Remember those books from when you were young? The ones that had you searching for rainbow dragons or buried treasure? You’d read eagerly until you got to the decision point: Do you try to steal the opal? Or give it to the witch like she asks?

Well, do I have a surprise for you!!

I’m teaming up with eight other writers at my press to write stories on a brand new blog called Novel Concepts. Our tag line says it all: “where you’re heard until the final word.”

Novel Concepts is a tag-team, short story blog. Each Monday, one of us will post a portion of a short story. At the end of the segment, we’ll offer YOU, the reader, two options for what might happen next. You post a comment with your vote! The majority rules and the next writer will take that choice and move forward.

The other authors I’m working with are romance authors, so I’ll dabble my hand in this new-to-me genre and see how it goes.

If you go to website, you can follow our blog so you never miss a post! That way, your vote will always count! http://novelconcepts1.blogspot.com/p/what-is-novel-concepts.html And while you’re waiting, you can go to the “About Us” page to check out all the authors participating in this crazy endeavor.

Our first story starts TOMORROW!! Squee! Are you excited?? I am!

I’ve been quiet on my blog first because I was dealing with a family health emergency, then because we were on a long and wonderful vacation to northern California and southern Oregon.

And what does my family do on vacations? THAT’S RIGHT! We check out all the local game stores we can find. I thought I’d share something we found in one of the southern Oregon stores…

…this AMAZINGLY COOL table that lives at Castle Hill Games in Grants Pass, OR. This table was one of the coolest, geekiest things ever I’ve seen. The store owner said that it’s made from multiple layers of epoxy resin set around dice. The crafters used a blow torch and a needle to get every air bubble out! They made it in a dust-free “clean room” and it took months. The edges are d6s; there are dice of every shape, size, and type. The pictures do NOT do it justice.

Castle Hill Games had a great selection of games, a huge number of MTG cards, and a great miniature war gaming area. They also sell dice rings made by CritSuccess…which three members of my geeky family bought, including me.

The owner was super nice, so if you happen to live by Grants Pass, check out the store.

Southern Oregon also houses Astral Games in Medford and FunAgain Games in Ashland, which also seemed like great FLGSs. Among other things, Astral Games features a room with tall tables dedicated to miniature wargaming with a wide variety of scenery, terrain, and other bits & sundry that help your scenario. FunAgain Games has nifty seating including old booths and they have cute demo stations for some games–like the type you’d see at GenCon. Both stores have lots of regular seating for board gamers and MTGers.

We saw lots more on our trip, of course–not JUST game stores–but I really wanted to share that table with you!

 

Waxing Moon, book two of Calling the Moon, will be released on August 18th!

Julie Hall thinks she has the hang of mothering her Werewolf baby Carson, until the night she wakes to frantic barking and finds her house on fire. Arson. Paranormal fire creatures want to kill Carson—and an unknown Were may be helping them.

As if fire-spawning Salamanders and a mysterious Werewolf aren’t dangerous enough, Julie soon faces even closer threats. Her trusted friend Eliza harbors a secret and Julie’s new understanding of Werewolves threatens to tear apart her team. Meanwhile, her relentless enemies will burn everything in their path, if they can’t get to Carson.

Will Julie’s efforts to protect Carson do more harm than good?

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If you haven’t yet read book one, Dark Moon Wolf, this is a perfect time to check it out and be ready for book two! 🙂 Here’s the Amazon link.

Be on the look out for more blog posts this week, as I catch you up on the last busy weeks!

 

I’m not sure I’ve ever said that before.

I came in 18th in the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge out of pool of 3,000+ writers. I know, I know…that’s not, like, 1st place or anything. But I am proud to be in the top 1% and I’m proud of all three stories I wrote during the competition!

My first round prompts were: science fiction, war veteran, and delivery in 30 minutes or less. I think my story “Abso” is my favorite from the competition this year–I’m pursuing publication for it now.

Second round was: suspense, a tutor and a funeral. My story “Special Things” is definitely one of the creepiest things I’ve written and it ended up feeling very tight and suspenseful.

Round three was an open genre with an undertaker and a sunrise. I went back to science fiction, one of my favorites, and wrote “Find the Light”–the title is what I like least about this one.

