My Mini Midweek Vacation

We are kicking off our Get Pop Cultured Week at work. 

Basically, we're having several days where we're celebrating almost everything in pop culture. There's going to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle day, a Comic Con preview day (I think), Frozen Friday (yes, the movie), and more. 

On the 19th of this month, there's a Get Pop Cultured costume day. And it has been strongly advised that as employees ... we  have to dress up. 

I was even offered money to help go and MAKE a costume if I needed to. There was no way I could do that. 

Therefore, I made the decision to take my two days available off work to disappear to Grand Rapids to raid the thrift stores for costume ideas. 

I landed on doing the cosplay that I really wanted to do for JAFAX next year. 

I decided to dress up as Ponyo's mom from Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo. She's the Mother of the Sea and she's in charge of ALL the oceans and its inhabitants and she basically sets her husband straight when he tries to control their daughter in the movie. She was just so cool. So I decided to go as her. All I need is a dress, a wig, makeup, costume jewelry, the works. 

Go thrift stores! 

<---- Ponyo's mother as she arrives on the scene.

And the second photo featured here is Ponyo's mother at the END of the movie. So you can kinda see where I'm going with the costume. It looks simple ... but she has little elements that are going to be difficult to pull off. Like her very specific jewelry. For the 19th, I may have to skip the necklace, but I KNOW I can pull off her headpiece. I've seen some pretty phenomenal cosplay for her so far, so I hope I can pull this off. The end result should look SOMETHING like this ...

Then, to complete the look, I'm going to create my own little Ponyo and her sisters for me to carry around. THAT secret I am not revealing in my blog until I create the final product. I'm not very artsy or crafty and the way I'm creating Ponyo ... not giving it up until I know what it looks like. All I know is that after my day of shopping today ...I'm feeling a bit more confident about this more and more. 

Sometimes, I wonder why I wasn't ever MORE crafty. If I could suddenly learn how to make something or create something that was actually pretty epic, I would leave everything and travel the Renaissance Faire circuit as a career. I really would. I'd be awesome at it and I know I'd love it. Travelling from place to place, meeting new people, seeing new cities, and .... being able to watch a joust on a semi-regular basis? Yeah, that would be heaven. The only thing I think I'd miss was the regular-ness of life and being near a Biggby or Barnes & Noble. 

With the Renaissance Faire season fast upon us all, it just gets me more amped up to go again. I love the ren faire. I just love it. *sighs happily* 

With my writing, I have drastically been improving the original draft. I've got a decent bad guy and he has MOTIVE for hating the main characters now. So yay me. Also, I have some motivation to keep going. I always got kind of bored with rewriting and re-editing. So I had a feeling that my readers would get bored as well. When I had finally figured out the fatal flaw ... which was the bad guy having no reason to even BE a bad guy, I feel like life has been given to the pages of the novel. I haven't brought him in yet, but he's been mentioned and it makes me type that much faster until he arrives on the scene in all his red-haired, topaz-eyed, twitchy glory. ^_^ 

There have been many instances where I have been so into a novel and mostly it's when I'm reading one ... but now? I'm feeling it for the one I'm writing. What a difference! 

So it just means that I sit in a lot of coffee shops, drinking chai lattes or large pots of Glitter and Gold tea while typing furiously at a keyboard.

It has just been an interesting couple of weeks. 

I think it's time to put this blog post to bed, however. What do you think? As a close, I will tell you the books I am on the brink of beginning. Yay books! 

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery is about the lives of two very different people. A concierge who would rather not deal with people at all, but has a secret passion for life and a fear of pursuing it. And a 12 year old child prodigy who hides her true nature from everyone around her to maintain the visage of 'normalcy'. Together, they learn more about themselves and each other.
That's really all I know so far about this book, but it's been on my To Read list for a while and for our August's book club, we're reading it. 

Half Bad by Sally Green is about the battle between good and evil in this teen novel about a young boy named Nathan. He's trapped in the middle of an ongoing fight between White and Black witches. 

