Flare; To Begin Burning Brightly

Good afternoon 2014!

Hah. Look. I spelled the date right.

So, following the trend a myriad of other online blogs, tumblrs, tweets and Facebook posts have, I will welcome the new year. Hi 2014! Nice to meet you. Do you take tea or coffee? Uh-huh, and how many sugars with that?

Honestly though, I don't think I'm as concerned with the change of the year as other people are. On Facebook I've seen posts saying things like "So sick of this year. Can't wait for it to be over. I hope things are better in the new year." I don't understand those people. You may as well say "So sick of this hour. Can't wait for the next one. Maybe it'll be better." There is literally no difference between 11:00pm on December the 31st and 1:00am on January the 1st. If you are trying to make things better in your life, why wait for an arbitrary human construct to give you permission to start? Why not just start right now?

This also means that I don't really make resolutions either. Sure, I have goals that I want to achieve but it doesn't matter to me what the date is. 

This might make me seem a bit like a cynic; I really do appreciate the celebration of bringing in the new year, but I just don't follow the hype as much as others do.

With that dry grumble out of the way, I have much news to announce! Many things have happened!

I finished my university degree! I am now qualified with a Bachelor of New Media Arts, majoring in Media Design.

I sold some art! Seriously, I keep accidentally selling art. I've logged onto DeviantART several times to find that people have just gone and bought prints of the same piece of Doctor Who fanart I did ages ago. I also sold a print of a painting in our graduate exhibition at uni. Go me!

I went fishing! All I caught was bait...

I applied for jobs! And was declined for them all. *sadface*

I'm thinking of making a Youtube channel! It will be a kind of vlog with me talking about all the weird and wonderful dreams I have. Also other things, like me being bad at games and good at writing. Go to The Ink Stained Brain to look at my as yet nonexistent videos and fancy channel art.

And finally, I accidentally wrote half a new book! Seriously. It's already half done. 42,000 words. Somehow, I wrote 10,000 words yesterday. It's boggling my brain a little bit. I suppose the reason it's been so fast and easy is because it's based on the first full novel I ever wrote, Sparks. 

I did a complete overhaul of the plot, deleted one character and added another. Some of the major themes are still there, but a lot of them have been trashed. And I started writing the whole thing from scratch. There has been no copy and paste, mainly because original Sparks was writing in first-person while the new edition, now called Flare is in third-person. I did enjoy writing first-person, but third-person gives a lot more freedom. It's more logical for if an when you want to switch between characters, or show a 'many years ago' style thing.

Which means I should probably update the Sparks info tab at the top of this blog.

Label for the file of notes for Sparks. I designed it to look like a laboratory
filing system label. All I need now is a 'TOP SECRET' stamp.

Now for a question for all you writerly types out there. How do you name your characters? Do you take names from people you already know and let the character take on aspects from them? Do you just pick names that you think sound cool? Do you research name meanings relating to the character's personality?

Personally, I prefer the latter method. I don't think people will ever pick up on looking up names to see what a character's true nature is like, but I like having those little in-jokes.

Feeling: Accomplished. 10,000 words in a day man!

Listening to: O Death sung by Jen Titus from the Supernatural soundtrack. Brr. Chilling. Also Short Change Hero by The Heavy, from the Borderlands 2 soundtrack. Delish.

Wearing: Grey shirt with pink printed tie and denim short shorts. It's an average day.

Eating: Had some Macca's for lunch. I have a miniature Boost bar sitting on my desk staring at me though...

Supernatural Ass

Good evening brethren of the pen and page. This meeting is convened upon the night of the sickle moon and the jig-dancing, green-hatted dwarf. Moonshine and crocks of gold for all.

It is true that I have not posted in quite a while. Mainly because I have been taking a break from writing and as such have nothing to post about. I have read that it's a good idea to take a break in between finishing a first draft and beginning the edit on it, so as to more easily be objective. 

What I have been doing, is boasting to everyone who'll listen that I've recently finished a 99,000 word manuscript, and then telling them off for suggesting to add another thousand words to make it an even 100,000. It's weird that they suggest that. Why is 100 better than 99? Both are equally cool to say in my humble opinion... But, who knows. Maybe after the edit it'll go up, or possibly down. All I care is whether it's a good story.

My brain, now currently free of its commitment to Soulless, has been pondering a little about the next rewrite of Sparks. I know for sure that the current manuscript is in a terrible state. Sure, I love the characters, the villain and some of the scenes, but I know that it is actually quite a shallow and cliched story. I have basically written the female version of Spiderman. So, there have been some notes on what modifications are to ensue - nothing concrete though. There are still a lot of plotholes to be filled with steamy hot, delicious story-tar. My brain needs to strap on its boots and high-visibility jacket and get to work on those. It's going to be exciting when it does.

