I hope it’s good though. I’ve also revived the website, and I’ve released three chapters and the prologue so far. Interspersed with the chapter releases are blog posts from the two main characters themselves: CherryPop and Liam (the Zombie). Liam and CherryPop are also on Twitter, though things aren’t looking so good for our girl as she’s become the victim of a Stupid Zombie bite that was infected with something and now she’s out cold. You’ll have to follow them on Twitter to find out what happens next.

I’m slowly building up a little ‘verse for my story that I hope can get noticed and (hopefully) is enjoyed by folks who dig on Zombie/Magic/sci-fi-y type stories. Ican’t narrow down a genre to pin this to yet.

I also have plans to do a podcast, maybe 30 minutes or so on Zombies that would end with the release of another chapter of the story. I figured I could do Zombie trivia, have someone review a Zombie movie and umm, other Zombie stuff. It’s a Zombcast. Or will be if I can recruit helpers. If anyone reads this, get a hold of me and let me know if you’d like to help me out

So that’s me done pimping what I’m up to. This is my main project right now in my free time and I am having an absolute blast working on this.

Anyway, yes I did some rearranging around here. Again. I got a wild hair last night around 9:30pm and decided that I needed more than one sidebar for all my junk. Since this blog is serving as my website, I needed a place to put all this stuff. And I’m sure no one really gives a toss but me, but I felt I needed to ‘splain.

So last night around 3am I was rudely awoken by the sound of hammers and rocks being chucked at my bedroom window which is right above my head and I was forced to flee. I don’t know who decided 3 o’clock in the morning was a good time to have a hailstorm, but who ever it was, I’d like a word.

I’m having mucho fun with the new camera that has so many settings I’ll never use them all. I took pictures of stuff in my house because I’m thinking of replicating (which sounds so much better than ‘stealing’) Dooce’s Daily Style posts. Not only can I practice macro photography, but as I was looking around last night, i realized, Hey, I have some neat stuff. Ok so I have some geeky stuff too. The up close and personal pic of a toy Dalek on my bookshelf may only interest Who fans, but I could also showcase a lot of my mother’s artwork I have hanging around.

If anyone’s wondering how I’m doing on the whole CherryPop story, I’m not doing so hot. I’m having motivation issues. I’ve written a few more ficlets and several attempts at starting the story (one of which is actually working for me) but I let myself get distracted. I’m wondering if I should just force myself to write. No internets, put the new camera away, unplug the Wii, no swimming (see? I do get out of the house on occasion) and write. Maybe start with 1 hour of writing and work up if I get on a roll. I keep thinking I’ve got to do it, and how cool it would be to actually finish it and the great sense of accomplishment I’ll have whether I publish it or not. And yet, something, some kind of block is going on in my head that won’t let me dig in and do it. I don’t understand it, and it’s pissing me off too.

So that’s where CP stands. I haven’t blogged as her either. Feeling guilty about that. Argh.

Ok first, a little backstory here. I’m pretty much writing these on the fly. I have an idea in my head of where the story is going, but I’m fleshing it out one Ficlet at a time. So when I sit down to write a sequel, I never know exactly how it’s going to turn out. Makes it kind of exciting for me to do it that way.

So as I’m writing this particular sequel, in which CherryPop and Liam have to kill some time until sunset when they can go investigate the headquarters of the Anti-Zombie Coalition, who they think might be responsible for a brutal Stupid Zombie attack. As they kill time, I have Liam poke around online looking for info about the AZC.

Poking around. Online. All he finds is a plain website with a mission statement and contact number. A website… Online… Noo.. that would be silly. But funny! Yes! I’ll do it! And I did. I waited to publish the ficlet until after I purchased the domain www.anti-zombies.org. Then I made up a little mission statement, named my character who will be the head of it, and made up a phone number for him. And I put it online. And I published the ficlet with the URL as the title. Hello expanded universe!

It’s a Ficlet with a kick! God I love that site.

Sure it’s a little OTT and silly, but it reminds me of the viral Lost sites that kept popping up when the show was on the air that enhanced the show’s mysteries. Fun!

No matter what I try, there is a gagging, disgusting ‘fishy’ aftertaste that is the same no matter what the seafood is. And it makes me want to heave. So I’ve given up the though of ever liking seafood. But I want to take advantage of the health benefits of fish, the omega-3 oils and all that good stuff. Everything I’ve read says those are so great for you. So I bought some fish oil supplements.

