C.J. Sullivan's Blog, page 26

Home Video: The Birds Taunt Poor Kaiser

Yesterday my backyard became an aviary for about five minutes, and my weenie dog, Kaiser, went nuts.

Car Intruders at Fossil Rim

Last year, my husband and I took a drive through Fossil Rim, which is basically an area filled with wild-life that you can look at and feed. You're not supposed to touch them, but sometimes they make it a little difficult not to... One deer in particular was quite the amorous soul. My Honda still sports scratches from his antlers, but that's okay. It gives my car character!

Here's Mr. Lover Boy closing in on my husband.



Drew couldn't get away!
You can't see me in the back seat, but I was rolling.



I finally tried to distract the deer.
Look at him scraping the side of my car to leave a lasting mark!
What a sweetie!



Mr. Zebra got jealous and had to see what was up.
This was not taken with a fish-eye lens by the way.



*Sniff, sniff, nibble nibble* Hondas taste good!


Say "Cheese"!


Click -->here<-- to check out Fossil Rim for yourselves!

I've Been Tagged!

Today I'm taking part in a fun little opportunity for writers: Authors Tagging Other Authors. I was tagged by the fascinating Mr. Gary Markwick, and I am going to keep this thing going. There are four questions below, which I'm going to answer. Then, at the bottom of this post, I'm tagging five more authors who have the option to keep the chain going, if they want, by answering the same questions on their blog and then tagging five more authors. So...here I go!


1) What is the working title of your book?

Wings of the Divided


2) Where did the idea for this book come from?

When thinking of what sort of novel I wanted to write back in college, I decided I wanted to do a story about supernatural beings that that weren't as overdone as, say, vampires. (This was 10 years ago.) I always thought angels were really interesting beings in lore, but I didn't see much mainstream movies and books about them. I wanted to do for angels what Anne Rice has done for vampires. (Big goal, I know.) Plus, I have always been fascinated by the idea of Fallen angels and how they cannot be redeemed like humans can and how that must make them feel. I also wondered if certain angels of light would remember the Fallen when they were still "good," and if they wouldn't care, or if they would be secretly sorry their brethren were now unforgivable.


3) What genre does your book fall under?

It's a bit of a cross-genre book. Best way I can think to describe it is contemporary/urban fantasy.


4) Which actors would you choose to play some of your characters in the movie rendition?

I would probably pick a bunch of unknowns for my angels so they'd have a better chance at making their roles iconic. For a couple of my main human characters, I'd pick Johnny Depp to play Jack and Michael Caine to play Max.


And now for the set of authors I've tagged:

Elyzabeth M. VaLey (Erotic Romance)

Kris Noel (Young Adult)

Diane Rapp (Sci-Fi/Fantasy)

Jen Naumann (Young Adult)

Rachel Abbot (Thrillers)

"Winter's Last Gift"

I am going to share with you a short story I wrote about a year ago. Originally I typed this one up for an apocalypse-themed magazine, which never quite got off the ground. To those of you who don't know me well yet, I'm not normally one to write on a theme just because it's popular. When I created this tale, I knew the whole "dystopian," end-of-the-world thing was (and still is) super popular. But even before this topic became so hot, I've always enjoyed intelligent stories of this sort. One of my favorite books ever is Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

So here's my take on the genre, a short tale that I'm pretty proud of, and one I enjoyed writing. It's dark, but it's not overly gory, and it doesn't have any zombies. I went the nuclear-fallout approach. Anyway, let me know in the comments section what you think of it. I'm toying with the possibility of writing a few more shorts on this theme and releasing them as a collection...maybe...





