Bam! Take that NaNoWriMo!

Shabam! I wrote 2,141 words today! Suck it NaNo!

Okay, so it is just the first day, but for a girl that has never written a novel before, I take pride in pretty much any amount of words on a page towards that end. And hey, they even kind of sound like a novel already!

So yeah, first day down. Though I will say, writing is actually pretty hard guys. It was difficult to force myself to just settle down and write. I think the hardest part was when I was attempting to write dialogue scenes. The line breaks kept jarring me out of it. And I would sit there staring thinking, “Okay, now what does he say back to her?” Then I was worried about how much I should describe, because I really, really don’t want to fall into the tired fantasy trope of being overly descriptive. That is allll over the fantasy genre. Though I might have gone a little too far in the opposite direction. So I think tomorrow I will go back in and add a little description so everyone gets the feel of this one creepy goblin that is part of the inciting incident of my story.

Goal for tomorrow: Write another 2,000 words!

If any of you are doing NaNoWriMo with me, comment below and tell me about your experience so far!! And if you wanna be my writing buddy my screen name on the site is: csadin.

Now I am going to go reward myself with some Buffy. Catch you guys on the flip side!

Line ‘Em Up!!

Okay, so here we are. Like just a few hours away from NaNoWriMo. I have been pretty solidly writing this novel of mine in my head for the last two days. Writing as I fall asleep, writing in the shower…etc. I am super geared up for this! I basically know what my first two to three chapters are! So now I just need to be able to write this.

So tomorrow, right after work, I’m sitting down and I am going to write this thing. Write the hell out of it.

Yeah! I can do this!

But now, I’m going to go to bed and get a great night’s sleep so that I can be refreshed and happy tomorrow. Perfect mood/state of being for writing!

Also, if you’re wondering… this is a little synopsis of my book:

 

Everything was going well for Razi, she’d managed to find and hold down a job for more than a couple of weeks, find and acquire a decent apartment, and best of all, no one had figured out that she was only half human. Until one day a changeling walked in the coffee shop’s bright blue door, looking almost exactly like her friend Kala. Almost.

In order to save her friend, she must travel into Faerie and get Kala back home before three days are up, or Kala will be lost forever.

 

Comment and let me know what you think! And for everyone else who is doing NaNoWriMo, good luck! We’re in this together!!

 

Here We Go…

Okay, so one of my friends posted on her Facebook that she had signed up for NaNoWriMo, and seeing as how I have been rolling around attempting to write a book in my head I immediately followed suit and signed up.

Oh god what have I done?

So here it is. I am broadcasting my official bid at this insanity. I’m thinking some kind of fantasy novel with some sexy time parts (probably because I have been watching/reading the vaginal fantasy book club novels!!). Sounds like a plan? Yeah, sounds like a plan.

Book books books!

Okay, so I just joined Goodreads, which is basically a social networking site for people that read and like to review and talk about books! Also, you can like follow your favorite authors and see what they are reading, reviewing, and doing.

Even though I love reading, like a lot, the real reason that I joined the site was because of Vaginal Fantasy. Vaginal Fantasy is the book club started by Felicia Day and three of her buddies, Bonnie Burton, Kiala Kazabee, and Veronica Belmont. The book club explores “vaginal fantasy” books, which are supernatural romance novels! So each month, they assign books, it used to be only one book and now they have a main and an alt, and then on the last Tuesday of every month they have a Google+ hangout where they all drink and discuss the book. Aka, it’s awesome. And hysterical. And yeah, watch it.

But the best part about it is that on Goodreads they have forums where everyone can talk and discuss the books! It’s fun! They also take questions and monitor what everyone is saying on Twitter and Goodreads about the books during their livestream, which also sounds like a lot of fun! I’m going to try to watch it live this month! I’ve already read the alt book for this month “Master of Crows“, I’ve started interacting on the forums, and maybe I can even set up an in person meetup! Some cities already have them at coffee shops and the like!

So basically I’m excited. I mean what else do I have to do while I bide my two more months alone before I can move back home to my family and my fiance?

