My Recent Adventures

I know. I know. I've been missing on the blog-o-sphere recently, but I've been busy with my adventures.

• I reached my page goal for the end of November. Woot! Woot!
• Experienced new exponential levels of traffic congestion.
• When we spent a night playing accidental vigilante cop, I learned that the D.C. in Washington D.C. doesn't stand for District of Columbia, it stands for District of Crazy . We witnessed a guy get thrown out of an SUV and punched in the face; saw two guys ripping their shirts off and throwing each other into glass shop windows; and witnessed a guy beating up a girl because she lost his keys. Pathetic. But, I must say, the 911 responders were amazing and got help on the way immediately. Sadly, though Sarcastically Delicious (aka boyfriend) thinks I'm crazy because prior to the trip I told him how amazing D.C. was. And it is, there is so much history and beautiful architecture. But unfortunately, S.D. didn't get to see this side of the city, and I doubt he ever wants to go back.
• My cousins and I were almost run over by a guy in a Mercedes. And then when we gave the driver the evil eye he responded with threatening to punch us in the face. Really?!?
• I've always wanted to be in a flash mob and I got the opportunity when we did a pseudo flash mob at my cousin's wedding reception.  
• I got my nails shellacked last week. It's kind of like gel or acrylic nails except without the sandpaper drills. So it's still my nail but with a super resistant nail polish on top. I'm impressed with where nail technology is going these days.
• It's show time this week! That means lots of rehearsals leading up to this weekend. If you are in the Birmingham area, come check out Musical Legends and Divas on Ice December 3rd at 7:00pm and December 4th at 3:00pm at the Pelham Civic Complex. This will be the first time I perform in front of an audience since I tore my ACL. Super excited and thankful for the opportunity!
• I'm going to the SCBWI conference this January! Any one else going?

Don't Switch Narrators on Me

One of the best narrators of all time is Jim Dale. He narrates the entire Harry Potter series on audio book and gives every a character a unique voice. He is very consistent about making sure each distinct voice is utilized with the appropriate character. Step back and think about how many characters there are in the series. The amazingness that is Jim Dale astounds me every time I listen to the series.

Recently, I've lost myself in a paranormal young adult series. The narrator for the first three books was fantabulous. She did an excellent job of giving every character a unique voice and making sure each voice was age appropriate. Well, something political must have happened in the middle of the recording of the series, because book number four and on are recorded by a completely different studio and publisher than the first three. Hence, there is a different narrator.

I know I can be resistant to change and I was extra skeptical when I put disc 1 in my CD player, but I was willing to give this new narrator a chance. I really was. But when she made the seventeen year old main character sound like she was thirteen it made everything seem less believable. In addition, this narrator is not consisent about giving each character a distinct voice. So sometimes you assume it's Character A speaking but it's really Character C.

I'm so put off by this new narrator that I'm seriously thinking of just buying the books or checking them out from the library. And then I wonder if that was the publisher's goal. Maybe they wanted to annoy us with the recording so we'd go buy the book instead. Maybe there's a higher profit margin on the book instead of the audio book.

Ok, sorry about getting all conspiracy theory there. Just speculating.

Lost in Fiction Land

My blog is my home page on Firefox and when I opened up my browser this morning I realized I hadn't posted since October 27th! Yikes!

And for that I'm very sorry.
I've been lost in fiction land.

Been ferociously busy rewriting/revising my novel Shift. And when I'm not rewriting I've been trying to be a good critique partner. And when I'm not critiquing I've been listening to the House of Night series written by P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast on audio book. And when I'm not doing those things I'm participating in real life stuff. Boo. But, it has to be done.

I don't have anything really inspirational, funny, or writerly to say. But here's some stuff that I find quite interest:

Amazon has a lending program for those who have an Amazon Prime Account and a Kindle. Very intrigued by this as I have one but not the other. Which one do I have? I'll leave you guessing on that one. Oh, the suspense.

I love Maggie Stiefvater's books. I am itching to find time to read the Scorpio Races. She wrote an excellent blog post about creating mood in your writing.