Sep 1, 2005

Long Time, No Update

It's been a while. I planned to update this blog every week, but I think I'd have to write a novel to catch up now. August was a busy month. Well, it was a vacation month, which means I got to go to a lot of theme parks, concerts, parties, and generally wallow in my free time. I count that as REAL life. Most of my life isn't that exciting.

Anyway, my artwork will be featured in an upcoming gallery show. The reception is this Saturday evening, in Alhambra (between Pasadena and Los Angeles), at Gallery Nucleus. If you're in the L.A. area, it's worth going to! There will be free drinks, a live band, and women get 10% off all the store merchandise, since it's an all-woman show. My artwork will be for sale at the gallery and on their online store throughout September.

I never told you about Comic Con, did I? Well ... to those of you who are "Wheel of Time" fans ... I went to a dinner with Robert Jordan and his wife, Harriet. That was a really cool, interesting experience! I'll attempt to go into more detail at a later date.

In the last week of July, I spent ten days in New Hampshire at TNEO (the Odyssey writing workshop alumni program thingy). It's basically a high-end critique group. Some of the Odyssey graduates are published novelists, and many have experience in the publishing industry, so I judged it worth going to. It was. I'll probably go again next year. Not only did we critique each other's work (and receive critiques on up to three stories of our own), but we practiced pitching our novels, we did a reading at Barnes & Noble, and we had panels covering everything from Young Adult markets to writing good query letters. Ask about my reading at B&N and watch me blush ...

So, I could tell you about the Doctor Steel and STG concerts I went to, but I think Larry has covered everything I'd have to say about that. If you've never heard of those bands (and you probably haven't), then it is your duty as a music-lover to check them out. By the way, Doctor Steel went to CalArts in the same Character Animation program I went through. You just wait, someday I'll have a Flash website that looks as cool as his ...

I've been out of work since Tak 3 wrapped up. I believe it will be showing up in stores across the world pretty soon. Remember, kids, I wrote some of the dialogue in that game (the Gameboy Advance version, anyway). I got to write the mind reader boss's dialogue! Oh yeah, and I animated him, too. Actually, I'm only responsible for about 1/3 of the in-game dialogue, and the publisher smoothed it all over and made sure there weren't any in-jokes left. Or maybe they just replaced our in-jokes with their in-jokes.

So, I'm doing some freelance, designing T-shirts and logos for an advertising company. Also continuing to teach myself Flash MX. I've overcome the learning hump and enjoying it now. I want to design a whole bunch of Flash websites for fun. But I try to keep my priorities in the right order, so I'm focusing on my writing instead. (Yes, that is a priority with me; I'm just weird.) I'm currently working on a short story about demonic Vikings. Rejections are trickling in ... maybe I'm self-deluded, but I keep thinking it's only a matter of time before I reach my goal of breaking into a pro market. I'll tell you as soon as it happens.

My novels and my screenplays are on hold. But not for long! I'm going to go insane and rip somebody's head off if I don't get back to long format writing soon.

Abby, signing off.