Anyway. Happy 18th place to me! 🙂

Like many others who’ve written about the new Wonder Woman movie, I was blindsided by the strength of my reaction to the movie. During the early scenes on Themyscira, I blinked away tears caused by the visual impact of a screen full of women focusing on what their bodies can DO, instead of how their bodies LOOK. I eagerly absorbed every moment of Diana’s idealism, her integrity, her compassion, and her code of ethics that refused to let her turn away when she could DO SOMETHING TO HELP.

What a message.

In Diana, we see a person whose tremendous compassion is a source of strength and resolve, instead of something that makes her overemotional, incapable, weak, or naive.

At the end of the movie, I found myself wracked with sobs–literally unable to contain my tears. My husband Gary said, “Are you okay? Are you…are you that happy?”

Yes. Yes, I was that happy. This movie stars a woman who stands for idealism, caring, a belief in love, a belief in the power of beliefs–things which, personally, I have been MOCKED for (and I’m not alone)–and turned those things into a portrait of strength, empowerment, and respect.

This movie showed a beautiful woman and focused on what she can do, not how she looks. I have never been so conscious of the male gaze as I was when watching this movie where it was ABSENT. We see no lingering shots panning Diana’s body. We have no shots up her skirt or down her cleavage. We have no shots framed between her legs. These things were simply not part of the movie–and they are such a commonly-used sign of “here’s your sex object” that we barely notice them, until they are removed. When Diana leaps into the air during the final fight scene and slams back to ground, landing on her feet in victory, her thigh shakes with the force of impact. Unedited. The movement of her thigh, her force, the importance of what she just accomplished–the reality of her body–all these are highlighted, instead of transforming her into a sex object.

We’re trained to think the male gaze is just how women are seen–until they’re not. This movie’s focus on empowering and respectful visual images dismantles any possible argument that objectified images of women are somehow natural or unconstructed, that the camera simply records what is, that the vision BEHIND the camera doesn’t influence what ends up on the screen.

I finally watched a superhero movie and saw myself on screen.

And it was so powerful. SHE was so powerful–not in the sense of possessing power over others (though she kicks a tremendous amount of ass), but in the sense of being completely empowered within herself and respected by others because of who she is and what she does.

Representation matters. Representation creates possibilities. Representation affirms what’s important.

Some people may pick apart Wonder Woman and they may have valid points. I’m not saying it’s the best piece of cinematography ever created.

But I’m saying it’s perfect. I’m so very thankful.

“So I stay, I fight, I give for the world I know can be.”

 

And this is the last week, folks, so breathe a deep sigh if you’re tired of reading about Parkinson’s and you have already reached “Unagi.”

V is for Variable. I like to think of Parkinson’s as a “boutique” disease. Everyone person’s Parkinson’s Disease is designed specifically for them; no one has the exact same set of symptoms and issues. It’s as if some (awful, nefarious, hateful) supernatural being said, “Hmmm, for this one, we’ll go heavy on tremor, pain, and loss of executive functioning. That one will get stiffness, constipation, apathy, and depression. The one over there? Let’s see. We’ll give them hypersensitivity to all PD meds, combined with slowness of movement, tremor, rigidity and hallucinations.” Yes, there’s a larger set of symptoms that most folks with PD experience some of the time, but on the day-to-day, people can have VASTLY different lived experiences with their Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s can also progress at different rates and with symptoms developing at disparate times.

Hi folks, Continuing my April tradition of Parkinson’s Awareness. This year, by the letters. Check out my earlier blog posts to see the beginning of the alphabet.

O is for Obsessive, or impulse control disorders. Dopamine agonists are one class of drugs used to manage PD. Agonists act on dopamine receptors in the brain and take the place of dopamine (which the brain is no longer producing). They are prescribed instead of or in addition to the meds that provide dopamine (levodopa/carbidopa, discussed under L). For many people, they can be an effective part of treating the disease. However–and this is a HUGE however–they can lead to extreme impulse control disorders behaviors, such as compulsive gambling, sexual behaviors, shopping, eating, and other things. This major side effect happens in at least 1 in 7 people on a dopamine agonist–and perhaps much more, because it is often hidden from doctors and researchers, due to the shame surrounding the behaviors. Before this was recognized as a problem, there are stories of people literally spending their entire life savings and ending up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from gambling. This is an extremely serious problem and everyone who knows someone on an agonist should be vigilant in watching for signs of compulsive and destructive behavior.