Now, I’ve never braved buying them before because I fear that fishy aftertaste. But several people assured me you don’t get that with the supplements. Well, I’m here to say that, uh, yes you do. At least I do. And it’s making me ill. So no more fish oil thingies for me and I’ll try to get those health benefits elsewhere. Right now, I think I’m going to go gargle garlic or something to kill this aftertaste.

In other news, I’m seriously considering giving up Blogger for WordPress for this blog. And I feel guilty about it. I’ve been with Blogger since before Google bought them. And I love Blogger, I really do. It’s a wonderful platform – especially for beginner bloggers. They make it so easy to get right into blogging which is helpful when trying to convince someone who’s reluctant to blog because it seems too hard to set up.

But I’ve been using WP at work for a while now, and I really like it. I love the plugins and it just seems to have more features that I like compared to Blogger. It seems like Blogger is far behind in development. It should the ability to have categories by now and they’ve only just released the ability to set posts to publish in the future. Come on Google, give some more time and love to Blogger.

I haven’t decided if I want to tackle porting all these posts to WordPress, or if I just want to start from scratch and leave these archived. I’m still pondering. If you see a completely different layout one of these days you’ll know I made up my mind. One of the cool things I discovered with WP is a podcast plugin that I think is used over on the Buffy Between the Lines site (which is powered by WP). I tested it out on my TV blog last night and it’s fantastico. I’ve been thinking of doing a little podcast around here and this would make it so simple to do.

What else is up… I’m using a little stimulus check money to stimulate the economy to buy a new laptop. It’s so not a high end one, but I don’t need anything fancy. All I do at home is some photoshopping, some coding, some video/audio editing and writing so I don’t really need a $2000 laptop. But I do need one of my own. I use my daughter’s and she’s going to be needing it herself soon. I can’t be laptopless Plus hers is feckin’ heavy as evidenced by the fantastically colourful bruises on two of my toes where it fell on them yesterday. I back and forthed on whether I should go to the ER last night because I thought they might be broken. But I don’t think they are now. The swelling is gone and I can wiggle them now.

I’m still writing. I’ve sort of halted the CherryPop story on Ficlets while I concentrate on fleshing it out. I gave up on the idea of writing in a coffeeshop or something. 1. I would be forced to buy a mocha and I’ve given them up for the most part and 2. Nosey clerks bother me.

Anyway, that’s me caught up for now. I’m picking up the new laptop tonight. I can’t wait! Off to look for garlic now.

Oh don’t worry. I’m being slightly dramatic on that last one. I was not hurt.

It began with the noisy neighbours. I suppose I should be thankful they weren’t having sex. But still, 3am’s a bit early (or late depending on your POV) to hold a normal, full-voice conversation on the other side of a wall you know to be thin from having to listen to 2 girls laughing loudly (but during normal hours) at the cat or funny Fark headlines.

So being woken up against my will is never a good thing for me. I get… grumpy. So after a groggy start to the day, I decide to stop by HyVee again after dropping the kidlet off to check if they have any of the Hint O’Mint tea I really love. I’ve stopped there in the hopes that they have it about 5 times in the past week and no joy. As I’m walking in from my car, a minivan parked illegally decides to back up just as I’m passing it. He hits me and knocks me off my balance a little. I smack his gas tank and give him a very loud, “OI!” He just looks at me like a slack-jawed idiot. No offer of apology or checking to see if I’m ok. Nope. Just a blank stare. Fucker.

And after that, HyVee STILL DID NOT HAVE MY TEA. Fuckers.

So I get to work, realize I’ve left my red Scheels sports bottle there the night before and so I have no lovely yummy Brita water to drink as is my habit. I grimace at the thought of going thirsty. I hate not having *something* to drink. I make plans to take the bottle home at lunch and fill it up. At lunch, I fill it and walk to the car, feeling better and carrying my water. Then I drop it. Now, it’s a tough sucker. The bottle bounces, and if I had better reflexes I probably could have caught it and had a good chuckle at how weird that was. But I do not have good reflexes apparently and all I could do was watch it land, the lid fly off and all my lovely Brita water spill everywhere.

I’m now late for work and besides, if I went back to refill it, the water would be tepid at best. I sigh, pick up the nearly empty bottle and head back to work where a slowbuilding headache begins powering up.

