Summer Jam

The phrase Summer Jam has a few different meanings for me - one more rooted in heresay and secondhand stories than anything else, and the other as the core of this post. At one point, Summer Jam meant a huge concert series about two miles up the road from my house that brought tens of thousands of people to the area and basically shut down the county.

In this case, it means I heard some interesting music this summer, and want to review my favorites and the moments that will always be linked to them. Much like that line in Eric Church's Springsteen where he says, "Funny how a melody sounds like a memory/Like a soundtrack to a July Saturday night."

So, yeah. Here we go.

Call Me Maybe: This was my manager's ringtone at work, so whenever the gift shop called to let us know we had a new reservation, this would blare from her phone. There were also moments when we would randomly dance in the kitchen, singing this at the top of our lungs. This was also the pick-up line for many a night when there were attractive, single men. (Not for this chick, though, I had to worry about not dropping cheesecake trays and whatnot.) Sadly, we did not make a boat version of this video. We should have.

Brokenhearted: When you work enough Teen Cruises, and have a best friend who is more than willing to indulge in the idea of mix CD's with you, this is what happens. This kind of became our Monday night anthem. Along with the next video.

Whistle: When Em and I first heard this song, it more or less....I dunno. We became attached to it. It's catchy. It went on our next mix CD. 

Pontoon: This is a Legacy song. As in, I will always be reminded of breakin' it down in the kitchen, belting the lyrics we knew, and just...this will remind me of two of the people I've worked with the longest at my job, and make me smile throughout the rest of the year. 

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together: This is just catchy as hell. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my Summer Jam. There are definitely others that will always bring up a memory or two, but they also contain enough F-bombs to blow my PG-13 rating like a popsicle stand. Have a good weekend, and most likely the next post will be from my new apartment in Geneva on Sunday.     

The Sleepless Writers

Many of you know I write. Many of you also know I know quite a few people who share the same passion for writing and hopefully one day being published. We talk on a regular basis, and then, one day, somebody had this idea that we should start doing vlogs about writing stuff.

With the power of the internet at our disposal, we became The Sleepless Writers, made our own YouTube channel, and got busy making vlogs every day about a variety of different topics. After some feedback from our viewers, who thought our videos every day were a little heavy-handed and kind of spam-like in their feeds, we decided that we would take some time, have some interesting Skype discussions, and figure out a new way to do what it is that we love to do and what we offer to the wider audience.

Re-vamped, with newer purpose, and with our relaunch approaching on August 20, we are The Sleepless Writers, a collection of bloggers and vloggers. We'll talk about writing, book reviews, the life of a writer, and general randomosity, and we'll give stuff away, too.

You can follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook...we're pretty much everywhere.

We also blog.

This could quite possibly be the start of something really, truly fabulous.

The Sleepless Writers

Moving Up and On

Sometimes it's the unexpected that does the most good. I was not prepared, Friday mid-morning, to be leaning against the counter of a souvenir kiosk and have my ex-boyfriend's wife go walking by with other members of her fire company. Really, the first thought upon seeing her was, to be honestly, incredibly shallow on my part in I was wondering how exactly she had passed the physical training aspect of it. Then I realized that really wasn't any of my business.

Even more surprising was the utter lack of emotional response the mere sight of her drew up. I wasn't angry. I wasn't sad. I simply...was. He'd moved on in a direction I had no intentions of going any time soon, and I think I finally realized in that moment I was good with who I was, and what I'd done so far in my twenty-two years on this planet.

Kind of also didn't surprise me to see said ex-boyfriend's sister on my walk back from getting coffee. She gave me a hug, there wasn't too much chitchat, and then it was back to hawking souvenirs and ringing up credit card purchases.

The ending gambit to all of this was, roughly in the same position as when I first saw his wife that morning, I saw the pair of them walking by. He looked much the same as the last time I'd seen him - only a little plumper, as not doing three sports a year like high school will do that to most of us - and, again, there really wasn't a whole lot of emotional reaction. It was like he was just another person passing by, though at one point he'd been much, much more than that.

I'm good. I'm good with who I am and what I've done so far with my life. This little series of events over the course of one day, almost totally randomly in a place where it definitely wasn't expected, proves it to me. And when I came to the conclusion that I was, indeed, not a complete wreck at the mere sight of them - together - well, I'm incredibly happy that I'm in a place where, I might not have expected a few years ago, but I'm more than okay with.

I'm more than okay with me in this moment.

Directions

There are these certain moments of clarity in your life when, if the time is right, and the situation presents itself, you more or less find a direction in an otherwise dark, unknown place and pull yourself forward. And sometimes that direction matches up to the one you've had for a while, that dream you've been chasing. Other times, it takes you a little sideways.

