Month: September 2012

{if it all goes bad, i can find a job punning, maybe}

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September 28, 2012

3:35 pm

13 Comments on {if it all goes bad, i can find a job punning, maybe}

Musings on Extemporanea

Cleaning through yet more files, I found a tandem story I started with a friend – back in Summer of 2011. We were making fun of our poor ability to write anything remotely romantic, so we were going to “practice.” First off, this friend (WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS) is somewhat of a lunatic, so I should have known better than to try anything serious with her. Yet, that’s what we did — attempt seriousness. This honestly wasn’t intended to be comedic at all, but we were trying to write through our hesitation at attempting what could go SO BADLY, and maybe make some progress in making a realistic relationship work on paper.

Or, so we intended.

I take the blame for this one. I think I made it hard to take the entire project seriously, as I named the characters…

The eight children of Xerxes the blacksmith are:
Cinder (b) = 28
Kyndel (g) = 27
Cole (b) = 25
Ashe (g) = 25
Lumina (g) = 22
Flint (b) = 21
Ember(g) = 19
Steele (b) = 11

It can hardly be blamed on my co-conspirator that the whole thing went up in smoke, as it were. After she stopped snickering at the names she titled the novel EMBER AFLAME.

Oh, yes. This was a project doomed from the start.

I mean, Cole and Ashe. Yeah. Those twins are hot…

{hipster colorist: knows fifty-one shades}

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September 26, 2012

1:18 am

8 Comments on {hipster colorist: knows fifty-one shades}

Ethnicity and YA Literature, Musings on Extemporanea

As I set up my computer the other day, my eldest sister was looking over my shoulder, and just about fell over herself snickering snidely at the title of a file in my writing folder. It’s simply titled, “100 Shades of Brown.”

Lest you think I had visions of gray, I did not – that’s a VERY old file indeed into which I toss descriptors I read of brown skin which are not food related, negligibly clichéd or otherwise inaccurate, ridiculous, or insulting. (Random links: Why writers really should lose the phrase “almond-shaped eyes” and another writer’s shared resource list of their own descriptors.) My brown file I jokingly titled after Nick Earls’s hilarious 2004 novel, FORTY-EIGHT SHADES OF BROWN, which had nothing to do with skin tone descriptors, and everything to do with… brown. (Just read it, don’t ask.)

Yeah, we’re hipsters, Nick and me. Into shades long before it became a Thing.

{empty closets, empty rooms}

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September 25, 2012

11:29 am

7 Comments on {empty closets, empty rooms}

Musings on Extemporanea

Skyway Drive 003

The nicest thing about having moved is, aside from having a sudden surfeit of boxes, I can now read blogs with the library’s website open, and hit the HOLD button on anything that looks interesting immediately.

My library is going to be well sick of me shortly.

That is “being home,” to me.

Gosh. Autumn already. What a tumultuous and busy summer it has been. Nothing at all went the way I expected – but … life is good.

We’ll chat more soon.