Flashback Friday

The lovely ladies over at GotYA are talking about the books they grew up with, so I thought I'd join in!

The Harry Potter books were some of the first proper novels I read by myself. They had me looking out the window on my 11th birthday, hoping for an owl.

I've been a Lord of the Rings fangirl since I was about 7. I started reading the series for myself when I was 11 - after I didn't get that letter from Hogwarts. ;)

And then there's A Series of Unfortunate Events. My mom read these books to my sister and me before bed, so I'm quite fond of these books. We only made it to the sixth, but I think I'm going to have to read the rest!

I'd also like to mention some of the picture books that preceded the chapter books.

The Berenstain Bears,

Amelia Bedelia,

and The Mitten. Lovely illustrations in this book!

And that's it for me! *scuttles off to see what books everyone else remembers*

Oh! One more thing! Check out In Which a Girl Reads! She's giving away awesome books! :)

Just Another Little Update

To tell you that the universe must apparently remain in balance. When something goes up, it must come down. After a bout of bad luck comes a bout of good. After you get accepted into your first and second choice universities, you are going to be burned by boiling oil and then your desk lamp will go kaplooey.

Which is to say, YESS! MY FUTURE IS NOT DOOMED! I got two acceptance letters yesterday from my top two choices of uni programs. *dances around*

Mind you, my top choice program has astronomical tuition fees and no scholarships, whereas the my second choice is $5000 less in tuition and is offering me at least $4000 more in scholarships, so now I actually have to put some thought into where to go, but who really cares because I GOT IN!!! *gloats*

I gloat because the number of pasty white females who get accepted to this program is remarkably small.

But anyway, yes, long story short: educational future not doomed. Financial future obscure. WIP still not finished. It just goes to show how much of a mutant this thing is when I've been saying for a week, "I'm almost done, I'm almost done!" But I suppose the ending must be proportional in size to the rest of the book. ;)

Anyhow, that's all I've got to say! Ta for now!

Random Update on my Uneventful Life

So, I realized I haven't blogged in two weeks. I blame this on three things, first and foremost the never-ending supply of calculus work that perpetually hounds me. Secondly, I spent March Break at my aunt's and my cousins tend to keep me away from the internet. And thirdly, I've found myself with very little to talk about.

I considered blogging about the alarming trends in some YA love interests, and I might yet formulate some coherent thoughts on the matter, but for now, everyone should go see what Para has to say. She's much more eloquent about it than I am. ;)

In other news, I drove a standard for the first time while I was down at my aunt's! (A standard car, that is. With a clutch and a stick shift and all that nonsense.) Now I can properly appreciate the convenience of automatic transmission. Seriously. I was only driving around a parking lot (with one poor unsuspecting car parked in the middle) and I thought I had too many things to think about. Clutch in, car on, shift to first, clutch off, gas on, stall out, fml, car not starting, wtf, oh right forgot about the clutch...and so on and so forth.

And oh, the poor puppies in the backseat! Or on the back floor, I should say, after I stalled out for the first time. Heheh.

I am in awe of those people who can drive a standard car an actual traffic-filled road and not die.

And on a more writing related note, my mutant WIP is SO CLOSE to being finished. Monstrous word count to be announced.

I think I'm going to ignore my Calculus and go work on it now.

Lovely contests!

Hello, my lovelies!

I am blogging for the sole purpose of trying to win a shiny free book from Choco, over on In Which a Girl Reads. The contest ends at 11 (EST) tonight!

Me? Leave things to the last minute? Never!

Okay, seriously, I delayed because I was hoping to find a slightly less obnoxious way to post about this. But my blogging muse is on vacation, so this will have to do.

So, um, yes, that's about all I have to say. Go check out Choco's awesomeness!

And if you're bored you can listen to this song, because it makes me want to break into weird, empowered dancing when I hear it. For what reason, I do not know.

The ILYCYAAYB Award

After reading Sumayyah's blog post and completely agreeing to the point of wanting to amass a non-angry-but-rather-enlightened-and-empowered mob to march through the streets shouting the message, I started to get a vague little idea.

Valentine's Day, for all its misleading marketing schemes, is not a bad thing. I mean, it causes stores to be flooded with very yummy chocolate, which, theoretically, will all be discounted by Monday. Who can complain about cheap chocolate?