But sideways can be good.

Recently, I've more or less figured out what I want to do post college graduation. It involves going back to school, and for someone who doesn't plan very well, I'm startling content with the path I'm aiming for.

Which happens to be a patisserie diploma from a culinary school with campuses all around the world. The one I'm aiming for happens to be in London, England.

Well, what about forensics?

The idea of being in a lab day after day - because with this kind of work and the degree I'll have, being a technician is probably what I'd be heading for - doesn't...it doesn't appeal to me. I know plenty of people who work in a cubicle all day, and that's not what I want for me. I want the chance to travel, to try new things, and make people happy. Generally, when people eat good food, they're relatively happy.

I love to bake. I'm good at it. And having taken food chemistry this past semester, I think that really cemented the sort of track I want to follow. Of course there will always be writing, as I'm looking at starting my third draft of Sage either today or tomorrow. My query letter needs to undergo some overhauling, and then I'll start sending out little packets of hope disguised as Publish me, please letters.

And in a few weeks, I'll be returning to college for my final semester. It's not going to be easy, I know this, but having crawled out of the academic basement between fall and spring of last year, I know I can do it. And that, sometimes, is more than half the battle.

So, this is where I'm at. It's been a fairly light summer for me - mostly working - and not a whole lot of blogging, and for that, I apologize. I'm still here, though. And that has to count for something.

Personal Infringement

Manager: "S is going to be my agent for when I publish my book."

Me: "Your bartending book?"

Manager: "Yeah. She's going to be my agent. She's going to organize my book signings and tell me where to go and everything."

Me: "It's....not that simple...."

Ever have those moments when you just want to reach over the bar, grab somebody by the front of the shirt, and say, "That's my dream, back the hell off!"? I understand that more than one person can dream - and dream big - but, it just makes a knot in the middle of my chest because being an author is something that I've wanted since I was six. It's not on my bucket list. It is, but not because it would be cool to do, but because it's something that I've been working toward for years. If you take that initial dream of a six-year-old and come up through to twenty-two, that's a lot of time spent reading, writing, and thinking of how damn cool it would be to see my book and my name on a shelf at Waldenbooks.

Which, I'm pretty sure I just dated myself gloriously.

I've spent nearly eight years working on one manuscript - that's almost finished - and over the past two and a half years, I've finished two others. I'm on page 197 of 362 in terms of editing and retyping Sage, and the sheer amount of work and heart put into finishing one novel, let alone two, makes this much, much more than a simple bucket list endeavor.

This could be quite petty of me. Jealously is not a good look on anybody, but I can't help but think, in the ensuing conversation earlier, that some people just don't get it. She wants to write her book in her spare time, well, fantastic. But it takes work. And then it takes querying.

I did feel slightly bad because the smile kind of faded when I went into how much work it is to query and then try to get an agent, and that the agent is responsible for dealing with publishers, and, oh, yeah, agents are kind of picky and will only take a small percentage of new writers.

That was probably petty. But it's the truth. I've got a stack of rejection letters to prove it.

I guess what bugs me the most is the natural assumption that it's easy. That once you've written the book, agents and publishers will fall all over you to take it and print it. But that's not the way it works. Her thinking that it's easy, that it'll be a great way to make millions, just sort of cheapens it.

And that is something I have a problem with.

In any event, I'll wish her good luck, periodically ask how the writing's coming, and hope that one day maybe the pair of us are in the same bookstore, looking at our work on the shelf.  

Almost Like a B&N

I'm not one for self-promotion - especially when it comes to my writing - but I thought I'd try something a little bit different.

Many of you have probably figured out that I'm a little stuck with Murphy and Me. Mostly because I finished Sophomore Fall and started Sophomore Spring to have an excerpt to apply for the Trias Writer in Residence Workshop, and I kind of haven't touched the new writing process really at all yet, and I've been trying to edit my way through the first 59 pages of printed manuscript. So that's kind of stalled out right where it's at and I'm not entirely when I'm going to be doing something new with it, since I chose the retyping the whole damn thing route in terms of editing. I was already leaning that way, my professor also suggested it....

Anyway.

Maybe some of you knew this - and maybe some of you didn't - but I have this tendency to work on more than one project at a time. That way, if and when writer's block (yes, it's a real thing, and really frustrating to work with at times) hits, then I'm not totally stuck not writing for however long it takes to break out of the funk. In some cases - like with parts of The Crossing, that massive thing in composition books - it could be anywhere from a couple weeks to over six months. Patience, when writing, is key.

