Lyda Morehouse's Blog, page 35

Keepin' on Keepin' on...

First of all, I posted a new installment of my grand experiment up on WattPad. I might have been writing up to the very last minute, but that just means this newest installment of UnJust Cause is HOT off the press!

You can read it here: UnJust Cause Part 4: Mochas and Motorcycles.

In this installment, Alex discovers that demons have a weakness for mochas. Also, it seems that the sexy redhead werewolf biker, Mac, is stalking her!

So, there's my sale's pitch. Go read!

I have to say, it's very different, writing this way. I kind of think I might be meandering a bit, but that's alright. I mean, I intend to do revisions before publishing this as an e-book, and it's probably good for me to take some risks. Otherwise, I'd never get this out there.

Tomorrow, Mason and I will probably have another podcast for you, also. I'm all caught up on Ao no Exorcist/Blue Exorcist, so I'll have to squee about that. That's a good manga, I have to say. Very engaging and, at the moment, a very TIGHT story.

Not a lot of other news. We're kind of waiting on snow. The weather people say it might be coming, 40% chance, anyway. Mason is looking forward to having the day off on Friday (I guess there's a holiday???) He wants to try baking bread. So, we're going to give that a go. Should be fun, if nothing else. On Saturday, I was invited to go to Minicon to be on a panel that would have been PERFECT for me, "Anime for SF Fans" (Right???!!). But, it turns out that the panel is scheduled at the EXACT same time as the one writing gig I have this month: I'm doing the Loft's First Pages thing down in Chanhassen. But, you know, it occurred to me, who is going to show up for this thing on the Saturday before Easter? Ah, well, I guess I'll find out. My luck, I'll have crickets and the Anime panel will be packed.

Right, I'm off to have lunch and post some fan fic as well. (My, aren't I busy?)

Waiting on the Car

It's pothole season here in Minnesota and our car has developed a very disturbing new rattle. I took in into the garage this morning and am now sitting at the library waiting to find out what might be wrong (and how much it might cost.)

Sitting at the library is only a little awkward now that I work for the Ramsey County Libraries. I keep seeing people I trained with and there's a lot of "Oh, what are you...?" But, that's okay. I mean, I'm not going to stop using the library just because I work here, you know?

I'm thinking, however, of packing up right now and walking up the street to Subway to get some lunch. I COULD just eat at Dunn Bros' but.. a sandwich sounds better and the sun is shining so the walk might be good for me.

Okay... while I was writing this, the garage called. The rattling was caused by two things 1) a clamp that held the exhaust system in place. They'd hoped that would solve it, because very simple and cheap. But, it turns out I also need a new sway bar in the back, a bunch of the things holding it in place are coming loose in a bad way. But, the damage doesn't seem too awful (only around $180) and they can fix it now. So, yay! Eventually, I'm going to need new breaks, but one thing at a time.

Five is Live

Mason and I recorded our fifth MangaKast. It's here: http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/five-is-live/ (Remember the go button is easy to miss.)

This is another experiment that I could call failed, but I don't. I think the most ever hits our site got was 20 or so on the first day. We consistently get three now, I think (and I'm sure two of them are probably me.) But, this doesn't depress me in the least. Mason and I started this partly because I have podcast equipment around that was bought for the other failed podcast project and because, sometimes, he and I have really brilliant insights about the manga we're reading. Mostly, it turns out, at 5:45 am, we don't. (This is when I wake him to read the manga and get ready to podcast. I also usually and sipping down my VERY FIRST cup of coffee, and as people who have seen me at cons know, it takes me a while to warm up....) However, we never had grand plans for this. For me, it's a great bonding experience with Mason. For Mason, he gets to be making a show. How cool is that?

So no one has to feel pressurized to listen to us. This is totally a labor of love in the strictest sense... and it's really almost no labor. I edit almost nothing, only the most egregious gaffs or coughs or slurps of breakfast OJ.

I'm off in a few minutes to hang out with naomikritzer and Eleanor. We'll probably talk "Captain America: Winter Soldier" which I finally saw yesterday afternoon. If I have any thoughts that distill from that conversation, I'll probably write them up here.

Okay, that's it for today!

New Installment Up on WattPad

My experiment continues. I've just posted (as Tate) the third installment of my work-in-progress: the sequel to Precinct 13, UnJust Cause.

Here's where you can read it: http://www.wattpad.com/44898135-unjust-cause-part-3-the-body-and-the-suspects

If you're confused about what I'm doing over there, the short of it is that I've really struggled with motivation to write ever since I was dropped by my publisher. The idea of posting this is a work-in-progress on WattPad is to keep the momentum going. I am really hoping to develop a following and a community there, so I can be encouraged to keep on keeping on.

