Camp and Hollywood

Hi guys!

Guess what??

My mom was on TV today!!

 

Here's the deal. Our town is turning 120 this year, so they are having a super big party for it and doing all kinds of crazy stuff like a tractor parade, and steeplechase, and trail rides, and turtle races, and on and on and ooooon. They're also having a quilt show. And my mom is a quilter. (I should really do a post about how awfully crazy it is having a quilter for a mom). She likes to make quilts and she's made several for my minions and I, and baby quilts for friends etc. So the town asked her to make a quilt for them to auction off. And she made it. Has tons of pictures on it from businesses in town all the way back to the 1800's. (There was a crazy amount of research involved) They also asked her to go on our local news and help advertise the quilt and the party. So she did. And me and the minions got to go with her. We got our weather man to wave at us, which was cool. One of the ladies who hosts the morning show also used to be an anchor for my favorite radio station, so it was cool to put a face to the voice.

We're all certain it's only a matter of time until the Hollywood talent scouts come banging on our door demanding to talk to mom and any other attractive, talented people living in the house. (Which is all of them, I'm just saying ;))

I've also joined Camp Nanowrimo, thanks to Andrea. Basically it's a website where you can talk to other writers, track your word count, and other writerly things, all while trying to finish the first draft of a brand new novel in the month of July. I've decided to work on The Dynamic Duo, since it's pretty much the only story idea that is developed enough to even attempt work on, yet hasn't actually been started in any way.

I may be posting sporadic this week because the county fair is coming up fast and I have horses that aren't even close to being ready yet, so I'll be busy practicing on that.

Happy Monday!

It's A Jungle Out There

Hi guys! Do you want to know why I didn't post yesterday, or even show up on any form of internet site at all??
I went to the zoo!!!
You know its crazy, my sisters and I were discussing how lots of kids books focus on the characters first trip to the zoo. Like, first grade trip. Not college freshman first trip. But I completely enjoyed myself and I was able to act like a total first grader, minus the whiney "Are we there yet?? My legs hurt. Buy me ice cream!!" side that I heard from all the regular age first timers around me.
I took lots of pictures, mostly with my ipod the far away shots didn't turn out very great. Luckily, Minion 1 is excellent at photography and she brought four camera's between all of us, so I've got plenty of pictures to show you guys. They're in no particular order mind you. My computer loads them up funny and I'm too lazy to put them together in groups XP They're cool in a jumbled mess too!
Speaking of which-

His eye glowed from the inside. He was creepy cool.    Some of them are so photogenic!

Hey guys....

 

Hakuna Mattata

 

This turtle was the same size as the sharks it was swimming with

He grabbed the bag and threw it on his shoulders. Like, dig my cape.

           Octopus/squid thing                                              I loved all the different jelly fish.

                                                            Photo courtesy of Minion 1.
                                                                 Speaking of minions...

 

                         
                                              You cannot tell me this fish doesn't look like Gru

   

They had a swamp room that was totally hillbilly themed.

This guy was mad. And like five feet long.

                                                   Penguins!! It was snowing in their room!

                   The fish and the monkeys race to get the bread. The fish wins, by the way.

All I could think of was Prince of Persia.

 

                                                    He obviously wanted his picture taken.

 

You can't really see it, but those fish were literally as tall as my dad. So like nearly 6 feet long.

Go ahead. Try and deny the resemblance.

 

 

 

Jelly?!?!? Sweeeet.

 

Does this butterfly not look steampunked? I will put it in my Beauty and the Beast retelling!

 

All teasing aside, it was awesome to be able to go with my family to the zoo and see all of God's fantastic creations. I loved all of them so much...well, except maybe the bats, and the giant furry spiders, and things with names like Screaming Hairy Armadillo. But seriously, God has made such fantastic stuff, and I just saw a piece of that at the zoo. While I loved them all, I think the aquarium was my favorite. What blew my mind was that the fish were so colorful. I mean, they were so bright and shiny, like I haven't even seen colors like that in the world above water. Flowers are pretty, and humans can make some pretty bright shades, but the fish were just out of this world. And you know what? They live underwater. Where most of them wont ever be seen by people Most of them live down deep enough that there isn't even any light to see by. Yet they are so gorgeous. It just shows how caring God really is, that he made even fish that weren't ever going to be seen so stunningly beautiful. It's just amazing to me.

 

Another moral to the story- forget history coming to life at the museum, all of your favorite kid movies come to life at the zoo.

 

A Post Full of Links

Hi guys! So, I've got a little bit to say about a lot of things. Ready? Fasten your seatbelts.

First off, Blaze has been sent out and I have been utterly thrilled with the feedback thus far. There's a lot more to work on than I originally thought, but that's okay because it is so nice to have a readers input on it instead of my brain that already knows all the details so it just fills them in for me whether I actually wrote it on the page or not.

The contests from Teen Words of Steel  are back, and there are some really cool prompts to put together this week. I don't have the slightest clue what to do with them, so you guys need to go check them out and come up with something so I can read them later this week :)

I have also come up with an idea for my Beauty and The Beast retelling for RoogleWood Press   that I will hopefully be entering later this December. I made a Pinterest board for it here if you want to check it out. I may be posting snippets later on once I actually start it. Right now it's just a board and one page list of details.

While I don't have an idea for the Teen Words of Steel contest, I DO have an idea for this months Chatterbox so you guys will probably be seeing that in the next few days.