I have other projects, other novels in progress, that while not in the same sort of genre as Murphy and Me are somewhat in the same style and voice. So I thought I would go ahead and share their blurbs, their links, and a little bit about the inspiration behind the story. That way, while you're waiting on Murphy and Me to do something or actually go somewhere - hopefully in the direction of a publishing contract - you might find something else you like just as much, maybe more.

Sage
Eleanora Hope knew from the tender age of four what she was destined for – she was the latest in a long line of Sages, those charged with keeping the dead beneath the graveyard ground – and she had more than willingly accepted the task at hand. At eighteen she was the youngest Sage, a byproduct of the passing of her grandmother, Lynette, fifteen years after the murder of Ella’s parents. And while the dead might deem otherwise, Ella was more than content with the life she had reconciled herself to.

Until Azrael and Aeryn literally drop in and introduce her to part of reality she hadn’t rightly considered. With two voluntary fallen angels – one who might not be as angelic as he should be – they turn Ella’s quiet existence as Sage sideways. Now with the possibility of an apocalypse and a power-hungry council of women after her graveyard, Earth seems to have become the proverbial war zone, and the lines between angel, demon, human, and Sage are more than a little blurred.

But if life weren’t complicated, it wouldn’t be worth living. And life for this Sage is far from simple.

Sage was born out of the cemetery by the Colleges and walking through there with my best friend and her camera in the fall of our sophomore year. It originally started out as my National Novel Writing Month story, but I didn't finish even remotely close in the month of November, and it's sort of turned into an ongoing project. 

The Icicle Man
Mari's life was to look after the animals on the small farm she and her mother kept in the New York Adirondacks. Other girls had come back from college looking to settle down, shack up, and raise babies. She'd come back to the farm and its simplicity. It was all she wanted. Until she met Jack. Or rather, Jack met her on her way through the forest to her grandmother's.

Convinced she was one of those piper-stolen children, he cages her into returning to his palace, for he is the Icicle Man, Jack Frost. Mari's not sure what to believe, but she knows she's no piper's child. Jack's plan, whatever that may be, is turned on its head when Mari gives him a challenge he can't refuse - what it means to be human. As Jack steps out of his centuries-old role, Mari discovers what makes the frozen Winter Prince tick.

And what it means to be truly human.

The Icicle Man started out as a play text - and is actually still in that form, as well, though not here, here is the novel form - and was started during my semester abroad in Wales in the fall of 2010. It's a retelling of the European fairytale Jokul Frosti (Jack Frost) mixed with a little bit of The Pied Piper. And a whole lot of fun.

I'm hoping that while I figure out what I'm doing with Murph and Ollie that you'll take a look and maybe find something you enjoy just as much. Or maybe you spam my inbox with messages looking for more Murph and Ollie and that will kick start me into writing them again. Either way works for me, truthfully.  

High Winds of Change

I moved out of that house on main street Tuesday back to the little hamlet that's always been home and breathed one hell of a sigh of relief. Another semester over. Two-thirds of senior year - because my senior year has three parts instead of two because I'm good like that - is over and hallelujah for that. The last three weeks got incredibly rough, including when my caffeine intake and subconscious anxiety decided to push itself over the normal threshold into something rather scary. I'm okay, but it seriously freaked me and everybody else out, so now your favorite coffee addict really only gets one mug a day, and to tell you the truth, decaf tea's not that bad. That and I'm making sure to keep a lid on my anxiety, which I hadn't considered a problem before now.

What's even more impressive is the turnaround my grades did in the wake of the semester from hell - Fall 2011 - to the point where even I'm proud of me. I sacrificed a lot to be able to put in the time and effort to go from a 1.33 to a 2.93 in a little under four months. I stayed in on my weekends (which, okay, not that big a deal because I didn't go out much on the weekends in general), didn't leave assignments to the last minute, and took my independent study as seriously as though it were a regularly scheduled fourth class. For the first time, I really felt like I had this college thing under control and was good at it. My exam grades weren't always great, but I had the material, and the professors could see I was working hard and all of it together was a combination that just worked.

My parents are incredibly proud of me for such a turnaround. And me? I'm happy.

Now if I can just do the same thing this upcoming semester, I'll be golden. But between then and now is a whole summer to fill with...Stuff. Work. Soccer. Refereeing.And anything else that comes up in between then and now. Mostly though we'll just roll with the punches and go with the flow. Which, you know, sounds great on paper and works ever better - or worse - in real life.

And, of course, there will be writing, querying, and whatnot this summer because I have a draft of a book and now it needs either an agent or a publisher. Hopefully both.

So. Hello summer. Bring it.