I can't really say it's working so far. It's possible that I've been silent too long. My readers may have given up on me, which is totally fair. I really dropped out of the scene pretty hard. Particularly as Tate.

I probably should have considered doing this sort of self-publishing thing immediately, but, the truth is I held out hope that one of my other projects would sell quickly. Obviously, that didn't happen, and when it didn't, I was very thrown for a loop. I still have projects that I'm hoping my agent will be able to sell, but I probably wasted a lot of valuable time scrambling around trying to fight a system that changed on me, seemingly overnight.

For instance, she and I were still trying to sell books on proposal, which, apparently, despite how many books you've had published, you really can't do any more. You need to have a finished project, ideally, but, if not that, then a lot of finished product to show off. I didn't have that, and so when there was interest, I had to scramble and write... which I'm not as good at. I did my very best, but I'm much better at having a chance to have a lot of revision and time to feel my way into a character and the plot. So, no surprise, those 'samples' fell flat for a lot of publishers....

...which, of course, only continued to depress me.

So, the whole idea behind publicly posting my work on WattPad was to up my confidence. But, alas, I've lost half my readers between my first post and my second. So... that kind of sucks. I'm not sure what to make of it. It wasn't like I had an overwhelming response for my first post, either.

However, I'm still trying to use the publication schedule I've set for myself as a motivator. At least if I write a 2,000+ word installment a week, that's forward progress. Considering that previously I was writing zero words a week, that's a very good thing. So, I'm not ready to write off this experience just yet. Not by a long shot.

For those who are wondering, yes, the end result should be a self-published e-book. Provided, of course, I stick with this.

In other news, I'm hoping to see "Captain America: Winter Soldier" today at noon. I'm sure to have a review of sorts for you tomorrow (which I promise to put under the cut). Also, tomorrow is Wednesday, so Mason and I will have a podcast for you (talk about a dwindling audience! Ah well.) But, he and I will talk Bleach and the new SnK and Toriko and whatever else strikes our fancy. Maybe I'll give a little review of Detour, too.

Anyway, there you are.

Blog Tour and Life

Just a head's up, I agreed to participate (as Tate) in the Writing Process Blog Tour next week. So, if you're interested in what I'm currently up to and how I do things, you can check that out. I'll be sure to link the post when it goes live, here. If you want to see what a previous one was like, here's the guy who tagged me, Conrad Zero: http://www.conradzero.com/2014-writing-process-blog-tour/

Otherwise, my weekend was made crazier by having forgotten that this weekend was Anime Detour. I mostly attended Saturday, though I did drop by for a little bit on Sunday morning. Mostly, I wandered the halls admiring costumes and buying too much stuff in the dealer's room. I have a few more photos I can share.

Here's Mason in the DeathNote/Clue x-over tee-shirt I bought him. Being the true and awesome nerd I raised him to be, Mason said, "Well, it really should say 'Mr. Boddy' instead of Colonel Mustard," but, we both agreed that it's still funny.


I only took one picture of a cosplayer on Sunday, but I just HAD to get this guy because he's Sigfried from Soul Calibur, and my nephew Jonathan and I wasted HOURS of our lives playing that years and years ago (and now there's an iPad version of it, so Mason and I have played it too.)


Otherwise, my con highlights were hanging out with one of the con's guests of honor, Christopher Jones at diner on Saturday night. We had a great time talking, but we were hampered from our usual mutual Marvel squee by the fact that I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN CAPTAIN AMERICA YET. (Though plans are in the works. I may be hitting a matinee on Tuesday with my usual Marvel crowd.)

Still, that was fun. A lot of the con, for me, was opportunities missed. Because I was Moon-Mooning, I missed out on a big-screen showing of "BLEACH THE MOVIE: Hellverse." I also didn't realize that one of the GoH's was a Dai Satō, a guy who worked on Samurai Champloo, and who, in point of fact, was a major contributor to some of my all-time favorite episodes. I never even heard him speak. The only thing I can say is that I breathed the same air as he did.

*head desk*

But, the other big thing we did this weekend, was get Mason to his UMTYMP test on Saturday. Mason was very nervous (for good reason--800 people apply, only 50 get in.) He decided he would feel best if he wore one of my ties and a white button down shirt. He looked super-sharp. And, he did his best. The testers are warned that they will encounter questions they'll have to guess at, and he said he'd had to guess a fair amount. But, I'm really proud of him for trying. I'll keep my fingers crossed until the letter arrives in May to let us know if he's been accepted. If we don't get in this year, he can try again next year (and up to seventh grade, I believe. So he has two more shots.)

