daylight savings time:

The clock has dust on it; I notice this as I take it down to change the time. One hour lost. Who dusts their clocks? I don’t have time to dust my bathroom of all its toilet tissue fluff. I’m lucky if I have time to clean the toilet at all. The bathroom mirror is speckled with dried water from toothbrushes and face washes. The counter top is wiped; at least there’s that. The round vanity light bulbs are mismatched, two compact fluorescent and two (standard) ones. Time moves forward without stopping. Before you know it, you can’t even remember what old-fashioned light bulbs were called.

So begins a new 52 weeks project! (Just a few weeks late… how did it become March already!?)

This year’s project is much simpler than the last. No finding story excerpts to set up. Just a few simple minutes of my time, once a week, one “interesting” spot, and noticing things. (Note that “interesting” will be subjective, obviously – whatever is interesting to me at the time. I’ll try to adventure a little further than my messy bathroom next time, lol!) (more…)

A book title poem, for Annie.

This was much, much fun! Everyone should try it!

Bad Behavior

Jane sexes it up.
Bad behavior
for
broken angels.
Normal people don’t live like this.

The life before her eyes
was
the odyssey,
and
then we came to the end.

Black tickets
on
the road
to
where the wild things are.

If you remember back in this post, I promised a “part 2″ to my self-publishing mini-series, and yes, that’s still coming. First though, I need to retreat to my editing cave. I’m passing off my final, FINAL draft to my proof-readers NEXT WEEK! (OMG, right?) We’re like, almost there, people!

I could panic just thinking about it, which is why I’m trying not to think about it too hard, lol!

I’ve finally uploaded the rest of my Traverse City pics from last summer – the deep blue waves, the sand so white you can just tell it would be so warm and smooth between your toes. They’re very relaxing to look at, so go check those out!

So, for now, I have a guest coming to my blog tomorrow! Jenna Anderson will be here, and it’ll be my very first time hosting a visitor on my little corner of the internet, so I hope you’ll all stop by to say hello and make her feel very welcome.

Then on Friday, I’m going to start my preview series for Exactly Where They’d Fall, and you’ll get to read the whole first chapter for free! I’m going to try out Scribd for reading. Seems like a really nice reading and sharing platform. And from there, if you don’t want to read it online, I believe you can download it as a PDF and read it on your e-reader! Or hey, print it on paper too if you want!

The preview series will be the first five chapters of the book, one of them posted (for free!) every Friday leading up to Release Day!

Also, I’m not sure if it goes without saying or not, but in the weeks to come, with the preview series, or any blog entries of substance, and on Release Day of course, I would appreciate any and all sharing or FB liking or reblogging or retweeting you might feel like doing. It’s a big job, and I’m one little woman. I feel stupid and cheesy typing “PLS RT” after every Tweet or whatever, so I won’t, but just know that if you do, I’ll love you forever and ever and ever!

So if you don’t see me much on Twitter or Facebook or wherever these next couple weeks, you’ll know what I’m up to. After I get this proofing draft out to my very gracious proofreaders, I’ll have some more time for blogging again, and I’ll follow up with that “part 2″ of the self-publishing series. And making other fun goodies for Release Day, like bookmarks and key chains!

But for now, into the editing cave with me! Deep breath and think of a happy place…

He’s more like his mommy than he knows.

This was a small series of photos I found within other larger landscape photos I took in England. Most of these I hadn’t even known were there until I super-zoomed in and found these little candid moments that I never would have caught otherwise. (more…)

60 mph, white knuckles, barely enough room for two cars! 90-degree turns in the city, where I swear, people are not heeding the 30 mph speed limits! And if you were ever worried about driving on the left side of the road, or going through a roundabout, I say BAH! Try driving in the English countryside!

But the people are friendly and it’s a lovely place, really!… If you survive the roads and everything.