Also, it's a time to tell people how much you love and care about them. These people should not be and are not limited to one's significant other, but also include siblings and BFFs and parents and grandparents and so on and so forth -- all those people who have been with you through thick and thin, who have taken care of you through sickness and in health, who have given you pocket money and let you mooch off them when you had none.

Go give those people a hug and, if you haven't eaten it already, maybe some chocolate. They deserve it. :)

And that brings me to the point of this post. By combining these two parts of Valentine's Day (the yummy chocolate and the idea of telling someone they're appreciated), I have come up with this:

The ILYCYAAYB Award! (Which stands for the I Love You 'Cause You're Awesome and You Blog Award.)

Now, I have no idea if I'm allowed to do this -- make up my own random awards, that is. But I'm darn well going to try!

I hereby declare it shall be awarded to 5 people who I love 'cause they're awesome and they blog. And then, ideally, those 5 people are free to and encouraged to give it to 5 people they each love 'cause they're awesome and they blog, and so on and so forth, forming a big web of luvvles and fuzziness in the blogosphere.

And so, without further ado and in no particular order, I hereby force the ILYCYAAYB award upon the following 6 people (because I just invented a new rule that says you can give it to SIX people on Valentine's Day, 'cause I kinda couldn't narrow it down to five. *shifty eyes*):

Sumayyah! Because, you know, her post gave me this idea and she makes really pretty banners and cover art for other people's awesome blogs and books.

Amna! Because she writes awesomely hilarious books about really smexy Huldus and leaves so much warm fuzziness on my babbling blog posts.

Parametric! Because she is the madly-skilled all-knowing TWFT ninja, and she writes such delightfully dark teasers.

Race! Because she posts awesome videos on Random Day and writes about guys who are not only hawwwt but genuinely sweet and oh-so-lovable.

Emilia! Because she writes awesome books and actually comments on my mindless babbling and she makes really awesome cartoons.

Choco! Because she makes such awesomely shiny e-magazines filled with awesome twiftie writing and she read seven books in a week, some of which were really long.

New Rule: you must explain why you love each person and that explanation should, if at all possible, contain some variation of the word 'awesome'.

And there we have it!

Happy Heart Day, everyone!!

Stories We Never Hear

Eek. There's been a bit of a lull in my blogging. See, I was busy waging war against a cold that was trying its very hardest to sink its claws into me. I think it's safe to say I won. With the help of several gallons of orange juice, the cold has been vanquished!

Speaking of wars, while I was guzzling OJ I watched a lot of documentaries on the history channel. Keep in mind I was probably slightly inebriated due to mass amounts of citrus and a crazy-busy immune system, but I saw this show on Vimy Ridge and it kind of struck a chord with me.

Under Vimy Ridge, there are a series of tunnels. In the days and weeks preceding the battle, they served as living space for thousands of soldiers - soldiers who were my age - many of whom would never make it home.

The tunnel walls are made of chalk-based rock, and are easy to carve into. Thousands of soldiers chiseled their names, hometowns, girlfriends', wives', and children's names into the walls, along with intricate designs. (Almost none of which I can find on google! Grr!!)

Three thousand five hundred ninety-eight of these people died.

In the documentary, they traced some of these names and found old letters and military records, and in some cases were able to talk to family members, and it gave a little glimpse at who these people had been and what they had done - what adventures they had, what they cared about, what they achieved. And it got me thinking about the stories we lose when people die.

My great-grandpa was a sniper in WWI. On one mission or another, he was creeping around behind a barn, and ran into a German sniper. They sat down and had tea together.

If my great-grandpa had died, there's a very real chance that no one ever would have heard that story. As it is, I can retell it in three lines. I'm sure there was more to it when he first told it. But I'll never know what that 'more' consisted of. I'll never know what they talked about, or why exactly they sat down and had tea together - two soldiers on opposite sides of the war. It's gone. (Unless maybe there's a German teen somewhere whose family does a better job of preserving stories than mine.)

When I look at old photographs, I find myself wondering about these sorts of little stories. Who are the people? What are their names? What did they do? What stories did they have to tell? I'll never know.

Luckily, I'm a writer, and I can make some pretty imaginative guesses. ;)

This hereby concludes today's gloomy blog post.

