Simon's Cat fan art

If you have read this blog from the beginning, you might recall my love of Simon's Cat, an animated series featuring Simon's Cat whom is always up to no good in his quest for moar foooood. Simon's Cat has appeared in videos, games, comic strips, and books. He is freaking awesome. The creator, Simon Tofield, started Simon's Cat with a video called "Cat Man Do" somewhere around 2008 and it blew up from there.

I'm a huge fangirl and as such, I like to doodle Simon's Cat still frames from time to time. Well, the other day, I found some awesome knee high pink faux-chucks on clearance at Clare's. I couldn't pass them up even though they are pink. In fact, I bought 4 pairs of them- one for me, one for E, one for L, and one for the cousin staying with us. Let's be real- no one turns down knee high faux-chucks when they were as cheap as I found them. Seriously.

So when I got these things home, I knew I'd be decorating them. My cousin painted a braided chain of multicolored hearts on her's. L painted bows, skulls, and stripes. E painted stars, stripes, bows, and paint splatters. I didn't want to do that- I wanted a high concept that would challenge me and my very poor painting skills. That's when I came up with the idea to use Simon's Cat! Off to Google I went to find still frames that I wanted to use for my boots.

I painted the familiar logo on the tongue of each boot. I don't plan to lace them all the way up anyways so that worked out well. Then, on onE boot, I painted Simon's kitten in a teacup on the bottom and Simon's cat with a bat on the top of that panel. On the other boot, I painted Simon's cat trying to convince a birdy that he is the birdhouse. I think they came out beautifully. I have some complaints but since these are only for me, I won't list them. I'm very happy with the way they came out. :)

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Hula Girl is Done!

Well, like it or not, my art project is finished. To recap: I painted a beach scene with a hula girl cutout for E&L's birthday party coming at the end of the summer. Voila!

Here is L trying it out just as soon as the paint dried. So we have a windswept sky, crashing waves, and a palm tree in the background with a hula girl in the foreground. I'm not good at making stuff non-cartoony but the girls love it and that is what counts. I have my own complaints (the tree... the freaking tree! It should have been bigger.) but the girls are flipping for it. I'll call this a win.

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

I'm Always Writing

The past month has been a whirlwind for me! I finished the first rough draft of my 4th novel (or well, mostly finished at least). I made a full revision of my 3rd novel and sent it back out to Beta readers. I started working again full time for a short amount of time (6 to 8 weeks) as a long term substitute in a K-5 school. We've have had multiple major snowstorms. My Granny had a major back surgery and is now in a rehab center for recovery. My brother's baby is due in a couple weeks so we've just finished Christmas with them (for E&L since Christmas didn't really work out for a party time- the S-I-L's mother passed after a long battle with cancer on Christmas Eve) and then immediately jumped into baby shower planning.

Is everyone else always so busy in January?! I can't say that I remember ever having such a busy January myself.

Something else I've been working on: My friend and editor Steven is a fantastic writer and I've looked to him as a mentor for something around a decade now. As it happens, Steven has gotten out of the habit of writing. Yeah, I know- he's an editor and a blogger. He should be writing every day. And he does, sort of. He has a dozen or so blogs that keep him pretty busy between transcriptions, copy writing, fact checking, and editing. But, none of those activities is about him creating work- for a while now, he has only been able to manage handling the work of others, maybe with commentary and background, but he hasn't written his own stuff. Writer's block? Maybe.

Earlier in January, I came across Writer's Digest's weekly writing prompts. I sent him one. He told me that he would absolutely not be writing to those prompts. An hour later, I got his first draft. It was that simple. I have told him 100 times that he needs to write. Nooooo. Send him a prompt and he's freaking Kerouac all of a sudden! We (meaning mostly Steven) came up with the idea to catalog all of his first drafts to my prompts, various snippets of our unfinished works, sneak peaks at works-in-progress, old stuff and new stuff, and more in a blog. I thought I'd share it with you. Check out Creative Differences to see the writing prompts I've sent, his responses, some of his past work, some of my past work, and various writerly things. Yes, "writerly" is a word because I said it is. :) My "Firefly fanfic that was" short story (detailed in this post) was posted a couple days ago under the title RED DOTS if you'd like to check that out!

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

November is Coming! November is Coming!

National Novel Writing Month is about a week away! If you haven’t registered yet, go to the website and sign up! Get to know the folks in your region; attend a Kick Off Party. Basically, get involved. That is half of the fun of NaNo.

If you want to read up on some information on NaNo, check out my posts from October 2011 (here) to read up on rules, rule breaking, prep work, a few writing exercises, etc. Start at the bottom and scroll up! I am pre-blogging some stuff to go up during November that will include some writing stuff (and requisite Election day stuff).

I hope you will jump into NaNo this year with me. I never thought I’d be able to write a full length novel but NaNoWriMo is the reason I finished my first. And my 2^nd. My 3^rd was finished outside of NaNo but I’ll be working on my 4^th novel this year, which will be the 3^rd book in my trilogy, The Immortalis Trilogy. Check the banner at the top for information my 1^st NaNo novel. Journey of Shadows was written in 2009 and rewritten and polished until ready for publication in March 2012.

You can do this. I know you can. I’ll be working right along with you!

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Happy 4th of July!

We have 5 kids here at the house running through the sprinklers and screaming like banshees. Dad has the grill going. We did a small bonfire (apparently illegal now- burn warning) and s'mores last night. I had the brilliant idea to replace the Hershey's bars with peanut butter cups. They were amazing. Mom is hanging out in the air conditioning with Gran, mixing up salad, making deviled eggs, and getting all the cutlery and such together.

I have managed to get the yard cleaned up with the help of the kids. I mowed while they drug tree limbs into a pile for the fire, watered the plants, and pulled some weeds. A teenage neighbor cleared out the gutters (yay no more trees growing in them!) for $20. I got up early and went to the cemetery to lay some flowers on my aunt's and my cousin's gravestones. No cats were bathed... its just been too crazy with all the kids running around and the random bouts of no electricity. So it is Wednesday and all I have left- minus bathing cats- is to write. I have been working on that but I've yet to be really productive. I'm so distracted!

Have a safe and enjoyable 4th of July folks. Make sure you drink plenty of fluids if you are going to be out in the heat!

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3