Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The Writer's Desk

Even though, at the moment, I don't really have a desk, this is what is what my "substitute desk" has all over it. This is what you get for writing:
~Books(mostly stuff like Mary Chestnut's Civil War, The Killer Angels, and Alex Rider--with the occasional Max Ride, of course)
~A whole freaking TON of notebooks (composition, spiral, bound, loose..you name it, I've hoarded it and then scribbled excessively in it)
~Writing utensils (pens, pencils, colored pencils, highlighters, sharpies, blah-de-blah)
~THE notes (I have a whole IKEA box full of loose notes...and those are just the one's I've found)
~sketches (I've got a ton of stupid architectural stuff for Psychic--stuff like floorplans to Bran Castle--and some sketches of Vannessa Toplin, a new character in one of my new vampire books that I'm writing--uncreatively called, for now, Coven 13.)

I'm not sure if it's as bad as J.K. Rowling's...But it's not pretty.

I also tend to carry around a bag with all of my writers crap (and Jasper Whitlock, my green nano rocks-my-socks iPod), with at least two notebooks at all times. I found this great video online (thanks Kaleb-who-I-don't-know-but-is-really-cool!) that puts a writers bag perfectly. Since my computer is being dumb and won't let me upload it, you can go to Kaleb Nation and then to 'videos' and 'what's in a writer's bag?' to see. it.

Also, School's Out--For Now is going well, and Dawn of the Personality-Challnged should be done soon, as will Spring With the Cullens. Next month or June, I'll be writing Summer With the Cullens, which will, undoubtedly, be better. I'll be writing another Kat/Max Ride story as well (tentatively called Saving the Flock and Other Extreme Sports) and I will make as many Kat's as JP makes MR's. So. There.

A A K

Thursday, April 24, 2008

New People!

Yay! I got new psychics! Okay...here are the new protagonist psychics:

StephAlison

And here are some of the students:

Alexandria Hemmin
Cynthia Constantine
Lisa Zerrin

Well? Pretty good names since I just made up the last names on the spot. Well, I'd better get back to writing. No new Carrie yet.

A A K

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

"Psychic" Update

Right, so...Psychic is going well. I've got three or four scenes written out (and one that I need to type up). I've got the Graveyard Scene done, ready for editing; same with Meetings--where Bridge meets the psychics. I've got a rough draft of the scene where B-Squad lands in Romania, and a bit of a scene where Bridge is just walking around the academy (TAPS). The one I haven't typed, but is written in my notebook, is a scene at TAPS where Bridge sort of "compares" SPD to TAPS while James is being weird again.

Speaking of Bridge's psychic cohorts, here they are:


Carrie Blake, Grey Sector Rep
Living-Deceased Mediator

Bridge Carson, Green Sector Rep
Psychic Auras and Tracking

Cody Parkani, Red Sector Rep
Precognition

Alison Hollox, Blue Sector Rep
Telekinesis

James Manson, Yellow Sector Rep
Dream Discernment and Alteration

Steph Thompson, Pink Sector Rep
Telepathy

I'm happy with the boys pictures, but I'm not crazy about the girls. I will be changing them, so don't all go off now and make a Power Point. Well, these are them--oh! Wait! I need the Professor too...and the SPD rangers...
The Professor
Jack Landors, SPD Red Ranger
Sky Tate, SPD Blue Ranger
Z Delgado, SPD Yellow Ranger
Sydney Drew, SPD Pink Ranger

I'll change Alison's, Carrie's, and Steph's pictures later.

A A K

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Writing Update

Okay...so, I've got three FF's I'm working on right now (Spring With the Cullens, School's Out--For Now, and Dawn of the Personality-Challenged Power Rangers; DotP-CPR for short.) So, anyway, here are the stats on them:
1: Spring With the Cullens has 5 chapters so far, and I'm planning to go to about maybe 13. They're just a bunch of one-shots, so maybe less. Next up: what happens when Carlisle returns from hippie doctor retreat...only to find Jasper, Emmett, and Edward behind the house sneaking _____!
2: Kat and the flock are about to get attacked by Erasers. Again. But this time they decide to bait them into a fight next time, where they get to use new toys! (Courtesy of Chi Kit.)
3: Bridge has almost solved the mystery, but what happens when Grumm attacks and B-Squad needs to fight? Of course, it doesn't help that Bridge has sent everything--including uniforms--to the dry-cleaners in case of bedbugs. So can they fight in...marching band uniforms?

