Happy New Year!!!

Don't know about you guys, but 2018 was a rough one for my family. Hoping 2019 is a whole new year!

Pic snicked from the internets. Let me know if it's yours so I can give credit where credit is due.

December Words of Wisdom

Not too many this month. Guess everyone was busy with Christmas.

There is a Christmas song upon the air, there is a joy innate within the heart. --Edna Greene Hines

Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall. --Larry Wilde

Let future generation understand the burden and the blessings of freedom. Let them say we stood where duty required us to stand. --President George H.W. Bush

You can't reach for anything new if your hands are still full of yesterday's junk.
--Louise Smith

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sometimes it feels so good to just sit by yourself, relax and not talk to anyone. --Kristen Butler

I have seen the Sea
when it is stormy and wild;
when it is calm and serene;
when it is dark and moody,
and in all its moods,
I see myself.
--Martin Buxbaum

The sea, for me, is where I want to be.
Where I may flow free.
The sea, for me, is where I dream to be.
Where I may be me.
The Mermaid of The Sea.
--Brandi Fitzgerald

"Let Me Be Frank", with director's commentary. OH. MY. GOD.

Not only does this guy do a brilliant turn as the "director" of the bizarre Kevin Spacey video that was unleashed on an unsuspecting - and very confused - world the other day, he did it not only within hours of the video being released, but he did in ON. FREAKING. CHRISTMAS. EVE. Not enough props in the world for this creative genius. James Urbaniak (aka director Skip Sullivan), a grateful world turns its ears to you:

Particularly love the shoutouts to Skip's appalled girlfriend Jenny, Freesound.org (bet they've never seen so much traffic), SoundMan73, and Touch of Evil.

Well played sir, well played.

Update 1/2/19: Let Me Be Frank now has its own iMDB page, complete with Trivia, Goofs and Quotes. Spacey is due to be arraigned soon, God only knows what he'll do then.

God bless us, each and every one

Hope everyone is having a merry and meaningful Christmas.

Oh, it's on!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

It's time for the Silent Monks!

Submitted for your approval...or not

It looks like my 2018 plan to submit to at least two markets/contests per month is going out with a whimper. I had planned to submit three stories to ScreenCraft's Cinematic Short Story Contest this month to go out with a bang of sorts, but when I got a look at the entry fee - $60 per story - along with consideration of what effect, if any it would have on my writing career (not much, except some bragging rights) I decided that money could be better spent elsewhere. I've got a couple of big writer's convention trips planned for next year so I'm trying to rein in the spending. It's weird, because this is the first time I can recall being deterred by the cost of an entry fee. I just thought it seemed like a lot for a short story, especially when multiplied by three, and I couldn't settle on just one.

If I had entered these stories, that would have given me 18 entries for the year out of a minimum of 24. Without them I only have 15 for the year. Not a great percentage, although at least a couple of down months (March and April) can be explained by the fact that my Mom passed away in March, and the ensuing months were a crazy whirlwind of cleaning out her apartment and then my moving in July. It's just been a rough year. I think I did okay under the circumstances.

As I mentioned here, I'm going to focus more on some lengthier projects going into 2019. Now that I'm officially done with 2018 writing-wise, I'm getting really excited about what next year could bring.

Happy writing everyone!

He knows who's a good boy

I can't even remember where I got this one, just that I've had it a few years and it never gets old.

Here, have some writing contests

Planning on making 2019 the year your writing career gets a boost? Here are some options for getting your work seen, judged, hopefully rewarded, and maybe even discovered.

As I mentioned here, not only did I have a lot of success with Moondance International Film Festival, but they have a boatload of submission categories, so whatever you're writing, there's probably a category for you. Plus, they're already accepting submissions for 2019, so here's your chance to get a jump on the new year.

ScreenCraft has fifteen different competitions including a fellowship, so again, pretty much something for everyone. They have produced a nifty interactive calendar showing the opening date, early deadline and late deadline for each contest.

Some others: Fade In Online has a bunch of competitions, TrackingB has TV and feature contests, PAGE International has contests for features, shorts and TV pilots, and Writer's Digest has their usual slate of annual competitions.

Happy writing!

'Twas two weeks before Christmas...

It's exactly two weeks until Christmas! Hope everyone has their shopping done. Stores are going to be insane between now and the 25th.

This popped up on my Facebook page and I couldn't resist posting it. I once attended a charity Christmas event where a friend's husband was Santa Claus. It was years ago, but I still remember his comment after that, "Every man, at least once in his life, should play Santa Claus." This particular Santa really knocked it out of the park.

