Behold my 95-year-old grandma posing for her birthday:

This is one awesome lady, folks. You can behold the magnificence here. Or, If that’s not your cup of tea, you can look at some links.

Instead of evicting tenants, land-lord gets a job. Wow. Just wow. More people like that would be great. Speaking of great, ever wonder what goes through an editor’s mind during manuscript preparation? Note how the article emphasizes this is a GOOD editing scenario. Oh, and if you’d like some interesting brain-candy, check out this graphic novel adaption of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, online for free. Nifty!

Got twenty five million dollars to spare? How about a house?

Bizarre shoe. Yes, that’s a shoe. Yes. It really is. Dang, that’s creative. Speaking of creative, here is a very, VERY good article for those of us still in the process: seven things learned from querying.

Check out the plague doctors. Look at those guys! The bird masks! The leather pants! I am seriously working these into my books somehow. I am also working in semi-colons. I like semi-colons. Speaking of which: In defense of the semi-colon. Preach it, sistah.

And now, a snippet from a book about Notte – the first vampire. Feel free to picture this all with an Italian accent. :D

My memories are not what they should be. I am aware that I was a young man once, human, a simple scholar, reading the stars and raising a family barely younger than I. That is, after all, how it was done in those days. Once one could create children, one did.

All that I have are single images, mental snapshots, viewed in sepia as if from a great distance, and these pictures came to me at great price. I do know this much: I was born, and later, I was made.

The ones who made me took me from my young family. They took me from my studies, from the protected city which I knew, and they changed me. They gave me to the stars I loved in a way I had never been given before.

There are times when I have wondered what difference it makes to be born through pain. My sepia dreams of the changes done to me are accompanied by pain, such pain, but of course, I did not at first remember them, and so my question is likely moot.

The first real memory – real, in color, with all senses engaged – was waking in the woods and finding that I lay under stars I loved but could not name. Finding that the night was no longer dark. Finding that all I wanted was to feed.

The hunger is beautiful, my friend. Delicious; intoxicating, like the finest aged and herb-touched alcohols of ancient priests, but far more potent. I woke, and I hungered; the Beast became me. The Beast became all that I was.

I ran through the woods. The trees, the shadows, the darkness – every sound in the air, every little heartbeat and pulse, from the tiniest spider to the largest lizard – I heard and felt and craved. I wanted to drink them all, to feel them pulsing inside me without conflict because I no longer had a pulse. Yet they were not enough. I wanted what I could not name – man-blood – but all I found at first were animals. So, after a time of searching and whining in wordless frustration, I pursued the largest animal I saw.

The deer fled from me. My Beast was not yet stealthy; finesse was a silly concept, considered at the back of my mind and then discarded. I was faster, that was all. She could not flee. Ah, my friend, my friend, the blood! Glory, bliss! Sweet, tangy, powerful, every cell filled with something I could not even identify, and as I drank, for the briefest of moments, I knew myself to be strange. Blood did not taste like this. I had tasted blood in the past. I knew I had, although my past was lost to me; I recalled waking and nothing more. But this!

The Beast tasted blood, and it became his one true love. His beloved; to be caressed, and treasured, and embraced and savored and until forever became ever more and always! The blood was all!

Then came the cold, strange shock of dead blood as the deer’s heart stopped, and I – the Beast – knew the horror of rejection. Then came the cold inglory of the blood that deserted me. The harshness of blood that no longer spoke or sang, that thickened perceptibly to sludge, that tasted now of foulness and the grave. I turned away from the corpse with a cry and vomited some of what I had taken. The memory of bliss hurt. I wept.

Taken from here. The responses, however, are all my own.

1. Thanks for everything you’ve done.
Friends who travel to me when I’m in trouble. Family who believe in my dreams even when there’s no proof. Lover who is my greatest cheerleader.

2. You’ve changed my life.
One person’s changed it more than anyone: Duane. Taking me away from the craziness, giving me confidence in everything from the kitchen to the computer.

3. I need you.
Scary. Very scary. And I said this for the first time this year.

4. I’ve only got one life to live.
I was 29 before I finally understood this – and I paid the price. Many people whom I’d allowed to lean too much on me actually grew angry when I started doing things for myself. It was hard. It was also worth it.

5. Nothing can stop me.
Nothing short of death. Rejections, questions, financial difficulties, health – doesn’t matter. I will never quit again.

6. I love my life.
I do. Deeply.


7. There’s nothing I’d rather be doing.
That’s what I realized when I got yet another rejection the other day. Of course I doubted; of course I wondered. But then I tried to see myself doing ANYTHING other than writing… and I couldn’t. Whether or not I ever get published, this is what I am meant to do.