Picture heavy under the cut. These photos were taken between Wanborough, Marlborough, Swindon, and Bath. (Click here for the full set, 72 photos in total.) Please enjoy the following photos while I attempt to get my brain jump-started again to prepare some more verbal posts! (more…)

There is no story for my photo this week. (And by the way, I’m sure anyone following this will have noticed that I’m hopelessly behind in my weeks, with little chance of ever catching up – and I don’t really care.)

Last Friday, I passed 50K on the second draft of my novel-in-progress, and just about as fast as I crossed that line, I promptly disappeared from the internet. Work-related anyway. I took an impromptu weekend off. I wasn’t supposed to be taking the weekend off, since I still need to plump and polish this draft by about another 18,000 words, and there’s this monumental and looming deadline to finish before my kid finishes school for the summer – self-imposed, but since I’m my own employer, I’m being kind of a hard-ass about it, lol! Oh, and we’re also simultaneously planning a trip to England in these same three weeks.

Yet even with all there is left to do, my brain spit out that 50,000th word, and shut down. It felt called for, felt necessary, and so it happened. (more…)

This week’s excerpt is actually a title, from my in-progress collection of stories and poems:

How to Stand on Your Hands

notes: And so I went on a quest for the ultimate mangled dandelion. And I took a damn lot of pictures of them too! (I may or may not have even dreamed about dandelions last night… I know, that’s a bit much, isn’t it?) (more…)

Jodie was reading on the couch when Piper burst into the apartment, bringing the wind with her, smelling of dried leaves and the crispness of fall. Hayden followed behind her, tall and nervous. Jodie made men nervous. She didn’t know why.

Piper ran up the stairs. Hayden stood in the center of the room. He nodded, Jodie nodded back, the mutual acknowledgment of each other’s presence. This was the part she hated. Was she supposed to stop reading? Was she supposed to entertain him? Make jokes? It was an odd, forced kind of friendship, her roommate’s fiancé. The walls of this apartment were paper thin; she’d even heard him having sex before. Jodie would be maid of honor in this man’s wedding, next to Amelia, and Piper’s dozen-or-something sisters. Piper was making the dresses herself, both her own and for the wedding party, clouds of tulle in yellow and lavender. They’d all look like Easter eggs.

Hayden shifted his weight, cleared his throat. “You mind if I steal your girl for the night?”

Didn’t he already have her?

Jodie shrugged. Did she mind? Didn’t she mind? “Sure, have at her,” she said.

- Jodie, from chapter 1.1, Exactly Where They’d Fall

notes: Happy Easter!

Little bit of Photoshop work on this one, just for the heck of it. I felt like desaturating the colors a little (it was too bright for Jodie, lol!), and added a texture.

“It’s summertime,” she said, clutching her arms tighter as it started to rain. “We’re always busier in the summers. The new shop, and Charlotte’s about to have the babies. I have a lot on my mind. I’m not mad.”

He sighed. “Of course.” Though he wished she would just be mad, that he threw his dirty field clothes on the bed, that he walked through the house in his boots, that he put the milk carton back empty. Anything. He would be overjoyed that she was mad at him, so that it wouldn’t be something else instead.

“I’m going inside,” she said. “It’s starting to rain. Are you coming?”

He shook his head.

He wandered to his fields in the warm summer drizzle. He meant to plant a lighter crop this year, but all he gained from the lightened workload was the extra time to watch his marriage fall apart. It was too late to change his mind at this point in the season. He had what he had, and there was no going back. So he watched the wheat sway in the wind, tiny raindrops stinging his face, the wet sky feeding the soil. He reached out a hand to touch the young stalks as he passed. It amazed him that this ground was so filled with life, that anything at all on this toxic farm was able to grow.

- Matt, from book #2 (working title: Where the Universe Dwells)

notes: I am cheating the crap out of this week! I actually took this picture last summer, lol!

But I’m busy, and I’m writing, and that trumps my picture project. At least for the next few weeks until I get this novel draft done. And I will get this novel draft DONE, and to my beta readers, by June 12th! I have about eight weeks, and it’s looking possible, people! It’s gonna happen, I swear it!

And maybe this is like one of those things where if you say it out loud with enough conviction, it might actually manifest itself into existence?