I am moving back to Virginia in less than four weeks, and I am so excited!  Living in Colorado has been fun and I have seen a lot out here in the past two years.  But Colorado has never really felt like home to me, I've always had Virginia and DC in the back of my mind.  I miss my family and friends, and all the green.  Don't get me wrong, the Rocky Mountains are beautiful, but everything out here is brown most of the year.  It will be nice to be in the humidity again (yes, the humidity) and to see all four seasons.

Colorado, it has been great  But it's time for me to go home.

So, here's the plan.  I live with the parents for a few months, get a job with a temp agency and then build my event planning business.  I'm thinking of calling the business "Infinity Event Design" and using a Celtic Knot as logo/symbol.  Thoughts?  I don't want to use the Infinity symbol...it just seems so corporate.

Another part of the plan is to continue to work on my Young Adult fantasy novel.  I've had a couple of good ideas lately, which I will post soon.  There has been a lot of brainstorming lately so now I just need to get down to the writing part. 

In the meantime, it's off to work at Ye Olde Chuckle Hut.

Epiphanies are a wonderful and useful thing to have lying around.  They come in handy.   And I think I just had another one.  

Until recently I couldn’t come up with a single plot line concerning my leading lady, Hero, the future Queen of Faerie.  I simply could not identify with her.  My first character sketch had Hero as a quiet, bookish sort growing up in a nuclear family in a suburb outside of DC.  I understand being quiet and shy, I was definitely that in high school.  But the nuclear family I just don’t get, particularly since I was raised by a single parent for what I think were my formative growing years.

My parents divorced when I was four years old, Mom was single for eight years, and then remarried when I was 12.  Granted, I had a big family when she married my step-dad; my mom, brother and I were joined by one adult and three kids making our new family one boy short of Brady Bunch status.

So, if one starts writing characters based on their life experiences, then Hero and I will have some problems.  Here’s my solution to cure my brainstorming/writer’s block:  I kill off one of her parents for the time being, figure out a rockin’ story line, and then re-establish said nuclear family complete with both parents and a few siblings (I’ve already become attached to all the characters in Hero’s family).

My mom said today that she feels anxious when a decision needs to be made but keeps putting it off.  I feel exactly the same way.  Now that my decision is made the ideas have been flowing again.  Thank goodness, I was getting discouraged.

My friend, Pansy, came in for a visit this past Monday - Thursday.  During her visit we embarked on a path of photography silliness, that was in fact incredibly silly and a ton of fun.

We decided that it would be a good idea to have a photo shoot in my living room using all of my costumes, of which I have many.  I always look forward to dressing up for Halloween, so it's natural to keep all of my random bits of costumes and props over the years.

But we couldn't just take pretty pictures of the two of us in costumes, we needed a theme!  And the theme we chose was....The Seven Deadly Sins!  Oooooooo.  Scary.  Below is a slideshow of the shoot and should be in the order listed.

Pride - 80's Punk
Envy - Random Wedding Dresses I own (don't know why...)
Gluttony - 50's housewife
Greed - 70's...Kind of.  More Jesus Christ Superstar.
Sloth - 60's Mod.  We were channeling Twiggy.
Wrath - Modern Goth.  Something of an obvious choice.
Lust - 80's Prom.  Scary!

Don't laugh too hard at our expense.  It was a blast and would do it over again in a heartbeat.  :)

Seven Deadly Sins

    It’s crazy how ideas morph over time.  I started this whole process with a name that I loved, Hero.  A name brimming with significance and symbolism, even still today, but was given to a woman in Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing.  There’s not much heroic about this woman in the play and she has very few spoken lines.  Yet as a name for a new female character it is amazing.
    The word “hero” is defined as, “a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities,” and is synonymous with a brave man/woman, a warrior or knight, a champion, victor or lionheart.  How cool would it be to use this word as a name for MY leading lady?  Once I decided on a name the ideas came rushing in.
    In the beginning (how very Genesis 1:1, no blasphemy intended), Hero was an adult coping with her new powers as a half-fairy, half-human hybrid.  Then she was twin to a man who could see ghosts and harness their power; they were the subjects of a dark prophecy to bring about the destruction of fairy, revealing their world to the human realm.  After imagining all the doom and gloom Hero morphed into something completely different.  She was then a human teenager being followed around school by a “fairy godmother” attempting to redeem herself for past mistakes; she’s not a very good godmother.  Then she was a fairy again, a changeling raised by humans and attending a new high school.  There a class called study hall was in fact a group of other supernatural beings learning about their history and how to control their powers led by their half .  And now we’re back to the fairy godmother following her around, yet now she’s a fairy, and they have save their classmates from doom with plots loosely based on Shakespeare’s plays.  (Let’s be educational AND fun for the teenagers!)
    After all these manifestations I have decided to use ALL the descriptions above, not using the same Hero of course.  There are so many characters rolling around in my noggin, just waiting for a voice.  Now the dilemma is picking the first story.  Do I stick with Hero and her unfortunate fairy godmother, or do I move on to my changeling princess that is learning how to control her new self with other supernatural students?  
    Perhaps the best course of action is to let them all rest and see which one yells the loudest.  It will be interesting to see which one wins out...

There is a character for which I need a name.  She is a 16 year old girl raised by her hippie single mother but is heir to the throne of the Underworld.  So I need a name that is both flower child and dark/macabre in nature.  The list of candidates so far follows:

November
Lilian
Luna
August
Rowan

Please leave comments with more ideas! 
--M

I have posted the first page I've written of one of my short stories.  It's loosely based on my step-dad and his many conspiracy theories.  He and I were talking on the phone as I was driving back to Denver from Albuquerque and we created a basic plot-line.

It's about a middle-aged man working for the Department of Agriculture.  He discovers a mutant species of algae and seeks to eradicate it before it can take over the world.  It's a silly story, much like Dad and I, but it's fun.  Now I just have to finish it. 

The first page is posted in the Short Stories section, or follow the link below.  Feel free to leave comments and suggestions, especially any other conspiracy theories YOU have!

Killer Algae

--M

One must decide what to do with their life.  At 28 I'm still not sure.  I have worked in restaurants as a waitress, bartender, cocktail waitress, and manager.  I've worked in telecom and solar energy, and I've been a wedding planner.  As you can see, my resume is all over the place and finding a "real" job has never been very easy.

What I DO know is that I don't like desk jobs, working in a cubicle or in a window-less office.  I need the sun and I need be creative.  So the plan is to stick it out with a "real" job, save some money, start my own event planning business (how does Celebrations by Michelle sound?) and write my book.

That's the plan.  Let's get started.