"Winter's Last Gift" 

Wind whistled through a crack in the windowpane. The shrill sound was just white noise to Nelson as he sprayed the last of the shaving cream into his gnarled hand. An age ago, the fluffy stuff would've felt cool against his skin. Today—as it had been like for Some Time—he barely sensed it touch his veiny, bluish palm, so constantly numbed he was by the bitter cold.             He'd cut down and burned Mr. Shelton's dining room table this morning so he and Shelia could have some warmth with their morning cans. Mr. Shelton wouldn't miss it; he'd been gone like the rest of the neighborhood, for nearly the whole span of the Winter. They'd packed up and left with the army trucks, but he and Shelia didn't much want to be crammed into some stadium like cattle while the government assured them "everything was going to be all right" when it clearly wasn't. He and Shelia had every right to stay here. They had access to all the empty homes and pillage rights to all the cans they could find: green beans, carrots, beets, chicken noodle soup, artichokes, Spam. Oh, how he missed Spam. It'd been many hash marks on the wall since he and Shelia had split a can of Spam. Good stuff that was.            "Honey?" he called from the upstairs bathroom. His wife still sat by the fireplace, the dying embers keeping her company. Shelia had been in a quiet mood this morning. Truth be told, they'd both woken up with a somber cloud over their head. Well, more somber than usual. He spread the lather on his face and sharpened his switch blade on the strap that hung off the side of the dead sink. No water flowed anymore; it was all frozen. But regardless, he still chose to shave at the bathroom sink mirror because it felt the most familiar."Shelly?" Trying to will the trembles out of his hand, he brought it to his chin and used the blade to scrape away his brittle facial hair. "How'd you like it if I went out an' searched for some real, bona-fide Spam? Would you like that, honey?"The whistling wind rattled the windowpane. Nelson wiped off his blade with a cold faded yellow towel. His mother-in-law had gotten them that towel set for their 40thanniversary gift. Held up well. Real well. He lifted the blade again and touched his cheek with it when a flash of darkness moved up the wall gave him a start. Gasping, he jerked his hand back and a thin sliver of a cut sent a crimson bead of blood down his face. Quickly dabbing it with the towel to get it to stop bleeding, Nelson tried to calm the rush of his heart. Any sort of adrenaline rush made him so damned dizzy these days.He felt in his back pocket for his glasses and fumbled to put them on. Squinting, he leaned toward the wall and watched as an inky black scorpion crawled up the wallpaper. It had three pincers and two tails, whose bulbous stingers faced the wrong way. As it climbed over the tiny printed pink flower buds and creeping green vines, its feet made faint skittering sounds. "H'lo there, little fella," Nelson whispered. "You gave me a fright." He let out a raspy laugh. "Naw, I'm all right. Don't you worry. Listen, you can stick around up here, but don't go downstairs. Shelia'll squash you flat."Almost as if it understood, the mutated arachnid changed direction and disappeared behind a framed picture of a conch shell. Nelson finished shaving and walked into the bedroom. Underneath his plaid robe, he was fully dressed for the day in layers of flannel. The closet door creaked as he opened it, and he reached inside for a scarf to wrap around his neck. He looked at the four-poster bed, its frilly white comforter wrinkleless. Shelia always insisted the bed be made, even if they weren't expecting company. You never knew, she said, when someone was going to drop by, and the house needed to be presentable at all times.Nelson stood by the bed as he put on his hat and gloves. He stared at the mound of carefully placed throw pillows. Shelia didn't much want to be touched these days, at least not intimate-like. He understood. The Winter had him down in the dumps, too. He just didn't let her see it. He figured it was just as well since his ol' one-eyed monster wasn't much for more than pissing these days anyway.He smiled, remembering the earlier days, long before The Last War, when the sun was still out. They'd make love on the kitchen table if the mood struck them. They didn't have so many wrinkles then. They had a future. There were so many things Nelson wished he could've done for his wife. He wished he could've made more money and taken her to more exotic locales. He wished he could've wined and dined her more often, even though she always claimed to be content eating at home. He wished he could've gotten her the horse she always wanted, and moved them out into the country, and properly grown old with living children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, and with the lord's blessing, great-great grandchildren.A great lump threatened to form in his throat as he looked on with longing and regret at the perfectly made bed. He and Shelia had discussed the Suicide Pits this morning. As he pulled out a juicy spoon of kidney beans, she'd brought it up. Said it might be time they went down to one. Join the rest of the folks who'd had enough of all this. He'd nodded, and all morning he'd thought about it.He walked, his steps heavier than usual, back into the bathroom with the whistling window pane, and retrieved his knife. Then he went to the stairwell and carved another hash-mark into the wall to mark the start of another gray-skied day. It was almost like art, this set of parallel stairwell walls. Some hash-marks were long and crooked, Nelson having carved them deep into the plaster. Others were tiny, maybe an inch in length, and barely scratched the surface. Today's mark was a standard, deadpan one, the scrape-scrape-scrapeof the knife like a musical accompaniment to the wind's song.  