Yay for Blog Posts that Don't Involve Thinking!

Because I can't think of a word beginning with F that would somehow relate to contests and therefore create some nice alliteration when paired with Friday.

But there are lots of contests going on right now!

Sumayyah's giving away prettiful banners and cover art at The Raven Desk. Only two days left!

Also, Race is giving away a copy of The Secret Year over on Creare.

I think one day when I have a job/some other nefarious money-acquiring scheme, I shall host a contest. They look like such fun. :)

This Thing Called Writing

It started in Grade 1. (or grad 1, as I so thoughtfully wrote at the top of the page)

My writing is nearly illegible, but I seem to have been writing about some made-up adventure with my friends and...The Three Musketeers?

at ferst reses Dartanyen [D'Artagnan, I assume] was missing from the rok we mett at evry reses

And then sadly my writing gets too messy to tell what sort of misfortune befell poor D'Artagnan. (Rest assured it was something awful and probably involved the Evil Vice Principal.)

But this unreadable passage marks the beginning of my career as a burgeoning story teller. From the garbled writing in my Barbie and Secret Garden notebooks, to the wild tales I told in my Daily Journal at school, to the maybe-almost-publishable wordage I spew out now, I've never been able to stop writing.

Sadly, as is clearly evident by the above passage, no one is born with the ability to write like [insert amazing author of your choice here]. We have to write and write and write and write and commit an obscene number of writing faux pas before we get anywhere.

I've been reading a lot of awesome blog posts about the mortifying excrement stuff writers came up with when they were younger, and it got me looking at some of my old notebooks and Word documents. It was rather amusing to say in the least. I had no idea what sort of atrocities I was committing.

Behold...

Shameless self-insertion Harry Potter fanfiction! (Age 7 or 8)

"Wake up." I heard my mom say softly. "I'm up." I said sleepily only half awake. I heard my mom walk out and down the stairs. I yawned, stretched and sat up. I crawled down the bed and took my white T-shirt with the gold star on the sleeve off the bottem of my bed. Then I reached under my bed and felt around until I found my jeans. I got dressed and went down stairs.

As I went downstairs I could smell my dad making pancakes and toast. I sat down at the table and started to eat the 3 chocolate-chip pancakes and apple juice I just got.

The table was realy crouded. In-fact there were 16 of us at the table! There was: me and Harrys friend Hermoine, me (Rebecca) [in case there was any hope left that this wasn't a shameless self-insert], my brother Harry, my dad (James), my mom (Lily), and my cousins [insert Weasley family here]...

*headwall*

Shameless self-insertion LOTR fanfic! (Age 9-11) (At least I had the decency to give my author surrogate her own name this time.)

I seem to have left the resulting document on another computer. Suffice to say I dragged the Fellowship and my elf-self through all sorts of revamped LOTR plot lines and also plot lines from almost every other book I read over the course of these 2 years. *facepalm* I should also tell you it was 100+ pages written in size 10 Comic Sans font, and I thought it was cool to have huge blocks of text rather than use paragraphs.

Evil Plan Prologues (Age 12)

Lord Lavince looked out into the blackness of the night. Not even a hint of breeze touched the leaves. Nothing stirred. His guards were silent as they assembled behind him. The time had come to put the first stage of his plan into motion.

The plot was seamless, a thing of true perfection. A malevolent sneer darkened his face as again he thought it through. Although dealing with hunters, Sitka’s group in particular, was risky, he had no doubt that they would join him eagerly. They would not turn down the chance to see King Alistar dead, even if it meant allying with a vampire to do it. The werewolves were getting restless. It would not take much to make them forget the old peace treaty, and then a war like no other would erupt, and it would not end in the vampires’ favour. Not when he applied the potion, which that twisted mage, Shauvier, had provided for him. The poor fool. The werewolves would be totally obedient, completely under his command. They would follow his orders, and his orders alone. The potion would strengthen them greatly. The vampires would not stand a chance.

This was my first real book, spewed out during sixth grade. It was called The Undead Prince and it was about (can you guess?) a vampire prince. This Vampire Prince was was kidnapped by an evil vampire lord. Evil Vampire Lord (hence forth known as EVL Hehe that almost spells evil) planned to take the vampire throne for himself, and wanted to keep Vampire Prince alive for some nefarious purpose while he did it.

