In the City

Hello, friends!  Just a quick update!  I may not have any more deadlines for a while (Yay!) but life is still as busy as ever!

I’ve been enjoying a wonderful few days, celebrating the impending Christmas season with friends and family.

A few of my girlfriends and I had a Christmas crafts night.

Then my mom and my sister and I took a trip downtown to see the world premiere of the opera Becoming Santa Claus.

And life is only going to get busier!  Tonight, my friend and I are taking my sister out to celebrate her birthday.  Tomorrow night, a group of my friends from high school and I are going with our English teacher (our Mr. Feeny, if you will) to see MacBeth.  Thursday night, I’m going to a bachelorette party and Saturday is the wedding!  So much fun and merriment and all the while I keep thinking, “Oh my goodness!  I have to get the new book out!”  Then I remember it’s already out and I think to myself, “Oh, yay!  I love it when that happens!”

The new book is doing great.  And Boy Band is getting some new love because of it!

I’ve had two reviews in the past week that I particularly love.  One is from a new friend down in Mexico named Bryan.  You can check out his review here!

He also took this fabulous picture and I’ve got to be honest, it’s one of my favorite book portraits ever.

The other is a review I believe I already shared, but I love it so much, I’m just going to share it again.

I love all my readers and reviewers and friends so, so much!  I don’t know if you realize it, but you make so many dreams come true just by doing what you love!  Thank you, thank you!

I hope you all are enjoying this most wonderful time of the year.

What Happens in San Diego Part 2

Part 2 of our San Diego Adventures recap begins the morning of July 9, 2015.  By that point, my sister had mostly recovered from her bout with food poisoning and was anxious to get to Qualcomm Stadium for the reason we’d come to San Diego in the first place: seeing One Direction in concert.  The parking lot opened at noon and we decided to get there as soon as possible to get a good parking spot.  I’d never driven to a concert before.  In the past, friends and I had always taken public transportation or had a parent drop us off.  This was a whole new adventure for me.

Still, we were awake so early that we decided we had a bit of time to explore the area before our stake out in the Qualcomm parking lot.  We decided to head to La Jolla Beach.

It was AMAZING.  I got to hang out with wild sea lions in their natural habitat.  We also saw pelicans and baby seagulls.

Yes, I took a LOT of pictures.  And that’s not even all of them.  Although I do have to tell you, right before we left, I decided to take a few last pictures of this one particularly photogenic sea lion.  As I was shooting (with my telephoto lens), this beautiful sea lion throws up a whole fish.  Just projectile vomits all over the place.  The seagulls were very happy.  I was not.  There’d already been more than enough regurgitation for one trip.

Anyway, aside from puking sea lions, La Jolla Beach itself is just absolutely gorgeous.

We also met a local artist named Paul Strahm.  He was a delightful person, and very happy to meet two young people involved in the arts. I bought one of his paintings of La Jolla.  You can check out his website here: http://www.paulstrahmpaintings.com/Home.html

Finally – and I know this is what you’ve all been waiting for – THE ONE DIRECTION CONCERT!

My sister and I arrived at Qualcomm right at noon.  Good thing too, because there was already a line of cars waiting to get in and find a parking spot.  After parking and snacking on what may or may not actually pass for a lunch, we got out, walked around the stadium, and visited the merchandise table.

I guess could tell you about the seven hours spent loitering around the parking lot, but honestly, they’re weren’t that interesting.  I’ll just skip to the concert itself.

Long story short, the One Direction boys put on a quality show.  The crowd was electrifying and enthusiastic.  These fans go out of their way to show their love for their boys.  And I think those guys have earned it.  They work hard and their songs are great.  I’ll tell you this as well: Seeing 1D in concert provided a lot of inspiration for the next Boy Band novel!  I even know what the title will be now!

After the concert ended, my sister and I ended up sitting an additional hour and thirty minutes in that godforsaken parking lot while everyone tried to get out.  I really don’t want to talk about that.

Fast forward to Friday morning, our last day in San Diego.  This was a day of mixed blessings.  First, we headed back to Balboa Park to visit the San Diego Art Museum.  They had a Coney Island exhibit going on, which my sister and I both really wanted to see.

