Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The Publishment.... new poem up @ The Cyinc Online

Hey!! I have a new poem up at "The Cynic Online/Cafe Del Soul" called Making Room - this one's not so dark, erm... well.... it talks of burning flesh and devil's, but in a *good* way! Take a gander if you have the time and Thanks in advance!

I'm particularly excited about this because not only does "The Cynic Online" have really good poets/poems, but they also have great stories! I'm hoping once I get a few more shorts in order that I'll get a certain one published here as well. The stories are entertaining, not so horror-ish, but cynical nonetheless, well worth a read if you get a moment.


Other contributing poets :

Life's Decisions by Anthony Dedakis;
The Purple Flower by Maxwell Baumbach
Goat Rider by Scott Gray; Reality by Nabanita Deshmukh;
Write Yet Another by James Dye; Hard Work by Alphonso Amos;
Climb Into a Rainbow by Tom Snee; Making Room by KM McElhinny;
Model Citizen by Tarik Linthicum; Truth by Marc Carver;
The Rain by Steve De France

Have a great Day and Happy Writing!

Monday, June 14, 2010

The "Black Rainbow" by: Miss Effie Collins

Hey all!! Part one of the the four part novelette BLACK RAINBOW is now available for a read-a-roo at Piker Press.

Fox Thomas is back from the military. Living with his mother and brothers again, with not much to look forward too. Now, all he has is time. He's not one to chase rainbows, Fox doesn't believe in gold or luck, until little Emma, all grown up and married walks his way.

The ending to part one will leave you drooling for more. Read it! You won't be sorry!!

Sunday, June 13, 2010

The Word-Love

This morning I got a hankering to blog about my love-o-words. I'm a writer, it goes without saying, right? Probably.

A simple post-twenty minutes tops. Or, it should have been, anyone who reads my blog knows that nothing ever runs smoothly for me. :D (Which just comes with being a parent, I'm going to assume).

So far this morning I have had three false starts. Yes, a cartoon called "Chuggington" for background noise caused my distraction the first time, now I have music playing softly in my ears. Then a crying, overtired boy who doesn't want to be in bed, but has no other choice, because he decided to wake up at three o'clock this morning and have an intellectual conversation with Mommy about tornadoes and weather, has turned the lightest of issues into the death of an imaginary friend (or what it would be like). I've since calmed him down, and got him to lie down for a little while. Just to rest (bc sleeping is the worst punishment in the world for my kids).

The funny thing is that upon my third attempt, I found stumbling words, my hankering long gone, the easy flow of fabulous evaporated to the place where unwritten words go. (Does anyone know? I haven't figured it out just yet. My two wavering ideals are either they hop from brain to brain until someone uses them, or they turn into Muse dust). And so the reason for the actual ramble of this post is because I remembered things seem to flow easier if I follow an actual train of thought than trying to force anything.

Hence the "fun" fumbling anecdote of nothing quite important, but still somewhat pertinent for the development of this post. (heh, you should see the first couple of drafts from my stories...)

A few months ago while I was reading POETS AND WRITERS magazine they spoke of a fabulous little word site called WORDNIK. It's cute, new and interesting. While I don't recall everything the article said about it, I do remember that where some sites only have a capacity for a certain number of words, Wordnik has an obscene amount. (Again, the numbers have dissuaded me)A little blurb from the "About" page...

**Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they've found what they consider to be "enough" information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don't want to wait—if you're interested in a word, we're interested too!

By "information," we don't just mean traditional definitions (although we have plenty of those)! This information could be:

* An example sentence—we have tons of examples and gobs of other data for most words. But even if we've only found one sentence, we'll show it to you. And we'll show you where it came from.
* Related words: not just synonyms and antonyms, but words that are used in the same contexts. Cheeseburger, milkshake, and doughnut aren't synonyms, but they show up in the same kinds of sentences.
* Images tagged by our friends at Flickr: want to know what a pout looks like? We'll show you.
* Statistics: how rare is tintinnabulation? Well, we think you'll see it only about once a year. Smile? You might see that word many times, every day.
* An audio pronunciation—and you can record your own!
* Something YOU tell us! Use the "Comments" and "Contribute" links to tell us something—anything—about a word.