So Vampire Prince was given an amnestic drug and thrown into the human world, where, of course, he wound up in a grade 8 class (because high school was far outside my range of experiences at this point) and met my inexplicably curious MC.

I later explained this curiosity by revealing that...

My MC was the great-great-great granddaughter of the magical world's most powerful sorceress, but didn't know it until she got stuck in a plot corner and needed to blast her way out of a mountain dungeon.

So anyhoo, let the Epic Quest to Save the Vampire Kingdom commence!

Once it was all said and done, The Undead Prince was a whopping 155K, with a rather decent ending, if I do say so myself. In fact, I think 13 yr old me was much better at endings than 18 yr old me. It all tied together nicely, at any rate.

My mom read it, assured me it was brilliant, and (horrifyingly enough) helped me get my sticky little paws on an agent's email address. We somehow convinced her to read the thing, and she was really quite nice in the sense that she read the first fifty pages and made several helpful comments about character development and so on.

I got as far as several chapters into a third book before realizing the aforementioned agent was not crazy and these books were crap.

After that, I decided to try my hand at contemporary.

Hello, Teen Angst! (Age 13)

Tangled was a story about six five teenagers with extremely angsty lives - Damian, Jake, Amanda, Renae (not Renee! No, no, no!), and Daniel (who I completely forgot about by the middle of the book). Originally there was supposed to be a third girl, Isabelle, but she was rich and had a rather happy home life, so I got bored with her and cut her out.

Damian, judging from the amount of page time he got, was secretly my favourite. He was also the token bad-boy who was supposed to really not be that bad. Suuure, he was a drug dealer, but he really needed the money and secretly encouraged people to stop buying the drugs. And yah, he was involved with some creepy organized crime guy, but again, he really needed the money and just in case you were thinking he could get a regular job I'm sure the bad guy would totally hunt him down if he tried to quit. AND his little brother has CANCER so HA! You HAVE to sympathize with him!! MUAHAHA!

*headwall*

In all its 125+K glory, this book also made a few tremulous steps into the world of publishing. I actually convinced an e-book publisher to look at it, but they weren’t too happy with the 179 instances of the F-bomb.

The Big Move (Age 15/16)

I actually had two of these books. One was about a girl who moved from BC to Texas (watch me walk all over every Canadian and American stereotype ever invented), which I wrote during grade nine and never finished.

Then there was this one.

I am about to die.

Huddled in my mother's old Chrysler Concorde, looking up at my new school, I was dead sure of that fact.

There were too many kids, too many windows with cardboard taped over them, and too many security guards standing by the doorway for me to feel even faintly hopeful that I might make it through the day alive.

I wanted my mother to turn around and drive back to the house. I wanted her to look at the school and say that there was no way she would let me set foot inside a place like that. I wanted her to tell me we were moving back to Riverglen before we all got shot.

But she didn't.

In fact, she was already getting out of the car.

I actually finished this one (YAY!), and at approximately 95K it was my first almost-normal-length book (YAY!). I called it Life is only Ugly until you find its Beauty. (I’m sure that was supposed to have some deep metaphorical meaning.)

Sadly, it has no chance of ever being published. It’s about a girl who does the Big Move from a small town to the rough end of a big city and she struggles to adjust and meets this cute guy in her art class. But I'm from a predominantly upper-middle-class suburban neighbourhood. I can’t really pull off drugs and gang violence and randomly crooked cops all that well.

I did zero research, pulled the ending out of my rear, and my MC and Cute Art Guy don’t even get together in the end! (Because there’s something weird about Cute Art Guy. He’s an extremely gifted artist, but he’s sort of in La-La Land all the time. As the author, you would think I’d know why, but I never really dug around for an explanation. :P)

After this, I moved onto...

CPCS - Chronically Passive Character Syndrome (Age 16/17)

And I still haven't gotten over this one.

Snippet here.

The Boy Who Stole My Heart Car came in at 54K! It doesn't send agents running for the hills! In fact, they seem to like the premise, because I queried a few (read: 4) and most of them (read: 3) requested a partial.

But none of those partials did very well, because my MC is passive to the extreme and I wind up totally glazing over the whole LI-is-a-car-thief thing. *headdesk*

I have plans to fix this one up, though. I think it's salvageable.

