cleolinda: (lolcat)





(so, yeah, Italian leather is a thing that's happening)

(Please note that we're back on Thursdays again)

(P.S. Zachary Quinto is going to play THE PATIENT)

So I am trying to make this the occasion of my return to recapping. "Mukozuke" creeps ever closer to being done. Pray for me; times is hard.

(That said, Kristen may have a Murder Sparkle surprise soon.)

Speaking of Aromaleigh, because I can never resist a good segue, I'm in the middle of Blade Runner/More Human Than Human robot eyeshadow inspiration posts. Tomorrow will be the Incept Date color, I think. We also announced that we're developing Twin Peaks eyeshadow, although I'm not sure when that collection would come out and I remain hellishly behind on the pilot recap. Also, there are new Asteriai star nymph and Galactic duochrome collections that I didn't even have anything to do with; I am pretty sure that Kristen never sleeps.

More cheerfully than it would have been last week: My sister had a serious emergency surgery (I'm being vague on purpose, not my health issues to talk about, etc.) at the end of February, but she's doing much better now. Still recovering, but I think this past Thursday or so was the first day she seemed like herself again.

A couple of weeks before that, I had a Sudden Dental Panic that turned out to just be "stop clenching your jaw." This was, therefore, the Best Dentist Visit Ever. I promptly went home, slipped on a sweetgum tree-ball, fell down the deck steps, and twisted my ankle. Except that it still hurts (but only sometimes, at some angles) a month later, but more the top of my foot than my ankle, and I think maybe I have a hairline fracture. Which... there's not much to do about that but stay off it (which I have not been able to do) and wear a Deluxe Ankle Stabilizer (CVS, $12).

I have started trying to get the ball rolling and the money saving for Dragon Con 2015, but I'm also concerned that at some point in the next six months I'll just be standing around somewhere and spontaneously fall down and break the other foot. However, I live in hope.

Also, I have a fantasy short story set in the War of the Seasons universe, through the latest Silence in the Library Kickstarter, with art by Dawn Murphy.

Also-also, [livejournal.com profile] foresthouse and I just did our first solo episode of Made of Fail, in which, among other things, I try to explain Jupiter Ascending to her (1:29:00ish) over the course of about seven minutes. That said, we do start off by discussing my haunted teeth.

I think that's about it for now, though.
cleolinda: (lolcat)
So the last month has been such that I haven't even been able to stop by and say "hey guys it's my 35th birthday!" or "hey guys, happy holidays!" or "hey guys, I have a Black Ribbon story coming out in the Athena's Daughters anthology!" It was... that kind of month. Some kind of pinched nerve or pulled muscle in my back, a conglomeration of flu and blarg shortly after my birthday, other health issues, then two weeks off the grid partly to get things done and partly just to recuperate (and then my phone died again yesterday). So I feel like we need to catch up, although let it be noted that I've spent three days trying to put this entry together while feverish with a new rebound blarg--in fact, shit, it's only a few hours until the Kickstarter ends. Well, it's been an amazing success--over $40,000 at this point, I don't even know how. Anyway--here's a bit more about the final version of my story: a photoset of reference images, a little back story, and the idea of strength as a choice.

(I believe there will also be an Apollo's Daughters companion, with female protagonists by male writers, which certain accusers of ~misandry~ seem not to have noticed.)

Also, I started rambling on about That Time I Mailed In An X-Files Script, Or: Why Creators Can't Read Your Stuff, and ended up on Geekosystem? (That's got to be one of y'all. O hai!) Here's a longer version of the Twitter conversation we had, now on Storify.

Meanwhile: Dracula recaps: I don't even know, you guys. As of last Friday, I'm four episodes behind. I don't know if it's seasonal affective blarg or my own personal issues or this show genuinely not clicking with a lot of people (apparently I'm not the only recapper who's wandered away), but... argh. I want to give the recaps another shot, so I'm trying to think of a different format that's less labor-intensive than "8000-word recaps, wtf." Bullet-point outlines in Comic Sans with screencaps? I don't even know.

