I Published a Book!

I can officially say I'm a published author now, and I feel pretty great about that. I published my book Among the People Lost over Amazon Kindle. It's for sale for $5.00, so go buy it!

Buy it on Amazon

8 Things I Want But Can Never Have

I love stuff. Like, seriously. Stuff is the best stuff ever. You know what the best kind of stuff is? The stuff that doesn't exist!

A Teleporter
Bonus points if it can teleport me through time.

Some Vampire Fangs
I don't mean I want fangs. I mean I want someone else's venom-covered fangs so I can join the eternal undead. In all seriousness, I would probably go for the Twilight-type vampires. No sleeping, no eating, and I don't mind sparkling a little. All I'd really have to do is drain a cow every now and then, and I'm set! But that's a pretty big decision. Until I decide that's really what I want...

A Philosipher's Stone
So I can try out the imortality thing without drinking lots of blood!

A Timeturner
A tiny device to manupulate time would likely be the most practical item on this list.

Whee!

A Fort
A big one, with towers and spires and battlements and bridges, and a massive underground network of dungeons and tunnels!

Room of Requirement
Put it in the basement of my fort, please. It would provide me with access to any stuff I may want or need.

A Dragon
I don't think I'm really picky here. I just want a dragon. So long as it's a nice big dragon with wings and the ability to talk, I'm cool with that. Though I imagine dragons are very high maintenance.

Like Kyle!
















A Holodeck
How freaking wonderful would it be to have this room that you can program to look like any place you want, with characters that interact with you fully? Think of how it would change your gaming experience. Want to go play Morrowind for a little while? Put on your armor and get in there! Also, the fictional worlds I could create and explore. Here I come, Underdark! This can hang out in my fort right near my Room of Requirement. That way I can go into the room and conjure up whatever I need for my Holodeck experiences, then spend the rest of my life next door in some fictional world.


England on a whim? Yes, please.



Book Publishing

I'll be publishing my book Among the People Lost on Amazon Kindle sometime in the coming weeks! I'm really excited. I'm reading through the whole story now, fixing any errors and making some really minor edits. I'm hoping to have it up for sale sometime next week.

Habenero Pineapple BBQ Sauce

So I made a barbecue sauce a few months back on a whim when the boyfriend and I found fresh habenero peppers at Wal Mart. He loves things that are spicy enough to give you ulcers, so we bought a bunch and I threw this together. It's the first sauce recipe I've ever come up with, and by some miracle, it's freaking amazing. It's got a good amount of kick to it, and the batch is small, so if you want to be able to really slather it on, I'd recommend doubling or tripling the recipe, all except for the habeneros so the spiciness is more diluted. I want to make a batch with cayenne peppers instead of habeneros to see how that tastes, too, but I haven't done it yet.

It's on Instructables if you want pictures (but it's easy, I promise). http://www.instructables.com/id/Habenero-Pineapple-BBQ-Sauce/

Ingredients:

3 Habañero peppers
1/2 cup pineapple
½ cup balsamic vinegar
1/8 cup molasses
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp hickory Liquid Smoke

Other things you'll need:
A blender or food processor
A meduim-sized pot

1. Preparing your Peppers
Remove the seeds from the peppers. You'll want to wear gloves so you don't get the oils on your hands. Cut about 1/4 of the pineapple into chunks. Put both of those into your blender or food processor and liquefy.
 
2. Simmer
Mix all of your ingredients together, including the liquified mix, in a pot. Simmer until it reaches the desired consistancy, which takes about 20 minutes. Stir occasionally to keep the pineapple sugars from separating.
 
3. EAT IT ON EVERYTHING
Enjoy!

  

Doing Things in the Proper Order

I'm terrible at it. Seriously. For as much as I constantly think up story lines and stuff, I never think about developing the world setting until after the story is well underway, and then I hit snags. I have this great idea in mind, and I'd love to start it, but I know the world is horribly underdeveloped. I don't even know how the most basic elements of the story would work. Do I want to sit down and make up the world? Nope! I want to get right into that story!

Character Development

It recently occurred to me that I probably put much more thought into my story characters than most people. I decided to make a series of tutorials that go over all the really minute things I take into account. The first one is done and up on DeviantART - http://eternalnight11.deviantart.com/art/OCD-1-Name-and-Appearance-217508395.

I call these tutorials OCD. It stands for Original Character Development, and it's also sort of a joke because you need to have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to possibly want to flash out characters as much as I do. Still, I think I make some really realistic characters, and I'm happy about that.