Nearly all of my favourite TV shows are back on the air. I awaited not-so-patiently for the return of Grimm, and the mid-season kick off was not disappointing. Castle, Once Upon a Time and 2 Broke Girls were back quite a few weeks ago and I eagerly await for them each day. What I have been amusing myself with in the meantime, is a copious amount of True Blood. I got up to mid-way through season four and decided to stop though, having lost interest after my three favourite characters all broke up. I highly recommend the series if you liked Game of Thrones. Their similarities include epic intro songs and scenes, much politics, blood and a high boob per hour count.

How could you not want to watch when the vampires look like this?

I apologise if this post is feeling a little dry though. My brain is slightly fuzzy. I was out clubbing till 2:00am last night. I had an insane amount of fun, and was weirdly unable to get drunk. Normally I'm quite a lightweight. What topped the night off though, was how many times my butt was pinched. I was wearing a slinky grey dress I bought at at a second hand shop for $4.00. It made my ass look incredible. Three times it got nipped. Also, as I left the club for the night, I was heading toward the taxi rank in the middle of my group of buds when two scary looking Latino fellas strolled right up to me and asked if I wanted to go far a walk with them. Rather stunned, I simply said "No thanks," and walked away. I attribute this overwhelming interest as a testament to the power of second hand shops. Never buying retail again.

Eating: Dinner was St. Patricks day themed here at college. We had beef and Guinness pies.

Wearing: Pink, striped pajamas.

Feeling: Tired, but good.

Listening to: The sexy theme song from True Blood is still looping in my head. Have a listen and you'll know what I mean.

Slush and Satellites

Hi! Cookie?

Today I found out that I can actually make other pages for my blog, not just new blog posts. Oh and did I had fun with this. Now you have three new pages to go and visit if you so desire. The first is a little bit more about me and this blog, plus a slightly zany picture. The second and third pages are short synopses on the two novels I am currently writing/have written; Sparks and Soulless.

Speaking of Soulless, I have been doing quite a bit of writing on it today, managing again to hit the 3,000 word quota I have set for myself, bringing the total now to 64,000 words. Being able to do this gives me excited, fluttery tingles. I know that if I keep it up, I'll have the novel finished in no time at all. And then, then comes the fun part where I print out countless copies of the first few chapters of my precious baby and hope they don't end up in an agent's slush pile.

I have only ever submitted something to an agent once. This was one of the more recent versions of Sparks. It was quite a while afterwards when they sent me a very nice, polite rejection letter. My first rejection. I was actually quite thrilled. You're not a real writer until you get your first rejection, or so I've read.

If you have any tips on writing queries or getting an agent or a publisher or good links on such subjects, please don't hesitate to put them in the comments below. I'd love any help I can possibly get.

 

One such slush pile. *Cringe*

Today was interesting also for quite a few other reasons. My parents decided that it would be fun to go and cook our dinner out on a fire under the stars. And it really was. We lit the fire down the back of our property on the beach of our 'dam'. The dam is actually just a hole we dug back when we were developing the land. The tonne of red clay dirt that was removed went into building the pads for the house and my dad's giant shed. Anyway, this little hole in the ground is about eight foot or two and a bit metres at its deepest and has a water slide at the back.

So we lit the fire, waited for it to burn down to embers, then chucked some bacon and burger patties on the hotplate. When we had finished our rather delicious dinners, the fire had died down considerably, and with no moon, it was absolutely perfect star gazing weather. My family have always been avid star watchers. My father bought a powerful green laser pointer so that he could point out the satellites he saw in the sky. He also downloaded a rather ingenious application for his tablet that gives you a real time view of what objects can be seen in the sky each night. I have watched several times as the Russian International Space Station has passed overhead.

Tonight though, after spotting the normal satellites whizzing like little shooting stars across the sky, I noticed something rather odd. There  in the middle of the sky, I kept seeing something blink at me. So I sat and watched patiently - and it blinked again. My family didn't believe me until they saw it blink too. It was blinking at quite a consistent rate; about once every fifty seconds. So when we all got too cold and mosquito bitten and headed back inside, I decided to Google this strange phenomenon. The closest I can gather is that it is an old, disused communications satellite that floats up in the very outer atmosphere, moving very, very slowly. Sometimes they are sent into spins and can blink. This blink is the light from the sun reflecting of their assorted solar panels or dishes. I was actually quite proud of myself for spotting this unusual night-time occurrence.

Feeling: Happy and clean, but unusually cold for a Summer night.

Listening to: Thunderstruck by ACDC, an awesome Australian rock band.

Wearing: PJs again.

Eating: Had delicious burger as stated above, and a pine-lime flavoured popsicle for desert. It dripped into my hair while I lay on my back looking up my special little blinky piece of space-junk.

