Still here.

And a lot of people are still here. Darn. I was hoping the religious fanatics would be taken.

I've been fairly busy. I started a new novel - now about 20k words - and I'm enjoying it much more than the 1930s detective noir one I was working on a couple months ago. I was struggling with it and kept getting bogged down on trivial details. Like "is this gun appropriate for the period? How strict should I be with period details versus detective noir/pulp stories written back then?" And I was also struggling with the language from that era. Sure, I've read a lot of books around then, but they aren't necessarily good representations of how people spoke back then. I'm a stickler for details, and when I see a modern term used in a period piece, it's quite jarring. Angst! I was at the point where just getting 500 more words was agony. When I realized that, I knew it was time to set it aside.

In addition to that, I'm also writing a bunch of short-short stories (under 2k words) and am tinkering in my head with two new ideas for novella-length stories (around 7k-8k words). I'll probably either A. submit them to contests for fun, or B. self-publish an anthology of short stories. We'll see, haven't decided yet. They all will need editing before I can even think of what to do with them.

On top of that, I'm still doing the 365 photo project (scroll down a bit to see the thumbnails and click on them if you're so inclined). It's somewhat irregular in frequency, but I enjoy it. I'm trying to do creative photos. Some are flops, some are great. Experimentation is good, I enjoy the process and I now have a few photos for my portfolio. I'm tempted to try get some work as a commercial-ish photographer, but truth be told, I have no experience in that industry. So I'm half holding out hope that some ad agency bigwig will see my pictures on Flickr and say, "hey, we gotta hire her!" I've heard of it happening to others. Why not me?

Never know!

With the summer - er...more accurately, spring (there's barely a summer here in Seattle) - coming, it's starting to finally warm up. The azaleas are in full bloom, it's a riot of colors in my neighborhood. We're starting to have more sunny days, and with the season change, I'm starting to think about shooting outdoor. I don't want to shoot the usual bird, flower and tree pictures, so that leaves me with people pics. I'm not a big people person, but still, I've come up with some creative ideas for outdoor shoots. I placed an ad on Craig's List for people with costumes and/or props and a desire to be photographed.

A lot of people fancy themselves being models, and they often will grab at any experience that helps them practice and if they get good pictures out of their time, all the better.