I ordered NeedtoBreathe's CD and it should be here any day!!

As of this morning, I am caught up on all of my schoolwork until next Sunday. Which makes me one happy camper.

It has rained every day for the last four, so I have not gotten any hay piled yet, but dad did get some done, and I will hopefully get a field done this afternoon.

Something that you might find interesting. The other day I was in a vehicle with Minion 2 for hours, with no radio or anything else, so we were playing games. The rhyming game...

"I'm thinking of a cat."

"Well I'm thinking of a bat."

She started it off with Spaghetti and the game quickly got boring.

 

So then we played the game where I say the first sentence of a story, then she comes up with the next one and it goes back and forth.

What I started out as a story about a girl named Sophie ended up being about a mole who chewed Cinderella out.

The next story was supposed to be scary. I started it with a face in the mirror. She ended it with the dog jumping into the bathtub and saying hello.

 

Just a little bit disgusted by her story telling skills, I told her to be quiet and listen, and started telling her a story. I hadn't ever had the idea before, I was just talking and seeing what would happen.

It ended up being a horror story about a six year old prison inmate.

It completely freaked her out and she demanded I finish it and write it all down to read to her as a bedtime story.

So I did.

It ended up being around twenty pages long and thoroughly creepy.  I think my parents would question my sanity if they ever read it.

That's why it's a bedtime story.

Parents aren't around.

So I'll be reading that to them this week hopefully, and if they give it the thumbs up I might share some of it with you guys just for fun. Or maybe I'll save it till Halloween...

I got the Incarceron series in the mail last week. Minion 1 split the cost with me, so now I'm reading them for the second time and I'm just as in love with Kiero as ever. I'll probably do a review on them, and I'm also really close to being done with The Selection, so I'll share my thoughts on it too. Whether you want to hear them or not.

So there you have it folks. I made a big huge long post out of basically nothing. Enjoy.

The End

 

I did it guys.

It's done.

Yesterday morning, around 10 o'clock.

I finished typing Blaze.

All of it.

Every last word.

And I am so thrilled.

I was still happy reading through the end the second time.

It's a great feeling.

 

Mom and Dad went off to get some stuff from town, the minions were goofing off and I was done with school, so I got busy typing and I finished it before dinner, and still got the house picked up for mom and dad coming home.

They never knew I was on the computer ;)

 

Then do you know what I did?

Right immediately after I typed THE END ?

I got on Pinterest.

It's a writerly thing to do.

Finish a story, you need a reward of some kind.

So I got on Pinterest and found this.

 

I'm sorry guys, but he looks so much like Blade it hurts.

So I pinned it to his board.

And got a thorough scolding from my roleplay buddy.

She told me it's the end. And I thought, but isn't the end where we begin?

 

She told me I had to finish the other stories I've got. That is was ridiculous to start anything more. That there was no way I could possibly add on enough to get to a point where I could make that picture a reality. That I should save it for a sequel, and if no one survived to make it to the sequel, I should consider a novella. But not now. Later.

I'm sure she knows what's best for me.

But you can't blame a girl for dreaming, right?

 

Anyway, after reading through the whole thing, I think I'm comfortable letting other human eyes see it. (If you don't have human eyes, I might be able to make a few exceptions) So if you were interested in reading Blaze, let me know where you want it sent to, and what format. I'm not able to convert it to Kindle format sadly, so it would have to be a word attachment, or just an email body. I'll also warn you. Half way through typing it, my spell check somehow got turned off and I have yet to figure out how to turn it back on, so there may be some words with the letters siwtched around.

 

Catcha later!

*Yawn*

Hi guys. I'm exhausted. Last night Mom and Dad were out baling hay

(see picture below for explanation)

I was tired before I went to bed. You should have seen me in choir practice last night. This is a very accurate description of me and Minion 1. (I'm Holmes, BTW)

I went up to bed at ten o'clock. The Minions stayed downstairs watching...I can't remember what they were watching...Oh! It was Saving Mr. Banks.

They stayed up watching Saving Mr. Banks and didn't come upstairs till about 10:35. Not too bad. Then at 10:45 the weather radio went off downstairs.

Thanks Minion 1, for leaving that on.

So instead of going down and shutting it off, she woke me up and told me it was on.

I very kindly told her to go shut it off herself and leave me alone.

After that I tossed and turned. All. Night. Long. My legs were hurting really bad for some reason and I couldn't sleep for longer than about twenty minutes at a time. Around midnight it started thundering and lightning. So that wasn't helping either. I came downstairs at 3:30 to get a drink. Usually walking around a little will make me tired and I'll fall asleep immediately. But it didn't work.

So I just gave up a few hours later and started roleplaying. Now I'm tired. I barely made it through reading a chapter on personality types without falling asleep. When I came downstairs my mom and dad asked me what was wrong.

I'm 17 pages away from being done typing Blaze and I'm going to try my hardest to get it typed up today. If I don't fall asleep on the keyboard. Or go crazy.

I'm also thinking I need to clean my room today. It wasn't too bad and then the Minions had a dress up party in there. So now it's not too good. Maybe that will wake me up. Or Skillet. Or Thousand Foot Krutch.

This post is just running in circles. You should know how tired I am. I'm not even doing any real writing. Just finding gifs to piece together the random strands of thought I've gotten out onto the page that accurately convey my mental state right now. I should probably, get off now...