Today I spent the day working on my next installment for Precinct 13's sequel, despite the depressing statistic (which I should never have checked!!) that half as many people read the second installment as did the first... so, my take away? I started out strong and then sucked it up. *sigh* Story of my life. Ironically, I posted the last of my Harry Potter/Bleach x-over this weekend and got more people to read that in a day than read the second installment of the sequel so far, since last week....

Yeah.

This is why people get discouraged with original fiction.

Anyway, it's a good discipline to have to write a 2,000+ word installment every week, though. That's much more progress than I was making before, which was zero. So good may yet come out of this experiment.

Anime Detour

Okay, so I GUESS Detour is this weekend. Right. I kind of thought it was NEXT weekend, and I would have continued thinking so if I hadn't gotten a text from a friend that said, "Are you coming to Detour?" To which I said, "Yeah! Next weekend, right?" She wrote back, "No. Now..."

So I texted back, "Be there in a bit."

So I scrambled together my costume. This year I cross-played Ichigo. Luckily, I had made Zangetsu some time ago.



There was a surprising LACK of Bleach cosplayers at Detour this weekend, but I got a few pictures anyway.

Me and Rukia:


Kommamura:


A blurry Final Release Uliquiorra who was trying to get into the elevator:


And... that was about it. I saw a Byakuya who was there from last year and one other Ichigo, but that was really it.

These two were awesome, though, L and Light (chained together!) What I liked about them was that L really had the movements down. He even walked with that funky slump, and Light carried an apple (so you know Ryuk was there, we just couldn't see him.):


There were, of course, a crap LOAD of SnK/Attack on Titan fans there. I mean, a [bleep]-ton. I didn't even bother trying to photograph them all, but there were two Annies there, though I said to the other one (with Zoe Hanji), "You look bigger on TV":





Part of all the SnK love, I think, had to do that Funamation was there showing off previews of their English dub Attack on Titan. Tomorrow, if I go, I'm just going to wear my hoodie.

Previews of 'Captain America: Winter Soldier'

I haven't seen the movie "Captain America: Winter Soldier" yet, and I might not get out to it tonight because we got 6+ inches of snow on the ground and it's still falling. However, I read the review that the Star Tribune gave of it http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/movies/253753221.html and I wanted to say that if you hated Marvel's Civil War, you're going to hate this movie.

It sounds very much like (which I had guessed from the trailer) that the main conflict is going to center around the idea of security vs. freedom, which was, in effect, the issue that tore apart the Marvel Universe in Civil War. The Tribune's reviewer seemed to think that the issue was given complexity, despite the fact that Cap is very clearly on one side of this issue, and very strongly so, from his line from the trailer, "This isn't freedom; this is fear."

Personally, I hope they deal with some of the issues that were brought up in Brubaker's run of the Winter Soldier collections (vols. 1-4) in particular the fascinating role his Bucky played in the war. I say "his" Bucky, because, quite obviously Brubaker's Bucky is a complete recast, being a lot older than the original. But Brubaker did some cool things with that, particularly with the idea that Captain America was the symbol of America during the war, so there were missions that the uniform couldn't go on, because AMERICA couldn't be involved. But, Bucky could go.

Because he was a crack shot.

And the war needed winning.

Maybe this messes with what a lot of people think of as the core of Captain America, which is to say that he's somehow always does the Right Thing and is always on the side of truth and justice and some idealistic 'American Way' that never existed anywhere in Real Life (tm). I don't know how Cap could have gotten through WWII without losing a little faith in humanity. We like to think of WWII as this nice, clean war, but that's simplistic. Of course it wasn't. It was a war. Wars are always ugly. Full stop.

So I'll be curious where they go with it in the movie. Hopefully, the roads will clear and we can get out and about soon. I'd love to be able to see this tonight, in fact. But, I actually kept Mason and Shawn home from school and work today because, as the driver, I said 'no.' Saint Paul Schools are still open and so I had to call Mason in as sick, and I'm sure the roads are more passable than they look, but why risk it? I think he'll survive a day without. If M.I.T. rejects him because he skipped school on a snowy day, well, then M.I.T. isn't worth our time, anyway. :-)

Because, seriously? This is how it looks outside right now:



Here's our car before we unburied it:



Yeah...

Social Media and (Writerly) Depression

If I ever want to sabotage myself, all I have to do is hit "stats" on any number of my websites. What happens when I do that is that I look at whatever the numbers are there and start either comparing myself to a more successful version of myself, or, worse, to someone else. And it can pretty much be anyone. I don't even have to torture myself with the current "it" crowd in SF. In point of fact, I've been known to send myself into a tailspin by noticing that another Tumblr-er has six comments on his/her post about their fan work going live on AO3, and look over at the pathetic one or two reblog/likes I got and think, "OH FINE, F*CK EVERYTHING. I QUIT."