Because I want to save up my strength because Hannibal is coming back early! Hannibal is coming back early! HANNIBAL IS COMING BACK EARLY, THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

omg )

(Also, I am still trying to figure out the username of the person who sent me one of the Wound Man sketches from SDCC, because that arrived a few days before my birthday when I was really down and it was like my favorite thing I got that week.)

Also-also, our vacuum cleaner died (House of Bark honors its service) and our washing machine is in its dying throes, so apparently we're doing the All the Household Appliances Dying at Once thing again. I'm at that point where I have tons of ideas--which are also possible sources of income--but no energy to write them down (untangling my illness bedhead was a major accomplishment today), so we'll see what happens next.


Site Meter

*confetti*

Oct. 31st, 2013 12:42 pm
cleolinda: (spooky03)
So! Today is the 10th anniversary of this LJ! And even though I am about to link you to a ton of stuff not actually on this LJ, I still consider it the mothership.

My second piece is up on The Toast! If you read it before, a Significant Correction has been made. It changes EVERYTHING. RUN, JULIE.

(The Toast is on fire generally today, btw.)

Over on my tumblr: a gorgeous new illustrated Hunger Games: Catching Fire poster, the Sleepy Hollow gang playing baseball (the follow-up), a few new Hannibal things (OMG), Old Maps of Paris, Kate Beaton's Halloween quiz, and Martha Stewart Halloween photography shut up.

Over on my new side tumblr: the lesser-known jacket of Anna Valerious, wonderful Dracula illustrations by Anne Yvonne Gilbert, and that POOF! gif I wanted.

And, in case you missed it, I finished the recap for the first episode of NBC's Dracula a couple of days ago (I need to go back and answer a lot of comments. ). I am SUPER, SUPER HOPING to make this November 1st deadline for my Black Ribbon story before the next episode that night, just in time to start the process all over again. Wish me luck!


Site Meter
cleolinda: (dracula hildebrandt)
Sooooooo a thing is happening. Here's the deadline I referred to with such vagueness:




I'ma be in it. This is also why I asked the Twitters for help with an author bio, the writing of which was complicated by the fact that I've hardly DONE anything: An expanded discussion of Black Ribbon )


Site Meter
cleolinda: (Default)
So, I haven't been around much. I should probably pop up a little more often.






Alabama was completely untouched by the Frankenstorm, so we're fine; yesterday was sunny and a little windy, and that was all. (I hope all y'all are okay.) For the last two months, I've mostly been holed up in the Fortress of Solitude on the corner of Anemia Street and Migraine Avenue, although I'm hoping that a new pair of glasses will help the latter. (Maybe I can upgrade to Chronic Fatigue Gardens pretty soon.) Currently fighting off a chest cold and steeling myself to look at a lot of unanswered email. The upside is, I've gotten a ton of work done on the book, although I was supposed to finish it tomorrow... nine years ago. So, you know. There's that. How about that new Star Wars movie, then?



Site Meter
cleolinda: (katniss)
1) Bella Swan: vampiring better than you since *checks watch* 2008. This is the same teaser that ran in front of The Hunger Games, so you may have already seen it (stop poaching Katniss's deer, BELLA). Read more... )

2) Meanwhile, shit got real: The Hunger Games' box office crushes the Twilight movies. All of them.

3) I seem to have hit a hypomanic upswing; mine, as I've explained before, are pretty mild. The only thing someone would really notice from the outside is that I'm a bit more upbeat, enthusiastic, and talkative--but when a movie I've really been looking forward to comes out, that doesn't seem out of place. (Honestly, I've started wondering--as I've said before--if you can trigger manic moods. If nothing else, I think it suddenly being SUMMER IN THE MIDDLE OF MARCH gave me an overdose of natural light, and that may have caused it as well. As I recall, my most pronounced upswings are almost always in the spring and summer.) Otherwise, I'm outwardly calm, but as I've gotten older, I've been edging further and further into mild mania, and the happy creative bursts have been "evolving" into something less comfortable. The upside at the lower hypomanic end is that I feel happy and creative (verging on hypergraphic); at the high, verging-on-manic end, I feel overcaffeinated, impatient, and irritable, I have all these ideas but I can't concentrate or focus, I have a hard time sleeping, and I don't want to eat. I have a sample of BPAL's Safari blend, and a dab on the back of each hand (so I can smell it while I'm typing) seems to have centered me a bit. Once I was able to actually focus, I got 1600 words written in a couple of hours last night (there's your hypergraphia), but it took me all day to be able to concentrate that long.

