We spent some time decorating these last weeks. It made me feel like one of those people on the Weekend Warrior shows on TV. Our house surely gained a level or two these last weeks. It’s fun getting to tackle new projects in your spare time. It was inspired by our new temporary roommate, Samantha’s brother just moved back to Texas from Tennessee, but it’s awesome that we finally got around to it.

First up was the hallway because it hadn’t been done at all since we moved in five years ago. Honestly the door to the guest room still had some red crayon from the previous renter. Back when we wanted to move in the landlord said it wouldn’t be ready for a couple weeks because it wasn’t painted, etc. Since we had to leave our old place before then we said not to worry…we’d love to paint. Ya..that friggin’ red crayon has mocked us since. But we showed it!

Now the doors are all freshly white and the hall is no longer white. It is much more calming. It has a lot more pictures scattered about as well. It’s easier to decorate walls that are freshly painted. Fresh paint must equate to crack for decorator’s or something. Eureka!

The second room was the main bathroom, which also hadn’t been done before. This one I was a bit skeptical about. I’ll admit it. But Samantha assured me it would be great once the walls were covered. And it was awful before, so it couldn’t possibly be worse. I kept an open mind. She was totally right of course…again. She keeps doing that! I don’t know if you can really see that shade of orange she used, it’s easier if you click on the bigger picture. It came out great.

Next up is my brother-in-law’s room and then the office. My BIL chose a similar color to the hall, but a bit darker. It looks cool and it should cover the current PINK walls nicely. Ya.. uh.. so we never painted that one either. We don’t have the paint for the office yet, but Sam assures me it will be green. Because I’ve always wanted a green room! And the landlord is having someone else come paint the outside of the house. Samantha picked out the colors for that as well. So I’ll have more pics soon.

So, fate has shown me yet again what happens when I say it’s time to relax. This was my day a few days back:

To start things off, the day was going great. No work. Not much to do. What could be better? Then I realized I needed something from the store. Reality strikes again and ruins everything.

I get dressed, grab my keys and my wallet and I’m off. I only get to the end of the porch before everything starts to go wrong.

There is a branch, thicker around than my waist (which is admittedly growing too large anyway), lying across most of the front yard.

The branch  right next to the car. Dangerously close to the the car.

Upon closer inspection? Yep, all the little branches have scratched their pointy little fingers from the top all the way to the bottom. Like dozens of little claw marks. Trying to be positive, it really could have been a lot worse. Like if the branch had been just a foot over. I shudder to think.

Well that’s enough drama for one day, yes?

WRONG.

A few hours later Samantha comes in to tell me the bathroom is covered in water.

yay! Because I haven’t had enough stress today.

Well, a leaking toilet isn’t the worst thing in the world. You just have to turn off the shutoff valve.

Oh right.. this house was built in the 1950s. It doesn’t have a shutoff valve.

So I get my wrench and head out to the street to cut off the water. I twist the knob and go back inside and the water is still on. Go back outside, twist harder. Still on. So I call the landlord and leave a message. Hours pass. Then I text. Hours pass. Finally he texts back around 1am. “Hey, I’m on vacation. Trying to get hold of a plumber.”

That night I had to set my alarm clock to go off every..single…hour to dump out the leaking water. The plumber eventually comes. I have him add a shutoff valve before anything else. He fixes the toilet and all goes back to normal.

The best part of all this? The plumber said I had been turning off the neighbor’s water. OOPS.

Well, well, well. It’s been some time, yes? I’m happy to announce that I did, in fact, survive what I am officially calling the Summer of Insanity. I finished five classes (and mostly with A’s, woo), worked two jobs, and I’m only 20 pages from finishing the final draft of THE FOREST AWAKENS. Which means submission time has come again! I’m ready for a whole new load of rejections. Yep, I sure am. Sorta.

Anyway, Summer is over and I graduate from University of Texas at Arlington  in December. You might think, ack, graduating soon, time to freak out, but I’m only taking two classes. After the Summer I had? This is going to be a breeze. And that’s good because I have a bunch of new projects to work on. I have a couple websites already lined up that should be fun. I got a buddy who wants to record an album with me. And, of course, I have a completely brilliant new novel to write.

So I hope nobody missed the blog too much. I know you guys were checking daily with frowning faces. Don’t worry, I won’t make you admit it. I have all kinds of new adventures to tell you about, new podcasts to release, all-in-all we have some stuff to catch up on.

