Being Peta

My hubby is awesome. Seriously.

I explained to him at the start of the month that there is no prize for completing Nanowrimo, besides personal satisfaction so he decided to give me a prize himself. (I've writen over 76,000 by the way and still the story goes on. :) )

So he presented me yesterday with a copy of Dragon Age:Origins as a congradulatory gift for crossing the finish line. *hug*

I had heard the game mentioned on 'Casually Hardcore', a downloaded weekly program from WoW radio which I follow. And said it sounded interesting.

Interesting is a bit of an understatement. This game, which is a single player role play game set in a fantasy world... of course... was released this month from Bioware and by the looks of it they both are planning to expand like crazy with a couple of books out, a table top version, downloadable content and an expansion on the way already AND have created a product worth the hype.

( Rad on for a very unproffessional reveiw kind of ramble... )

So here my crazy secret.

For the past five years, since i first knew they existed, I have wanted an asian resin cast ball jointed doll.  (Known as bjd if you're googling them).  I don't know why.  I'm not a big fan of dolls and never was as a kid but there was something about these guys that sucked me in.  There were two problems.  One was you have to order them from Asia over the internet, they aren't sold in local shops, and I was nervous at that time about ordering things on line.  And secondly they are HIDEOUSLY expensive!  There are cheaper dolls now available, but not back then.

Nether-the-less the one that captivated me was of course one of the most expensive (and highest quality mind) and that was a doll model called 'Camine' made by the Korean bjd company 'Dream of Doll.'

I could never justify spending that kind of money on a doll, could I.  I could never justify spending that kind of money on myself.  Plus I didn't have that kind of money.  But I did start a little saving on the side.  And after four years of saving, plus topping up a bit from my tax return this year, I finally held my breath and took the plunge and nine weeks ago I ordered my Camine.

These dolls are hand cast and made to order.  So I had to wait two months before i got my shipping notice from Dream of Doll to tell me he was on the way.

For those interested in the details: He is a 64cm DOT (Dream of Teen) with his default face up (face painted) issued with free default wig for his cast model and a random pair of eyes. (Yes you can swap out the hair and eyes pretty easily).  I also ordered a set of clothes and a pair of boots for him which arrived with him as I didn't want him sitting about neekid.

The following under the cut is part of the picture show of the box opening.  It's customary for people who are members of 'Den of Angels', a bjd forum, to post these when they get their doll.  Plus it was fun.

two days and only 6 hours of broken sleep.  I've been running on a coffee high for the last twelve.  Time to crash, though hopefully not burn.

No nanowrimo-ing for me for day 10.  My first day where I haven't been able to produce anything.  Ah well.  I'll make up for it over the next three days.  I have a comfortable buffer zone in place with my word count so I'll just wear it.  For those reading the embarrassing ramble I loosely give the term novel that I am currently uploading on a secret account somewhere in the Youyangs guarded by rabid murlocs... I will update tomorrow.  I've actually got 3 more chapters written out so I'll post up the third chapter tomorrow, hideous abuse of grammer and punctuation and all.

Also I'll post pics of my latest aquisition that arrived in the post this week and reveal my terrible secret in the bargain... okay, one of my terrible secrets.

Okay....

With the a time management schedual in place to balance my work mum responsibilities without burning out I've commenced my first nanowrimo at the start of the month.  I've been absent from the web ways for quite some time trying to organise RL to free up this month as much as humanly possible for the tast.  All emails will be answered eventually I promise.  (Sorry for being such a rotten snob.)

With the first week drawing to a close I'm pretty pleased with my literary effort.  Over 23,000 words logged so far.  On the other hand, as I'm working off a synopsis, I can already forsee a huge run over of words before this story is finished.  Which isn't such a bad think except that it means more time will be needed to complete it.

Story wise, I'm lovin' getting to play in  an (almost) new sand pit.  This story is based in the Terinu universe but set a centuary into the future and so involves a whole new cast.  I've enjoyed learning about these new characters and seeing how they handle the stauff I'm throwing at them.  Also getting to write a purely word based story of a decent length has been good excercise for my muse.

In keeping with the need to focus on my novel I'm limiting my own line time to almost nothing... it's too big a distraction... until I've atleast hit the 50k mark.

On the other hand, after a prod from kiki, I've decided to go ahead and post this evolving story as I write it to anyone else interested.  I'm opening up another livejournal account as it's the most brain dead way I can think of to do it.  This journal will only be made available by invitation only as I don't want it available to the general publ;ic just yet.  It's going to be raw and choc full of ambiguities, creative use of grammer and spelling errors that would make an eight year old laugh.

