I need to work harder to achieve my crazy cat lady dream.

In which I profess my love for Lake Superior and the north woods.

I'm quite sure I will not be on the internet as much this weekend as I normally would be. The reason is I am going up north for the weekend to attend the funeral for one of my friend's dad. The hotel we got a room at has wifi supposedly, but I've been to a few hotels up north that didn't have the wifi they claimed they had, so I'll believe it when I see it.
We're taking *my* car so I'll be able to go up into Grand Marais on Saturday. Grand Marais is my FAVORITE city EVER. E V E R.
So Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning will likely be much more internet free than usual.
I foresee many walks this weekend.
I don't know what it is about them north woods. They make me feel at home.

Gigantic Mortality News

It's so huge it just might blow your mind.
So I know I was saying I wouldn't ever be doing release dates again?
Well I lied.
I'm going to publish Mortality on July 20th of 2012. That does NOT mean it will be available for purchase that day, and it DEFFO won't be available in paperback yet on that day, but it will be published, as in submitted to KDP Amazon.
Right now we're looking at a 2.99 ebook and probably $12.99 paperback, because this one is going to be long.
Well, long for me. Relatively short for a novel. Unless I get on a really good writing jag. In which case I'll be like OMFG TYPE TYPE TYPE TYPE TYPE CLACK CLACK THAT'S MY FINGERS ON THE KEYBOARD CLACK.

iTunes and Zebra Danios

I have this lovely 10 gallon fish tank on my dresser. I got it when it was on sale at Petco. It's about 2 or 3 feet long by like 1.5 to maybe 2 feet deep. I have black and white and pink stones at the bottom of it and there's some of those glow in the dark pebbles (that have NEVER worked >.<) in there as well as two plants and a pink, green and yellow rock thing. I'm so descriptive. *eyeroll* Anyway I've got 9 Zebra Danios in it. Well, four are glofish. But those are the same damn thing. (Glofish or Glowfish or whatever is the proper term [read: I'm too lazy to google right now.] are Zebra Danios that have had a paint substance injected into them (learned this AFTER getting my glowies) that makes them glow really pretty under a blacklight.
I'm considering getting some Neon Tetras for the tank, too. Because it feels kinda empty. I'm going to be getting some more plants and maybe one of those bubbly treasure chest things for it, too. Soon. I also want to get a backdrop for it, maybe the Finding Nemo themed one at Petco.
I also have a dark blue Betta named Hugo. The Danios all have names too: Koontz, Hocking, King, McCammon, Chucky, Duane, Shakespeare, Lewis and Elliot. If you can't tell, it's all author last names EXCEPT Chucky because I have a hard time pronouncing Palahniuk and therefore I went for first name.

I have upwards of 100.00GB of music on iTunes right now.
And for the most part, it'll pick its own shit and I'll be happy with whatever.
But some nights it just picks misses.
Like, all night long.
One hit, 20 misses.
Skip, skip, skip.

Someday I want to write a musical

Something powerful and silly, with a main theme song something like a cross between "The Internet is For Porn" and "Listen to Jesus Jimmy." Except not really.
But I do want to write a musical.
Then again I want to write just about anything right now. It seems the only words I can get out are these boring Oh Hi! I'm Writing To My Blog! words. Don't get me wrong, I love you reader people, but for cripes sakes anyway, I'm trying to make a living of this! And I can't even seem to get my muse to stay with me for ten damn minutes!
So I'm thinking I'm going to have to hit the books. Literally. I will go and punch copies of my books right now and demand to know why they won't give me their secrets. How did I stick it out and write you, books? I DEMAND AN ANSWER! KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

...I almost wrote "kneel below sod."

I don't know where I'm going with this post.

WOW

This blog is only 6 views away from 1000. That's amazing. Just a couple months ago I think I only had like 300 views on this beast.