Unexpectedly Nerdy

So, among my general, not really out of the ordinary pastimes, I have found myself doing some incredibly nerdy things. Normally my hobbies are just reading, writing, occasionally playing a sandbox or tycoon style video game and watching movies or television shows. Last night, I found myself making a paper craft model of a unit from the extremely popular and insanely difficult pro-league game, Star Craft II. I have not played the thing myself, but have watched quite a bit over my boyfriend's shoulder. He is very into the game. I am also now the owner of a D20 dice. D20s are a core component of table top RPG games. Admittedly it's shiny purple (one of the main things that drew me to it in the first place) and I was given it as a gift, but I still own a D20. I have also been watching a lot of anime lately. I am a member of the uni's anime club, but have been going more for the company than the anime - until just of late. I found myself watching all of Ao No Exorcist (Blue Exorcist) and I am quite interested in other titles like Sankarea, Another, Tiger and Bunny, Maria Nikki (Future Diary) and Gun X Sword. I even went and watched Spirited Away.

Overall, I think I am enjoying being extra nerdy.

The 'Immortal' so far

My shiny D20

There hasn't been much progression on the Soulless front. It's pretty much where it was since the last post I did about it. I really have to get an itch, a real fire under my butt, to write anything nowadays. It's not a good habit to get into. At least I'm still blogging. I find it sometimes loosens the stopper on the bottle of creative juice that resides somewhere inside me.

Also on the subject of novels, I have been thinking a lot about my first novel, Sparks, since I have moved onto Soulless. I have concluded that it is, unfortunetly, a rather bad book. The whole plot (a teenager recieving awesome superpowers) is a complete cliche. The main character is a shallow as a new pothole. The villain is also incredibly cliched and pathetic. But how I wish I could make it better. I really do. But I dread doing it. I really don't want to go back and edit that damned thing again. I have been working on that stupid manuscript for six years, a little under a third of my whole lifespan, and I don't know how many times I've rewritten it. It realy upsets me that I've spent so long and so much effort on it, and all I've produced is that. A very disheartening revelation...

Feeling: Down.

Eating: Pop rock studded chocolate.

Wearing: The daggiest things I own.

Listening to: The construction vehicles down the road reversing.

I Hope It's Not Writer's Block...

Yellow all!

So, it's been about a month since my last post. Quite a few interesting things happened and also didn't happen. I got a boyfriend. That I did not expect. I finished my first year of university. Kinda expected that one, but it's still a totally weird feeling. Just thinking that I only have two more years of formal education freaks me the hell out. I have also done no writing whatsoever. I think I read over the summary for Sparks II once, and that's about it. Feeling so lazy. Well, not really lazy. I just don't want to do anything except play Magic the Gathering, a game my boyfriend got for me, talk to said boyfriend online and sleep in. And I seem to be eating pizza. A lot. *Raises eyebrow*

I haven't heard back from the agency I submitted Sparks to... whenever it was. I should really start keeping a track of stuff like that. But I think I've gone past the 'If you haven't heard back from us at this time, then we don't like you' date. So I suppose I should do up another cover letter and send it to someone else. Actually, I might do an editing session first. Said boyfriend spotted a mistake on about page ten. *Worried face*

What else have I been doing? *Finger on chin*
We had a garage sale. I managed to sell my PS2 and all the bits and pieces that went with it. Earnt some pocket money. Tried to learn the Party Rock Anthem shuffle today, but failed miserably. Watched Cars 2. Which was surprisingly good for the sequel of a children's movie. Normally I hate sequels, but this was quite okay. Aaaaand... That's about it. Exciting huh?

Cya-n.

(See what I did there?)

Fangirl Rant

Well, here goes my first real blog entry. Part of which is already on deviantART, but, meh. I have study to do, so I'm going to cheat a little and copy-paste. You won't tell anyone, will you?

Anyway.

I am currently most of the way through my second semester of my university degree. My first year is nearly over. It seems only yesterday I had just arrived on college, a brand new fresher. Exams are coming up, I had assignments due, and all I could seem to do was listen to Doctor Who audiobooks!

I didn't actually know they existed until about a couple of weeks ago, when I was craving more Doctor Who and decided to Google them. Turns out there are about four audibooks that are actually read by David Tennant and three by Matt Smith. This led me to curling up in my deskchair for hours, headphones in, clutching a pillow and my doctor doll, wearing my fez, and listening to that gorgeous Scottish accent. (I haven't got to Smith's books yet.) I must say that he does them books just as well as he acts. The transitions between his narration and doing the Doctor's voice is seamless, and you can hear every wink and grin. *Stares off dreamily into mid-distance*

I was also bouncing up and down in my seat, eagerly awaiting 7:30 a few Saturdays ago. Most of my friends downloaded the Doctor Who finale and watched it early, but I decided to wait. It was fantastic. Not as good as some episodes I've seen, but still fantastic. I won't go into detail about it, as it would be spoilers for those who haven't seen it, but as the episode is titled The Wedding of River Song I feel I am at least allowed to gush about how much I fangirl 'awwwww'ed and 'squee!'ed when River tied the knot. It was a lot. My poor Doctor doll nearly got the stuffing squished out of him in my excitement lol.