What’s really neat is that in Boy Band, the guys in the band shoot a music video at Coney Island.  Needless to say, I was incredibly eager to see the display.

As it turned out, however, the exhibit was only open to members of the museum.  It would be open to the public beginning the next day, but my sister and I were flying out in 8 short hours.  It just so happened that a very nice lady and her friend overheard our dilemma and let us into the exhibit as her guests.  I couldn’t believe it.  She was so incredibly sweet.  I know it made both KJ’s and my day.

After we visited the museum, we ate lunch and drove around a bit.  Unfortunately, I accidentally left my cherished camera at the cafe where we ate, so we had to drive twenty minutes back to University and Park to reclaim it.  There was no way I was leaving California without it!  I had pictures of blue whales on that camera! Not to mention, that camera has been everywhere with me.  It’s practically family.

After the camera debacle, my sister and I decided to head back to the airport, you know, quit while we were ahead.  That almost worked out.  We returned the car without a hitch and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.  Of course, while in line to check our bags, I discovered that my piddly little bank account had been hacked.  Someone got ahold of my card number and used it to buy $500 worth of movie tickets.  I’m sure I don’t need to explain this to y’all, but I’m an independent author.  I am poor.  As if the airport wasn’t stressful enough, I also had to deal with some loser hacking into my bank account.  I’m not going to lie to you. I cried a little.

Thankfully, everything is being taken care of.  I have a new card and the bank WILL reimburse me everything that I lost.

Our San Diego adventure finally ended with a delayed flight and a minor battle with air-travel panic.  I don’t like flying.  In fact, I kind of hate it.  I’d much rather be on the ground.  Or on a boat.  I really love boats.  But flying?  Nope.  Planes are too tiny and too crowded and turbulence?  No.  I don’t even want to talk about it.  My airplane anxiety is the one character trait that I passed on to both my female protagonists, Kate and Mel.  I didn’t mean to.  It was a total coincidence.  But it’s just my natural reaction to flying.  I get panicked, so my characters get panicked.  It’s the one thing all three of us have in common.

San Diego, it was (mostly) fun, but I’m happy to be home.  I’m a Texas girl at heart.  Give me open roads and open skies any time.  Though I do miss the ocean.  And that baby blue slug bug.

Oh, and one more thing…

The Kind of September also went to California!  They loved it.

Rainbow Over Dallas

It’s always a gamble meeting the people you really admire.  They can turn out to be just as amazing as you ever dreamed.  On the flip side, they might end up disappointing you.  Rainbow Rowell, author of Eleanor and Park and one of my favorite books of all time, Fangirl, was not exactly what I was expecting.

She was even more amazing.

I went in to the reading and signing thinking she would be a neat person.  I love her books.  I follow her on Twitter.  She seemed like an all around awesome person and fellow fangirl.  But actually seeing her in person and meeting her?  Oh my goodness, she is marvelous.

She was all smiles from the moment she appeared, to the reading from My True Love Gave To Me, to the Q&A session, all the way to personally meeting and greeting each and every one of her fans.  She’s genuine and hilarious and sweet and enthusiastic.  She’s everything I want to be, not just as an author, but as a human being.  She’s so real, so personable.  She treated each and every one of her fans like they were the only person in the whole room.  I knew I admired her writing going in, but now I admire her even more as a person.

Yes, me being me, I gave her a copy of Boy Band.  She was so sweet and she congratulated me and offered to take a picture with it.  I’m telling, y’all, she is so awesome.

One of the artists who contributed to the special edition was there also!  Her name is Simini Blocker and she is just as delightful!

Such a wonderful experience meeting these talented and wonderful women!  Thank you both so much!

Mainstream

I had a conversation with my friend last night that really got me thinking back on my college days.  I realize that, in the almost two years I’ve been keeping this blog, I’ve never really talked about my days as a student at the University of Texas at Dallas.  I’ve touched on Grad School here and there, but for the most part, I keep my college days in my past.

