Trip to the EMP and ALA
Source: Uploaded by user via Chelsea on Pinterest
Went to the EMP/Sci-fi Museum here in Seattle this week. The sci-fi museum is probably my favorite museum ever because, well, to be perfectly honest, because it has things from TV. And I love things from TV! I mean, just look at that Dalek! I got to see that in real life and it was so amazing. Kinda shabby up close–was made in 1988–but still one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.
Another highlight from the trip was seeing Mr. Pointy and Nighthawk, two of the stakes used on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (I mean, you remember Mr. Pointy, don’t you?) I stared at these things for way too long! There was supposed to be a spellbook from Buffy on display, too, but it had been put away “for conservation.”
Source: Uploaded by user via Chelsea on Pinterest
There were lots of other cool things, too, like Superman’s costume from Superman IV, Shaun of the Dead’s shirt, and this creepy Pon Farr perfume I saw in the gift shop:
Source: Uploaded by user via Chelsea on Pinterest
You can see more pics over on my Pinterest board.
This weekend was also ALA Midwinter here in Seattle. Got to hang out with lots of people and scored a bunch of ARCs. Didn’t get any writing done (sad), but feel refreshed and excited about books in general.
Gamification, Behaviorism, and My Cat
This week in my Meaningful Gamification class, we’re studying behaviorism and how rewards are used to affect behavior. So basically people have studied how doling out rewards/in what ways they’re doled out affects learning. So if you have someone push a button to get a reward, but they only get a reward at one minute intervals, then they learn not to bother pushing the button until that one minute mark. But if you make the rewards come at random times, so that the person never knows when pushing the button will get them something, then they learn that behavior really well and it becomes an addictive “checking” habit.
When I was listening to that part of the lecture, my first thought was, “Wow, that sounds annoying. What a stupid thing to get hooked on.” And then of course I realized that it sounds EXACTLY like me checking my email. I think most of us can relate. And if you’ve ever gotten a really good email–whatever that might be to you–that gives you a really good spike in happy chemicals, then it becomes even harder to quit. Mostly, though, it doesn’t matter if I ever get the reward of an email or not–checking for it has become an addiction and just the hope of having a message keeps me going. If I leave for a few days and don’t check my email, then I break that habit a little and I don’t feel the need to check once I get home. I always feel at that point like I could just walk away from it. But then I get curious and want to check, just once, just to see… and it’s a slippery slope from there. (I read once in an entrepreneurial magazine that it’s recommended you check your email no more than four times a day, so it doesn’t become stressful. I think I’ll start by cutting back to four times an hour.)
And it’s not just me and the other email/Facebook/Twitter addicts out there, by my cat, too. One of my cats, Kitten, saw a particularly
interesting skittery bug in the corner of the bathroom once, maybe twice, and now he’s hooked. No matter how many times he doesn’t see a bug in the corner, he can’t stop checking for it. And every time he checks, even if he comes up empty, it seems to reinforce the behavior, making him just want to do it more. Every time he follows me into the bathroom (he’s also obsessed with following me around everywhere, so maybe he’s prone to addictive behavior–I don’t know), he goes right to that corner and checks it out. Sometimes he’s in there just staring into the corner, hoping and waiting. And I often think, “Wow, that is sad!” And then I wonder if it’s really any sadder than checking the internets over and over. I mean, I’m pretty sure all my precious emails are a little more important than the possibility of there being a bug in the corner. But as much as I don’t care about chasing bugs, I’m sure Kitten is equally unimpressed by chasing emails. If getting to see a bug gives him the same spike of happiness, then is it really any different?
I Exist Again!
As of now I just finished my last final for summer semester! Now I have two weeks off before it all starts up again…
Book wise, I have not forgotten about you all who are diligently waiting for The Trials of Renegade X. I’ve had to put it on hold for a bit while I work on finishing up my dark YA fantasy, Fire and Chasm, which needs to go back out on sub. And I’ve been working with the amazing Karen Kincy (author of Other, Bloodborn, and the upcoming Foxfire) on the Steampunk Book of Awesome. Two books at once is about all I can handle, but as soon as I finish up Fire and Chasm, I’ll be back to working on the Renegade X sequel.
