It’s time again for Blogophilia, the weekly blog game where Marvin gives participants prompts to use in their blog posting. This week’s prompts are:

Blogophilia 41.3 Topic: "Going For It"
Bonus points:
(Hard, 2 pts): include "playing with a rabbit (or b00nie)"
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These are from last month’s trip to Branson. We went to the titanic museum but, of course, not photography. I took some random pics of the town, but those are some of the ones that aren’t taken off yet. Anyway, these are of varying length, and levels of boring-ness.

Historic downtown:



Branson Landing:



Super long search for a restaurant:



Picture guesses:



Ray of death, ray gun, shoot, lazer, gun, blast, shoot, shooting high, shooting low, shoot for the stars, vexed, eliminate, exterminate



Fav song of the moment - “Sail Away with Me” - Sunrise Avenue

Tags: Branson, video , blogophilia

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It’s time again for Blogophilia, the blog game where Marvin the mysterious gives participants prompts to use in their weekly blog posting. This week’s prompts are:

Topic: The Way We Were

(Hard, 2pts): complete the phrase "Advice is what we ask for...."

(Easy, 1pt): include the word 'insane'

I had a lot of snifty ideas, and even one cool suggestion about cyborgs, but it’s crunch time and I’m already taking a break from plaid to get this out. (Plaid? What is that you ask? Plaid is the new color. 2011 will be the year of plaid, just wait and see. If you don’t believe me then check out http://jissilly.com/5022.html and you’ll understand what I mean!)

Things have just been insane around my house this week. I have two book covers waiting approval, a third I am in the middle of, and two more in my inbox waiting to be addressed. I am in the midst of some plaid editing (You still don’t know what that is? that’s coz you didn’t go look, did you?) and I’ve gotten involved with a group of indie authors on Facebook. It started out as the Black Friday sale, and has now expanded into a full on Holiday sale - check out the cheap reads here: http://www.amazon.com/lm/R1108DUARP28EE/ . We’re also discussing a kind of informal Facebook group to help one another out and such. You can go take a look at that too here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=142302989147609& . I haven’t updated my website yet, or even started the December newsletter and then we’re having our family Thanksgiving tomorrow (Saturday) so my productivity is bound to be pretty low. People ask me “How do you do it all?” Answer: I don’t. If advice is what we ask for, then let me give you some. Pick one thing and stick to it. This multiple project life is for the birds.

Of course, I intend to ignore that advice and keep stretching myself thin because I refuse to give any of it up. Just sayin’.

On a side note, a funny thing happened to me today. Well, it’s funny in a sick way. I will probably have to give a deposition over the phone in the next few days to prove I was not having a “secret relationship” with someone - or they could end up going to jail. Seriously. I feel like such a vixen. Interestingly enough, it is because they helped me with my first book some time back that has brought it all about. So does this mean that I can say “read the book that almost put one man in jail”? Oh for the way we were when the world made any flippin’ sense!

Now that I’ve bored everyone beyond tears, I am going to bore you further. NaNoWriMo, which means National Novel writing Month , is held every November and writers all over the world try to get 50,000 words out before December first. I didn’t have enough time to write, but I did get to participate in a way with LC Cooper. She wrote The Voices of Cellar’s Bridge: Katherin’s Hope for NaNoWriMo, uploading the “in progress” file to Smashwords every day, and so instead of just sitting down one weekend and zooming through the cover, I also did it in progress stages so that readers could watch both the cover and the book grow. It was a very cool project, but alas all good things come to an end and it is now finished. However, for your viewing enjoyment, here are the six stages:

As often happens, the concept was the author’s idea; I just drew what she asked. Here is the original sketch that , yes, is on tiny notepaper as I drew it during a Dr. Who break while I was at my brother’s house.



Scanned and slapped over my handy dandy template, I started by blocking in the bridge in art media. Art media in Paint shop pro can imitate many different things like markers, pastels and more, but I usually use the oil paint, as I did here.



The sky in this version is actually a photograph with some blurry filters applied and is actually the same sky I used in the Butcher Harbor cover a few months ago. Another sneaky thing I did was with the charred wood texture. Looks pretty real, huh? That’s because it is. As luck would have it, I had just recently taken some photos of charred wood in the neighbor’s burn pile, so I chopped out a rectangular section of it and pasted that into a new layer and set it to Overlay. Yes, I’m giving away all of my secrets here, so take notes.