Hey everyone, I just wanted to get on and say that I won’t be updating the Blog and Podcast as regularly for a little bit. With Summer approaching my time is going to be incredibly limited. I have taken on more than usual for this time of year. I want to still focus on my writing and programming amidst my wild schedule, so that means my blog is going to be slower to update. I’ll still stop in from time to time with updates and fun things I’ve found. I am about done with another website to share with you guys.

I will be updating my activity bars on the front page while I work. The last set of edits for THE FOREST AWAKENS is coming along nicely! While I’ve been plotting the next book I was planning to write, another has crept into my interest. So now I’m plotting two books to see which I want to work on next. I think this new idea would be much faster, so it might win out.

I’m also pretty active on Twitter, so if you want updates you can find me there!

Around the start of the new year I added a new update bar for the front page to keep track of this year’s writing goal. It occurred to me the other day that I forgot to EXPLAIN what the darn thing means. It’s really very simple. In years past I have made complex writing goals and I found them stressful.

So instead I took a different approach. I looked at how many words a day it would take to accomplish a book being fully written and edited. I decided on 500 words, enough to fully write and edit a book that is around 75,000 words, and then to still have enough left over to work on my podcast stories.

I get my words two ways:

1. The old fashioned way, you know, actual writing.
2. 3 drafts of edits are equal to the number of words I wrote.

This basically means that the final draft of a 2,000 word story is worth 4,000 words toward my yearly goal (2K written, 2K edited). As I expected, I’m a bit behind on my percentage but I’m not stressing it. Summer is usually when I get a big bulk of my yearly writing done (I just have more time for it). Those days I tend to do far more than 500 words so it will make up for a small bit of slacking the rest of the year.

I couldn’t have asked for a more relaxing weekend to finish my little quasi-vacation. The best part about the oddball weather in Texas is that every once in awhile the whole place virtually shuts down in bad weather. Because of it, I had a pretty great two weeks. So no complaints here!

The best part of all is how we got to finish it off. The two of us decided over Christmas that we were going to take a trip this year, nothing too fancy, but a chance to get away. We haven’t done that in years. So we rented a log cabin near Hot Springs, Arkansas. It was a short drive and it looked beautiful. It really was everything we hoped it would be.

We’re not really the fancy vacationer types, so this place was a lot of fun. We spent a day mining for diamonds in the only public diamond mine in the world one of the days. Diamonds for us were not in the cards, but we did get a cool assortment of other kinds of gems. It was pretty wet because of all the snow that came before our trip. Some time we want to go back and try the dry mining instead, it seems a whole lot easier.

For our Valentine’s dinner we grilled up some steaks and Samantha made garlic mashed potatoes. I got a fire going and we sat around the fire talking and eating. It’s so nice to just get away from everything and have a meal by the fire. After dinner we walked down to a little wooden boat dock and just looked up at the sky for a bit. Then we sat in the hot tub. Yep, this place really had everything, even a hot tub on the front porch of the cabin. If you like nature and you want to get away this place is fantastic.

All-in-all a terrific vacation!

I’m back from my awesome February vacation. The blog has felt so quiet lately. Well I have lots of posts to remedy that! It should be a pretty eventful week around here. Our vacation ended with a 3-day weekend at a romantic log cabin in the woods. It was just what the doctor ordered. I worked extra hard on my writing leading up to the trip so that I could justify the time away. Now it’s time to get back to it!

Thanks for joining us tonight, as always I hope you enjoy the story!

Rewarded With a Curse

When the leader of a small group of wizards discovers the existence of an ancient ritual said to grant vast amounts of power, greed and darkness seem to follow in the wake of its discovery. Roger Gardwhin, a middle-aged man trying to maintain a normal life outside of this magical group, is forced to take part against his will. As the day of the ritual approaches, he’s realizing just what he is getting himself into.

 

Tonight we start the first new podcast of 2011! REWARDED WITH A CURSE is new attempt on my part to write a story in the 1st person point of view. I usually tend to stick to 3rd person limited. It’s a pretty common tradition in fantasy to write that way, at least in the high fantasy genre I write in. This was a lot of fun though and I’ve already plotted the next two parts. That’s another 2011 change. We’re going to try for longer episodes that don’t go on quite as long.  My goal is roughly 2000 words per episode.

We hope you enjoy the story. As always, feel free to comment on where you think the story might be going. Maybe your ideas will get included!

Rewarded With a Curse

When the leader of a small group of wizards discovers the existence of an ancient ritual said to grant vast amounts of power, greed and darkness seem to follow in the wake of its discovery. Roger Gardwhin, a middle-aged man trying to maintain a normal life outside of this magical group, is forced to take part against his will. As the day of the ritual approaches, he’s realizing just what he is getting himself into.