• On Life and Love

    What in tarnation?

    Why have I suddenly become obsessed with reggaeton? Don Omar, Daddy Yankee, etc. Weird. I’ve got to be scaring coworkers and my roomie if they hear what’s blaring out of my headphones. Then again, I may do that normally… I’ve hacked out a few thousand words over the past couple of days, and while not all of it is published yet, some of it is up on the Ila des Mains series page. My character is morphing on me, becoming less nervous and neurotic in some respects, but I shall endeavor to keep her close to the brand of psychotic she was in the first couple of stories. That, of…

  • On Life and Love

    The other beast emerges

    About Wednesday, I slipped into a weird mood that I haven’t felt in months, thanks to the stress of school. It’s my weird “work hard, play hard” mood that brings with it an unimaginable focus. Right now, my mind is set on about four things. Two of those are work-related, one is writing. None are social, unfortunately, so socializing for me has hit the back burner–if I don’t have a purpose for talking to you (be it technical or otherwise), I probably won’t spare many mips for discussion. Alas, this meant IMs and e-mails have gone largely unanswered this weekend, that I’ve been the antithesis of soft and warm (although…

  • On Life and Love

    Linkage on writing

    For the lit-geeks inclined to spend their Saturday nights writing instead of doing homework or being particularly outgoing. Reading suggestions on writing can be such a sticky subject, because people can get into the mindset of “How dare you say this is the the way to write?” (Much like people did with Mathias’s web design canon, come to think of it.) Granule of salt, a nice chill pill, and a bit of perspective, folks. Really. Why, yes, I did just use the term “chill pill”. Welcome to the early nineties once again. Minisinoo‘s written three articles on writing recently that have been sitting in my “read/comment/link” pile in Bloglines: Issues…

  • On Life and Love

    Bring your Spanish-speaking accent and read aloud.

    The quote below is the awesomest piece of writing I’ve run across recently, and is courtesy of a professorial candidate that presented this afternoon. It has to be read as though it were completely Spanish, though, or it loses all effect (I may have left an accent mark off somewhere—don’t shoot me). Rafael Pernett y Morales, Loma ardiente y vestida de sol La noche cayó, y Macorina volvió del monte con Pito, justo a tiempo, just-a-time, para subir al autobús latino que volví a la ciudad… En el autobús latino se cantaba en español. En los autobuses chombos se cantaban calipsos con ukeleles y las mujeres decían que iban a…