Here the title got fixed, and you can see there’s more charred wood texture applied, as well as a sand texture (done the same way!) and a grass texture on that cliff top out there. Both the sand and grass are from photos I took in Virginia Beach a couple of years ago.



And then I did the same thing to the weeds with a photo I took in College springs, Iowa, and added the smoke in the background with the ever cool Eye Candy plugin (seriously, they were worth the $200 I spent on them!) and then blocked in some misty-ness. But don’t get attached to it, because…



We’re all done and a lot of the mist went. I did add some foam at the base of everything and textured the rock with some photos from along the side of the highway. We also opted to add a red glow inside the bridge that represents elements in the story.



If anyone is interested in the book, which looks pretty interesting, to me, you can get it on Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/28720

Wasn’t that exciting? And now it’s time for the segment I like to call Random Things from My Hard Drives.

I haven’t taken any photos off since October, so I thought I would instead share a poem I wrote on request about the color Orange.

Orange
Light breaks over the horizon
like juice in a cup so bright
the yummy goodness is impossible to ignore
so bright and friendly
how can anyone be hysterical
while drinking of the citrus
even if they added
cloves to the juice
that is
orange.


(It was inspired by the same conversation that inspired Jonathan’s Blogophilia entry this week, so I thought it was appropriate! And yes, it is supposed to be weird.)

Fav song of the moment - Sail Away with Me - Sunrise Avenue

Tags: blogophilia, art, books, poetry

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You’ve probably seen the special features that come with most DVD’s. They range from the ever cheesy movie commentary to my personal favorite: the deleted scenes. Whenever we finish a movie the next thing we do is check the menu to watch all the scenes that got cut. But, wouldn’t it be cool if you could do that with a book?

Well, now you can.

Presenting The Lost Chapters – the “deleted scenes”* from Legacy of Ghosts. Just like the deleted scenes, these will be tiny nuggets that have been removed from their surrounding scenes. Though I will mention where the scene “fits in”, it isn’t necessary for you to have read the book to enjoy them.  They’re also pretty much spoiler proof. How cool is that?

**************

Sparkling Jorick

(Insert this randomly into Chapter Three between the walk and the stitches)

(Info you may need to know: Jorick is a vampire wholives in a house cluttered with books everywhere. Katelina is a human and Loren is a vampire teenager who lives down the beach from them. If you're extremely interested, I have character bios and pictures of thecharacters here)

Katelina lay on the living room couch and stared at the book in her hands. It was another 1800’s era “classic” and, though she  liked old books, she wanted something newer. Maybe something that didn’t have the women in bustles.

The door opened and her eyes flicked from the printed words to Jorick, who strolled into the living room casually. He started for the dining room, but when he noticed her scrutiny he changed directions and came to stop next to the couch. “Hello.”

She gave him a cursory smile, then asked, “Don’t you have any books that were published after 1901?”

His brow wrinkled. “What?”

“Books,” she repeated. “Published after 1901? Maybe something from the last fifty years?”

“Of course I do,” he responded testily. “You just have to look for them.”

“That could take the rest of my life,” she muttered darkly. “It isn’t like you have anything organized around here!”

If his expression was anything to go on, the idea was a completely foreign one to Jorick. “And how should it be organized, pray tell?”

“The books could go in a book case. That would be a good start.”

He blinked at her, and then waved the conversation away. “You just have to look for them,” he repeated. “I’ve got a lot of books around here-”

“I’ve noticed.”

He ignored the interruption. “-And there’s surely something you approve of.”

Loren chose that moment to arrive, noisily banging the door open and closed. Alost tauntingly, the boys arms were laden with even more freaking books!

“You’re bringing yours over here now?” she cried. “There’s enough!”

Loren dropped the stack into one of the wing backed chairs and straightened his hoodie. “Nah, these are Jorick’s. Just bringing them back.”

Katelina couldn’t stop the annoyed eye roll. “Fantastic. Just what we need. More books.”

“There’s some good ones in here,” Loren objected. He paused to rifle through the heap and one fell to the floor with a bang. Loren left it lay, oblivious to the dark look Jorick shot at him. He seemed to suddenly find what he wanted. “Here, this one’s good.” He held up a battered paperback of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“It’s strange,” Jorick countered, and scooped up the fallen book.