H/T to Tropical Life, Food and Fun on FB.

It's a holiday hat trick for Foamy the Squirrel

"Tis the season to shut the fuck up and stop being a whiny little bitch!" Gotta love Foamy.

Full Metal Christmas

I've posted this before, but watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer this year made me want to drag it out again. Behold! Full Metal Jacket dialogue dubbed over a scene from Rudolph.

This one has me in tears every darn time

What a gift, to have voices like this and share them so beautifully.

Christmas with Mommie Dearest

Quite a performance from everyone involved.

Words hurt

Think it about it, indeed.

Interesting factoid: While Boris Karloff is well-known for narrating How the Grinch Stole Christmas (OG), the songs were actually sung by noted voice-over artist and singer Thurl Ravenscroft, also known as the longtime voice of Tony the Tiger.

H/T to Trish Martin for sharing this on the Fame is a Bitch Obsessed FB page.

We have a winner! And a finalist! And a couple of semi-finalists! And a new writing plan for 2019!

As I posted in August, I had submitted four entries to the Moondance International Film Festival, three in the short story category and one in the short screenplay category. Last week I was looking over old submissions and realized I'd never received any notice from Moondance, and since it's been months I assumed that meant my entries hadn't placed. I tried checking their website multiple times for results, but the results link only led to a page that appeared to be down.

I decided to check again and not only does Moondance have their website issues resolved, but all four of my submissions were listed in the results:

All the winners can be found here.

Needless to say, this was very good news. I needed some encouragement with these stories. Bahama Bobby was written for the St. Petersburg Bouchercon anthology but didn't make it. It did score an Honorable Mention in this year's Writer's Digest Annual Writing Competition (in the Short Story/Genre category), so I figured it wasn't a total waste. Plus, I just love it. It was inspired by this meme, which I thought was hilarious:

Christine Thirteen was written for the most recent Sisters in Crime/LA anthology but wasn't chosen, and Deja vu, which has been around forever. was rejected by the SinC Guppies 2017 anthology (I received that news shortly before Crime Scene/Do Not Cross was accepted for LAst Resort, the 2017 SinC/LA anthology). Chick Stuff was something I wrote years ago and been filed away and forgotten. Nice to see it still has some life.

I haven't done submission posts for October and November because I haven't submitted anything recently. There were several anthologies and markets I wanted to submit to, but ultimately couldn't come up with stories for. I've also been reconsidering my "two submissions per month" plan because it's keeping me from working on larger projects while spending a lot of time and energy on markets that don't pan out. There is one more competition with a December deadline (for cinematic short stories) that I'll submit to and that will be it for 2018.

So the plan for 2019 is to work on a couple of novels. I have an A project that's been kicking around for years and a B project that's a more recent idea that will be my fallback when I hit a wall with/need a break from Project A. I also have a play that I'd like to spend some time on in the next couple of months, in the hopes that it will be ready for 2019 competitions.

There are a couple of upcoming crime anthologies (2019 Bouchercon and the San Diego Chapter of Sisters in Crime) that I definitely want to submit to since these are right up my alley, but other than that I decided I need to try to market my completed short stories to publishers, rather than trying to keep coming up with new ones whenever a theme is announced. Since most of them have placed in competitions, I'm going into 2019 with the mindset that they're worthy of publication if I can just find the right fit for them.

Happy writing everyone!

Are you a woman? Are you oppressed? The BBC knows what's up, and what's keeping us down.

It's been so long since I've been able to blog something like this. Reminds me of the glorious days of Attack Watch. Seriously, I kinda miss the Twitter of days gone by, and by days gone by I mean circa 2011.

Luckily this priceless piece of crap popped up on my Twitter feed this fine Monday evening and brought back the good times:

Because shoes, brow pencils and much needed (for those of us so blessed) upper-body support are clear evidence of The Patriarchy (TM) keeping us girls from succeeding in life. I'm sure the victims of female genital mutilation, women stoned to death for being rape victims, and those girls kidnapped by the Boko Haram and forced into sexual servitude are so thrilled the BBC is at the forefront of identifying what's really victimizing them. Take that, men!

Of course, I had to contribute. Sorry if TMI, but Orwell was right, some bras are more equal than others:

Have at it, Twitter Nation!

Click to biggify (HELLO AGAIN 2011!!!) if you can't read on the page. Totally worth the clicks. Twitter at its finest.

By the way, speaking of female empowerment, I recently found the best freaking lipstick ever. Bless you, Besame. You will be hearing from me again. Besame mucho!

Have a beachy Christmas

Image from The Beach is Calling on FB.