Musings Of Alone-ness

Alone is a funny state of being. Sometimes when I come home, I think about the fact that if Someone broke in and kidnapped me, it would probably be at least a day before anyone realized I was gone. It’s depressing and just a little scary. Which is probably why every time I come home I lock my locks and throw the chain.

But the funny thing is that even though none of my friends live in this city, I’m not alone. I talk to my love everyday, multiple times a day. I talk to my friends. I talk to my parents. My boss is an amazing lady that is probably just as paranoid as me and would notice if I missed work and didn’t call in or email in. She’d think that was weird. And it would be weird.

One time my best girl friend and I synced up Netflix and started watching Season 1, Episode 1 of Buffy. We Skyped while we watched it, so that I could see every time she smiled, frowned, laughed. It was like we were sitting in the same room, watching together.

My guy friend and I watch football together. I mean we talk on vent while we are both watching our games. We yell, laugh, chat, and comfort/congratulate each other respectively. Again, it’s like I’m hanging out with him, just chillin, enjoying each others conversation and company.

And I’m making friends. I went out Wednesday with a girl that is fun and kind of enjoys my weird quirks. We had drinks and lingered over out dinners, tater tots dipped in mac and cheese, sausage and fries. Saturday I went out with the couple I met at a bar and we went to an Octoberfest. The fest was meh, but hanging out was great. We dissected the fashion of people around us and computers. Even though they know I’m leaving in November to go home, they are excited for me. They want to cram in time to hang out and show me around the city. Next weekend, we’re hopefully going to a college football game together. Oh and me and that friend are going to go to dinner again on Wednesday to celebrate her birthday.

So really, I’m not alone. Sure, when I’m maudlin, I moan that I’m the only one here, with no friends. But if I’m truly being honest with myself, I’m surrounded by friends and family. They’re virtually all around me.

GenCon

So yeah, I just went to my first con: GenCon. It was pretty awesome. For so many more reasons than just the con. For instance, I got to meet some of the people that help make Geek&Sundry, which is awesome! I even went to dinner, lunch, and morning coffee with Beverly, who is the marketing director for the company. And I met Bo, who is the Assistant Producer for the show, which is awesome!! Both are amazing and awesome people. Bo used to be a game promoter, so he knows like tons of developers and knows a ton of games, which is awesome. I love board games!!

And then, no big deal, I got to have coffee  and even hang out with Pat Rothfuss. Yeah. We talked and stuff. Like normal people and junk. And if you don’t know who Pat is, check out his blog and his books. He is an amazing author. Definitely one of the best I’ve ever read.

I got to play a few different games while I was there. I got to play the new Game of Thrones board game (while dressed up as Dany) and it was pretty awesome. Also, I played Smashup, which I wasn’t that big a fan of. But I also got to demo the new mobile based game SolForge, which is by the people that did Ascension. It was pretty cool! They have a Kickstarter too! I definitely need to go give them money!

But yeah, best three days ever! The energy was amazing. Definitely kind of a let down when I returned home to my apartment alone. Especially after being surrounded by people and being so excited the whole weekend. The low was extreme. But it was worth it. So, so worth it. Perhaps after I completely recover I will share more specific stories of my experience!

Outings

I’m making friends!

So I know I told you about the couple that I met in the bar the first night I ventured out. Well they are pretty cool. Just this past Saturday, we went out to a beer tasting festival together! It was awesome. All you can taste beer, and as a lightweight, I was definitely toasty pretty much the entire day. We started the day with a plan of attack, get there an hour early to line up. I was first in line!

I live about an hours walk from the site of the beer tasting, so I decided to walk there. The nice thing is that pretty much the entire walk was on the really nice walking path called the Monon Trail. While I walked, I chatted with a friend from home, which was awesome. I am really happy that I am managing to stay connected with my friends that live in other cities. It really has made me so happy that both I and them are making an effort. I don’t know why I’m so excited about this, but I think there was definitely a fear that I’d fall off the face of the earth and really just live here all by myself, lonely. But it didn’t happen! Maybe it’s also that it always feels nice to know that you are loved and missed.