Music.That was one of the things he missed most.Just the simple power of turning on the radio and filling the room with melodic sound.But there were no symphonies now, no rock bands, no new albums to look forward to, not even ways to play the old albums. Maybe Shelia was right. Maybe it was time.He descended the steps and turned to join her in the living room. The fire in the fireplace had gone out. He stared at the back of Shelia's head as she sat on the flower print couch, facing the ashes. The curly brown wig he'd found for her was slightly crooked.Reaching a hand forward to straighten the wig, Nelson sighed, knowing without a doubt that today was the day he'd been dreading. But there really was nothing more for him here. He moved around to the front of the couch and knelt down. Then he placed a hand on Shelia's thin, frail knee.She was just bones beneath the dress. He knew that, damn it, but the spirit of her—the essence—had to still be hovering around because he felt it sometimes. He heardher talking to him. He never stopped to think he might be going crazy. What did it matter now anyhow? Her dark, eyeless sockets drew him in so deep that he swore he had a connection to the afterlife. And that Great Beyond wasn't such a bad place to be. Her fixed, macabre grin said so.Today he'd officially join her. "Shelia?" he whispered, taking a skeletal hand in his. "Can you give me some sort of sign that you want me to stay? Anything? Or is it time?"He gently twirled the wedding band around her finger. The jewelry just hung there now, no flesh to keep it secure. He took his own silver ring off, easily sliding it off his ring finger which was much thinner now than it had been when he'd gotten married. Then, when he got no reply, he took her hand and put the band in it, defeated.  
It was hard to think of a time when the houses weren't empty, when the skies weren't gray, raining down their constant ashy snow flurries—not pretty snow, but ugly, as if some dying dragon god in the heavens were deteriorating, shedding tiny bits of its charcoal skin down upon its plagued people. His boots crunched the icy mush as he walked. The closest Suicide Pit he knew of was old Mike Harmon's swimming pool about two streets down. There were a number of these spots now, usually emptied pools or dried up ponds. Out of respect for those who wanted to end their lives peacefully, people had donated old firearms they didn't need any longer and placed them in a big safe box at the Pits' edge.You could lean over the edge as you shot yourself and hope you fell in on top of the other bodies, or sometimes you could get someone to go with you and shove you in after your brains were blown out. There weren't a whole lot of people around anymore to do the courteous thing, so sometimes Nelson would walk over to the one that used to be Harmon's pool, and he'd nudge the corpses in that hadn't quite fallen right, just to keep the edge clean.The snow that continued to fall kept a nice blanket on the corpses so they didn't stink, and most of the time you couldn't even tell how many bodies were in a Pit, much less who they were. That was one good thing about the precipitation. Made the Pits more private.Nelson didn't need to borrow a gun. The one tucked under his belt would do just fine. He reached Harmon's back gate, the old man long gone. In crude black lettering, the words S. PITS AHEAD had been painted on the gate. Nelson pushed it open, and it creaked, the hinges all but frozen.He stepped forward but then stopped as a horse's cry startled him from behind.Looking back at the road, he grabbed for his gun and watched in adrenaline-fueled fascination as a pack of mangy coyotes circled a tall black horse, backing her onto Miss Beth Stewart's porch. The mare rose on her hind legs, and Nelson could see that she had three eyes, one glassy orb glinting in the middle of her forehead.She came down, and one of the coyotes snapped at her foot. They didn't much look like coyotes anymore, more like chupacabras. Another one lunged at the mare, and she cried out, the sound piercing the gray atmosphere like a sword. Nelson's eyes filled with tears. It was the first time he'd cried since Shelia died. Shelia had always wanted a horse, hadn't she? Well, maybe it wasn't time to visit the Pit just yet.He aimed at one of the chupacabras and shot. The creature yelped and then took off running, the others perking their heads up, their ears pricked. Nelson fired another shot, and the rest of the ugly things retreated down the street and through an open back fence.The mare stood, shaking, on the porch. She hung her head, all three eyes watching as Nelson approached. Someone had put a makeshift saddle on her, but from the shabby looks of it, hadn't ridden her in a while. Probably some poor schmuck died and left her behind. Such a pretty horse didn’t deserve to be abandoned."Shh," he said, holding out both hands to try and communicate he wasn't here to harm her. "There, there, girl. Those monsters are gone, see? Let me take a look at you."He expected her to bolt at any second, but she didn't. She didn't even move as he slowly inched up the porch steps and placed a hand on her neck. He smoothed her silky black hair back away from her face, and she gave a weak whinny then leaned her nose into his shoulder."There, there, girl," he said, sniffing back his tears, smiling now. He wiped the crystalizing moisture from his cheeks. "Are you hungry? I have some food back at the house." As he rearranged the saddle, the horse only stood there, perfectly docile.This was a sign. He was sure of it. It wasn't his time after all. "Such a pretty girl," Nelson said. "Shelia will be so happy to meet you." The freezing wind picked up, blowing Mr. Harmon's gate back and forth, and its hinges screeched as the snow continued to fall. 

