Here we are with another Progress Report. (For reference, here is my Year of No Fear Manifesto). This covers July, August, and September. Things have wound down a bit for me. Hubby and I spent most of summer camping and when we weren’t camping, I was working on Grave Touched.
There’s been something missing in my life that I have been in denial about for a very long time. Something so important to my inner artist that I haven’t felt whole. I have dreams about it weekly. I sometimes daydream about all the possibilities, everything I could accomplish. And yet, due to circumstances and a whole lot of fear, I’ve resigned myself to being without it. What I’m talking about is darkroom photography. I won’t go into the whole thing, because it’s a long story (you can read about it here) but I’ll give you the quick-and-dirty version, emphasis on the dirty. I started studying b&w and darkroom photography after meeting my fiance from college. He was into it and had a home darkroom. From the first moment I spent in his darkroom, I had been in love. It was amazing, and I came to find out later that my grandfather, unbeknownst to me, took pictures and had his own darkroom. That was such an unexpected thing to learn, and fitting. So I took as many photography classes as I could at college along with my Journalism major, thinking it would help my job prospects. And I ended up learning –and loving — b&w and darkroom photography.
I’m going to be frank with you all, okay? I’m about to talk about erotica, sex, and sex scenes. I don’t want to offend, only explain. You have been warned. I’ve always stayed away from erotica, thinking it was the written equivalent of porn. Then an indie author named Kendall Grey smashed that to shards with her Hard Rock Harlots series. I’d read her urban fantasy novels (the Just Breathe trilogy — AMAZING) and when she started sharing teasers of the first Hard Rock Harlots book, Strings, I was hooked. It was the voice. And the hot sex. And, most of all, it had a beautiful love story at its center. How can an erotica novel have that?
Erin here. We’d like to introduce our new anthology, “Under Her Protection: Stories of Women to the Rescue,” which is now available. It’s filled with stories about…women to the rescue! At Turtleduck Press, we strive to twist things around and change stuff up. So, when we were planning this anthology, we thought about the traditional “damsel in distress” stories and thought, “what if the guy needed saving? And what kind of woman would be the one to save him?” And, naturally, sometimes saving someone comes with a bit of romance. And this anthology was born. Here’s what we have in store for you: KD Sarge’s “Guardian” tells the story of a scholar and a warrior who isn’t what she seems. My story, “Reaper Girl,” is about a grim reaper who accidentally reaps the soul from a man very much alive – and must fight the Underworld to get it back. Siri Paulson’s “The Raja and the Madman” tells the story of an inventor in a tower and the maidservant who befriends him. Kit Campbell’s “Drifting” is about a girl, unsatisfied with her life, who receives an odd letter about a Prince who has been cursed in a Faerie world – and an old family legend come to life. We feel these stories will stir your soul and touch your heart. As always, all proceeds will go to UNICEF. Where you can purchase our anthology: Amazon KindlePaperback EditionSmashwords
Here we are again with another progress report. This one covers April, May, and June. (For reference, here is my 2014 Manifesto I wrote back in January.) As it turned out, I got a lot of things done. Some are still in progress. But overall, I feel pretty darned good about it.
This is an odd one because you’d typically think that there’s no fear involved in gratitude or a positive attitude, but I’m here to tell you that there is. If you have clinical depression. If life always seems to kick you in the teeth. There’s a real fear there that things won’t ever change, so why bother torturing yourself with good, positive, grateful thoughts?
Continuing my Year of No Fear series. Today I’ll talk about poetry. I’ve been writing poetry since I was 11. That’s when I discovered free verse. Free verse is freeing, and it’s still my favorite type of poetry to write. My first poem, which was published in our middle school paper, was a free-verse poem about unicorns (I had an obsession with unicorns for most of my childhood.) I didn’t write many poems, and sort of dropped it until high school when I had my first real crush, my first real boyfriend, and my first real heartbreak. My poetry muse seems to thrive when I’m unhappy. Not the most healthy thing, but writing poetry is very cathartic. And fun.
I thought I’d do a progress report, since all of my posts this year have been about my efforts towards living fearlessly. Let’s take them one at a time, shall we? #1 Ice Skating Refresher: I’ve been terrified of ice skating due to a fear of injuring myself (in fact, I’ve always said, “I’d learn to ice skate but I’d probably break both ankles.”). That’s what kept me from doing anything for 37 years.
Continuing my Year of No Fear series, I’d like to talk about photography. My grandfather was a photographer who had his own darkroom. I didn’t know it until I began studying photography and darkroom work in college. I remember feeling amazed that he’d done the same things I was doing; that it was maybe in our blood. I’d wanted to pair photography with my Journalism major, to make me more marketable (“hey, I can write and take my own photos!”). However, I ended up learning fine art photography instead. I absolutely loved every minute — from the shooting, to the developing of the film, to printing my own enlargements. It was like magic, really — you have a blank sheet of photo paper that turns into something beautiful instead. I will always love darkroom the most, no matter what I do. It’s where my artistic soul feels most at home. Unfortunately, I’ve had to put my darkroom stuff on hold due to several different factors. (I knew that once I’d graduated from college, I would no longer have access to a darkroom. My fiancé at the time had his own darkroom and I thought, maybe I can do this. It took a lot of time, a lot of work, and a bit of magic, but my dad, my ex-husband, and I made it happen. To this day I still marvel at it. We had no contractor but managed to move an entire wall to create a little “room” for me).
To continue my impromptu Year of No Fear series, I want to talk about novel revision. Everyone says it’s critical. That you can’t possibly write a first draft and not revise. And I’ve found that to be true. For me, it’s even more critical.