Again, that's all I really know. THIS one was an ARC I found at work and pretty much I just looked at the cover and said 'Sure, why not?' because of course that's how I roll. I'm a cover judger. I admit it. 

So those are the books that I am finally going to be beginning. Let me know in the comments if you've read these before or if you've heard anything about them. I'm always anxious to talk books and share ideas. 

Until I write to you again ...

Be Open, Be Loving, Be Yourself

Taryn

Going For It....

Cheers for writing! 

Ever since I fixed my novel and it's no longer left with a GAPING plot hole that I'm sure a meteor could have flown through easily, I have been rewriting and writing like crazy. A friend of mine and myself decided that we've had enough of the rejection letters and the long drawn out wait to even find a literary agent. 
Together, we've decided that we're going to just WRITE our novels and then we'll trade the novels in chunks and slowly edit them between themselves. Then we're going to go through the self publishing route. After all, Jennifer Armintrout, my super amazing author friend SWEARS by this route because your book remains YOUR property. 
Or something like that. Maybe I'll have to ask her again. Get some more info. 

Maybe the next time I'm able to get to her Writer's Group. 

Meanwhile, maybe I will try to share one of my fanfiction pieces. Because my obsession with the Mortal Instruments only grows now that I have finished the final book. All I want is Alec and Magnus to be happy ... or at least I wish that Alec was MINE. (Oh yeah, Ashy. I said it. Alec is mine. Deal with it) 

True to form, I have absolutely no idea what I'm really writing about tonight. It's something that kind of bothers me. Maybe one day when I have my head screwed on straight, I'll be able to actually come up with some sort of idea to post weekly here. Am I right? 

Granted, I WAS just telling a dear friend of mine from Barnes & Noble that in my world, I have no deadlines, due dates, or scary things. I live on a cloud. And all the clouds are made of cotton candy and it rains chocolate. The trees are made of cupcakes and the leaves that fall from the trees are rainbow sprinkles. Bunnies, unicorns, and all things fuzzy are the co-habitants of this world and everything is happy. All the time. 

How could you NOT want to live in a world filled with these little guys? 
The real world is a scary place. In my head ... my world is WAY better. *laughs*

I think that's why I feel like I really connect with the main character in the novel I am currently reading. 

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell 
It tells the story of a young girl named Cath who ... is starting college with her twin sister Wren. Wren doesn't want to be her sister's roommate. She wants to be her own person. And Cath? She's nervous and anxious and scared (all of the above are different feelings. Trust me). Her roommate, Reagan is kind of anti-Cath and she has a boyfriend who's around ALL the time. She hasn't even had the courage to face the cafeteria. And her sister ... is nowhere to be found when Cath needs her. She just feels ... alone. So she retreats to a book obsession and a book world where everything makes sense to her. Fanfiction, forums, and writing are her escape. But ... soon ... as we all do, Cath is going to have to face the real world and step away from the fandom and look towards her future. 

I'm aware that we can't live in a happy, fuzzy bunny world all the time. I am very well aware of this fact. 
But the world we live in isn't easy. The lights are dulled and the air feels cold; the sky is unwelcoming and people are unfriendly. It's loud and dark and harsh. 

But there is a light we CAN grab onto. God gave me a gift when he gave me a good family, an amazing circle of friends, and of course ... my books and imagination. Without these things, I'm sure I wouldn't have survived my OWN experiences in college. Both at Kalamazoo Valley and at Cornerstone. 

I wish that I could say that one day I stood up and said 'No more hiding', but that isn't true. 
And because I know myself ... I know that that will never happen. A part of me will always be caught in two different places. One foot in someplace where I can disappear to in my own head (my writing world) and the other foot in reality that I HAVE to face on a daily basis. And ... that's okay. 

Whoa did that get intense. Thanks for hanging onto the ride there. 
Maybe that's just the mood I'm in. I don't know. 
Well, my store is closing so I've got to take off. I'll try to write you again soon. Don't cry. Don't sniffle. Don't be sad. I promise that I won't sound so .... depressing next time. 

Be Open, Be Loving, Be Yourself
Taryn