Solar Eclipse

There will be a solar eclipse today, but unless you live in Australia, you probably won't be able to see it. Here's a simulation of what's going to happen:






In ancient history, eclipses were like these magical, feared occurrences, usually brought on by God or the gods, and they served as a sign for startling change. They were bad omens, thought by many to be a sun-devouring demon or dragon.

This eclipse makes me think of the 2006 movie Apocalypto. It's an amazing film--if you don't have a weak stomach, that is. (It appeals to my adventurous, tomboy side...that and I think Rudy Youngblood is a gorgeous guy. *Ahem*)

Unplug

If you're like me, you like to work hard. If you're a writer (or any kind of artist), you like to devote a ton of time and energy to your craft to the point that it almost borders on obsession. Also, if you're like me, you may work a day job, too, so that leaves you with very little YOU time.

Often I reach a point where I feel totally drained. I've given all of my energy to my day job or my writing. I spend countless hours on the Internet trying to respond to emails and Tweets and Facebook posts in a polite, timely manner. And I reach the point of getting burned out.

I have found that the best thing to do when you reach this burnout stage is to Unplug. If you have a day off from your day job, you don't have to spend every waking minute on your hobby. It's GOOD to get away from it all, to unplug your laptop, to (gasp!) turn off your cell phone! Just leave it behind for a little while--it'll be there when you get back; I promise.

Get out in nature, if you can. Take a walk. Or if that's impossible, go to a quiet room in your house where there's a window. Open the curtains and let the daylight in. Sit and let your mind drift away from all the things it feels chained to, and soon you might get an idea of just the thing you need to do to make you feel refreshed. Go with your instincts--unless they're saying to plug in and get back online. Don't do that. Rewind back to a time when we didn't have all this technological distraction. What did you do for fun back then? How did you feed your creativity? How did you nourish your soul?

That's what I'm doing today. I'm writing this post, and then I'm turning it all off. I'm going to clean house, maybe decorate a little, possibly go to the library. I'm going to paint my toenails and read a book and cuddle with my little weenie dog.

Don't worry, I'll be back, and probably sooner than I think. But bottom line is this: unplugging, even just for 30 minutes, is sometimes necessary. So when you feel stressed out, try having some YOU time, too!

Six Sentence Sunday: Wings of the Divided

This Sunday I'm going to share six sentences from my novel Wings of the Divided. In this scene, little Fallen angel Kiazmo is musing on his deadly comrade Laphelle, about how powerful he is and why so many of the other angels (light and dark) fear him. Enjoy!