I'm working pretty heavily on a princess doll and on Mortality. Both should be complete (well, on Mortality, a rough draft should be complete) soonish. I'm very excited to show off both to the world. Mortality is my brain baby and I am very proud of the idea and I'm very hopeful that I can write it properly and not in run on sentences like this one turned out to be.
 :)

Stanford Grayson

Just a short blog post to show some love to my favorite character name thus far: Stanford Robert Grayson.

Stanford Robert Grayson is one of three main characters in Mortality. The other two are Darrell Anderson and Danielle Camillia Grayson. There are also minor characters, such as Darrell's wife and children.

But in all honesty.
I want someone to draw Stanford Grayson for me.
Show me what you think a man named Stanford should look like.

Custom Dolls and Ponies and Stuff!

So, this past week has been epic. My friend Buri suggested that she and I start trying to customize MLP dolls, and that led to me deciding to add Barbies and Bratz to that, so now flash forward a few days and I've already made a custom doll. It was a brown/black-haired Bratz doll that had bright red lips with pink sparkles and brown eyes with ugly brown eye shadow. Now she's a juggalette. That links to my etsy listing for her. She's $25 plus shipping, which is $5 (unless you're from outside of the US, then it's $10).

We went thrift store hopping yesterday and scored a metric buttload of used Bratz and Barbies and a few Liv and Moxie Girl dolls. I think we may have even found some "my scene" Barbies, which I cannot wait to strip of their hair and laugh in their faceless faces.

Fatima Paperback--FINALLY

So, yeah. That's pretty much it. Fatima is available for purchase from lulu.com for the time being, soon to be available for order (from what I understand) at any bookstore through their computer system. That does not mean that it will be readily available at your Barnes and Noble, BUT you should be able to order it from them within the next 6-8 weeks. I'll let you know when I can search it on different websites and find it.

Beauty From Pain

So, I've come up with how Mortality will go as a book.
It's going to be split into three parts:

1: Stanford
2: Danielle
3: Molly

Stanford is the main character, the only one who will be a 1st person perspective in all three books of the series.
Danielle is Stanford's wife.
Molly is Stanford's best friend Darrell's wife.
When the book is out it will be MUCH clearer why all three of them will have their own parts of the story.

I will leave you today with the song Beauty From Pain by SuperChick, which is one of the songs on the OFFICIAL Mortality soundtrack. I will hopefully reveal one song from the soundtrack with every update between now and the time that the second draft goes off for editing.
Cheers!

Trying a Different Tactic

Tonight I am going to hopefully at least finish doing character profiles for Mortality. I'm trying a different tactic with this book. I'm actually outlining it. In pencil. In a notebook.
I'm hoping to be done with the outlines by no later than April 15th. Then I'm gonna sit down and hammer out the story, hopefully get it done by no later than May 15th, do a quick edit or two, and release it to y'all.
I'm really excited about this one. It's got a lot of strong religious undertones to it. Not in the preachy way. That's not why I write. I don't write to preach.

One Wish

If I ever found a genie and it gave me a wish, I would wish to not be a procrastinator anymore. I have SO MANY things I need to finish and release. I'm not even kidding. I have a re-write of My Sister's Keeper (Was going to scrap it, but there's something about it, maybe the fact that it was my first real novel I started working on... I don't want to give up on it just yet.), Ice, Mortality, Living Will, editing on Chastity's new piece (Unlikely Couple), editing on the Retail Hell Underground-esque piece Destruction Productions has picked up, not to mention Mommy Tales, Nikki's Choice, and Diary of a Teen Vampire.

So I've come up with a plan. I've moved out to the desk in the living room, and I will work for at least 1/2 hour at a time, and I will stay up until about 5:30 AM every day until I've gotten all caught up on this stuff.
In the meantime, please be on the lookout for promo pieces I'll be doing on my youtube channel, AuthorEWestlund. There will be one up for Fatima soon, as well as Nikki's Choice, one for the Sketchbooks series, one for Teen Vampire, and a few for Chastity's first two submissions.

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