Killian's Blog/Website/Whatever

Two-thirty p.m. is the Devil's Favorite Time. Ok, maybe that's a little melodramatic of me but, in all seriousness, every day at 2:30 I hit a mental wall and experience a singular mood swing from (A) to (Horrible) in which (A) is a variety of moods, ranging from Tolerant to Awesome, and (Horrible) is exactly how it sounds. For some reason, at hour 14 and minute 30 of the day, I begin thinking about every single thing that I hate thinking about. I can't stop it. Suddenly, in mere seconds, I've gone from being bouncy and productive to being grumpy. There are a few things which could be held accountable: 1. the weather This seems like the most likely culprit. My natural Happiness Stamina can only hold up against White Cloud Cover (because, really, they don't even have the decency to be greyish. They are boring, milktoast clouds that make me cold) for so many hours.  Plus, I know full well I have SAD, and it's almost February. Which is the deadest of the dead of ...

Today was pretty productive! Hooray! I'm still falling a bit short of the ol' 8-hour-workday, but not by all that much. It sort of reminds me of middle school--when I was home-schooled*. Sometimes a school day lasted seven loooong hours, filled with really hard math and poetry memorization and dry history textbooks. But sometimes I was done in only three hours . Those were my favorite days, for obvious reasons. So if my work-from-home schedule seems to emulate my old home-school schedule a little bit, that's probably not too bad. I mean, who's going to tell me any different? Only The Man, and everyone knows that I don't like him very much. Also, discovered a great new poet today! Her name is Jan Conn , and she is not only a poet, but a PhD in Genetics (she studies mosquitoes). Read awesome poem here . Now then, I should probably go to bed, because I need to wake up at 8am to do some editing, formatting, and whining about how little I sleep. *dun dun duuuuu...

I've been trying this full-time writing thing for about two weeks now, and I have already learned a few very useful things. 1. It's hard to write without a designated workspace. I had one for a few days, but the confusion of various moving times, furniture selling, etc, made it go buh-bye. I've been a lot more finicky and fidgety and less productive since then. I'm hoping that moving into the new apartment, getting all of my furniture from P-town, and setting up my own special workspace will get me back into a comfortable routine. Somehow, I have still been getting some writing done, but I definitely haven't been hitting my 500-words-a-day mark. Sometimes I get close to 300, but other days all I do is dink around with formatting. 2. I really like rituals and routine. They help me work. I also like to make soup when I am mad stressin'. Chopping vegetables is therapeutic.  3. Formatting sections of my serial in Publisher and making them into PDFs is remarkably...

A list of things that happened on my recent Family Vacation: 1. We went for my dad's 50th birthday and my uncle Jon's 40th. All accounted for, there were 8 adults (Daniel and I included), 2 teenagers, and 5 kids under ten years old. Keeping the group together was very difficult, but we didn't lose anyone for more than about five minutes (and it was always the over-ten-year olds getting separated, thankfully). 2. Daniel and I spent a cumulative 32 hours at Disneyland in 3.5 days. My brothers and parents beat us, with a cumulative 36 hours (Daniel and I opted for some mid-day napping on day 3). 3. Disneyland is still superamazing. It doesn't matter that I am 22 years old--I still get nervous when I'm about to meet Mary Poppins. 4. Conrad hit Matthew in the face with a sandwich. 5.

Background: I've started writing a mystery in the Victorian tradition--more precisely, the Dickensian tradition. The Mystery of Edwin Drood is one of my favorite Dickens pieces, and it is both heartbreaking and fittingly fantastic that he died halfway through its writing (therefore leaving the mystery unconcluded and thoroughly mysterious). Dickens wrote it like he wrote most things: serialized. Chances are that he didn't even know how it would end when it reached its untimely end. Getting started on my new Writing From Home thing* has been a bit rough, so I'm going to up the ante. This is where all my bros come in. I am going to serialize my mystery. In order for this to be a motivating force, I need people who are interested. Essentially, I will be sending out one chapter a week to anyone who wants to jump in on it. A chapter is not a big deal, currently. The first one is only about a page and a half, maybe 2 pages. I'm thinking a long chapter will be only ...

Hey! Hey guess what! I officially live in Seattle. Wheeeeeee! It still feels a little bit like I'm visiting because we don't have a new place, so none of my books are up here. It's like a visit... with most of my clothes. But I imagine that after another week or so, it'll start to feel like real life. Especially when my brain realizes that I don't have to leave town and go back to school. Woo! St. Francis - The Fool In addition to my awesome move-ee-ness, Daniel got me the most awesome tarot deck ever. I have been (inappropriately, considering the subject matter) coveting it for some time, but it is out of print. However, Daniel has magic powers. So now I own Tarot of the Saints (!!!) by Robert M. Place. The deck is incredibly beautiful and thoughtfully assembled, and the book that comes with it is very thoroughly researched. I'm a lady who loves a good citation, so this deck is like a dream come true. It's a good thing I want to be a writer. The...