Just to clarify in my last post... i did enjoy Astroboy last night.   I've seen all three of the Japanese produced cartoon series including the original black and whites produced by Tezuka himself.  Plus I have some of the reprinted Osuma Tezuka Astroboy comics and the redrawn series by Akira Himekawa.  Astroboy was my single biggest early influence when it came to making space opera Sci Fi my genre of choice.

But long time fans will definately be disappointed if they're expecting any kind of adherence to the original story line or the dark, emotive mood Osuma wrote the series in.  THIS big screen version is targeted squarely at kids.  It is thoroughly westernised and many tragic elements lightened up.  And there is massive inconsistences with the original story created by Tezuka.  (e.g. Metro City floating in the sky instead of Tokoyo.)

The characters are well 'drawn' with a decent attempt to keep to the style of the original comic... e.g. big noses on Tenma and Elefun and those pointy 'horns' on Astro's head which would have been a nightmare to place for different facial angels in 3D.  (Love the explanation for those on the human boy Toby's head... 'hair gel'.... not a style young Japanese boys used in the 60's I think. lol.)  I believe that originally the producers wanted to make Astro look older... more of a teenager, I'm so glad they didn't.  The action scenes are well paced and are exciting without leaving you feeling dazed.  The film does suffer from some glaring inconsistences e.g.  the trashed Earth surface below metro city isn't exactly that trashed except for its robot scrap heaps: there are lush green growing areas and a thriving working city.

My other beef is the voice for Dr Tenma.  Nicholas Cage is BADLY cast.  His voice sounds half asleep and does not suit this character at all.

I'd like to discuss some aspects of the story line but I won't for now, given that many who read my posts are in the U.S. where the film is yet to be released.

It is a great movie for kids and adults (like  me :) ) who enjoy watching animation.  I go to the movies to have fun, not to be reminded about how awful our species really is to each other. My kids loved it.  I had a good time.  That's all that counts.

Just come back from seeing Astroboy.

I loved it. :)  I won't say anything more because i don't want to spoil it for anyone else.

It was also really nice to see a cameo of Osamu Tezuka in Astro's 'awakening' scene.  Nice touch guys!

Must find an excuse to go see it again.

I made a birthday gift for my friend Angela.  She's a dear friend who comes around almost every friday night for our weekly World of Warcraft session.



This is Minimolt, Angela's main WoW avatar.  She took me about a month on and off to complete from scratch (I design all my own doll patterns individually.)  She stands about 33cm tall and is double skinned (cotton sheeting underskin with doll skin sewn over the top).  her face is hand painted in acrylics.  her staff and jewelry are made out of butchered junk jewelry bought from a stall selling sets of this stuff at really cheep prices.  I'm really hoping to get some more if the stall owner returns.  I don't make many dolls, although my computer monitor has a bad octopi infestation problem which I'll show you in another post.  Every so often I feel the need to make something three dimensional and this is how I go about it.  I don't sell them as I need to (a) be really inspired to make on and (b) I always customize my dolls to the individual they are going to be given to.  Plus my volume is pretty low.  I've made five dolls in total although i do have a number of plushies that keep creeping out of my imagination and into reality.  my daughter usually claims most of those though.



For those who are concerned... yes the comic continues but my muse stubbornly refuses to return to it until I get all these other things out of my system.

GEELONG WINS THE 2009 GRAND FINAL!!!!!!!

GO CATS!!!!!!!!!


(Off to get as silly as a parrot. be back later. :) )

My eldest son Ryan is on the puter every Friday making a podcast with Matt, a friend from school.  They've been at it weekly for months now.  It's a general interest podcast where they discuss wierd and unusual news stories.  If you're interested the podcast is called 'Radiovideo'.

You can find it at  radiovideo.uuuq.com
(No 'www'.)

Ryan joined at episode seven.  There are ten so far.

Go.  Download. Listen.  Join the forum. :) 
(Note the registration confirmation email doesn't function so you can log in automatically almost straight away.)

I got a call from my youngest sister a little while ago.  She sounded a bit strained and asked if I had time to talk.  Of course.
She explained she had taken her eldest son for his child psychologist appointment... a one off related to an incident at school I won't go into.  While there the psychologist asked her outright if Rhys had ever been tested for autism.  My sister sat up straight away... she'd been suspecting autism for a long time though a test three years ago, conducted by a trainee mind, had not been conclussive.  Well the short of it is that the psychologist tested my nephew and he proved positive for autistic traits.  She puts him as having asbergers syndrome.