Next came...

The Mutation also known as my WIP

It's going to wind up being about 200K. 'Nuff said.

But really, I should have seen this one coming. Look at the word counts that have preceded it. 175K at age 12, 125K at age 13, and there was secretly a 139K attempt at contemporary during my grade ten year that never even got near finished!

I think it's been proven: I have a disease called Longbookitis, I'm still committing plenty of writing faux pas, and the road to being a published author has a very loooong learning curve.

Wow, that turned out long.

Morose Monday

Look! Look! I'm keeping up with my New Years resolutions! I'm blogging! (Even if, in this post, blogging has become synonymous with whining. :P)

So anyhoo, this Monday is morose, of course, because Christmas holidays are over and even though I don't have to go back to school thanks to that whole I-graduated-last-June thing, I do have to get my rear in gear and finish these online courses I'm taking. I also have to acquire a bulldozer and do something about the piles of mess that have accumulated in my room. o.O

Furthermore, I'm back home after being at my aunt's for two weeks. My aunt typically has 2-12 people in her house at any given time. My house typically has one person: me. And my dog. Whose gastrointestinal system is not as, er, fresh, as it was when she was a younger dog... Anyway, it's all rather lonely in comparison.

But! On the upside, being alone in a house means I don't have to listen to my music through headphones. I can blast it as LOUD AS I WANT!!! Er, as loud as my speakers will let me before they asplode, that is.

And so on that note, I shall scamper off to clean.

Ta!

Last post of '09

Man, I really wish I'd known we had class shirts when I graduated. They said, "The last class to make you say, 'Oh!'" Or something along those lines. I was amused, at any rate. But I totally missed the memo on grad shirts.

Anyways, that was completely off-topic. I just couldn't help but think of it when I titled this post.

To get back on topic...

Stuff That Happened This Year:

1) I turned 18 and became legally old enough to vote, go to big-people jail, and go into the adult section of video stores. Mind you, I haven't actually done any of these things yet.

2) I joined AW after lurking for several months and met all sorts of wonderful people. :D

3) I graduated high school, technically (*is still taking three online courses to get a total of 38 credits*).

4) I worked in a university bookstore, which was painful as heck.

5) I worked on a movie/TV set which was, at the very least, an interesting experience. :)

New Year's Resolutions:

1) Blog on at least a semi-consistent basis. (These random unannounced 3-6 week lulls will stop! Honest, they will. *shifty eyes*)

2) Finish my WIP. (It's almost finished! Almost! In all it's 200K+ glory.)

3) Solve the whole 200K+ problem. XD

4) Overhaul and re-query The Boy Who Stole My Heart Car, because chronically passive characters are baaaad.

5) Get into some sort of physical activity so my muscles don't atrophy by the time I'm 20. (Gotta have one health-related resolution, right?)

And that's about all I have to say. What's everyone else looking forward to doing in 2010?

Eek! Bad Blogger! That is to say, My First Blog Post In Three Weeks.

I know! I'm an awful blogger!!

I kept meaning to post. Honestly, I did. I don't know how many blog posts I half started, but I did start them. I just never actually finished them. :x

So now I will post something! Even if it isn't of a literary nature.

Yesterday was my first day volunteering for a local film company.

I got to do the clicky thing at the beginning of takes!

<-- You know, that thing. Which is in fact called a slate. And I only messed it up twice! XD

I also met and had lunch with Michael Ironside. No one seems to know who he is (I had to IMDb him) but he's been in a lot of stuff. I actually recognized his voice more than his face.

But anyway! He told me film business was like elephant excrement, give or take a word, and I should run while I could before the stink got stuck. I'm pretty sure he was kidding. :P

The good news is I'm a smidge more certain that I'm doing the right thing by planning to apply to film production programs in uni. Since I've only got a month left to make up my mind, any minute increase in certainty is a very, very good thing.

Oh! There was also uber delicious chicken for lunch! Point 2 for the film industry! They feed you!

So anyhoo, there we have it. My awful, tiny, un-writing related blog post.

Epiphanies and Christmas Lists (Wow. I just failed miserably trying to type epiphany the first time. XD)

Today, people started asking me what I wanted for Christmas. My obvious answer was, "BOOKS!" But of course they needed me to be more specific than that, so I went and browsed book listings to hunt out titles and authors.