On the other hand, you get wackadoo flights of fancy like the mandatory Panem TV schedule, and like this:

@cleolinda: WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING RT @NikkiFinke: Hugh Dancy To Star In NBC Series ‘Hannibal’

@cleolinda: Look, save some time. Modern-day Sherlock Holmes hunts Hannibal Lecter. In a dystopia. With a vampire. An alien vampire.

@cleolinda: The alien vampire is on the run from a beauty pageant to the death. Also, Sherlock is a werewolf. His brother is a steampunk faerie.

@writingfreak88: No alien ninja turtles?

Read more... )



Site Meter
cleolinda: (Default)
1) Bella Swan: vampiring better than you since *checks watch* 2008. This is the same teaser that ran in front of The Hunger Games, so you may have already seen it (stop poaching Katniss's deer, BELLA). Read more... )

2) Meanwhile, shit got real: The Hunger Games' box office crushes the Twilight movies. All of them.

3) I seem to have hit a hypomanic upswing; mine, as I've explained before, are pretty mild. The only thing someone would really notice from the outside is that I'm a bit more upbeat, enthusiastic, and talkative--but when a movie I've really been looking forward to comes out, that doesn't seem out of place. (Honestly, I've started wondering--as I've said before--if you can trigger manic moods. If nothing else, I think it suddenly being SUMMER IN THE MIDDLE OF MARCH gave me an overdose of natural light, and that may have caused it as well. As I recall, my most pronounced upswings are almost always in the spring and summer.) Otherwise, I'm outwardly calm, but as I've gotten older, I've been edging further and further into mild mania, and the happy creative bursts have been "evolving" into something less comfortable. The upside at the lower hypomanic end is that I feel happy and creative (verging on hypergraphic); at the high, verging-on-manic end, I feel overcaffeinated, impatient, and irritable, I have all these ideas but I can't concentrate or focus, I have a hard time sleeping, and I don't want to eat. I have a sample of BPAL's Safari blend, and a dab on the back of each hand (so I can smell it while I'm typing) seems to have centered me a bit. Once I was able to actually focus, I got 1600 words written in a couple of hours last night (there's your hypergraphia), but it took me all day to be able to concentrate that long.

On the other hand, you get wackadoo flights of fancy like the mandatory Panem TV schedule, and like this:

@cleolinda: WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING RT @NikkiFinke: Hugh Dancy To Star In NBC Series ‘Hannibal’

@cleolinda: Look, save some time. Modern-day Sherlock Holmes hunts Hannibal Lecter. In a dystopia. With a vampire. An alien vampire.

@cleolinda: The alien vampire is on the run from a beauty pageant to the death. Also, Sherlock is a werewolf. His brother is a steampunk faerie.

@writingfreak88: No alien ninja turtles?

Read more... )



Site Meter
cleolinda: (reiko)
@Kate_Hart: Loooove this post from @sarahockler about writer's resolutions: "Just make the bed." (Mine is always "clean the sink.")

Unfortunately, mine right now is "Get the sleep," because that jump in my eyelid has come back (probably from too much reading), and also: dubstep fever drags on. Night!


I will probably get up in the middle of the night and sit on the internet drinking iced tea, what



Siesta at House of Bark on Twitpic





Site Meter
cleolinda: (Default)
Okay, so. I have talked about Dracula a number of times; I read it in middle school (with big glossy Greg Hildebrandt illustrations, no less) and wasn't ever quite the same afterwards, really enjoyed Leslie Klinger's annotated edition, so on and so forth. Short version: Actors reading Dracula on BBC Radio Ulster. The first four installments (fifteen minutes each) are up for about 20 hours more, so hurry on over there. Long version:


@kiwimouse: @cleolinda *cough* Michael Fassbender reads Dracula: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0170yjj Thought you might be interested.