Which is, of course silly, (if only for the reason that, of all the things I do, my fan work consistently gets the most love.)

This, however, is why I could never do a kickstarter/Indigogo kind of crowd funding thing for any project/potential project/life crisis of mine. I would probably be apoplectic with envy within five minutes of the thing going live. Even if I did respectably well, I'd think, "Well, you-know-who went viral in five seconds SO SINCE I DIDN'T I MUST SUCK SO MANY ROCKS--ARGH, I QUIT LIFE. BYE."

I don't know what to do about it, besides stay the [bleep] away from the dreaded 'statistics' buttons. I'm much happier just whistling on the crowded avenue, as it were. This, by the way, is my metaphor for a lot of social media. I sometimes feel every time I blog or tweet or post, I'm shouting into an extremely crowded hallway, where hundreds, even thousands, of people are passing by at any given moment. Attracting even one person's attention is really difficult. And, often, I can stress myself by looking over at other people standing in this metaphorical crowded hall and seeing the crowd they've managed to gather around them.

I was just talking about the whole social media phenomenon to a friend. The New and Improved SFWA Bulletin had a 'how to win at Social Media' type article and one of the bullet point type bits of advice was "be interesting." Yeah, see, that's not really helpful. I doubt anyone sat down to the social media of their choice and said, "My plan! BE BORING! That's sure to get retweeted!" And, similarly, there's really no quantifying 'interesting.' One person's interesting is another person's dull.

But, I'm probably boring you with that. See, that was my plan. I bet I'll get six new LJ friends now.

If I don't, I'll be sitting over here in the corner sobbing and feeling unpopular.

Speaking of articles that I'd love to read, it'd be interesting to know if anyone has done research on the correlation between depression and social media. I feel like maybe I've read somewhere that the internet (or the interwebs, as I hear you kids call it,) makes people more anxious, because they're always expected to be available, are constantly barraged by info, etc. But, I wonder if anyone has tracked this kind of comparing yourself unfavorably to others problem--or if that's just a problem of mine.

:-)

In other news Shawn had a lovely birthday on Tuesday. We went out to both breakfast and dinner which are my favorite things to do and one of my biggest presents to her was that we went shoe shopping and fabric shopping and I DIDN'T COMPLAIN, NOT EVEN ONCE, ABOUT HOW BORED I WAS. I'm such a good partner, aren't I? I bought her some actual gifts, too, but Shawn is easy in that she likes pretty shiny things like a magpie, so Mason and I went to the Tibet store and spend some bauble on some baubles.

And then I worked at Maplewood Library both Wednesday and Thursday, so it's been a busy week for me.

Newest MangaKast

Because I had to go to work this morning, I'm bringing MangaKast to you a little late. In today's episode, Mason and I discuss the newest, hot-off-the-presses/scantilation Bleach 575, Toriko 272, as well as my first impressions of Blue Exorcist and Mason's take on where he's at in One Piece.

http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/go-forth-fourth/



If you're so inclined, enjoy! (Remember the little arrow to start is kind of hard to miss, but it's right there at the top!)

MOAR as the Kids Say

I posted the next installment of UnJust Cause on WattPad today. I'd been hoping to published consistently every TUESDAY, but tomorrow is Shawn's birthday and I expect to be away from the "desk" most of the day celebrating with her.

So, if you want to check it out, it's here:
I've named it "A Demon Named Furfur" because I introduce a character who is, in fact, a demon with this name. Yes, it's a nod to Moon-Moon, however, I seriously found this name on one of those "guides to the demons of hell" sites and I thought, "Yeah, that sends fear into the hearts of men. I am... Furfur...."

So, yeah, I had fun writing it. Also, manga/otaku/Japanese culture nerds will also recognize that Furfur is not the ONLY demon introduced in this installment.

Also, I've been using the WordPress site to review manga, and I put up my short take on Samurai Champloo vols. 1 and 2 (which is the complete run): http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/samurai-champ-aloo/

Otherwise, it was a typical weekend. I worked at White Bear Lake library on Saturday, while Mason played his very first D&D game (which he LOVED.) Sunday we did a bit of housecleaning and I took a nice walk out in the sunshine with naomikritzer which was lovely.

Oh... yeah, and ick killed my entire tank. There's not a soul left. Susan died first and then the Eleventh Division fell one by one. I'd had hope for two of the mountain minnows, whom I named Kenpachi, since they were the last survivors. But, Zaraki fell today, so there's no one left.

I'm fairly devastated, honestly, but I'm hopeful that in a while I can try again. Maybe shopping at a higher quality fish shop might do the trick. I am totally getting another dojo loach, though, because Susan was possibly the most personable fish I ever had, albeit briefly.

*sniff*