Anyway, so I was walking to the tasting and when I got there, I saw a huge line waiting for the fest. Huge. I was honestly a little disappointed. I thought for sure there weren’t going to be that many people who came an hour early to get in line! Thankfully, the line was for the VIP people who got to go in an hour early. I figured that out by talking with the volunteer workers, and they joked around with me a little. But then they told me to go and stand by the stop sign that was across from the front of the line. “You’re first in the regular line! We’ll line up everyone behind you!” So that was pretty cool.

Then I met up with my new friends! They, like me, were dressed for the heat. And we both were chugging water before the event, because beer plus heat equals major dehydration. I even brought a snack! We chatted and joked around and decided to plan out exactly where we would go first to taste beer. We decided to veer off the main path in hopes that the crowds wouldn’t be very big over in that part. Little did we know that our “off path” was actually a huge part of the event! But initially at least, there were definitely less people than the main drag. Or what we thought was the main drag.

The best beer that I tasted that day was a chocolate beer. It was a light beer, but chocolate. It literally tasted like a chocolate cream soda. It was amazing. If I could just have that for dessert every night of the week, I would be a happy girl. The best thing about it was that you could really, really taste the chocolate. And it tasted like a milk chocolate. Amazing. I also had a peach beer. That’s right, peach beer. Also wonderful. It was really light and fizzy and very refreshing. Talk about the perfect thing for a hot summer day. Unfortunately both of the breweries are over an hour away from me. So yeah. That sucks. Though I might just have to drive an hour there and an hour back for some growlers of that chocolate beer. Yeah. It was that good.

We also met up with a friend of the couple. He was really nice too. They are just in all very fun people to be around. And woo, we were all nicely toasty. Have I mentioned that we were toasty? We ate once while in the fair, and the prices weren’t bad! $5 for a huge hot dog and some chips. Super reasonable. And then we ate at a gyros place after we had exited the fair. Oh man, this gyro was delish. It had french fries in it! It was the best surprise ever!

Nicely, my couple friends drove me home instead of me having to take a cab.

So yeah, I’m doing things! More than just sitting at home watching Battlestar Galactica or playing video games. Though I do that a lot too.
I also went out with the girl that I met by the pool twice! We had pizza and beer one night and she also invited me out with her boyfriend and all of his friends from the gym that he owns! That was also a very fun night. There were like 30 people there in that group and a lot of us just talked and laughed and had a few drinks. It was really awesome. And they are pretty awesome too. I even got to meet their dog! He’s soooo cute!

So anyway, doing things. Making friends. Seeing a bit of the city. It’s good.

Thr3e Wise Men Brewery

Okay, totally didn’t expect to have something to write about again so soon after the last post. But there’s life for you sometimes.

So yesterday night, even though I was terrified, I decided that I should go out to a bar by my lonesome and try to make friends. Good idea because I literally know absolutely no one in this town (well except for my boss and the people that work around me, but they all have kids and aren’t quite on page with a girl right out of college). So I surfed around on the interwebs to try and find a place that wasn’t a dance club, but wasn’t going to have an age demographic of 60+.

I settled on the Thr3e Wise Men Brewery. It had great reviews and they make a blackberry beer! And anyone who offers beer in a “growler” (a 64oz glass jug) is pretty a okay by me. So shy and kind of shaking on the inside, I went.

I sat at the bar, because how could I meet people if I had a table all to myself? I sat down and the nice bartender came over and first asked me for my license and then asked me if I had ever been there before. My prompt reply: “No! Actually I just moved here like a week ago!”

“Oh wow really? Where from?”

“Chicago!”

“Uh huh, then why does your liscense say Louisiana?”

“Cause I’m from New Orleans originally!”