Does that mean that there can be something in the definition that isn't kosher? Maybe, but I haven't seen any inconsistencies yet. Check it out when you get the time.

Learning new words gets me geeked. I enjoy it, and I was curious to see what other resources everyone else uses as well. Let me know if you're feeling generous. My word-o-the-day emails consist of one from Merriam-Webster, and the other from WordNik. They have entomology, different meanings, and pronunciations. Which is always fun. The best ones, or the ones that strike my fancy the most go into my "favorites" list, (a handmade list that holds such words as chrysalis, mirth, casket, valise, noetic, macabre...etc), along with my daily word fix, I also frequent Thesaurus/dictonary.com (which also contains a translator and an encyclopedia), and a rhyming dictionary at the ready. (Plus, The Bookshelf Muse does great things with descriptions along with The Non-Verbal Dictionary)

I supposed it goes without saying that I love word games (ie. Scrabble, crossword puzzles), and I make up my own words too (I think every writer does that tho, it comes from the creative part of us. jazziment, synopsisize, publishment... etc, nothing fancy, just play, if you will).

And I also have four dictionaries (one - the twenty pound, unabridged 2001 Webster dictionary), two thesauri, and three foreign language dictionaries (Russian, Italian and Gaelic).

I prefer the term multi-faceted abnormal, thank you very much. I'm a word-geek and I'm proud of it!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The WorkLoad.... wk 10.

*snurffle* I can't believe I've been doing this for ten weeks. It seems like it's been so much shorter *sniffle* but time does have a tendency to slip away *sniffle* from us doesn't it? I had this whole long schpeal planned out for my blog today since RL has stolen my blogging time, yet again. *snurffle* (Sorry! I'll catch up soon, I've not forgot my favorite blogs! *sniffle*)And today has been no exception, although I'm not short on time today the crappy weather has me down for the count with a full head of "swell-Kara's-sinus'-up-to-push-her-eye-balls out-of-her-head-itis" it's no fun. But I must stay on track less I fall of the face of my world *snurffle* and have it crumble into nothingness. (trying to rebuild from nothing is harder than staying on track, even when I feel like my head is about to explode). *aaaachooo!* (and possibly a tad over dramatic...)

Kay last week's goal:

8k - CINDER
Sub one thing out.

Done and done. *sniff, sniff*

I wrote over 12k last week for CINDER, leaving me at 43k for the WIP so far and I subbed three things out (poems) I have gotten responses back and one was accepted while the other two would like me to rework/tweak the poems a little more. So no rejections on that note. A positive there.

New goals for next week... *Aaaccchhooo!*

8k - CINDER
Write outline for new novel wriggling in my noggin.

(I'll add the links to my other blogger buddies a little bit later. *snurffles* )

Have a *sniffle* good day!
Happy writing.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The Workload... wk 9

Yup. I shot myself in the foot.

Well not literally, I'd actually like to say that real life shot me in the finger :D That's a little better. Last week I'd decided since I'd written 10k that I should make it my goal and then Hades unraveled in my house and exploded. I barely had time to write this past week. Regardless, I actually did edit and crit a couple of different works. So I wasn't completely out of the writing loop. I did however only manage to get 3k written.

The meager amount, does push me up to 32k for my WIP which rocks. This week is week four, and so I'm hoping to keep the ball rolling and stick to an even 8k, if I surpass then it's my surprise right?

(nod along with me people, it'll be easier if you just agree with me :D)

I did manage to finish my poetry revision, I am now waiting for an answer from a question I sent to the editor. I'm hoping it got there. I always worry whether or not my queries/submissions arrive at their destination. Does some evil hand of fate will snake it's way through the interwebs and pluck it into a black hole because something out there likes to torture me...

Oops. *blushes* Now I've gone off tangent, I should get on with this week's goals before boredom/fear sets inside you from the severely damaged warbling's which ride around my head.

New Goal:

8k - CINDER
Sub one thing out.

That's it. I'm trying to get the rest of my life into neat folds at the moment and I'm going to stick with what I know I can do for now.

Have a great week and Happy Writing!