Sunday, October 23, 2011

World Fantasy Convention, Here I Come!

Hi, blog friends! Life continues to be a whirlwind of craziness. I keep telling myself that after my trip to WFC in San Diego, everything will settle down. But, that's a total fabrication to keep me from screaming... though I am totally excited the holidays are coming up. I've decided to forgo my usual Monday Meme to share a random list of things I've been doing lately:

1) I saw Three Musketeers on Saturday and Real Steel today. They were both pretty awesome. Three Musketeers had a pretty rad airship battle. Yep, I said airship. You know you wanna see it.

2) My son's fourth grade play is on Thursday. He's going to be a pirate. For Halloween, he's going to be a knight. So, there's been a lot of discussions of the wardrobes of both pirates and knights. And weapons, naturally.

3) I posted the first page of Countless in the Miss Snark's First Victim October Secret Agent contest. It pretty much got eviscerated. When I participate in public critiques, I like to give honest feedback, but always make sure to find something positive about someone's excerpt. Not all people have that same philosophy. The especially annoying thing is that everyone was saying I had too much of the antagonist's backstory on the first page, when the whole reason I added any backstory at all to the first page was because an agent I met at a conference critiqued it and told me I needed some backstory. So, this kind of makes me feel like poking my eyes out. Okay, venting done. Backbone thicker. Moving on.

4) My colt got castrated earlier in the week. Yeah. So, that was interesting.

5) Planning for my big trip. Weather forecast - check. Reserve shuttle from airport - check. Edit and print up pages of Countless and new novel (tentatively called Noir) - check. Buy a couple new outfits just for the heck of it - check. Bring books for Charlaine Harris and Neil Gaiman to autograph - check.

I'm going to be in California in three days! Holy cow! I'm freaking out a little. Mostly in a good way. A heads up - next Monday I will skip my meme as well since I will have just flown back from Cali late Sunday night and have a big meeting at work on Monday, plus taking my son trick-or-treating Monday night. I'll probably post links to my November issue of Raven Moon on Tuesday. I've got a cool author interview and a book review in addition to the usual fun stuff.

So, wish me luck. Did I mention I'm going to be flying all the way across the country all alone? And I won't know anyone when I get there? Okay, I'm babbling now. Talk to you guys next week!

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Monday Meme and Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

So, it's Sunday night and I've had a fun but tiresome weekend at Islands of Adventure (where HP World is) and Busch Gardens in Tampa. Even though we live like three hours from Orlando, we hadn't made it down to Harry Potter World yet. Here are some pics - if you haven't been, this could be considered a spoiler, so consider yourself warned.


Don't know, not too good at following rules... :)


The sky was behaving and gave me a nice backdrop.


Yum....


You could actually send yourself real mail from here. Like an acceptance letter to Hogwarts or something.  How rad is that???


And another of Hogwarts with the cool statues. The sign was cool too, there were these sparkly silver lights that kept lighting up behind 'Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry', to make it look like magic. It was a very fun weekend. The Hogwarts ride is really cool, even for a wimp like me. I only screamed once :)

Blending into my usual Monday meme... I don't know about you, but when I'm at theme parks, I usually have the urge to pick up a few souvenirs. Like, half the stuff in the Harry Potter store, some Grinch pajamas, a few things in the Marvel gift shop. So, when I'm a famous author, I'll go on a wild theme park shopping spree that would put Kim Kardashian to shame... not that she'd shop at a theme park. And then, to make up for my materialism, I'll make a large donation to the endangered animal fund at Sea World and Busch Gardens.

So, what theme park goodies do you want to get your paws on? What's your favorite theme park?


Monday, October 10, 2011

Monday Meme: When I'm a Famous Author

Happy Monday! I haven't posted in a couple weeks because things have been insane at my day job... I kind of fell off the face of the blogging planet. Last week I was in D.C. for several days at a work conference, and have been putting in a lot of overtime for a variety of reasons I won't bore you with. And October doesn't look like it's going to slow down any... this weekend we're going to Busch Gardens and Harry Potter World, and at the end of the month I'm off to San Diego for World Fantasy Convention! It'll be a wild ride.

So, on to today's theme... when I'm a famous author. Since travel is majorly on my mind this month, we'll stick with that. First of all, when I'm a famous author, I'm flying first class, baby! Being 5'10", I'm all about the extra leg room.

Couldn't find any pics I liked of first class seats, so I settled for what I'll drink in first class. Yum. Also, when I travel, I'll always get a suite of rooms. Maybe like this:

**Photos removed since peeps have been getting sued for posting photos on blogs**

Or maybe:

 
**Ditto**


And, I'll definitely get spa services wherever I go.

**Ditto**

I feel more relaxed already... So, what about you? How will you travel in style when you're a famous author?

Stay tuned for updates on HP World and WFC 2011!