Saturday, April 25, 2015

Poetry, Prose and Plans

I know two weeks went by without a post from me, but in my defense, I have been super busy with poetry writing and the end of term school stuff. So now you know let's move on to the topics of the day....

Poetry- As many of you know, I participated in the Found Poetry Review's National Poetry Month project, PoMoSco (Poetry Month Scouts). I just uploaded the last poem today. This whole week, I was doing two a day so I can finish early enough. So what am I going to be doing with all these poems? I know I mentioned about making a chap book and that is the tentative plan. I downloaded the Kindle Kids ebook creator (it is also for comic books and graphic novels as well) and I hope this helps with format and since there will be pictures in the book, I think this is the best tool.

My last poetry book Into the Garden was a formatting nightmare where I had to edit the book line by line in HTML and it still wasn't perfect. If this new tool works well, I will redo the first poetry book and release it again. I think it will work better because your work with PDF's. I don't have a title yet or projected release date but I am shooting for June sometime. Some of the poems need  tweaking because the prompts made it somewhat difficult to create a perfect poem. On the other hand some turned out really well and may not need any revision.  I really enjoyed working on most of the prompts, I liked some better than the others. All 30 poems will be in the book! 

Prose- I don't know how many of you noticed that you have to click on the button that says "I'm 18" or whatever that button is. Months ago, I said Google was going to make certain blogs private,  if they had adult content,  so I was going to get rid of  Suburban Vampires. Then a week or so later, I got another notice stating they weren't going to do this, instead people with adult content had to activate the warning. What the hell does this  all mean?

I am going to bring back the series, in fact I want to spend more time working on it and actually finish it. I decided to start using to do lists again and I do get a lot of things done when I use them. This is my last week in this term and then I have a break. Plan is to write a couple of chapters so I can post them on here. 

In addition to the other stuff on my to do list, I added one key thing: to send one story or poem to a publisher. I am happy to report I have been doing this steady for the last 5 weeks. I try not overwhelm myself and just send one thing either poems or a story. I made a damn spreadsheet. You better believe I am getting serious about publishing.

Okay well, the month of May seems like it will full of possibilities. Till next time...

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Adventures in Car Buying

We've had our car for three years and we put 60,000 miles on it. It is now hovering about 177,000 miles. I am hoping it makes it 200K but, it's going downhill fast. We replaced various parts and sensors and the car still doesn't run right. So we've been looking for another car. And let me tell you, this is no easy task. 

If you remember right, I mentioned in my last post that we were going to DC. My husband found lots of affordable cars in Maryland. So I brought the checkbook. We had to rent a car just to get to DC (first time Priceline users but that is a post for another time) anyway. He finds this really nice car in our price range at the Fitz Mall in Gaithersburg, MD. We are staying in Rockville MD so it wasn't far. We wrote to the dealer and went to DC. The sales guy, I think his name was Jason, said all the car needed was tires and rotors. Now, tires you have to replace every so often and rotors are easy and inexpensive to fix if you have someone, like I do, that knows how to fix  stuff on a car. When he writes back to us we are in DC. It is close to an hour train ride from DC to Shady Grove. We tell him we are interested in actually looking at the car because it was a good price and only needed tires and rotors. The guy writes back and says he'll let us know when the car is ready to be looked at.

So we do some sightseeing stuff. Finally, the guy says we can come look at it. This is at 4 pm or close to it. We rush to the closest Metro, take the red back to Shady Grove, pick up the rental and drive to Gaithersburg. I probably should mention that we actually told this twat burger we were in DC not lurking around Popeyes in Rockville. Anyway back to the story. My husband gets to the dealer and tries to find this Jason guy but the twat burger pushes him off on another salesperson. Who proceeds to tell him that the car needs thousands dollars worth of work to even pass Maryland inspection. And we can't drive it because it is unsafe and it will need to be towed. Blah blah... then the salesperson tried to sell him a more expensive car.

My question WHY LIE? Why waste our time for nothing? We seriously wasted 2 hours on this twat burger. And this could have been prevented if he would have been honest in the first place. People like that give car salesmen a bad name.

The adventure ended this weekend. We rented a car for the day to go to Harrisburg where we had two prospects lined up, mileage was under 200K, and in our price range. We got the first car on our list today. It was a 2000 Nissan Altima. I love this car. It has a sunroof. Now, I just need to think of a name for it. I was thinking Davina but I don't know. The place we bought car one, Team One Auto Group, was honest and friendly.

And there you go, my advice:  avoid Jason at the Fitzmall in Gaithersburg, MD  because he is a liar or withholds the truth and you will waste your time unless of course you are buying a more expensive car and he will probably love to lick your hemorrhoids.

Until next time...

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Happy National Poetry Month

Yeah it's April!!! Not only does that mean, one day in the very near future I might be able to enjoy short sleeve shirts and sunshine but this is the start of National Poetry Month and the official start of PoMoSco (I wrote about the project last blog post). I have a bunch of my poems scheduled for the next week so it will be easier to find my poems by clicking here. You can also visit PoMoSco to read other poets' work.

So the reason I have so many poems scheduled, is the family and I are going to DC tomorrow until Monday evening.  I have one poem scheduled per day. I hope you check out my work and other people who are also doing the project. 

Okay, so DC is on the horizon. We are definitely going to try and get to the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly. I really want to see the space shuttle. We are also planning on seeing all the monuments and the art museums as well.  After this shitty winter, DC will be a welcomed vacation. Really hoping to eat at Popeye's. There seems to be one everywhere.

I am already half way through the term at school and doing well in both my classes. I really enjoy my screenwriting class. I might just tackle that screenplay for ABC Family sooner than later. Also, for the last three weeks in a row, I have been sending out stuff to traditional publishers. My goal is to send one thing away once a week. Yeah, it seems like a small number but it is something I can do. In fact, I sent poems to The New Yorker  the other day and I will be sending poems to Rhino  in just a little bit here. I even made a spread sheet and for those that actually know me, this is a big step since I am the queen of chaos and organization is not my strong suit.

Not too long of a post today, I have a lot stuff to do before going away. I implore you all to  check out PoMoSco and read my poems on there.

Till next time...