While doing this, I realized three things.

1) Amazon is much cheaper than bookstores. I like this. I should start using Amazon.

2) There are a lot of bad book covers out there. Interestingly enough, the three books I want for Christmas are three of the few with decent covers, but that's besides the point! I was scrolling through the top seller lists on Amazon and was seriously repulsed by a lot of the covers.

3) I want a lot of books that I can't have. Why can't I have them, you ask? Because they aren't published yet. XD One of them is on its way!! (*cough*The DUFF*cough*) And another is soon to be on its way! (*cough*CoS*cough*) But sadly a lot of books I want to read have not even been finished yet (*cough*HURRYUP*cough*), let alone found agents and publishers. *tear*

Hmm. I think I know what I want for Christmas. ARCs and beta rights!!

Anyway, that's about all I have to say today. Now I must scuttle off and work on my physics so that I've actually accomplished something by the time my physics tutor gets here.

Ta! :)

ETA: OH! About that Christmas list. It currently includes Living Dead Girl, Break, and Hush Hush. Any other ideas?

Menial Monday

I'm really only blogging because I feel like I should, not because I have anything momentous to say. XD

I was informed I won't be getting any hours at work until January, by which point I probably will have found another job. With any luck I might be able to get a job at a real bookstore for the Christmas season. *crosses fingers*

In other news, I'm the only person in the house who isn't sick with a cold. *dons germ mask and hides in closet* Apparently one of the local high schools is four cases away from being closed for H1N1. This is the high school my little sister attends. *hopes little sister doesn't have H1N1*

Umm. Let's see. I also had some very yummy cake today, stuck a cookie on the end of an umbrella, and had a NaNo idea begin to niggle at my brain. We'll see how it goes.

And! I have a poll. Because I'm still stuck trying to figure out what makes Love Interests like Gale/Peeta, Edward/Jacob, Mr. Darcy/Mr. Bingham (did I spell that right?) so infatuating.

It should be over in the sidebar momentarily. =D

Oops. =D

Just a quick update to let everyone know that if you're setting up a phone system, it's a bad idea to make people dial 9 to get to an outside line.

Hehe.

I was phoning people about their book orders today at work. We have to dial 9 to get out. I was making a long distance phone call, and I accidentally double-clicked the 1.

Campus security promptly arrived.

I rolled my chair away from the phone.

XD

Minimum Wage

Warning: The following post contains a rant.

Working for minimum wage ($9.50 here) is lousy.

Working for minimum wage means you get paid $76 for a full (eight hour) day. When those eight hours are spent on your feet doing menial work (let's say, oh, straightening books on a bookshelf), $76 seems like a major rip off!

It seems to imply that a day of your life (24 hours) is therefore worth $228.

If someone came up to you and offered you $228 for a day of your life (as in, you would have one less day to live) would you agree?

I wouldn't.

*stops grumbling*

We shipped some books to someone in Jamaica the other day. (Or was it only one book? Can't remember.) Her name was Donna and the shipping cost $75 - an entire day's salary for me. Probably more than an entire day's salary when you take taxes off.

Have you ever considered what kind of a percentage the government gets of your salary between income taxes, sales taxes, parking meters, road test fees...Okay, I'd better not get going on that can of worms. =P

Anyway, I'm off to enjoy my free time! Ta-ta!

Creepy Government Buildings

Today, I went to a government building to get my name changed on a piece of ID. There was nobody in it. There were merely two phones sitting on two little tables in front of two lists of phone numbers.

After checking the sign on the door a few dozen times to make sure I was in the right place, I sat down and started calling those phone numbers. They put me on hold. For a long time.

Then sketchy janitorial staff started walking by in the hall, looking at me like those cannibals in that movie looked at that tasty castaway.

I left.

Wordy Wednesday

I doth declare this day to be...Wordy Wednesday!! Bow down before it! For without words we would all be stuck grunting and gesticulating to communicate. Books would be replaced by interpretive dance and there would be no discrete way to ask someone where the bathroom was.

On Wordy Wednesdays I shall post a random word that I like for whatever reason, and then I shall ramble on like I usually do.

