch of TV shows coming out this past fall that I would have loved to check out (Minority Report, Limitless, Quantico, for an example) but I worried that they’d get the ax and/or end on a damn cliffhanger. Those are absolutely the worst, because let’s face it, the chances for a revival are so slim. And it’s heartbreaking. (Of those three, I believe Quantico is the last one standing.) So, let’s get on with the list, shall we? In no particular order, they are: 1) Forever. Canceled after the first season. Had an interesting premise — a man who works as a medical examiner and is immortal. This drew me in because 1) it wasn’t the average police procedural show, and 2) why is Henry immortal  and can he find a way to finally die? Plus there was a glimmer of a potential romance with the woman he works with, Jo. I don’t know the final resolution because as soon…

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Trigeminal Neuralgia: One-Year Update

Well, actually, it’s 11 months, as my 1-year anniversary of my diagnosis is July 17th, but “One-Year Update” sounded better than “Eleven-Month Update.” So, for the most part, I’ve been doing really well. I had an interesting moment while reading an article on one of those list websites. The title caught my eye: The Top 10 Most Horrible Medical Conditions Known to Man or something like that. Guess what #10 was? TRIGEMINAL NEURALGIA. I’m like, “No kidding.” They don’t call it the “suicide disease” for nothing. I am not 100% pain-free, which is okay. Going from 100% excruciating pain while conscious to about 95% pain free while conscious is a BIG, huge improvement. Times I still have pain: when it’s going to rain (this is eerie — I can predict when storms are coming before the weather people), if any kind of wind or breeze touches my face (so fans are bad), when the water hits my face in the shower, and about an hour to an hour and a half before the next dose of my pill. Times I’ve used a loopy pill in the past month: zero. Six months? Maybe once or twice. Compare that to almost every day. Things I enjoy now that I’m not in so much pain anymore: photography. Writing. Sunlight (used to be a trigger). Camping (although the campfires can trigger pain still). Stress is just stress now, not stress+pain. That’s a good thing. The medication does wonders. It is really a life changer. I’ve had…

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