While I'm on the topic of writing, I wrote this really short story a few days ago, and people seem to really like it. That's pretty cool. It's called "Untouchable," and it's centered around the theme "misunderstood." I seem to have taken it in a much different direction than most people have ever seen. http://eternalnight11.deviantart.com/art/Untouchable-217384712

Five Years from Now

I may seem like a walking cloud of anxiety and depression most of the time, but underneath all that misery, I'm actually a pretty optimistic person. I have goals and hopes and dreams and expectations. They change from time to time, but there are always a few constants. So where do I want to be in five years? In a lot of places at once, I think.

1. I want to be out of this house.
If you've never lived with every one of your single mother's unmarried siblings, never had to deal with a Downs Syndrome-afflicted uncle getting rapidly worse, never had to yell to the person in the same room because the people in the next are laughing too loud at terrible sitcoms for you to be heard, never had to check your silverware before use to make sure it's clean, never had to clean up the bathroom with every use, never been the only one in the house to go hungry a dozen nights in a row because no one thinks to ask you if you want dinner, never had to lock your own bedroom so people don't go in and steal things, never wanted to run away from the immense amount of negativity all around you every day, then you made out better than I did.

2. I want to have my Visual Arts degree.
Last most of you knew, my career choice was a teacher. Well, I wanted to be a Latin teacher, which is a certification type thing after doing other teaching stuff. Then Abington dropped me out, and I didn't get my full 4 years of high school Latin. I decided I'd go for Social Studies Education, figuring I'd always have the option to switch over to Latin. Then I learned Abington dropped their Latin program. I really don't want to teach Latin at a Catholic school, where it's required and I have a bunch of snobby students who don't want to be there. I'd rather teach at a public school, where the kids are in my class because they want to be. Thanks for killing that chance, Abington. So anyway, it made me really reconsider my career. I've been getting super hardcore back into drawing and stuff, and already you can see my progress. I learned that Keystone has a Visual Arts program, so I'll be going for that to improve and hopefully get somewhere.

3. I want a room full of stuff.
Art stuff. Photography stuff. Craft stuff. Jewelry stuff. Computer stuff. Music stuff. So much stuff that if I get inspired, I have everything I need in one spot. GOD, I LOVE STUFF!

4. I want a bigger kitchen.
I love cooking and baking, but my kitchen here is really tiny. There are too many people and not enough square feet for me to be able to cook as much as I'd like.

5. I want cats.
I love my cats. I don't think I'll be taking them with me when I move, though. Sylvester and Tiger are both 10+, and they had a hard time adjusting to a move when they were 5 and 4. I'd rather not stress them out again. Psyche might go with me, but I'm not sure. She does like me the most out of the three of them. If none of them go with me, totally adopting another kitty.

6. I want to have a job.
Sort of goes without saying, really, but with a Visual Arts degree, there's no guarantee that I'll have a solid career right out of college. It's more likely that I'll have a good-paying job that leaves me with enough spare time to do artsy stuff on the side.

7. I want to be with Tim.
It's no less important because it's this far down. It's just something I don't think of often because when I think of where I'll be in the future, he's always in the picture.

8. I want to have fans.
Or rather, I want one of my projects to have fans. All the projects I've started (or tried to start), and I feel so unnoticed. I just want one of them to catch on and get popular.

9. I want to have at least 3 books done.
I'll be finishing one within the next month, if all goes well. It's taken a little over a year so far. With college and stuff in the way, I imagine the next ones will take longer, so 3 seems to be a pretty realistic number.

10. I want a better understanding and knowledge of the metaphysical world.
It's something I'm currently working on. I've got a general knowledge of gemstones and horoscopes, and a very slight knowledge of natural remedies. I'd like to expand on all of that and learn new things.

11. I want to be healthier.
I imagine I'll be in better health once I get out of this massive amount of stress. Also, once I do more with number 10. I think it would be wonderful to go up stairs without my heart rate reaching 150.

12. I want a tattoo.
Seems so simple compared to the rest on here. I've had one in mind for a little while now, but I have no money, and any money I make has to go towards a new laptop. I feel like this is one of those things that I'll think about for an eternity before actually doing, and so it's on this list.

13. I want to like things.
I'm a super taster, which means I have like, 5 times the normal amount of taste buds. I can pick up preservatives that are normally undetectable and notice very slight differences in seasonings. It's great by itself, but as a kid, I never learned to like a lot of really common foods, and in a lot of cases, I don't think I ever will. There are too many things that trigger the gag reflex for me. Tim's managed to find some stuff I like, and I wish I liked more. It's really hard going through life on a diet as specific as mine.

14. I want to be child-free.
God, I hate children. They're gross, messy little noise makers that only serve to annoy me more than Tim can when he tries his hardest. I think I would kill myself. If he wants kids, I'll get him a puppy and put it in a stroller.