There are a few reasons for that.  For one thing, I was a very different person back then.  Not so different that I would hate myself or that you wouldn’t recognize me, but I definitely had an attitude.  I was still bitter about a lot of things that had happened to my family and to people I love.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do or how I was going to get to wherever I was going.

In spite of my personal issues, UTD was a great school.  I learned a lot and for the most part, had a pretty great time.  There was one class there, though, that really rubbed me the wrong way.

I won’t name names or reveal the exact class because I don’t want to be the person who trash talks others online.  I can tell you one was a study of the arts class and I took nothing away from it except that I wanted to do the exact opposite of everything that instructor told me.  I saw no value in what was taught and I found a lot of the material weird, inappropriate, and to be honest, a little gross.  I was genuinely disturbed by what that professor considered “art” and truly resented the way he looked down on “mainstream” artists.  For him, an artist or a writer or a filmmaker only had value if what they produced was “outside the box,” in other words “weird and creepy.”

Do you want to know my dirty little secret?

I want to be mainstream.  I want my books and my photographs to appeal to a lot of different people.  I don’t want to be a part of his stupid, snobby, elitist group of “artists” who “think outside the box.”

Don’t get me wrong.  I think genuinely thinking outside the box is a good thing.  I think it’s a very good thing.  But what this guy called “thinking outside the box,” I call “being weird for the sake of shock value.”  And some of it was really shocking, let me tell you.  I won’t go into detail, but one of his “projects” involved really disgusting puppets.  It still gives me nightmares.

I don’t want to give you the wrong idea about my education at UTD.  My academic experience was, overall, very, very positive.  But our discussion last night really got me thinking about this one class.  To be honest, I’m not even sure that professor is still there or if that class is still being taught.  All I can tell you is that if he ever contacts me and tells me that he likes my books, I’ll know I’ve done something wrong.

Tragic Flaws

Last night, I finished reading the Percy Jackson series.  All in all, I loved them and I’m really looking forward to reading the Heroes of Olympus series.  They’ve also really inspired me to get back into drawing.  I used to draw all the time.  When I was younger, I really thought I was going to grow up to be an artist.

This is one of my favorite paintings I’ve done. The light beams below the whale look kind of stupid, but I loved the whale and the stars.

Turtle sketch.

Now, for the record, I am nowhere near talented enough to actually become an artist.  A photographer?  I’d like to think maybe.  But as much as I love to draw and paint, I’m not stellar.  That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it, however.  Thanks to Percy Jackson, I really want to paint some Greek Mythology.

The books also got me thinking about the ideas of Tragic Flaws, the characteristic that could potentially be a hero’s downfall.  In Percy Jackson, Annabeth’s tragic flaw is pride.  Percy’s is his willingness to sacrifice the entire world in order to save one of his friends.  The concept of tragic flaws does not strictly apply to the Percy Jackson.  In Shakespeare’s tragedies, you find Othello’s jealousy, Hamlet’s unwillingness to act, and MacBeth’s ambition.  This afternoon at work, I started thinking about what my tragic flaw might be.  I came up with several possibilities, which, now that I think about it, might not be something to brag about, but I thought I’d share anyway.

1) Stubbornness

I am stubborn.  Like, to a pigheaded degree.  If I think I need to do something, I’m going to do it no matter what anyone else tells me.  I very rarely change my opinions on anything and I am very loathe to admit I was wrong.  I will admit it, but it’s VERY difficult.  Still, I almost always think that I’m right and I’m very opinionated.

2) Defensiveness

Along those same lines, I am also very defensive.  I hate being wrong or mistaken and I take criticism very personally (which is a TERRIBLE trait for an author).  I blame this compulsive need to be correct on my time spent in a private elementary school where even the slightest lapse in perfection would result in a yellow card, three of which added up to a detention.

3) Overanalysis

I, like several girls, overanalyze EVERYTHING.  A person could send me a simple text message like, “Okay,” and I’d immediately think, “Okay?!  What does that mean?  Are they mad at me?  Are they happy?  Are they simply settling to appease me?  Do they think I’m a huge loser?  Oh gosh, they must think I’m the most annoying person in the world!”  It’s awful.