Knitting wise, I am working on my first original pattern (I’ve only made crochet patterns), and am also dying to make this Louhi coat. It’s the long gray one that looks really archaic and cool. I’m finishing up a cape right now and this hoodie (as soon as I actually buy the rest of the yarn I need), but man do I want to cast on and start that Louhi coat! It turns out I like making capes and coats and cloaks and things. And hoods. I can’t own enough coats and it turns out I can’t make enough of them either.
Life Changer – Writing sans Internet
Once upon a time, in 2004, in a faraway land called Bellingham, WA, where the sky, the earth, and the sea are all the same shade of gray, I got it into my head that I wanted a portable writing device. I had a desktop at the time and I wanted to be able to write anywhere, whether that meant when I was out of the apartment or just when I was sitting on the couch. I did a lot of research and discovered the NEC Mobile Pro. (Which, as you can see if you follow the link, is also gray.) It was super portable, had an actual keyboard (not full size, but it worked), and it turned on and off instantly, which meant no waiting for my computer to boot up in order to write down any brilliant plot ideas I had at one in the morning.
I got a refurbished one off of eBay. It had a spot where you could plug in your dial up internet (LOL), and the one I got came with a WiFi card so you could connect to the network, even if it was kind of slow. But I never ended up using the internet on it. It was a little tiny box with Pocket Word and a word count meter and almost nothing else. There were no distractions, and it changed my life.
Or at least my writing life, which was pretty much the same thing. Not only was it light and portable and I could sit wherever I wanted with it or write in the quiet room at the university library, but I became way more productive. And it’s not that I’d never experienced periods of high productivity with my writing, even with the internet, but it was so much easier to get into that mode without having the option of turning to distractions every time I got stuck.
In the summer of 2007, the same summer I finally graduated college and the same summer that the last Harry Potter book came out, I wrote The Rise of Renegade X, all on that little computer. Then, two years later after I’d sold the book and gotten paid for it, I bought a shiny new laptop. I love my shiny not-so-new-anymore laptop that literally sparkles in the sunlight (there are blue sparkles on the lid, but they only show up in direct sunlight), and at the time I’d badly needed a computer that actually functioned, since my desktop was, on its good days, barely still functioning.
So I got the laptop, and it did all the computery things I wanted it to do, like play games and play videos (with sound! and without blue screening at random times!) and check my email 1,000 times a day. And gradually I stopped using my MobilePro. My laptop didn’t have a spot for the sync cable, my MobilePro had no USB ports, and my laptop couldn’t read the card that the MobilePro could actually save to, at least not without hooking up a separate card reader, and the card itself was unreliable and would frequently forget everything that I’d saved on it.
Anyway, since then I’ve been writing exclusively on my laptop, which has about a million distractions on it, including the internet, which I can’t stay away from. And if it’s not the internet, then it’s Spider Solitaire. And lately I’ve been especially prone to these distractions and I have a lot of writing projects I’m not making enough progress on, if any. So I decided it was time to go back to an internet-less computer.
I did tons of research and got this slightly used HP Mini for a great deal on eBay:
This netbook ended up being the perfect combo of everything I wanted. USB ports, card reader, runs actual Windows (instead of CE) so it can handle Open Office and doesn’t screw up formatting when I’m passing files between computers. It’s lightweight and gets almost 10 hours off one battery charge and it comes out of hibernating instantly, and the boot up time when I turn it on is super fast, too. And the keyboard, which you can see in this next picture, is just how I wanted it. Chicklet style with a hard base.
(As you can see in this pic, I am clearly working hard on The Trials of Renegade X.)
I uninstalled any unnecessary programs, deleted all the games, and left the whole thing not connected to the network. It has my writing programs and that’s pretty much it. It’s amazing how big a difference not having those distractions makes! Instead of being unfocused and looking for ways to procrastinate, I’m actually, you know, working.
Sometimes it pays to know what works best for you. If the internet is there, I will poke at it. I won’t be able to leave it alone, and I know this about myself. And it can make working on my laptop a source of stress. In contrast, the netbook feels like a quiet, stress-free workspace that is just me and my books and the tools to make them better.