My computer decides to pick this day to do wonky things and I spend most of the afternoon wrestling with it, cursing at it, sighing frustratedly, and finding myself weighing the probability of getting fired over how satisfying it would be to pick it up, walk outside and heave it at the nearest passing semitruck. 5pm cannot come fast enough.

It finally does, and the minute I get home, I sit down, and stay there nearly catatonic until bedtime. Everything bothered me. I growled at the kid over stupid things and promptly apologised and then felt bad for being such a nitpicky bitch and finally I just crawled into bed.

Thankfully today was fine. Nice even. I didn’t drop a thing, no one ran me over, the computer behaved and I spilled no water. I even got to duck out of work 15 minutes early thanks to a surprise announcement from the kid that she had to work at 5pm and she had the car.

The cool thing I did this evening was venture out to Hastings (a bookstore along the lines of a Borders or Barnes & Noble) with the laptop with the purpose of getting started writing my book.

Other than being completely ignored by the staff there when I really would have liked to order a cup of tea (you apparently have to hunt down a clerk if you want to order stuff. I say screw that) and one screaming kid, I was quite productive in the hour and a half I was there. I was able to outline almost the entire story so that I have a base to work from. I needed that to help me focus. Otherwise I look at the blank Word doc and feel overwhelmed at not knowing where to begin.

I think I’ll try someplace else though next time because Hastings is full of crappy clerks (I did decide to name an annoying character in the story after the crappy store though ) I’m just afraid if I go to Starbucks I will not be able to resist the siren call of the beautiful Mocha. God I miss my Mochas. Being good sucks sometimes.

Wow this is getting long. Sorry. Anyway, I made good progress on the book and I can’t wait to get in there and really flesh it out. I was looking at self-publishing options this morning (I’m not getting ahead of myself, I was just talking to a columnist at the paper who wrote a book a couple of years ago and he was telling me how he did it.) It looks like I’m going to use Lulu.com to publish it. They don’t require any dosh up front which is good because I don’t have any I’d love to try and get the book published the old-fashioned way via a proper publisher but I don’t see that happening.

Except you know, sometimes bloggers get noticed by publishers. It worked for Dooce and that chick who blogged about being a cabbie in NYC. Those guys are part of the reason I began blogging as CherryPop. That and I want to post as her as much as possible so I can inhabit her headspace and do a good job writing this book. It’s going to be in first person so yeah, better get some practice. And if cherrypopmcgee.com happens to get some traffic along the way, then cool! Besides, it’s kind of fun I also hooked her up with a MySpace page for the hell of it too. Why not!

Ok I’ve rambled far too much. I’ve got a Dresden book to finish up and then I think I’m off to bedfordshire. Gnighty!

And for the hell of it, I created a Twitter account for CherryPop too

BUT, I did something this weekend that frankly, I’m astonished I did. There is a fan show/podcast for Buffy called “Between the Lines” where they write actual episodes and cast fans as the characters from the show. They put it all together into a podcast and frankly, it’s pretty fucking cool. They’ve finished their first season and are holding open auditions for their second season.

So I auditioned. What the hell right? All you need is a mic and recording software, and you can use Audacity, which is free. I happen to have Audition so I used that. Anyway, I had to record myself using dialogue from the character I was trying out for. I’d love the part of Drusilla, the spacey, deadly English vampire because she’s one of my favourites so I did her lines. But I also figured I’d audition for a few other parts too:

Drusilla – Crazy psychic vamp
Cordelia – Total Cali cheerleader type
Lilah Morgan – Vicious bitch lawyer at Wolfram & Heart
Gwen Raiden – Electro-girl/well-paid thief

The links go to the audition pieces I had to record.

I’m sure I sucked immensely but I had fun anyway. But that’s not the kicker. The kicker is after I sent my audio and application in, they wrote me back and asked for a sample of me singing because I guess they’re contemplating a musical episode. No power in the ‘verse will make me post that audio sample so don’t even ask. But I did it They wanted a snippet sung from any song in the Buffy musical episode, “Once More with Feeling.” I sang the first verse of Anya and Xander’s song, “I’ll Never Tell.” (Link goes to youtube, uhh a Sims version of the song. It’s weird but all I could find.) My cheeks are blushing just thinking about it. I sound great in my car with a CD blasting (and overpowering my voice) but this was a capella, and I had to rely on my memory for the tune. Shan said it wasn’t bad but that I was flat. Ah well I thought I could probably induce dogs to howl.

