The Five Things

In an effort to procrastinate the brainstorming of a new story for July Camp, I turn to blogging. It’s hard to believe that today is estival solstice, the longest day of sunlight in the northern hemisphere, which pretty much marks the halfway point in the year.

Kind of daunting.

Rather than trying to remember everything I’ve done so far this year, I’ll just review this month with the five things.

What I’m Writing

Or, in other words, what I’m not writing. I’ve only finished five chapters of edits, with ten more to go. I was hoping to finish it by the time July Camp begins, but this doesn’t seem likely. I will be participating in July Camp, which is only ten days away, and I’ll save the edits for then. Which allows me to focus on what direction I’d like my writing to go: to continue with the urban fantasy story, or go back to my fantasy story. I’m hoping for the latter.

In moments of indecision such as this, the best thing to do is to just dive right in. The timing will never be right, so it’s more a matter of just putting my foot down and going for it, regardless of how prepared I am not.

What I’m Aggravated About

DeviantArt. I don’t know how familiar you are with that website, but I’ve been a member of theirs for eleven years now, and while I’m more of a lurker on that site nowadays, it’s been an important platform for my artwork. Last week, someone hacked my account. Fortunately, I was right on top of it from the second I received “your email address has been changed” notice. And of course, I was unable to login because the scumbag changed the password, too.

Fortunately, my ticket inquiry must have locked my account to prevent the hacker from stealing my private information from the site. But it still doesn’t excuse the fact that deviantArt didn’t respond to my status inquires until two days after I sent the ticket. And I had no idea what was going on during that time. Now that it’s all cleaned up and I finally have my account back, they wanted me to rate their customer service.

I left no comment. I’d already given them an earful after the third status inquiry.

However, I’d like to show you what the hacker wrote to deviantArt when they found themselves locked out. This inquiry was sent to dA three hours after I submitted my initial ticket. Notice the atrocious grammar. I hoped they knew the difference, Eh, I need to amuse myself or else I’ll blow my top.

“All that jazz?” *guffaw*

I can’t believe the gall. And I’ll leave it at that or else this post will turn into a horrible rant.

What I’m Grateful For

My home and my small circle of friends. This past weekend, I went to a get-together at a friend’s house and got an overwhelming sense of how precious my quiet home and family is. Apart from my kids, my husband and I are introverts. We love our friends, though hubby certainly has many more friends that drop by the house due to his work, which is fine with me. But after that get-together last weekend, I couldn’t run home fast enough into my quiet castle. I love my friend very much, don’t get me wrong, but this is why I prefer small groups. More than four is too many for my comfort.

What I’m Reading

I’ve been beta reading for a friend which has led to reflections on my own writing. I may go into that in another post.

The TBR shelf which is collecting obscene amounts of dust.

To put it plainly, I haven’t read a book in a while. That’s the problem with Netflix: it sucks away all my time for reading. And while watching a story on the screen is entertaining, it’s just lacks that charm of reading a book, feeling the story in your hands. It’s just more tangible. Well anyway, I have a shelf of books waiting for me, but I keep going to the library and picking up new books instead. Last week, I picked up “A Discovery of Witches” by Deborah Harkness and “On a Pale Horse” by Piers Anthony.

Both storylines intrigue me, but I’ll be reading Discovery of Witches first.

What I’m Watching

I’ve just recently completed House of Cards (the last half of season 5 was rather predictable), and so after taking a short breather, I started up a new series.

I may or may not be fangirling over Sherlock.

Here’s what I’ve boiled it down to after completing the first season: he’s a self-absorbed, brilliant, and strategically charming prick who favors science over emotions, but isn’t too far removed from his heart that he wouldn’t show his charm, with a little show of feelings if it suited him, and BBC has groomed him to become the quirky nerd who not-so-ignorantly makes a girl’s heart melt because he finds no purpose or advantage to those sorts of emotions unless his IQ is tickled.

Yeah, it was right about the above scene that I started to see what the silver screen was doing to the fangirl inside. So I’m glad that there are only 4 seasons so far. Three episodes down, nine more to go.

Unfortunately, I’ll be fangirling from this point forward. I feel …foolish.

As a side note, BBC makes some very good shows. Strange and Norrell really hit the spot for me. If only that show had been as long as the book.

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So that’s all for now. Apologies if I’ve bored the hell out of you. However, I’ve now successfully gotten most everything off my chest, and I feel ready to achieve new things!