Three Awards, One Post!

Over the past coupla weeks three groovy gals tossed awards in my general direction and I'm only now getting to working on them. *Tsk*

The "One Lovely Blog Award" comes to me from Elise Fallson. Merci bien, Elise!


The Rules for this award:
1. Name, thank, and link back to the blogger
2. List seven facts about yourself
3. Pass the award to 15 other bloggers and leave them comments on their blogs to alert them (I'll do this at the end of this post.)

Here are 7 facts about me:
1. Though I was born and raised in NY, because my parents spoke their native Portuguese at home, I had to take ESL during the first few years of elementary school.
2. No matter how much hot coffee I drink, I never quite wake up till I've taken a steamy shower.
3. I read tarot cards from the age of 16 till I was about 32.
4. I also started smoking at the age of 16 but haven't managed to want to quit those just yet.
5. I break for vampires. (Woof!)
6. For some bizarre reason, I count steps as I climb them. This may have started when my Kid was young, but I can't be sure it's not 'cause I'm just insane.
7. Speaking of vampires and counting, I just adore the song Eight Beautiful Notes, as sung by Count von Count from Sesame Street. It's a hell of a lot of fun to sing, and an excellent example of an ascending and descending harmonic minor scale (my FAVE!).

OK, award #2 is the "Fabulous Blog Ribbon" bestowed upon me by L.G. Keltner of Writing Off the Edge. Thanks, L.G.!

Here are the rules:
1. Post the rules on your blog.
2. Name five of your most fabulous moments, either in real life or in the blogosphere.
3. Name five things you love.
4. Name five things you hate.
5. Pass the Ribbon on to five other bloggers. (Leave them a comment to notify them of this.)

Five of my most fabulous moments:
1. Winning a poetry contest in fifth grade.
2. Learning that my English teacher (from both 9th & 12th grades) has used my work as an example of good writing in her classes (I heard this from two of my cousins who attended the same high school, maybe five or more years apart from one another). That blew me away.
3. Winning the role of the Narrator in my first college's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
4. Seeing this blog go live and folks stopping by to read it.
5. Every time I buy a drink and get asked for ID. :-D

Five Things I Love:
1. My family
2. The talents God gave me
3. Reading
4. The Atlantic Ocean
5. Mojitos

Five Things I Hate:
1. When people crack jokes at others' expenses.
2. When folks condemn, rather than critique intelligently. (For example, "That sucked." -vs- "I thought the plot weak and I couldn't connect with the main character's motivation.")
3. Waxing. (Sorry, fellas; it's a fact, Jack, and I ain't takin' it back.)
4. Cleaning.
5. Most reality TV.

And the "Liebster Blog Award" is the 3rd and last for today's post, given me by Andrea Teagan of The Enchanted Writer. Thanks, Andrea!

The rules are:

1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.
2. Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you.
3. Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.
4. Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 blogs of 200 followers or fewer.
5. Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment at their blog.

So, here are all of my nominees, who fulfill the criteria for all three awards above and are welcome to claim them all, if they choose:

Random Stream of Consciousness
* Pixies Don't Have Wings
Abso-fraggin-lutely
Bouquet of Books
Chock Full of Words
Dina Thanki
Geek Banter
Holly's Horrorland
Semi-coherent Thoughts
Just Another Creative Writing Blog
Living In An Estrogenic Flux
Pish Posh
Shouldn't Life Be More Than This?
Tonja's Musings
The DM's Screen

Right, so - the hour grows late and all the informing will have to wait till 'morrow. Goodnight, Blogosphere. OXOXO

Writerly Things ~ Collage Me, If You Can!

These are a few of my writerly things...

On a recent visit to my friend Andrea Teagan's blog (The Enchanted Writer), I read with pleasure her post "How to Make a Story Inspiration Collage." The basic gist of the project is to make a visual representation of a current work in progress (or WIP) and have it readily visible for when you're writing and feel yourself getting a bit stuck. The instructions are simple and I remember thinking that just going through the process of making the collage would probably stir up all sorts of ideas for your WIP. My next thought was, "Hang on; I totally made one of these for my (as yet unpublished) novel, Bedeviled !

I dunno about y'all but, as I write, I tend to need firm mental images of real-life folks to fill in these sort of abstract characters who're clambering out of my head and onto paper (yes, paper, as I tend to write my first drafts longhand). They're actors, usually, though sometimes they're folks with whom I'm personally acquainted - which isn't to say I'm basing the characters on the folks, just that these are the visuals I've got when I'm writing the characters.

Anyway, at some point that I worked on Bedeviled, I felt myself stall and so I put together a collage which, I must admit, is not as grand as the collage Andrea posted on her site but worked the necessary writerly mojo for me. There are two panels to this collage, which I've scanned and elaborated upon, below. My character's names come first (followed by the names of the dudes I visualize as I write, in parentheses).

Clockwise from the top: Ardos (Thomas Gibson); some random beach, somewhere; Father Gianni (William Hurt); me and my Sis on a wintry Robert Moses Beach, Long Island, NY; Gavin (Gerard Butler); and Mike (Samuel West).

Clockwise from the upper left: Cadzick (John Cusack); me and my Sis on her alma mater's campus (I envision this space as belonging to the chapel in my story); Gabe (Matthew McConaughey); Rafe (my friend, singer-songwriter Tama Waipara); a snippet from some magazine which perfectly summarized the basic themes of the story; a clawed hand belonging to no one in particular...as far as I know.

I've been thinking of Bedeviled as a supernatural thriller for quite some time but, lately, have desired to take it in more of a romantic direction - which is to say, rather than starting with the Main Character's love life at its crisis point (and having very little interaction between her and her fella except for the beginning and end of the tale), I want to tell the same crazy story while also showing the developing relationship between Madeleine (my main chick) and Gavin (her main squeeze). So, yeah; I've a fair bit of revising to do (and then some - what I've got in mind is a gargantuan process which will undoubtedly take me all summer to complete). Am I daunted? Hells, yeah. Can I make it happen? Sho, 'nuff. Probably. (God willing!)