But, fun was had and I probably won’t end up with a part, but at least I tried out And Mike – They’re going to be producing a Firefly version of this You’d be great as Wash

But later that day, I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to put a blog on the new site and post as the character? A sort of online extension of CherryPop (ohmygod Steph quit saying CherryPop) that potential readers of the book could come to and learn more about the character. It could become a viral marketing thing I could use when it’s done. It could be a way for me to inhabit the character, much like an actor does, so I can make her and her weird world believable.

And it has the added bonus of being something that will motivate me if I find my inertia on this waning. BUT I don’t see that happening this time. I’m too excited about this

Sooooo without further blather, here’s CherryPop’s blog. Just a post or two right now, remember I just started it yesterday But I’m planning to write as her quite frequently as well as continue to add to the ficlet series.

This is gonna be fun

I’ve tried everything I can think of too to jump start my stupid brain. Writing exercises, I’ve started many many blogs aimed at giving me a place to bounce ideas around, NaNoWriMo… nothing was working for me. Then I met Ficlets. The place has been amazing and I can’t say enough good things about it. I know I talk about them quite a bit here, and you can see my latest ficlets in the right rail over there ———>
but I think there are several things about the site that make it so perfect for me.

The very short format forces you to try and tell a whole story in a few paragraphs, which means you have to edit and re-edit and piece your idea together like a puzzle to make it work and still be cohesive and good. Sure, you can sequel your story if you need more room, or if you’re creating a series. You can even prequel your story (or someone else’s!). So you get good practice. The site offers many ways to get inspiration for a story – you can flip through thousands of Flickr images, or use a story starter, or sequel someone else’s ficlet, or read the site owner’s blog when he throws out quotes and ideas for ficlets. The community has also started incorporating writing challenges you can enter.

My friend used his space to create a nifty challenge called 18-1 where you have to tell a story but the first sentence must be 18 words long, the next 17 words, then 16 and so on until the last sentence is just a word. I’ve entered many challenges, but that one kicked my ass.

But probably the best part of ficlets is the feedback. I’ll admit it straight up. I am a feedback whore. I’ll write a ficlet and publish it, then refresh the page until I see someone’s commented on it. And people aren’t afraid to be honest either. If you suck, they’ll tell you. They don’t know you. It’s not like asking your family or best friend to read your stuff an they’ll probably try to be nice. I find I need that constructive feedback. I need to know what works and what doesn’t. It’s encouraging when they like your stuff because it’s mildly thrilling and prompts you to keep it up.

So that’s a helluva lot of blather on ficlets, I know. So what’s the point? What’s the big idea for a story that’s got me so excited? Well it’s thanks to Ficlets that I had this little epiphany. The other day I was in the mood to write a ficlet but I didn’t have any ideas. So I searched for ‘zombies’ in the Flickr images (I’m in a supernatural frame of mind atm what with the vampire porn and Dresden Files floating around my head.) I found a picture of a handpainted sign that said ‘Legalize Zombie Marriage’ which I found amusing.

And with that picture, a little ficlet series happened. When I was trying to think up a name for the girl, for some reason calling her CherryPop seemed like a good idea. What a weird name, I know. But I like it. A lot. So my ficlet series is sort of about CherryPop’s weird life where the supernatural stuff is slowly being accepted by society as ‘real’ – ie vampires and zombies and ghosties etc. are really real and CherryPop grew up amongst the “monsters” and now she spends her time helping the the normals to get used to the idea and fight for their rights etc.

Anyway, I’m obviously working on the details in my head, but the ficlet series is practically writing itself, it’s so much fun, and I’m making each one up as I go which is probably a bad idea when you’re creating a whole world etc. but I can’t stop thinking about this idea. I feel so excited about it and I’ve never had this feeling about anything else I’ve ever written. So wish me luck and check in with me now and then to see how it’s going (and to see if I’m still doing it.) I’m working up a storyline for it tonight and I might write another ficlet for it as well. I hope to get this written and then I’m going to try the self-publishing route at lulu.com because I don’t have the first clue about how to approach a real publisher. Anyway, I’d better get to it