In fact, today, since it's the first ever Wordy Wednesday, I shall post two words! And now, without further ado, here they are!

hirsute |ˈhərˌsoōt; hərˈsoōt; ˈhi(ə)rˌsoōt|adjectivehairy : their hirsute chests.

I liked this word because it came up when I was playing Cranium with my aunt and cousins, and I was really excited when I knew what it meant. I happened to know what it meant because I had looked it up in a thesaurus when in need of an adjective with which to insult someone. Insulting people with words they don't understand is always such fun.

gadabout |ˈgadəˌbout|nouna habitual pleasure-seeker.

This one I got by scrolling through my Mac Dictionary until I saw a word I liked the sound of. ^_^
And there we have it. Two lovely word for Wordy Wednesday.
In other news, I've deciphered the first eight bars of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I'm quite proud of myself, since I have very minimal amounts of musical skill.
I am also trying very hard to find a job. Jobs are sorely lacking up here, especially for high school graduates with sketchy amounts of work experience. But I shall persist! Because I desperately, DESPERATELY want to run to the store and buy CATCHING FIRE, and I can't do that until I get some sort of pay check.
Anyway, that's all! Got any particularly enthralling words? Post 'em! :)

Rejections and Rock Climbing

Hey, guys!

NB wasn't in love with the partial. *sigh* Ah, well. He's got nice rejection letters. They don't make you feel like decaying excrement.

*continues to shoot off queries to unsuspecting agents*

In other news, I went rock climbing this morning. My atrophied muscles are not used to such activities. They are now going into shock. Seriously, I can barely type. =P My forearm muscles are Dead. With a capital and everything.

And, um, yes. That was pretty much it. This is a short blog post. =D

ETA: Also! The Bee Killing Spray is giving me a headache, which I suspect is a bad sign. *waves goodbye to brain cells*

Round and Round the Query-Go-Round

Look at me, blogging almost every day this week! I'm quite proud of myself. ^_^

I sent out 2 more queries today. I want to send a couple more, but it's not working out so well.

One agent wants to know when/if a query is a multiple submission. This is fine. I threw in a line telling her it was. However, she also says she would like to be informed of other agents' interest. NB's got a partial (*seat bouncing*) but she can't want to know that...can she? My sensible side says no. My egotistical side says maybe/if I mentioned that she might get a touch more interested.

Another is to an agency who only lets you submit ONE query to ONE agent. No shooting a second query off to another agent at the agency if the first one rejects you. So I'm biting my nails and wondering if I should elaborate on the flattery or if one of the other agents would be a better fit.

And then ANOTHER agent is one I pulled off the list of Most Queried Agents, but she doesn't respond to non-personalized letters. I'd love to personalize it. Really, I would. But I don't know what to say. She gives very little information about herself and her preferences and I don't really want to say, "I'm querying you 'cause you were on the list of Most Queried Agents..."

And then yet two MORE agents want synopses included, and since I've been silly and haven't written one yet, I can't query them until I come up with a halfway decent synopsis.

So, yes, it's slow going.

In other news, the bees around here are going nutty. I went to McDonald's with my cousin and the kid she's babysitting this morning and they were dive-bombing us the whole way back. It was scary! Running with a two-year-old is also a touch exhausting, so I'm totally being a couch potato for the rest of the day. :)

No Sleep

Okay, so yesterday's post didn't grow, but I'm posting again today, and two post two days in a row is odd for me, so it's pretty much like I expanded on yesterday's post.

You'll have to excuse my badly worded sentences, though. I haven't slept in over 24 hours, which means I'm very fuzzy-headed.

I call it research. I've been making my characters pull a lot of sleepless nights lately. Now I know first-hand what the symptoms of No Sleep are. Brain fuzz, clumsy fingers, giddiness, slowed reaction time, general stupidity...Fun times, fun times.

This lack of sleep is due to a retirement party I was hosting last night. It was nearly a disaster. It was supposed to be a surprise and the guest of honour wound up at the wrong place because the person who was supposed to be luring him to the party didn't get the message the location had changed. It was all very exciting.

Now I can't decide whether or not to go to sleep. I'm afraid if I do, I'll wake up feeling like sludge. *ponders*

Okay, so this was a rather useless post. I promise, next time I'll talk about something literary! (OH! Like how one of the old members of my drama troupe somehow got a SF publishing contract with Random House - lucky little duck.)