[Where were all of you when this started running last Monday?!]

@cleolinda: We need to have more actors reading gothic novels. Someone get on this. Read more... )


One of the reasons I mention this, though, is that I had a really dry, listless week of non-writing page-staring, and listening to this has made me feel a lot better. I think it's because Dracula is one of those books that makes me want to write, to feel like I can do this. There are some books that are so brilliant, you want to just give up; there are others that are so bad, you just grouse about how you could do so much better. But, true or not, even "I could do better" is more smug than productive. It's interesting to find books that are both good and inspiring, that are admirable without being intimidating. Books with some flaws but with great characters and stories tend to hit that mark for me, I think, and place a very engaging, approachable kind of greatness within reach: not perfect, but wonderful. Since a lot of people are doing NaNoWriMo at the moment, maybe that's a good question to ask: what books do that for you? No, seriously, tell me. I may need to read some of them.



Site Meter
cleolinda: (Default)
Jesus, how long have I not blogged in?

How long have I not blogged in. This is what is left of my brain, y'all. All my grammar is belong to novel.

WE HAVE TO GO BACK, KATE )



Site Meter
cleolinda: (ghost background)
Jesus, how long have I not blogged in?

How long have I not blogged in. This is what is left of my brain, y'all. All my grammar is belong to novel.

WE HAVE TO GO BACK, KATE )



Site Meter

Candygram?

Oct. 1st, 2011 07:39 pm
cleolinda: (black ribbon)
@cleolinda: Extremely Crappy Draft: 173,749 words. Enter stage two: Readable Draft.

@cleolinda: Precisely! RT @particle_person: Yes! That is enough words to still have lots of book left when you toss the half that don’t work right!

@cleolinda: I guess it’s not really time for a victory lap yet. Maybe a victory… skip.

@alliancesjr: Admit it, you’re going to do a victory macarena like it’s 1992, aren’t you?

@cleolinda: More like a victory flop. I just keep sitting here going, I can’t do this. What am I doing? I can’t do this.

@cleolinda: But it’s like… doesn’t really matter if I can’t. Don’t really have a choice, do I? Have to keep going with whatever I’ve got.

@alliancesjr: Like a shark. But…on land.

@cleolinda: LAND SHARK!

[BANTER] )

RANDOM LITERARY DISCUSSION ) 

While we're here, hours after I started writing this post--the #occupywallstreet thing has blown up into a multi-city protest, but police have arrested "about 400" protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge so far. There's a livefeed, and, apparently, some kettling happened. Mark Ruffalo, of all people, seems to be tweeting from the front lines ("People in 5 different jails. They are releasing people now. 3 in NYC and 2 in Brooklyn"). BPAL, meanwhile, has put up a charity scent to help send pizza to the protesters (the pizza is already going out): "Rock the protester cliché! This is a filthy friggin’ patchouli, dark, deep, rooty, and strangely sexy, with cocoa absolute, tobacco absolute, and bourbon vanilla." More as I hear about it, assuming anyone in the media bothers to cover it in the first place (*side eye*).

ETA: Here's an article that does a fairly good job of explaining what's going on and how it came together.



Site Meter
cleolinda: (black ribbon)
Wow, it's been a while.

So. I think I'm at the tail end of a mild hypomanic/manic episode that's lasted about two weeks. I think. Using my Make Hay While the Sun Shines policy, I sat down to put as much of Black Ribbon together as I could, and write more whenever I thought of something. There are a lot of symptoms that I eventually notice--don't want to eat, have a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep, unexplained itchiness (often a caffeinated sort of tingle), creativity/productivity, and--sometimes--the distinct giddy feeling that I'm in love, even when there's no one around to be in love with. Turns out? Hypergraphia can also be a symptom of mania. BEHOLD: Tuesday. Read more... )



Site Meter
cleolinda: (Default)
Internets, I may or may not go see X-Men today, so in the limited amount of time I have, I will simply give you a (a, not the) Twitter-reaction round-up to the Wall Street Journal article about how YA is bad and it should feel bad ("It was all vampires and suicide and self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff"). I don't feel like I really have to take it apart sentence by sentence, because it is so incredibly, self-evidently wrong in its wrongness to anyone who has actually read YA books.