“It’s supposed to be!” Loren explained, waving the book for emphasis. “It’s funny.”

Katelina climbed to her feet and moved to examine the books. Most had unfamiliar, albeit modern covers, all except one; a black cover with a bright red apple.

“You’re joking!” she cried and hefted the heavy book. “You own this?”

Jorick peered disinterestedly over her shoulder. “Oh, that. Yes, I suppose I do.”

“Oh my God! You’ve read this? Seriously?”

“Yes, I read it. I’ve read a great deal worse, though I’ve also read a great deal better.”

“No shit!” Katelina suddenly imagined him sitting in the chair pouring over the teenage romance, a kleenex clutched in his hand. The image was too much to take and her laughter got the better of her so that she dropped onto the couch, the book clutched in her hands.

“I’m not sure what’s so funny,” Jorick remarked stiffly. “It’s a book, like any other.”

“Yeah, if you’re a twelve year old girl!”

“Hey!” Loren objected. “I read it too, you know!”

Katelina waved the objection away, and managed to choke out, “So, team Edward or Jacob?”

Jorick drew back a step, as though she’d lost her mind. “What?”

“Jacob.” Loren leaned on the back of the chair, settling in for the conversation. “That shit in the second book where he takes off and leaves her, I just can’t condone that, you know? He just leaves her there to get whacked by those other guys.” He grinned broadly. “Besides, the whole glitter thing is too gay, you know?” He jerked his head towards Jorick. “Can you imagine him glittering?”

“No,” Jorick stated flatly and snatched the book from Katelina’s hands. “She can’t.”

“Actually,” Katelina began, her grin large and evil. “I think it’s an interesting picture. Jorick in sparkles.” She held up her hands as if framing a photograph. “What do you think, Loren? Wouldn’t he be lovely?”

Loren laughed until Jorick smacked him in the back of the head. “Aw, come on man, lighten up! This is a literary discussion here!”

“It’s an imbecilic discussion,” Jorick replied. He looked at the book in his hands, then held it out to Katelina. “Here.  You were so desperate for something modern.”

Her laughter died and she cleared her throat noisily. “Well, yes, but…”

Jorick raised an inquiring eyebrow. “But?”

She shifted uncomfortably, her eyes on the floor. “But, well.” Her voice got quiet and she admitted reluctantly, “I’ve already read it.”

Jorick’s expression was one of satisfied smugness.

*However, unlike deleted scenes, these were actually written later, for fun, so I could pull off the whole “Lost Chapters” gag. None of the Lost Chapters were ever in the original manuscript, nor were they ever deleted. Thank you for reading the small print.

Tags: vampire, book, story, scene, short, funny,

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What is cyber Monday? Wikipedia defines it as follows:

Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Cyber Monday is also used as a marketing term in Canada, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Germany. In these countries, with the exception of Canada, Cyber Monday sales last for eight days, typically from the last Monday in November to the first Monday in December. In Canada, the sales period mirrors that of the U.S.

So, in the spirit of sales, several authors have gotten together and dropped their ebook prices to the special holiday price of just $.99, including my own Shades of Gray and 101 Tips for Traveling with a Vampire,

Click here to go to the list!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Mine is still coming up this weekend (yeah, we're behind in my house - it's more fun that way!)

Tags: book, sale, kindle, ebook, cyber monday, author

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I am supposed to be posting Spiffy Old Stuff, working on the newsletter, updating my website, working on a cover, drawing icons for Lowell and probably twenty other things, but I’m ducking out for a moment to post a random blog (hence that random banner up there).

I have to say all this social networking/MySpace disaster has really cut into my productivity lately. Between having to now actually DO things on Facebook and playing with MyBoomerPlace, as well as trying to figure out 3.0… well, let’s just say it’s taking a lot of friggin’ time. I wish they’d done this back in May when I had free time (Did I have free time in May? Does anyone remember?) Anyway, I’m going to make myself a test profile on MySpace, I think, and try to see what I can do with the profile/blogs because I refuse to upgrade this one until I know what I am doing with it. Speaking of other blogging sites, I’m going to tri-post this with MySpace and Blogger. Though I usually cross post with my blogger blog, which I originally created because I wanted to put an RSS feed on my website and My__ (where is that symbol even at?!) didn’t have that capability. ( MySpace: http://myspace.com/joleene_naylor  Blogger/Blogspot: http://JoleeneNaylor.blogspot.com )