I’m Only Happy When It Rains – A NW Girl’s Ballad
So you know that Garbage song, I’m Only Happy When It Rains? Yeah, well, it took me forever to realize that song was about being emo. Not like I’m actually only happy when it rains, but when you grow up in the NW, especially in some sort of black hole rain shadow, a rainy day is so comforting. I got on this subject because yesterday it rained, and it was cold and chilly and wet and we had the windows open so all of that could blow in. A good rainy day, where you can hear the rain outside and smell it in the air, always makes me feel safe and like everything is right with the world. It’s the kind of thing that makes you say, in all seriousness, “Wow, it’s a beautiful day today,” when you get up in the morning and everything is wet and cold and nostalgic.
And it’s not like I like being wet and cold or anything. It’s funny how this kind of weather reminds me of walking to school back in junior high, and while I don’t remember particularly enjoying that part of my day–especially if it involved cold drops of water pouring over me–but the same weather now can make me think of those times and only pull out the good stuff, like the way the rain makes me feel so alive.
I have a vitamin D deficiency, and some days, despite taking supplements, I sit here longing for the sun like nobody’s business. I feel like some withering old plant dying in the corner. And sometimes I think maybe one of these days I’m going to have to relocate to a place with actual sunlight. And then a rainy day comes along and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t ever leave here.
“My wings are so pretty!” :/
So I was at the store earlier today and saw one of the horrendously non-canon toys Hasbro makes for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. They have a talking Princess Celestia who is not only the wrong color (she’s white, not pink, in the show), but when you press the button sticking out of her flank, she says the stupidest, most vapid things that are SO NOT LIKE HER in the show AT ALL. When I pushed the button, she said, “My wings are so pretty!” And I laughed out loud in the store because it was just so wrong. I pushed it again and her wings lit up with flashing lights and she said, “I will light the way.”
Princess Celestia is normally the wise Christopher Robin type character of the show who’s older and more level-headed than most of the other characters. The Gandalf, the Dumbledore. You get the idea. Imagine Dumbledore saying, “My wings are so pretty!” like he means it.
I mean, WTF? Where do they come up with these awful toys? It’s like they’re designed by people who have not only never seen the show, but were maybe shown a five second glimpse of what the character looked like, then, a month later, told to remake the character from memory. O__o
Would I have liked this toy as a kid? Maybe. I would have been happy to have a pony princess who was both a unicorn and a pegasus, and the light up wings would have earned it major points. But the fact that she’s not canon would not have sat well with me. The pink body, the completely wrong colored hair… That would have bothered the hell out of me!
Here’s a convenient video of all her sayings that I found on YouTube:
In Which Our Brave Heroine Becomes an Entrepreneur
I have meant to post a million times these last couple weeks, but it kept getting away from me. Blog posts are always skittering away as soon as I turn on the light. Or, in a less creepy metaphor, they’re like Lucy and the football.
Anyway, I relaunched my Etsy shop this past week and applied for my business license! Applying for a license was actually pretty easy–I just filled out a form and paid a small fee–but it felt pretty cool to declare myself a business. Here’s a screenshot of my Etsy shop:
If you live in the NW, I got an artist’s table at GeekGirlCon, August 11th and 12th. Come stop by and say hello!
I also went to Comicon a few weeks ago, and it was amazing! I hung out with author pal Karen Kincy and got to meet Tara Strong, the voice of Twilight Sparkle (and Batgirl in Batman: the Animated Series, Timmy in Fairly Oddparents, Rikku in FFX, Bubbles in Powerpuff Girls, Harley in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, and she’s been in about a million other things, too). She was so nice and great to see in person! I gave her a stuffed Twilight Sparkle I made her and she was amazed and hugged it and let me take pics!
John DiMaggio, the voice of Bender on Futurama, was in the next booth over, leaving voicemails for fans from an angry Bender. I got to go to the Futurama panel as well as the Batman panel, and everyone was amazing. I’m definitely hoping to go again next year!
I’m back!
What? You didn’t know I was gone? Well, I was. My lack of posting this past week or so was due to me temporarily joining the 9 – 5 world. Or, technically, the 8 – 4:30 world. Now I’ve returned to the ranks of the gainfully happily self-employed.
This is going to be a brief post because I have a literature review assignment due on Saturday and I, er, haven’t picked a topic yet. Hence, a bulleted list to create the appearance of being brief:
- Harper Madigan: Junior High Private Eye is now out in paperback! The paperback is gorgeous. Here are some pictures to show you just how gorgeous.