"While many of the angels of darkness had their weaknesses, be it sex or drugs or bloodlust or any other perverted addiction, Laphelle was slave to nothing. And he never lost a fight. The reason he was not a member of the Elite was not just because angels of First Rank were forbidden to rise to higher status. Rumor had it that that Lucifer especially didn't trust him. There must have been something in the way Laphelle carried himself during the parades after winning battle after battle on all those distant worlds. Something in the way he refused the pleas of women begging to bed him during those victory celebrations, something in the way his eyes searched for more than just dark victory that made even the Devil himself uneasy."

Wings of the Divided is now available.

19!

Why is the number 19 my favorite number today? Because history was made during the 2012 US Election, that's why! Click -->here<-- to see why 19 is so groundbreaking!

Decluttering: Before and After!

I love decluttering!

Ever since my mother-in-law helped me go through my own house last year and declutter and organize it, I'm hooked on the feeling of freedom it gives! I continue to work on my own home, but I also get great enjoyment out of helping my friends and family simplify their lives with this liberating process.

What decluttering does in a nutshell is this: it clears out the baggage from the past you, in order to open up the space for the present you to live today with more freedom and energy. It also helps you not go crazy from all the clutter around you!

Last week I went to visit my long-time friend Misty for my birthday. And while I was there, we started talking. What we'd originally planned to be a relaxing, chill-out visit turned into a back-breaking project to get her house decluttered and organized! But before you feel sorry for me, thinking that my weekend was ruined, know this: I wanted to do the work. I love doing it! And now, I am proud to share some "before" and "after" pictures of some of the areas we had time to do together.



First off, Misty needed an area to store some of the things in her house that she wasn't ready to totally get rid of yet. The garage was a great place for storage. Problem was, there was absolutely no room in her garage! We couldn't even get through the door. Check it out:



So we pulled out every tote and every bag and went through them, item-by-item. I had Misty divide these items up into different categories, such as Giveaway to friends, Donate to thrift store, Keep, Trash, etc. We rebagged and reboxed all the things, according to their new categories.

I would have liked to go through everything one or two more times to see clear out even more space, but we still ended up getting rid of a lot. This is a load we had her father come pick up to take to the thrift store--an entire truck-bed of stuff:



After reorganizing the garage, we actually had space to walk into it and store more items if needed:

(Look! We even had a friendly, little orb keep us company!)

Next up on the agenda was her work space. Misty is in the process of starting a tutu-making business called Chummy Mummy. I thought, if there's anything I do before I leave, I want to clear up a space for her to work on her tutus. So we started clearing out her office area. Here's how it looked when we first walked in:



And here's what it looked like after:



There was also an enormous, old desk on the right side of the room. It was doing nothing but catching things that needed to be organized and put away:



We organized all of the things that the desk had caught, and we simplified the space with a much more efficient table for tutu-making, as well as some organizational drawers and baskets on and beneath the table:



Also, here's what the left side of the room looked like originally:



And here's what it looked like "after":



That wooden cabinet you see (above) was a great storage space. Originally, Misty had stashed all of her old VHS tapes in there (VHS tapes which nowadays are obsolete and really need to be given away or put into storage), and this is what it looked like:



The cabinet now serves as a great, functional place for her to store her Chummy Mummy tools and supplies:




That was all I was able to help with, given the limited time I was able to be out of town. But after I left, Misty continued to work on her house. She was able to, all by herself, transform her baby's room from this...




...into this:




Great job, Misty!

And three cheers to decluttering and organizing! :-D

Halloween Costumes 2012!

I was a woodland fairy, or the season of Fall embodied. Take your pick! 
(Tutu and some accessories by Chummy Mummy)

And here's Drew with this last-minute concoction! 
(Mustache by yours truly)

Ready for a night of fun!!




Kaiser got into the Halloweenie spirit, too! What a scary shark!



...Even though he wasn't that jazzed about his costume...




Hope everyone enjoyed Halloween 2012!