@maureenjohnson: The Wall Street Journal has done it again. I am going to have some kind of an episode. *quivers* http://on.wsj.com/lwuPNd

And then it snowballs into #YAsaves ) 



Site Meter
cleolinda: (Default)
So. Writing update. That scene I had lost--I had tried to recreate it from memory. Turns out I ended up with an opposite take on how one character reacted, so after I found the original (like I said: Windows Explorer can't locate something you didn't type up), I realized that I had two opposing takes to reconcile. Which is fine; I just have to decide which works better. I have no problem writing out a scene in as many different ways as it takes to find one that works. I don't feel like the story exists, concretely, unchangeably, once you write it down, so I don't have a problem playing with different versions. I just have to sit down and figure it out now. It's a really interesting (to me) scene, so it's fun.

I'm skipping around at the moment because that's just how I always roll I'm trying to type up all my handwritten notes and drafts. I think the next bit I type up is going to be about the Chinese apothecary. Read more... )



Site Meter
cleolinda: (ink)
Okay, I am tired of this. I am done. I am done, ironically, with not being done. I am tired of not finishing things, like a book I've been working on for eight years while every bandwagon in the world saddled up and passed me, and I am tired of being jealous of writers whose only sin was ACTUALLY FINISHING SOMETHING.

Read more... )




Site Meter
cleolinda: (galadriel mist)
I have been struggling with a severe downturn. I think what's happening is that we're getting into the seasonal depression... uh... season. And then there was the ice this week (we're still shoveling it off the deck; it's too thick to melt enough on its own). I mean, maybe it's natural to be sluggish when it's 18 degrees outside. Even though the days are getting longer from mid-December on out, the lack of sunlight catches up with you about now. And I usually get depressed just after Christmas and my birthday anyway. I tried to put together a linkspam post four days ago, and I just couldn't ever get it finished. I can get on Twitter to hit a simple "retweet" button and feel like that's the next best thing, for short bursts of sociability. It's hard to explain how you can bob to the surface, perfectly cheerful for a little while, or giddy about this or that little geek-interest thing, and then sink back under for hours of brooding. The thing about depression is that you can often keep up appearances in front of other people. Sometimes I think that depression is almost a separate, sentient organism, and it works hard to protect itself--it wants to make sure you don't believe in it, that you think you're miserable because you're a miserable person who deserves it, not because you have uncooperative brain chemistry. It wants to make sure you cover for it, you convince people that you're fine. It has its own priorities and best interests, a sense of self-preservation, and the self it wants to preserve is not you.

I've been trying to write. That actually went pretty well for a couple of days, except that people kept interrupting and pulling me away to do this or that just as I was getting somewhere. So instead, I went back to reading--non-fiction, which is why I haven't mentioned it; I might do a quick writeup on a few books at once. It's the kind of thing I take notes on while I read and come up with new characters or plot additions for Black Ribbon; a lot of it is to get details for high-society scenes or help me get a grip on the international political situation circa 1889. I think I'm going to be doing this mix of real names and fictionalized characters; I'm okay with dropping the name of a real person, but much more interaction than that, and I start to feel weird. Maybe you'll be able to tell who it's meant to be, maybe not. Because the thing is, Black Ribbon isn't a wildly alternate universe, though it looks like some historical elements are going to be accelerated a little bit. Major anarchist activity is going to start about four or five years early (uh. That is maybe giving something away), and we're going to have some technological developments happen 5-10 years early. In a weird way, I think I feel more anxious about getting away with this because the story world isn't wildly different. If I were just going to do outright fantastical steampunk with the airship pirates and whatnot, I don't think anyone would call me on discrepancies, because they'd know it would be pointless. But what I'm doing now is close enough that people are going to think I meant to be historically accurate, but internets, let them tell me, I am WRONG. I guess the solution is to put in a few Wildly Different elements to signal that. I was hoping that a mechanical peacock in the first chapter would suffice, but maybe not. I guess the only thing to do is write it and see. The only way out is forward.