For those of you holding out for a signed copy, you’ll be able to order one from me very soon. Like, starting next week.
- I heard from my cover artist for The Trials of Renegade X, and the cover art is almost done!!! If you want to see it before the general public, be sure to sign up for my newsletter so when everyone else sees it, you can be like, “Oh, that? That is so last week.” Except you’ll probably get to see it more like two weeks early, but saying, “That is so last fortnight,” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
- I’ve got another post coming up on revisions and editing, this time focusing on the little stuff, as opposed to the big picture, so stay tuned for that.
- And if you enjoy my posts on writing, you’ll be excited to know I’m working on my first ever non-fiction book (!!!!!), entitled BREAKING THE RULES: AN INTERMEDIATE GUIDE TO WRITING. If you’re past the beginner stage but don’t yet have a book contract and want to amp up your writing, this book is for you. And who doesn’t want to amp up their writing? Especially for less than the price of a tall mocha frappuccino?
So there you have it. These are all upcoming things for you to ponder while I desperately calmly finish up my literature review.
Post Birthday/Book Birthday Post!
My 30th birthday turned out to be excellent. I can’t believe I’m starting a new decade of my life! Anyway, it was a great birthday, despite the two hour inconclusive doctor visit from hell. (They decided I don’t have asthma, but don’t know what might actually be wrong. Um… yay?)
On the bright side, I got to go out to dinner afterwards, which is one of my favorite things to do. There was much nomming of noms and it was good and we had a little lava cake at the end, which is the best kind of cake. And later I got a surprise visit from some friends who took me out for milkshakes, and a great time was had by all!
And I released my book, like a kraken! *pictures it swimming furiously through the ocean towards unsuspecting pirate ships* My first indie venture, and I am quite pleased. The cover turned out amazing, the ebook is very nicely coded (if I do say so myself), and people are buying it. And saying good things:
This book has got a lot going for it. Is this a hard boiled detective novel, or a teen adventure story? You decide. For me, the juxtaposition of the two is what makes it shine. If you liked Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, you’ll enjoy Harper Madigan, not because it’s similar, but because it’s so different.
Reminiscent of Buffy or Angel, the story bounces between serious and funny without giving the reader a minute to catch his breath. It’s not “belly-laugh” funny, but more, “cool as a cucumber” funny.
That review really captures what I love about this book! Sometimes that’s so hard to put into words, even when you’re the author. And any day when my work gets compared to Buffy or Angel is a good day in my book.
The paperback version is almost ready. My proof copy is on its way, though it might not get here until the 12th. I am spoiled from Amazon Prime, and I thought since Createspace is an Amazon company that it would carry over, but no… But it’s shipped and will be here soon. Hopefully everything will be sparkly and wonderful and error-free and I’ll be able to approve the book for publication.
You will be able to get signed copies directly from me once it’s out, too. I’ll post more details about that when it releases.
A Gaggle of Announcements
Loud honking announcements that will chase you around the lake and beak you to death for a crust of bread!
Er… probably not. These are actually very lovely announcements that don’t resemble geese in any way. But gaggle is a cool word. It’s right up there with gusset.
Anyway, onto the announcements!
- In exactly 28 days I will turn 30! (That’s March 2nd, for those of you who forgot it was leap year.)
- I have TWO–count them, TWO–new books coming out in March!
- One is GROWING UP DEAD, a humorous MG about a vampire trying to survive 8th grade.
- The other is HARPER MADIGAN: JUNIOR HIGH PRIVATE EYE, a noir detective novel set in junior high.
I know, neither of these is the Renegade X sequel. But it’s coming! And in the meantime you can tide yourself over with some more great reading. ;) Each of these will be available in both ebook and paperback.
Blurbs and covers will be up very soon! If you want to be notified when these books are available for purchase, you can sign up for my newsletter in the top right corner of my site. And if you’re a book blogger interested in reviewing either–or both–of these books, please email me at CampChelsea@gmail.com or through the contact sheet on my site.
Junior High Private Eye
A rebellious 7th grade detective and his new by-the-book partner face off against the PTA Mafia.
Available now in ebook and paperback!
And as an audiobook!
The son of the world's most feared supervillain discovers he's... *shudder*... also the son of the world's most beloved superhero.