Also, I'm hard at work on Psychic and still haven't actually written any of the story yet. I'm thinking of changing it a bit to the point where there's no copyright stuff to worry about so that maybe I could publish it sometime in the future.

A A K

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Introductions

Well, yesterday was the 147th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War; I'm sure everyone in Fort Sumter was very excited. Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I am a HUGE Civil War buff, and I even added a whole chapter about it to Spring With the Cullens, my humorous Twilight fanfic.

Well, Michael and Fisk are wonderful--if noisy; even though I oiled the wheel--and everything is pretty boring. It's Spring Break though.

Well, I think I'll introduce everyone I'll be talking about on the ol' blog:
1-Fritz: my older brother, a junior in High School. He's into world conquering, European History, WWII history, Risk, communism, and Rise of Nations.
2-Zeneah: (pronounced Zin-A-uh) my very best friend in the entire WORLD. Not her real name, of course, but the name of a character she is in one of our Power Rangers stories (this one is HER story, by the way; but still cool. I'M IN IT! My name in it is Carrie Blake.) She likes cats, chocolate, Alex Rider, Tamora Pierce, anything drama, is in a writer's club at her school, and wants to be an Air Force shrink. She's way cool.
3-Tinker Bell: my little sister (2nd grade) who loves everything pink and frilly. While I find this disturbing, she loves it. Her current (and very LONG) obsession: fairies.
4-Alvin: Think Alvin from the old Alvin and the Chipmunks shows. He's obnoxious, critter-ish, and VERY into rodents. My 6th grade brother. A serious pain in the fangs sometimes. (Sorry, I'm writing some vampire stuff right now--plus I'm going through my "vampire phase"--so I'll be using vampire lingo for a while)
5-Dad: obvious. He's really cool, a philosophy, art, and film professor at the local 'U', and always telling his students "funny" stories about us kids. Yeah, real "funny"...until the students actually MEET us at the annual Phil. Department Dinner. Then it's just plain embarrassing sometimes.
6-Mom: a GT (Gifted and Talented) teacher at the local elementary school. She lived in Germany, St. Louis (GO CARDINALS!), Texas, and a couple of other places when she was a kid. Funnily enough, we haven't moved ANYWHERE. Much to my dismay.

So there you have it. I might add a few others along the line.

A A K

Monday, April 7, 2008

Alarm Clocks

I've used a lot of alarm clocks. I've tried my mom's old one (oish, that one is loud), a radio/CDplayer/alarm one (it just recently "officially" bit the dust), and even digital watch alarms; but to no avail. For the past couple of years, my mom has pretty much had to spend about 45 minutes attempting to drag me out of bed and shove me out the door to drive me to school (it's very rare for me to make the bus).

Thanks Mom.

Well, at 5:15 this morning (WAY too early) those two stupid (I say this affectionately) hamsters, Fisk and Sir Michael, were in the wheel in their cage on my dresser, making a ton of noise; that thing was squeaking like mad. So I manually turned the wheel for 'em--one at a time--for a couple of minutes, then I went back to sleep.

At about 5:45, they woke me up again. This time, they were both in the wheel at the same time, clambering over each other and trying to make it turn. Now, 5:45 is VERY early, and I ran out of patience VERY quickly. I kicked 'em both out of the wheel and closed it off. I tried to go back to sleep, but they, the furry little bastards, were making a racket in the plastic tube; plus, they were chewing at the plastic gate. So I just listened to my iPod for a while (Running Up That Hill-Kate Bush; Once In Every Lifetime-Jem, The Dangling Conversation-Simon and Garfunkel, Starlight-Muse, yada yada yada.)