He smiled and laughed a bit and then promptly began to explain a little about how they brew most of the beers there themselves and gave me a menu. He started to walk away, but I stopped him because, as I told him “I actually already know what I want. I looked you up on the internet.” Thankfully, I managed to stop myself from continue to babble what went on in my head “Well not you specifically, but the bar. I mean I don’t even know your name so how could I look you up?” (imaginary awkward laugh) Showing amazing restraint, I managed to just order my beer, a Two Lucys Blackberry Wheat.

Yeah, it was pretty good.

As he came back to give me a humongous mason jar of water, the guy sitting next to me asked him what kind of beer it was. But then he turned to me and said “Oh man, that was rude, I could have just asked you.” I lit up with hope, oh man, maybe this was going to work! Maybe I’m actually going to make a friend! He’s sitting with a group, a girl and another guy! Maybe they will be cool and we can all hang out together!

This flashed through my head as I nervously giggled and said “Oh no, that’s okay!”(awkward pause that probably felt longer than it was) “It’s good though!”

He nodded and promptly turned back to his friends. Ouch, burn. My hope died a little, I lowered my head and started to pretend to peruse the other beers.

But right then, the bartender came over and started talking with the people on my other side. The lady was saying that she loves IPAs and the bartender was agreeing. As I listened, I shook my head and made a face, and then the bartender included me in the conversation. And then after he left, the couple and I started talking! First about beer and then about Chicago a little bit (cause he overheard me telling the bartender where I moved from) and then about jobs, and then about football (yeah, he went to Purdue when Drew Brees went to Purdue. He met Drew Brees. Friends for life.) and then about more and more things until two hours had passed!

As they were getting ready to leave, he went to the bathroom, and she and I were talking, and I said “Well if this isn’t too weird, I could give you my number and whenever you guys are in the area…”

“Yes! I will give you my number too! And I don’t know why, but my email address too.”

Yeah, I got them digits.

I’m excited. And like a dork, I emailed her right when I got home. So night one, on my own, at a bar/social setting, I think I can chalk it up to a success. Even if I never see that couple again, at least I didn’t sit silent, staring at sports games that I don’t care about for 30 minutes and then left.

Entering the Real World

Hello all,

So as almost every blogger says at one point (and I think I’ve actually already said it numerous times), it’s been a while. But for once I have a good reason for it! My last post was in March, and in March, I graduated. So of course, with the economy being as it is, I was a little stressed out. I was searching for jobs left and right and despairing that the time, effort, and money that I put into my college education wouldn’t actually be worth anything.

But it was! I got a job! And it’s in my field! Glory glory hallelujah!

I just started working last week for Tribune Broadcasting in a new and developing position: syndication. So basically I am watching all 13 Tribune TV stations, monitoring their content, what videos they have, what videos they are planning to get, and then I not only make sure that our syndication partners get these videos, but I also share them around within the other TV stations in the Tribune Company.

Add to this, I am also starting to run the Tribune Broadcasting Twitter and Facebook. Oh yeah, and then I am also going to be editing together footage from stations and tracking and creating national segments, whenever there is an issue that is affecting multiple locations or the entire United States.

Already I’m in love. I love that I get to do multiple things in one job. But I think what I love the most about this job is that I am getting to help create it. My bosses are so wonderful that they are letting me be creative, ask questions, and then suggest more things for myself to take on. I’ve already suggested the latter two responsibilities, and I’ve only been working for a week, so who knows what else I’ll be doing in a month, two months, or a half a year.

Long story short, I’m excited and I feel incredibly lucky to a) have a job right out of college and b) have a job where people believe in me and allow me to be creative.

Soon I will be making a tab for what I’m doing at Tribune Broadcasting, but I will also be posting videos from the Tribune that I think are great, videos that I have created, and in general updates on what I’m doing.

So stay tuned!

🙂

Character Study: Lucas Neff takes a Break from Television’s “Raising Hope” to Bring his New Play, “The Last Duck,” Home

New article up for Newcity Magazine! For this one, I got to talk with the playwright Lucas Neff, most well known for his part on the TV series “Raising Hope.” He told me a bit about his new play “The Last Duck.” I also got to talk with the director of the play, Marti Lyons.

You can find the article here.

Check it out!