For my sister this was a bit of a relief as it's something she'd felt was probable all along given Rhys's behaviours.  He's already getting extra assistance in school and is in an early intervention program even pre diagnosis.

It's when the psychologist asked my sister when she wanted her second son Khyl tested that blew here away.  Khyl is extremely intelligent. Mind bogglingly intelligent.  How many children do you know can name many of the constellations or even know what a constellation is at the age of four!  Khyl also taught himself how to read and write.  If you ask him what animal is that he will not only tell you it is a zebra but also what species of zebra it is.  But due to his extremely poor social skills he was kept down in three year old kinder.  The psychologist hasn't assessed him yet but has given my sister a preliminary diagnosis of high functioning autistic/ ?asbergers with a genius IQ.

My sister is sure what to do with his schooling.  At his intelligence level kinder is nowhere near stimulating enough but the kinder teachers feel he isn't socially ready to deal with going to school next year which is what the psychologists insists should happen.  My sister is getting in contact with the Autism Victoria to get more information before she decides what to do.

My sister is feeling overwhelmed but as i said to her both boys are very sweet lovable kids and there isn't any diagnosis that is going to change that.

Last night Vegout was running a heroic Upgarde Pinnacle on his main.
The blue proto drake dropped.

He won it.
*Hugs*

(Of course he hasn't stopped crowing about it ever since.)

Moving along with plotting my nanowrimo novel I suddenly realized that, though i loved what i had so far, I've only enough story for 25,000 words, unless I want to pump it full of filler fluff (eck).  On the other hand i still don't know how I'm going to resolve the main crisis although I'm pretty confident I know how to build up to it.  I'm going to play around with not resolving the crisis but letting it build to even worse things.  (Falling back to one of my old tricks... if you get at a brick wall of creativity then think about what could happen to make things so much worse and then write that.  My only worry is ending up with an apocalypse... lol.)

I'm finally starting to get to know and like my protagonist.  Suxs when you've got some really interesting and fun support characters and your main is just  blah.  I've changed some of his personality traits and interests and he's so much better for it.

In other news I have to work out how to transfer moneys from my bank account to paypal.  never done it b4 and don't know where to start.  Off now to ring my banks customer service.  Wish me luck.

I am off chocolate until after nanowrimo.  A few pounds crept back on after my big loss last year so i want to get rid of them before Christmas... shouldn't be a problem.  So chocolate is off the eatables list.

I do have an emergency snickers bar pinned to the notice board above my desk.

Just for emergencies.

I have spent a good chunk of this evening developing characters for my nanowrimo story plan.  I forgot how much fun it was starting a story from almost scratch with  brand spanky new characters forming right under my fingers.  Having more creative fun then I've had in a LOOOONG time! :)

Am loving Mindmap... so easy to inset stuff and juggle it all around.  I'm using it to note down any old idea that pops into my head and to flesh out my characters in point form.  I've spent the last hour or so moving these newly minted beings onto the character sheets on Ywriter and fleshing them out even further.  I am going to finish loading these in before I start trying to order the actual story events into a comprehensive chain.  I'm being very strict about keeping the cast to a manageable level.  Only working on characters that are essentual to the plot.

It's early days yet, but I'm still concerned that my main protagonist feels a bit bland to me.  Have to find a way to make him more interesting.  My other main characters are coming along nicely though.  Lots of juicy idosincrisies to play with.

I had a general idea for the basis of the story in my head for the last couple of months.  It's wicked fun working on expanding it.

Just to recap, this one is set in the Terinu universe but close to century in the future.

My little girl is off to her first school camp this morning.  we had a smattering of real tears as it finally dawned on her that she was going to be away from home for three whole days.  But that didn't last long.  By the time we arrived at the school she dissapeared into a cloud of her friends with nary a goodbye.

And Ryans stoked.  (My eldest son, 15.) He's just been approved to do start his VCE on Info Tech in year ten.  He already does year ten Media studies, Computer science and Games Programming even though he is still in year nine. (Note to nonAussies... VCE is the final years of secondary schooling comprising of year 11 and year 12... need to do these and get high marks to get your first pick at uni courses.)  His Info Tech considers him a gifted programmer.  I'm not surprised... games development is his main hobby and he's teaching himself several other programming languages just for the fun of it.

And Chayton (other son) is involved in the school choir and lead vocals for his schools battle of the bands this year.  This is the same kid who tops the goal count at Soccer and organised his own vigilante group  'The Tinies' to stamp out bullying back in grade 1.  Go figure.  lol

My trolling the net has lead me to rwo pieces of interesting software which I'm going to trial to help me build the stories. 