On other notes, but still Doctor Who related, I thoroughly enjoyed the Cosplay event that was put on at the university Anime Club I attend. It was great fun and I got a lot of comments on my costume, [link] . It was fun to make, fun to wear, fun to pose for photos in and incredibly fun to go and collect my 2nd place prize in. The prize turned out to be a 1:24 scale diecast model Delorean time machine from Back to the Fututre, another series that I absolutely adore. So there was then the question of what happened when a time machine was given a time machine...

Now what other stuff was I going to write about? Oh, yes. Writing.

My novel! It is finally finished! The main reason I wanted to start this blog so as to follow the beginning of what I hope to be a successful writing career. The first edition of my novel was completed when I was in grade nine at high school, I think. Since then it has had many, MANY rewrites and edits and periods of hating it, then loving it and then realising it was naive trash. But finally, I have produced a manuscript that I feel happy with. Now all I have to do is find an agent. Such a task is going to take a long time, with many, MANY rejections.

This is the synopsis bit I have written for my query letter, but cut an pasted here for a quick overview of the storyline:

My novel, Sparks, is Young Adult Fiction. It spans a period of three months and is set in Sydney, Australia, in the present year. The protagonist is Sarah 'Sparks' Harrier, a lonely sixteen-year-old girl who is abducted by puma/men hybrids and transported to an eerie, white-walled facility, where she awakens to find that she has been given extraordinary powers. The novel tells the story of Sparks' subsequent escape and her struggle to deal with her strange and dangerous powers as they begin to take over her life and affect her friendships. During her fight to understand why they have been forced upon her, she learns a devastating secret. This novel is approximately 86,000 words long.

If anyone knows of any good agents, whether it be here in Australia, or elswhere, contact me with their info please?

That's all from me for now, I thinks. I might go and listen to more Doctor Who. Or, y'know, do some study.

Tata.

And So I'm Back, From Outer Space...

I'm going to cheat a bit here. I realised after reading a few blogs that some started with a bit of an introduction to themselves and what they are actually doing in this vast, messy world some call the 'blogosphere'. So, I'm going to change the date on this entry to make it appear as the first of this blog. I'll set it to Halloween, just for fun.

Okay, that done, time to introduce myself.

I'm Raechel. 

I am a young student, currently studying a Bachelor of New Media Arts at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. I love art and writing and I am hoping to get my novel, Sparks, off the ground sometime soon. It is my opinion that I spend way too much time on the computer. I like to read full sized novels in one sitting and I can spend whole days playing the Sims 2 and Minecraft. I love science fiction shows, namely Fringe and Doctor Who. I am not ashamed to say that I am a die hard Whovian fangirl. My greatest acheivement to date in this respect, is that my college dorm door is decorated to look like the TARDIS.

People tell me I'm slightly mad. I accept these compliments with bows. It is my opinion that normal people are rather dull. When you try to conform, you lose who you really are, or who you really can be. So, I be myself. Granted, it's very easy to be myself. I am lucky in many, many ways. I have a loving, generous family, a sharp mind, a good waistline and if I might says so, fair looks. I am at the beginning of my life really. I have not yet had any major emotional crises, achievements or failures. So, expect this blog to get interesting as I write about my life and these potential successes and disasters. And my writing. Don't forget the writing. 

I must say I love writing. I get a thrill when writing. I get to play with characters that I've pulled from nothing. I get to send them on adventures, succeed, fail, hurt, love. I would liken it to being like a god, but that's a bit egotistical. I think it's more like a link back to my childhood, where I'd set up my Barbie doll house so perfectly, then give my Barbies life. And then I'd steal my brother's Action Man, have Barbie invite him over for a plastic meal, a drive in the Barbie (R) Convertible, then take him up the dollhouse stairs, for some, uh... coffee. Yes. Coffee. *giggle* 

Anyway. Giving characters stories is fun, yes. But I also like to think about how people will read my stories. I want to take them on adventures too. I want to see their eyes light up as they read the plots I first dragged kicking and grumbling onto the page, then spent hours polishing, cleaning and re-reading. I want people to enjoy my writing and get lost in the stories like I do.

So, hopefully, that's what this blog will acheive. It will tell a journey of my life and my writing.

Enjoy.