I know I'm behind on Varney and Secret Life, but... just... nothing. I actually think about Secret Life a lot, but I can't get the new entry to turn out right. You know how there's usually more than one storyline going on at a time? Like, we visit with two or three different sets of characters? I've got one set of characters planned out, but the other storyline or two, they're kind of vague. I don't quite know how to get this entry to fill out properly. I mean, it's a process I go through every time; I'm just completely stalled on this one. And I don't want it to take nine months to work out again. But I think I am going to have to call a hopefully short hiatus until I work it out, rather than show up each weekend and go, "Yeah... still not done" and feel worse every time. I think the guilt actually torpedoes me worse than the block itself.

Meanwhile, the Golden Globes are tomorrow night. This is one of the awards shows I traditionally liveblog (one of the many services we provide at Cleolinda Industries). I keep trying to gear myself up for it, and... ehhhhhhhh. And we've got a really good slate of movies this year almost none of which I've been able to leave the house and see, so it's not lack of enthusiasm for the nominee pool. We've got one of those rare years where almost anyone could win and it would be deserved. I just... can't muster the energy. But I have to. I hate defaulting on things I like to do just because my dumb ass feels whiny. So I'm going to try to do that tomorrow night. At least with Lizzie now, it's easy to set up in front of the TV.

Also, I can't find my Lillie Langtry bio, which VEXES ME. On the upside, I've been given a couple of new YA books, so I might get to those soon.



Site Meter
cleolinda: (lolcat)
I have just had another Moment of Clarity with Black Ribbon--about seven pages' worth of background notes and a timeline I should have drawn up years ago, but there you are. I'm a little anxious about exactly how many years it would take to get a medical degree between 1870 and 1890, which is why I think I put off pinning down the exact years for so long. But honestly, until I made an attempt at it, a lot of things could not come together. And then I had two huge realizations and it was awesome.

So. Not to be smurfy about it, but: this is what I am thankful for. What are your plans for Turkeymas, if applicable?

Failing that: BRING UNTO ME THE BLACK FRIDAY SALES.



Site Meter
cleolinda: (black ribbon)
I just want to let you know that I'm not dead or anything. I am having a very good time writing and wallowing in research materials, particularly a gold mine I stumbled upon for a subject I hadn't been able to find anything on in years previous. (Shhhh.) As such, I am behind on EVERYTHING. Well, I try to keep an eye on everything, but I've stopped posting anywhere very much. Tumblr in particular has gone by the wayside (but I will come back to it).

Basically, I spent the last months, if not year(s), wrestling with this goddamn novel and thinking that if I were just a good enough writer, I'd not only be able to make it work, I'd be able to make it brilliant. And then suddenly, Read more... )

So I'm trying to keep up with everyone, but I'm also just really happy at the moment, and I have to chase that wind as long as it blows. I would really like to post some linkspam today, but I don't know.

I am trying to get this week's Secret Life of Dolls finished. (I did put up a new installment on Sunday night.) The good parts are written; I just have to work on the connective tissue. This is generally my process anyway, and speaking of which, it is exactly how I write Movies in Fifteen Minuteses, and I realized with a start I'm supposed to start writing one of those this weekend. My time frame on turning one of those out these days seems to be 10-14 days, which sucks (because you want to be among the first out of the gate when it comes to cultural parody/commentary), but you get higher quality when I take my time and sleep on it, so what're you gonna do. BUT. I did want to put out a new Secret Life for people who would like unPotter counter-programming this weekend, and also, if we keep the story going, we'll get to our new arrivals in a more timely fashion. My birthday, which is now Relevant to Your Interests, is less than a month from now, after all.

ANYWAY. Back to wallowing in sources. So much to read, so little time, so much fun.



Site Meter
Page generated Jun. 6th, 2025 10:17 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios