Poe Readings, Feeding my Companions and Writing

The Halloween Month is almost over and the magic that possesses me still lingers full force. This is the month I'm the most inspired to create and I have three major projects with deadlines to reach. So this weekend I told Sue that I can't do anything.

I really wanted to do the Poe reading, but I never got tickets for it. I'm not a huge fan of Poe like I used to be. I still have his books and I appreciate the references in movies/cartoons/media so I think I would have really loved to have seen the show. Bad thing is, we don't really have a babysitter for our dogs and the show comes with drinks paired with the show. We'd have to get the mock-tails so we could still drive. 

I might be feeding my companions too much. I went to pick up Mozart and he was heavy. Sherlock keeps running into everything. I'm a little torn if I should get him that halo for seeing impaired dogs. He's not completely blind. Sherlock makes eating so difficult. He always tries to get between me and food, but he's not aggressive. He's just letting you know he's hungry too. Hence, my companions are getting a little chunky. 

Sherlock has been waking me up around 1am in the morning. He won't go back to sleep so I get up and take him to the living room. He will sleep on the couch and let me sleep. It sucks. I like the bed more than the couch, but this is the only way I can sleep with him. I think he has abandonment issues and in the middle of the night he has to know someone is still there. Why he won't let me sleep until we get to the couch.... I will never understand. 

Writing Update:

3 short stories due in 3 weeks for 3 different anthologies. Can I do this? 

The High Priestess is working on a project so she's inspiring me to get these three projects finished. 

Yule Horror Story 1 : I'm working on a LGBTQ story with the feeling of Babadook meets The Witch (The VVitch). I want the feeling of isolation, grief, self discovery. This is really hard because I believe the word count for this is only 8,000 and that has to include the paragraph about why I'm writing this story and I guess maybe something about me? I don't really want to talk about myself. I want to leave this ambiguous. I like Babadook and The Witch because it didn't tell you what you were seeing. It let you decide what happened. Can I pull this off? I have to get the feeling just right.

Yule Horror Story 2: I'm making this a slasher story. I'm not sure I'm good with slasher stories and this is only 2,000-4,000 words. Not very many words so things have to happen fast. I wanted to do something like Wickerman, but that has a long build up. I'm thinking maybe go with the Wickerman feel, an entire crazy town of people who have one strong belief. How do I do this in 4,000 words? 

Gamer Horror: I believe this is 8,000 word limit and I just saw that it's not due until December, so thank goodness! This will be my next project after I finish the other two. I used to play this horror game so much that it would give me nightmares. I hope I can use my nightmares to fuel a good story on this. This has to be LGBTQ characters per the request. I'm good at making it apparent in romance, but in horror? We'll have to wait and see what subtle signs I can place in it with the word limit and with the fact that its probably supposed to be gory..... 

I want to start working on projects for publication every month. If I can't get them published, I think the High Priestess wants us to try to put together our own anthology. That would be so fun! 

Downsizing, Fall Festivals and Writing

Drinking: White Chocolate Coffee

Watching: Take Charge of My Heart <--- super cute

Sue came over and helped me organize my kitchen. I think we cleaned and threw away so many things. I didn't realize I had a plastic problem. I have way too much plastic, thinking "I'll use that for Thanksliving" and yeah, I just collected like it was going out of style. 

I have a LOT of coffee mugs, and Ann said they break their's all the time, so I'm sending my Disney mugs to her and keeping my Halloween mugs that I love so much. Sue scrubbed out the coffee stains. Didn't realize coffee stains could be scrubbed out. 

Anyways, I do have a "collector's" problem with my things. I do need to downsize a lot considering it's only the two of us and our little pack of dogs. 

The only thing that I really don't know about is moving things around so much. My mind has a system. I think I'm chaotic-organized. I'm artistic. But also, I can't explain why I need things in a certain order. I don't know if I just got used to working around the chaos that I live in, but Sue is ready to do a super deep clean and I'm anxious. It feels like everyone is with her on this. I'm outnumbered. So I guess I'll see where life takes me on this journey that I obviously should say "yes" to. Because maybe people are seeing something I'm not. 

We went out to eat, but we skipped the Fall Festival Fair this weekend, both at the church and the downtown event. So sad. I would like to have kept up that tradition, but Sue didn't want to do the event downtown. She said it was boring. And both Emory and I agreed to skip the church carnival because they raise money for things that we are not in alignment with. 

Guess what we found! Vegan Egg-Nog! So we obviously had to buy it. It's so tasty. 

Writing Update:

Worked on N.F. and realized it is a nightmare. I have no idea what I've been trying to edit for a month now. I cut all the pieces into chapters again instead of all one big document. Some of the chapters are super small and some are extremely long. I combined some of the chapters to make it a little more consistant in length. I have rewritten some of the characters. One of them is a famous olympian from BC so there isn't much about him. It's a little fun writing a history for someone that is famous but has no real records. I'm having fun with this story.... but I'm also frustrated. I keep going back and forth on just dropping it.

So far this might be DADDY KINK, because I swear, as I was writing this, I aged up my two dominant male characters. I was just working on their character sheets and realized that given the era, and what not, they would be older, established gentlemen. I'm going to have to write this and see if I'm actually going to put it out. 

I started working on fluff-cember stories with a flair of kink-tober. I don't know what I want to do with these projects yet. One is so freaking good that I was thinking about submitting it to a anthology. By "good," I mean I'm super excited by the outcome of the dialogue and the story. It is practically writing itself. 

My writing buddy and I met on Tuesday to do a writing session. She worked on outlines and I worked on character sheets. I'm thinking I might need to work on an outline too. I feel like when I wrote this story, I had no real direction so cleaning it up now is very difficult. 

Jack-o-Lantern Night, Witchy Girl Trips and Writing

I had such a beautiful day. 

Sue and I went to Barnes and Noble and read the back of books. So many books to chose from. She got four books that she promised I could read after her. I got two, but they aren't her style. She likes horror/thriller. I think she also likes strong woman point of views. I asked her, but she got confused by what I meant and then the moment was gone and we were just there picking up books again. 

The two books I got were romance and capers. I love a really good caper. I just watched Now You See Me 3 and WOW! was that deliciously fun!

I drank so much coffee that it had me shaking. I really don't know why if does that, but it's the only thing that really works when my Attenion Deficit Disorder is really kicking my butt. 

It's supposed to rain, but the skies look fairly clear. Arizona got rain. 

We went to Magic of the Jack-o-Lantern. We don't know if they were real carved pumpkins because there were so many and pumpkins do rot. The designs were awesome. Someone took so much care in carving them, fake or not. The drive was a little long, but everything in California is when you have events everywhere. 

We want to do the POE event. It's the retelling of Poe stories on stage and it's matched with drinks to go with the show. So much to do, so little time.

The High Priestess has invited me on a girl trip with another member of her coven. I'm super excited and I want to get some pampering things to take for all of us. Any suggestions on how to make a girl trip fun? I am way too excited. Also, maybe a little witchy too. Maybe I should bring my tarot and some crystals? 

Writing Update:

BL: This is best friends to enemies to lovers-ish. I say "ish" because I'm not really sure if a scene is really lovers as of yet. I'd call this story pretty dark given the themes. Alpha/Beta/Omega story line.

F.C. I have 60 subscribers! I am so excited to see that so many people were interested in this story. I need to finish it, but I feel like it might be more complicated than just slapping an ending. I need to really think about the characters emotions and the possible fallout. 

Zombies, Communes and Writing

Watching anime horror and it got me thinking about zombies....

Would zombies splatter blood if the blood is congealed? and if there is no new blood, what happens to the old blood for days, weeks, months..... and if they are walking around without a heartbeat to circulate the blood, would it all pool to their legs and feet? 

I wonder because when you feel like you're going to faint, you're supposed to put your feet up on the couch to help the blood flow towards your brain.... what happens at that point? Did we just stop circulating blood ever so briefly? Our hearts slowed down.... But imagine if a heart just stopped?  

I don't think zombies look like you'd think in horror movies. I also think the hottest states would be the safest because the zombies would dry out pretty quickly in heat. Also think there might be no splatter. Goddess, I close my eyes and see something I really don't want to see in this. 

Just thoughts.

It's been a pretty slow week for me. We haven't done anything for ourselves that we usually like doing. No puzzling. Very little writing. We've been running back and forth from the commune.

We went over to the commune for the best tofu dinner. It was delicious and the ginger rice was perfect! Then we had to take two people to the airport. I'm currently getting text messages from them and they are across the seas. Everyone travels so much. It's so fun to see pictures and hear about the adventures. I made a group chat for something. I don't remember now and everyone uses it like a Facebook wall. It's really fun. 

Writing:

B.L. I don't know if I want to keep this title. I'm now on chapter 9 in editing. I do NOT like chapter 10 so I'm probably going to cut it completely or rewrite it completely. I'm sort of dreading tearing this chapter apart. I'm going to let Emory read it before I do some major editing. 

Sort of looked at my other stories but they frustrate me at the moment. I have so much editing to do.