Speaking of the MySpace mess, this is what I got in the mail the other day from them:

(Click photo to see full size)

I tend to link everything together (Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, twitter, Mysapce, you name it!) but I think I’m opting out of this one. It looks like it’s just an excuse to clutter up the stream some more. And speaking of things I’m not going to do, I got this the other day, too:

(click image to get full size)

Yes, this IS an email wanting me to expand my bandwidth on Diagonalley.5u.com - a website I bet you didn’t even know I had because I abandoned it years ago! Not that it wasn’t a cool idea, but it seemed to be too confusing for other people to participate and I moved on to a new hobby other than website building, so it just got left in the dust. I can’t imagine why it’s suddenly getting traffic! Though it had a peak a couple years ago when someone took the “find your wand” quiz and put it on their Facebook. I know it had an increase in traffic because I had a wave of complaint letters from people who didn’t like the quiz questions, who didn’t like their results, etc. etc. By the end of it I was so annoyed that I let other people write the replies back for me because I was sick of saying “Thanks for the feedback, but this is a free quiz on a website I’ve stopped updating. Thanks.” And then I quit answering them altogether.


Speaking of answering odd emails, I got a funny one last weekend:

No idea who she is, or why she thought I was at lunch. I replied back and said “I wasn’t at lunch, I took a whole day off!”, but I haven’t gotten an answer to that. Oh well, it made me amused for a moment. Though Uncle Sam is not amused, it seems. Apparently over 70 some domains have been seized by the US government - mainly torrent download sites, from what I understand - for participating in copyright infringement:

(Click for full size image)

If you want to see this in person, one site that the article listed (and the site I screen capped) is http://torrent-finder.com/ . Though the logos are all catchy, I think Uncle Sam went a bit crazy with the drop shadow. Yes, I am critiquing the design of the official, scary notices. Just because they are scary, official notices doesn’t mean they shouldn’t look their best!

And speaking of making things look their best, there’s a pretty cool new… erm, site I guess you’d say at http://www.yohdr.com/ .

(stolen from their site)

HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography is a technique used to create photographs of scenes with both very bright and very dark sections without the result becoming either washed out or too dark. Done right the results can be quite spectacular.

This is accomplished by taking multiple photos of the same scene with different exposure times. These separate photos are then combined in a smart way to create a result that has good exposure across the entire image.

Of course I had to try this out. Since I was in a hurry I didn’t actually take three photos of the same thing with different exposures (like you’re supposed to!) instead I edited three photos curves to get a close semblance to three exposures:

 


Then I uploaded them in the super easy uploader and it gave me this result:





Since the ground is just a black silhouette, this wasn’t the best choice of a test photo, but I was in a hurry. Still, I was happy with the results as, editing the photo myself back in July, this is what I came up with:

And that’s all the randomness I have for now… What? You want more? Well aren’t you lucky that it’s time for the segment I like to call “Random Things from my Hard Drives”?

Tonight’s segment is a little off the cuff I did for Simple Sunday at the CPC. The piece was inspired by Guylane’s artwork “My Life in Red”:

Red,
fire streaks the dawn,
like blood of champions that drips unheeded
between the cracks of last night's dreams.
Half forgotten in the mist of morning ,
voices whisper and shadows flee ,
chased away by the rising sun .
In the day the night's demon cannot stay,
but must hide in all the spaces
beneath the floor, behind the door,
where the golden rays cannot reach them.
But when the darkness returns
and the shadows stretch,
they'll creep forth once more
to whisper visions into the ears
of the unwary,
weaving threads of nightmares
while the sun sinks in streaks of golden fire,
colored like the blood of champions,
Red

Fav song(s) of the moment - “Fairytale Gone Bad” & “Sail Away With Me” - Sunrise Avenue

Tags: CPC, Photography, Links, Amusing, Weird

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So, here I am with no idea if I am going to actually do much with this place or not. it just seems like a bunch of people I know from MySpace have come over here and I finally decided "What the heck". We'll see what happens, I guess.

This is a test blog, by the way

so here's an old photo

and here's the video to my fav song of the moment


Let's see what happens with it, shall we?

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