One is called 'Ywriter' which is a way to break down the story into it's charcater, plot, chapter, scene components.  It's got lots of versatility and an intelligent organisational system.  Google it, it's a tiny download and easy to install, and then jump onto Youtube for a tutorial.  that's all i did to get started with it.  It also seems to have a very comprehensive built in set of instructions..  Going to give it a thourough test run tomorrow with a dummy project after I've done the house cleaning.  I'll let you know how it went.

The second which I've been having fun with for the past hour is a program called 'Freemind', which is basically a fairly straightforward mind mapping software to explore ideas with in a fluid enviroment... it is EXACTLY what i do on paper when I'm planning a story.  Once again I found the download through googling, then Youtubed to find a tutorial.  (After a string of night shifts I need to see and hear and not just read the instructions to learn.)  I've played around with a dummy mindmap on it and had a ball.  my advice is just screw around with it for a couple of hours, it's really quite powerful.

Both of these apps are FREEWARE.

I'm going to do a dummy run of planning a short story on Freemind and then using Ywriter to expand it into a full fledged writing plan.  You can use Ywriter as a word processor and write the whole thing on it, but I'll see how I go.

I've gone and done it.

I've registered for this years Nanowrimo.

I've wanted to do a nanowrimo for the last three years, and would have done it last year if Vegout hadn't been unemployed and trying to set up his own business at the time.  This year there are no excuses.  Conditions are as good as they're ever going to get.

I'm going to apply for two more weeks leave for the second half od November, seeing as I was knocked back on my request for four weeks over August/September (only had two weeks of it approved.)

Right now I'm trying to plan a time table of time allotments over the month for when I have time available to work on the story and strategies for getting away from the family on weekends and evenings.  I have spanky new little netbook ( a Toshiba NB200, replacing my poor little ASUS which really wasn't powerful enough in the end to handle what I needed it of it.) and i intend to carry around with me.  Must make it a carry case.

Next problem: what to write.  I have two possible ideas in mind.  One using my Terinu cast and the other set in the same universe but in the future with a differnet character set.  plenty of time to play with both.  i hope to be sold on one by the time November rocks around.

I don't trust myself to be able to wing it from nothing on Nov. 1.  So I'll be spending time over the next two months putting together a plot, charcaters and researching what i need so I have no excuses to procrastinate.  i also intend to use Write or Die for speed to stop myself from getting stuck making perfect prose... something I'm terrrible for.

Anyone else doing Nanowrimo this year.  I could do with a writing buddy.

I'm registered at the Nanowrimo site as Chaypeta, (of course :) ).

Back on the internet.  (It's been down for a week.)
Also I only have four more weeks to go b4 my holidays. :)

To Royce, this one is for you per your request on my free drabble offer.  I do want to write one on Tez and Maria but my musr got stuck on the Leeza Tez crossover and wouldn't let me go until I'd written it.

I figured that Tez, with his immortality, would see just about every event in history, so I let him jump forward in time to be a small part of the Terinu universe.  He appears to be spended a lot of time with the vulpines based on his dress and current manner. Sorry about the crap title.  my muse was all wrung out when it came time to name the thing.  I'll think of a better one later.

This thing grew to over 2250 words. lol.  man I love 'Write or Die', it forced me to keep forging on when my perfectionist brain wanted to stagnate on a phrase or find the perfect word.  i think my work is better for it.

 

( Interlude, or What happens when Leeza gets drunk and misses out on her coffee. )

Gacked from jeriendhal

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request a drabble-ish of any pairing/character (with a prompt) of their choosing from me.* In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level. Of course, reposting not required!


Need to brush up on my very rusty writing skills and this looks as good a method to do it as ever.

Though i warn you, my fandom knowledge base is very very limited.  If you want any reasonable 'in character' stuff best stick to:

Dr Who  --> (Doctors 4, 5, 9 and 10)
Farscape
Full metal Alchemist
My own characters from Terinu
Tez and Maria from the stories by Royce Day.
Torchwood (At a push... may not be very in character.)

Alternately I'm more then happy (most happy actually) to do your original characters if you give me a good description of their personailty traits and the scenario you want them in.

I'm also pretty relaxed about writing adult content as long as it doesn't involve paedophilia, gore or bodily products not normally associated with vanilla adult content.

I reserve the right to make the piece as long or as short as my muse commands me and there may be a delay before I get around to yours.