At 6:38 (or somewhere around there, anyway) I finally got out of bed (listening to the awesome Basshunter. DotA, if you know the song) and got ready for school. Of course, I still looked like I just raided Army Surplus, but there are a few things that an early start won't change (thank mayo).

I was up before my brother, (which here I will call Fritz, even though that is nowhere near his real name). I was ready for school early; which just about gave my mom a heart attack. I was even the first one at the bus stop.

Then again, who ever thought that hamsters could be such efficient alarm clocks? This morning I was half torn between giving them some extra sunflower seeds, and cursing the stupid explorer who brought back hamsters for all I was worth.

A A K

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Summaries

As promised (on FF.net), here are my upcoming stories and the somewhat-summeries that go with them:
Twilight:
1-Bloodthirsty-my version of how Jasper met Alice. These are just notes from about a year ago. This is pre-Eclipse, by the way.
2-Confederate-what happens when Maria (more year-old stuff, not Stephenie's version of Maria) starts messing with Jasper's head from afar and the Cullens don't know what the toast is going on? On and off, he still thinks that he's a confederate soldier, and is trying to kill the Emmett and Edward because they're "yankees", trying to get rid of Rosalie, Bella, and Esme (but he won't kill them, because it's "wrong" to hit a girl) because they're yankee spies, but likes Carlisle, because he's British. The Cullens need to find out what's going on and need to stop it before Jasper totally loses it.
3-Spring With the Cullens-All the hilarious things that the Cullens put up with from Esme. Whether it's Easter dresses or spring cleaning. (1st of four.)
Power Rangers:
1-Psychic-THIS IS THE BIG ONE! I've been working on this one for months, and am still working out the kinks in the plot line! Haven't even finished the first chapter. After a "premonition dream" about a group of psychics in Transylvania, Bridge--our favorite psychic green ranger--goes to Romania with the others. After Bridge apparently "died", instead of contacting his fellow rangers, Bridge sets off in search of the psychics. He finds an academy of them, where they learn to live in secret and fight the undead--mostly vampires. Bridge has to choose between a life as a psychic, or that of a ranger. Because he can't have both.
Maximum Ride:
1-School's Out--For Now-KAT IS BACK!!! When Max is captured by erasers and scientists--from right under the flocks noses--the flock heads to Seattle to enlist the help of a friend; a human panthera-tigris-tigris hybrid friend. They must find Max, discover what Itex is up to, and perhaps even blow some more buildings up.

So there you have it. These are the fanfictions I am writing right now. If you have any questions or comments, or if you can help me set up a website, please contact me. You can leave a comment here on the blog, on any of my stories on fanfiction.net, or email me at rhodri13@hotmail.com

A A K

Hamsters

On Monday, I got two Chinese dwarf hamsters, Sir Michael and Fisk. I've had hamsters before; there was the family hamster, Snowy. And then there was Albert. Albert was a name I just randomly came up with, but Albert Einstein fits the mold perfectly. He was a cross between Einstein and Houdini. On his first night in the house, he knocked off his plastic tube, jumped off my dresser, got into my parents room and tried to eat one of my dad's chocolate truffles. Then he somehow got back onto my dresser and into the cage. To this day I don't know how he did it. Anyway. This morning at 6:30 AM, they woke me up by being as loud as they possibly could. I went back to sleep, but they did it again every hour until 10:30. By then I was pretty fed up, so I put in my headphones and listened to Keane and the Smiths until I could get to sleep. Hopefully, this would help.

What a lot of parents don't seem to realize is that on weekdays, of course you want to sleep in! But on weekends, you DON'T. Why? Because it you're sleeping in, you can't savor the not-going-to-school part that makes the whole weekend! We teenagers just know this stuff. It's like how we just know how a Monday feels compared to every other day of the week. You can--and I do, by the way--have whole conversations with people at school about how it feels like a Wednesday, even though it's a Thursday.

So thanks a lot, hamsters.

A A K