8. I can change the world.
Yes.

9. I will change the world.
I am working on my little corner, you better believe it.

10. I have changed the world.
After this election, I believe it’s possible.

11. I’m rich without money.
Driven home when we were unable to get work for months – and yet were content.

12. I’m doing what I was meant to do.
Yes. And it feels good.

13. I conquered my biggest fear.
Mediocrity and bad cooking. Yes, those were my big fears – and I’ve beaten them both.

14. Glad to help you.
I said this last night. O_O

15. I have all the money I need.
I do. We’re comfortable; there isn’t enough to splurge and run out getting toys, but you know what? We don’t need toys.

16. I don’t care what people think.
And getting to that point is why Steven finally was able to say “shit.”

17. I’m honest.
Paid for that, too. Again: worth it. I couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t.

18. I’m going for it!
Book one: finished. Book two and three: outlined and in progress. Book four and five: first couple chapters written.

19. I’m proud of myself.
I can’t believe it – but I am.

20. I’ve failed.
I have failed. That’s WHY I value victory so much now. Losing my 20’s to stupid decisions, throwing away the degree I wanted for the one I was “supposed” to have, taking the job that I was expected to take, no matter what it did to my emotions and social life… never again. Never again. I have learned to say no and hang up the phone because I spent so much time being unable.

21. I’ve learned from my failures.
See previous. Heh.

22. I have no regrets.
Yes and no. Do I wish i’d done some things differently? Yes. Am I glad they happened that way, however? Yes. Because that way, I truly understand what I was missing and what I’ve gained.

23. I don’t like my life.
A horrible place to be. A necessary place. A changing place.

24. I’ve never had more fun in my life.
Strange but true.

25. You hurt me.
This was acutally the hardest for me to say when I said it.  I grew up trying SO hard never to hurt anyone, even if they were at fault, that I’d often apologize when I had done nothing wrong just to appease bruised egos. Sometime in 2006 and early 2007, I stopped doing that – and was finally willing to say, “that’s hurtful. Stop.”

26. There’s more to life than this.
60-80 hours a week working a job I would have enjoyed as a hobby – but hated as employment. Not writing because I simply had no TIME. I’m not doing that ever again.

27. I love you no matter what.
This, ironically, was part of the “you hurt me” conversation.

28. I’ve accomplished a lot.
I have. I’ve overcome some really crazy brain-trickery and some terrible health issues. I’ve gotten past troubles and trials that stun me to think about now. I can honestly say without God’s strength, it wouldn’t have been possible – and here I am.

29. You’ve been successful.
I think so. Finishing books, continuing on in the face of rejection, learning to cook – these are silly things, perhaps, but they ARE success.

30. I’m listening.
A mantra of mine for far too long, ironically.

31. I’m here for you.
Again: just last night.

32. Words can’t describe the way I feel.
*grins* Reading about other authors’ success; my wedding day; looking at the book I wrote and knowing it doesn’t suck. Yup. Speechless.

33. I’m not giving up.
Never.

34. I don’t have any worries.
I’m not there yet; I’ve come very close, but not there quite yet.

35. There is no place like home.
Oh my word, this is SO TRUE. Of course, it wasn’t until I actually HAD a place to call home.

36. It was a pleasure to talk to you.
*laughs* Does this one count if I end most converesations this way?

37. I have all the time in the world.
This one was actually discussed just the other night after my last rejection. I do not need to RUSH. I need to make good use of my time – but that’s not the same thing as panicking because time is “running out.”

38. I need a hand.
Lost track of how many times I’ve said this one.

39. You’re my best friend.
Oh, yeah. Often followed – sincerely - with “love you.”

40. I’m glad you were here.
Those same friends who are willing to travel – they got this.

41. I’m just gonna go for it.
Hello, finished books!

42. I can’t thank you enough.
Friends and lover and family.

43. I’m trusting my gut.
That would be right now. Writing something that I KNOW isn’t an easy sell.

44. I follow my own path.
And strangely enough? Once I broke through the hedges separating my path and others’, I found my path is much, much easier.

45. What a wonderful world.
Know what brings this home? Matt’s dancing:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY Why? Because you see (a) beautiful, beautiful world – and (b) people, just as humans, enjoying it together. It’s incredible. 

46. I take full responsibility.
Said this both when I should… and when I shouldn’t.

47. I’m not sorry.
This was hard, hard, hard to say – and again, was in the “you hurt me” convo.

48. I came, I saw, I conquered.
Veni, vidi, vici!

49. I haven’t said enough.
*laughs* Yes!!

50. I’m not afraid.
Is this true? It’s certainly more true than it ever was before. On with life.

Grab the book nearest you. Right now. Turn to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

LOL! I love this meme.

“It was my favorite photograph: me and him in black tie, taken at a dinner dance at the Dorchester the previous November when I’d still been pretending to be his girlfriend and he’d still been pretending to be hiring me for convenience.”

From The Little Lady Agency in the Big Apple, by Hester Browne.