4) I Never Give Anyone the Benefit of the Doubt

This is one that I’m trying to work on, but I have a bad habit of assuming the worst.  I think I can read people, so I am likely to believe that I know their thoughts, their motivations, and every bad intention that they have.

5) Impatience

I have no patience for anything.  I hate waiting.  It drives me crazy.  I barely have the patience to write out this paragraph right now.

6) Self Pity

I’m not sure why, but there are times when my self esteem just plummets.  It happened a lot more when I was in graduate school, but I still have my off days every now and then.  Publishing my book helped a lot, but every now and then, I’ll be struck by that little voice in the back of my head screaming, “You’re so weird, you’re so useless, no one is going to like you the way that you are, you better get cool NOW.”  Again, that has been happening less and less, but my self-esteem could still use a bit of improvement.

7) Laziness

I’m lazy.

8) Compulsive Need to Make Lists of 10, or at Least Even Numbers

I think this one kind of speaks for itself.

I know everyone has flaws and I know that this list doesn’t even come close to describing all of mine.  However, I don’t think that focusing on the negative is a good idea (add Hypocrisy to the list).  I’d much rather look for the good and the beauty in people, places, and things, than for the things that might not be so perfect.  I say I’d rather do this because it’s very difficult for me.  That another thing I’d like to start working on.  My mom has the remarkable gift to see goodness in everybody.  It’s something I really envy about her, because I’m simply not like that.  I’m more like my dad, personality wise.  The only personality traits I share with my mom are that I love cats and will tell anyone who will listen pretty much anything.

I hope spelling out all of my tragic flaws has not made you like me any less.  I value honesty above pretty much any other virtue (If we lived in the world of Divergent, I’d be a Candor for sure).  I guess sometimes, it’s easier for me to understand life when I think of it like one big storybook.  Characters are easy to understand, but real people?  I think to even begin to understand ourselves would take a lifetime.

I Forgot to Add a Title

Hi, all.  Today, I am feeling oddly motivated to do things and to not be lazy, so this won’t be a very long post.  I’ve already cleaned my room, which was a feat in and of itself, as I am just about the messiest person on the planet.  However, I’d also really like to be someone who gets by without a lot of material things.  I swear, I’ve thrown out and given away so much stuff in the past year or so that I can’t believe how much crap I still have.  It’s like, every time I get rid of stuff, the remaining stuff multiplies and takes over my closet and my drawers and ultimately, my floor.

I think my big problem is sentimental value.  I try to remind myself that this is not Toy Story and that old stuffed animals do not actually have feelings and they will not be sad if I decide to give them away.  In fact, they will probably be happy to be going to a kid who will really love them and appreciate them.  However, my mom and my sister and I all suffer from mild forms of anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, and apparently one of the symptoms is “empathy for inanimate objects,” so there you go.  I’m not crazy, just a little chemically imbalanced.

While I was cleaning, however, I did find this picture that I painted a few years ago in grad school.  The assignment was to create something in the style of a famous artist.  I chose Charlotte Salomon. My inspiration came from one of her paintings. The painting was just words and it said, “And with dream-awakened eyes she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew: for a while she had to disappear from the surface of life and to that end make every sacrifice-so that from the depths she could create her world anew.”  So I took those words and created an image.  I thought it was actually kind of a neat painting and I’d totally forgotten about it.

And for the record, no, the girl is not supposed to be me.  Her hair looks like mine, but that’s only because straight hair is surprisingly difficult to paint.

Before I sign off, I wanted to share one last thing with you.  Every once in a while, I find a song or a book or something that I love so, so, so much that I have to tell everyone I meet about how much I love it and why they should love it too.  Technically, I didn’t even find this one.  My sister did and she shared it with me after I read The Hunger Games.  I was listening to it today and I was just thinking, “This is such a great song.  Everyone in the world needs to know about this song.”  It’s called Girl on Fire by Arshad, and it’s actually a song inspired by The Hunger Games.  Anyone who loves good music and the books/movies needs to hear this song!  It’s so goooooooooood.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got today.  Still hard at work on Cemetery Tours 2.  Go read the first one.  It’s awesome.

Bye!